333 replies to this topic

[Crockdaddy]

Ultimately why should it matter the publisher at this point either way. Most of the damage is done long ago regarding the pricing model, the early choices in the development cycle. We do have a great Mechwarrior Arena shooter. Just for many we wanted MOAR ... and frankly for the amount of money invested into this franchise I suspect we should feel entitled to MOAR. Was it realistic to feel entitled? Likely not given how things have turned out.

One positive from my MWO experience ... my Star Citizen expectations are strongly tempered and I shouldn't be disappointmented when the game doesn't meet my too lofty expectations. Thank you PGI ... er IGP ... or whatever (joking just joking).

[RedDragon]

JaxRiot, on 24 November 2016 - 04:52 PM, said:

So I have a hard time believing that nobody at PGI or IGP even noticed it when a moron like me can notice it right away.

On the other hand, no one at PGI noticed that the new minimap would be a debacle. Or that the Long Tom would ruin the game. Or that LRMs were terribly overpowered for weeks during LRMgeddon, Or that ECM was like God mode (for years) ... I think you know where I'm going with this.

[Hunka Junk]

I started this thread with no idea of what was about to happen. I have a lot of points I'd like to speak to. I'll try to keep it concise, but I will not shorten this in favor of not making points clear.

PGI v IGP is before my time. It seems established that they were two different entities, but things get fuzzy when your friend, former co-worker, acquaintance goes into a joint venture with you. Everything about this is very vague, and perhaps that is for legal reasons. Keep in mind that we have a thread up about people who aspire to be game designers, and the more specifics you can provide about how that dev/pub relationship went wrong, the better.

I have very limited experience with NGNG, but I didn't start this thread to get them in trouble. I see them as great internet personalities and recognize their efforts in making this whole thing work. As for community managers, I'll discuss that further as we go on.

COMPLAINTS
Communication- This thread is a microcosm of what's wrong with dev-community interaction. The accuracy of the PGI/IGP is one thing, but others are furious that it took this issue to bring devs in contact with the community. It's a serious problem that communication up to this point was virtually nil.

Ethics- It is ethically dubious that NGNG people on PGI's payroll post on these forums appearing as though they are normal community members. It is even more dubious that they appear to represent the community in podcasts and twitch interactions with the PGI president. They need to have the turquoise text of other PGI employees.

Toxicity, ambiguity, and accountability- People who would most likely offer constructive criticism become less constructive the longer they get ignored. Some people are simply toxic, but that's not what I see here among those becoming increasingly critical of the game and the devs. Criticism here is based on an overall lack of progress demonstrated over a very long period of time coupled with a perceived attempt to avoid criticism. When PGI messes up, a modicum of humility to acknowledge that things got messed up would go far in terms of keeping temperatures cool. Instead, we get the fetishization of surprising the community with new things that are also not quite ready for prime time.

Maturity- this is mentioned in the podcast. One speaker suggests that the community lacks the maturity needed to understand what it is to have a non-AAA game in development. A childish developer breeds a childish community. If the game is truly a non-AAA game in development, then the developer has a further duty beyond what AAA games have to manage expectations. And make no mistake, we are not children. This may be a game, but we are stakeholders in your business. The vast majority of us have invested more money into this single game this year than it would cost to buy the five top AAA games released this year. I think some devs may be interpreting mech sales as their approval rating. This is a mistake.

Moving forward, I'm not just here to complain. If indeed we are players of an F2P seeking a win/win approach to making this game last and profit as long as possible, then here are my suggestions:

Representation
Community- “Community” needs to be defined. Note that on your splash page, people can click on “Forums” and be brought here, or they can click on “Community”, and be sent to payrolled NGNG. The forums are your community, and it's worth shouting out to the larger community at Reddit and Steam. These 4 forums are your community. NGNG would be better labeled “Multimedia”.

Community Management- We do not need community management. What we need is community engagement. This means someone assigned to read and respond to what the community is talking about. I don't think this needs to happen on a daily basis, but perhaps they could respond to the week's most talked about topics. “Regularly” is the key term here, and equally important is this person's ability to respond in some semblance of depth and not vagaries about pipelines. In other words, this person needs to be able to interface between command and community in a meaningful way and, wherever possible, provide answers.

Players' Council- The pre-roundtable was open discussion, followed by a players' council, followed by a roundtable.

That was very good.

The post-roundtable was the president talking to NGNG people on payroll and a community on chat being told to behave themselves.

This was horrendously horrible.

When people label NGNG state radio, this is what they're talking about.

The roundtable must be round.

What this means is council meetings instead of town halls. It means that the devs are free to put up what points they'd like to address, and the the council gets to put up points they'd like addressed.

It has to be a two-way street.

Finally, let the community vote on priorities.

Get all the feedback as you did in the roundtable, then let there be a vote on what is most important.

There is too much “the community asked for this” and not enough “the majority asked for this”.

If forum voting is skewed by alts, then send a qualtrics survey to each account holder.

You can't make everyone happy all of the time, but I cannot emphasize enough the difference between:

“Here's what we're doing. Someone asked for it.”

and

“Many people have asked for X, Y, and Z, and now we're choosing to focus on Y.”-with a survey to back it up

Then I understand that I was heard but that the majority chose something else. I can live with that. I can't live with being ignored.

NOTE: I said all of the above without mentioning nerfs, PVE, Solaris, or any other specific change I might want. I focused on the mechanism of how to decide.

Now, are you people in high places still listening? Or did you just come to put out a fire and return to the status quo?

ENDNOTE: I oppose anyone being banned or their employment affected by this thread.

[Mycrus]

Even the forum meta is boring... really this issue?

Shills be shilling from the start when unit leaders didnt want to shell out for their ts3...

Igpgi is well known... like 'it is known khaleesi" kind of known...

Just goes to show you how dead this game is...

[JaxRiot]

dervishx5, on 24 November 2016 - 08:15 PM, said:

Why are you guys upset? This has been painfully obvious for several years.

Exactly!

NGNG being basically paid Shills? Well, DUH! I could have told you that a year and a half ago. I thought everybody knew that.

Russ says that they had no involvement with IGP and that IGP was formed by an Acquaintance and that they didnt even notice how close their company names were to each others..

Oh really? Tell us more about this "Acquaintance"

Personally I dont really care. Its all old news to me, and I hardly play any more and havnt invested any money in a very long time.

But its still funny to me that all of the big names jumped into this thread for some serious damage control, as if we take anything they say as truthful these days.

You know.. because IGP / PGI / NGNG have always been so completely honest and forthcoming to its player base all of these years...

Just sayin

[Davegt27]

BFD NGNG paid shell who cares

PGI's relationship with IGP another BFD

people are making a big to do about nothing IMHO

[Hunka Junk]

Davegt27, on 25 November 2016 - 05:22 AM, said:

BFD NGNG paid shell who cares

PGI's relationship with IGP another BFD

people are making a big to do about nothing IMHO

How would you rate NGNG as community managers?

I believe that is a point.

[Mycrus]

Hunka Junk, on 25 November 2016 - 05:28 AM, said:

How would you rate NGNG as community managers?

I believe that is a point.

Not very well... why you think they needed new ncix shills...

[Alienized]

you guys need to chill the fk out.
relax, put the stereo up, dress as sadistic masochists, swing the whips against your pc and man up to the point where sadism is standard.

we all should know by now that PGI staff has no time to play or learn to play games. its kinda obvious. i mean, i played alot, made a bloody alt and it needed just 4 battles to pass Matt and Tina in tiers.

with that said.


enjoy this.

PGI, it would be a pleasure to demonstrate how bad the highlanders and victors are in private matches with you. 1on1. no twitch streams, no hacks, no bs, you and me. 1v1 tournament.

COME AT ME GUYS!

[Hunka Junk]

Mycrus, on 25 November 2016 - 05:30 AM, said:

Not very well... why you think they needed new ncix shills...

Umm? NCIX were not meant to manage community.

I think the purpose of NCIX is still a bit of a mystery, but...

I see nothing there in terms of community engagement.

And I'm not gonna hang around to try to steer this any more than I already have.

EDIT: What I've said here does not need 6 months to digest or some such.

You should address this at your celebration of MWO.

That's not soon. That's next week.

And what I mean by that is: a structured, transparent way to better hear your community.

Edited by Hunka Junk, 25 November 2016 - 05:49 AM.

[DevlinCognito]

NGNG as Community Managers? I can kind of see it. They play the game, make useful/interesting videos and actually talk to people, but it feels like they are hampered by not actually knowing/being able to talk about anything. Our current Cm could definitely learn a thing or three from them that's for sure.

[Hunka Junk]

Alienized, on 25 November 2016 - 05:37 AM, said:

I just listened to 30 minutes of that.

Musically, it's roughly at the same place our community management is.

[cazidin]

Bombadil, on 24 November 2016 - 08:34 PM, said:

Phil is away with his family for the holiday and unable to respond himself, so I will for now.

I'm going to keep this straight to the point, despite how I feel about how rude and misinformed some of this thread is.

Phil and I were not anywhere near being on the inside when IGP formed, and can only base our knowledge on what we've heard over the years, just like you. I can only assume that Phil took the previous knowledge that IGP was formed by an acquaintance, and then expanded on that and unfortunately said or implied some things that simply weren't fully accurate.

The podcast was unscripted, and we had no idea what they were going to ask us, so we were just answering as best we could off the top of our heads. Phil made a mistake, he's human. I think that's what Russ meant when he said words are words, meaning that they can easily be misspoken and/or misunderstood, not that they are unimportant. But I think most of you already knew that.

"Rude and misinformed"? Let's start there. We haven't been rude. Not at all. Snarky, maybe, but a lot of us have refrained from any serious insults or rudeness against PGI or NGNG. The only misinformation is from NGNG or PGI. As an example, I'm still waiting on Russ to fulfill his promise. He hasn't. He won't.

Second. Okay, I believe you. Until evidence is presented linking you to old IGP, I'll take your word for this but you are COMMUNITY MODERATORS for a COMPANY that you NEED TO BE OBJECTIVE TOWARDS! This is a CONFLICT OF INTEREST!

I repeat. You, and EVERYONE who works at NGNG is committed to a conflict of interest for now *only* being Community Moderators, a position in this company, but for not being upfront about this! We learned about it from a Freudian slip!

Words are important. Words matter. The wrong words can make the difference between a century long peace treaty and a hundred year war. Words led to the first great war. Do not dismiss these as just words. Address them, take these words to task and explain - provide irrefutable evidence that they're wrong.

And stop ignoring point 2. This makes FOUR representatives of PGI thus far in this thread. We have NOT seen anywhere near this level of interaction on the forums before. Maybe... show up more? Talk to us more? Give us a reason to stop being cynical buggers?

Edited by cazidin, 25 November 2016 - 06:24 AM.

[lazytopaz]

Hunka Junk, on 25 November 2016 - 04:11 AM, said:

I started this thread with no idea of what was about to happen. I have a lot of points I'd like to speak to. I'll try to keep it concise, but I will not shorten this in favor of not making points clear.

PGI v IGP is before my time. It seems established that they were two different entities, but things get fuzzy when your friend, former co-worker, acquaintance goes into a joint venture with you. Everything about this is very vague, and perhaps that is for legal reasons. Keep in mind that we have a thread up about people who aspire to be game designers, and the more specifics you can provide about how that dev/pub relationship went wrong, the better.

I have very limited experience with NGNG, but I didn't start this thread to get them in trouble. I see them as great internet personalities and recognize their efforts in making this whole thing work. As for community managers, I'll discuss that further as we go on.

COMPLAINTS
Communication- This thread is a microcosm of what's wrong with dev-community interaction. The accuracy of the PGI/IGP is one thing, but others are furious that it took this issue to bring devs in contact with the community. It's a serious problem that communication up to this point was virtually nil.

Ethics- It is ethically dubious that NGNG people on PGI's payroll post on these forums appearing as though they are normal community members. It is even more dubious that they appear to represent the community in podcasts and twitch interactions with the PGI president. They need to have the turquoise text of other PGI employees.

Toxicity, ambiguity, and accountability- People who would most likely offer constructive criticism become less constructive the longer they get ignored. Some people are simply toxic, but that's not what I see here among those becoming increasingly critical of the game and the devs. Criticism here is based on an overall lack of progress demonstrated over a very long period of time coupled with a perceived attempt to avoid criticism. When PGI messes up, a modicum of humility to acknowledge that things got messed up would go far in terms of keeping temperatures cool. Instead, we get the fetishization of surprising the community with new things that are also not quite ready for prime time.

Maturity- this is mentioned in the podcast. One speaker suggests that the community lacks the maturity needed to understand what it is to have a non-AAA game in development. A childish developer breeds a childish community. If the game is truly a non-AAA game in development, then the developer has a further duty beyond what AAA games have to manage expectations. And make no mistake, we are not children. This may be a game, but we are stakeholders in your business. The vast majority of us have invested more money into this single game this year than it would cost to buy the five top AAA games released this year. I think some devs may be interpreting mech sales as their approval rating. This is a mistake.

Moving forward, I'm not just here to complain. If indeed we are players of an F2P seeking a win/win approach to making this game last and profit as long as possible, then here are my suggestions:

Representation
Community- “Community” needs to be defined. Note that on your splash page, people can click on “Forums” and be brought here, or they can click on “Community”, and be sent to payrolled NGNG. The forums are your community, and it's worth shouting out to the larger community at Reddit and Steam. These 4 forums are your community. NGNG would be better labeled “Multimedia”.

Community Management- We do not need community management. What we need is community engagement. This means someone assigned to read and respond to what the community is talking about. I don't think this needs to happen on a daily basis, but perhaps they could respond to the week's most talked about topics. “Regularly” is the key term here, and equally important is this person's ability to respond in some semblance of depth and not vagaries about pipelines. In other words, this person needs to be able to interface between command and community in a meaningful way and, wherever possible, provide answers.

Players' Council- The pre-roundtable was open discussion, followed by a players' council, followed by a roundtable.

That was very good.

The post-roundtable was the president talking to NGNG people on payroll and a community on chat being told to behave themselves.

This was horrendously horrible.

When people label NGNG state radio, this is what they're talking about.

The roundtable must be round.

What this means is council meetings instead of town halls. It means that the devs are free to put up what points they'd like to address, and the the council gets to put up points they'd like addressed.

It has to be a two-way street.

Finally, let the community vote on priorities.

Get all the feedback as you did in the roundtable, then let there be a vote on what is most important.

There is too much “the community asked for this” and not enough “the majority asked for this”.

If forum voting is skewed by alts, then send a qualtrics survey to each account holder.

You can't make everyone happy all of the time, but I cannot emphasize enough the difference between:

“Here's what we're doing. Someone asked for it.”

and

“Many people have asked for X, Y, and Z, and now we're choosing to focus on Y.”-with a survey to back it up

Then I understand that I was heard but that the majority chose something else. I can live with that. I can't live with being ignored.

NOTE: I said all of the above without mentioning nerfs, PVE, Solaris, or any other specific change I might want. I focused on the mechanism of how to decide.

Now, are you people in high places still listening? Or did you just come to put out a fire and return to the status quo?

ENDNOTE: I oppose anyone being banned or their employment affected by this thread.

Maybe if we all start quoting you they will come back and see 50 pages of your post and actually response to something that actually matter rather than swooping in to put out a imaginary fire to imaginary and nonexisting problem.

Who gives a s#it if PGI is IGP or not. It feels like we're looked over by people who have attention span of a ferret "so we belive that we need to.. .oh look at the kitty/something shiny (mechpacks money)".

Still it feels like they don't give two f#cks about what the majority wants and I presume what majority wants is new weaponry and equipement, new game mods (maybe mode with more than 12v12), melee mechanic and those are just three things that I believe everyone would enjoy a lot if it was implemented in very near future.
So yeah we're back to status quo, sell the mech packs... and add nothing more of any value apart from that into the game.

Why I'm getting so emotional about a game? Because in a year time I've fell in love with it... and it pissess me off to see how little have changed for good/better.
The only positive change about this game I can list is the fact that they've actually put some work into the levels and overally the remaking process is outputting good looking maps (but even that is two steps forward and one step back - look frozen city aka sniper city; previously one of the best brawl maps... now a sniper fest idiocy).
Oh and they've finally sorted out loading/refreshing info/mechlab. So yeah that's the second good thing that happened to the game over a period of year.

This game has such a great potential its gameplay mixed with the ability to customize your ride is a golden key to victory and for me it's kind of a unique being sitting in a niche that's not so overpopulated... yet devs don't want to develop and work on this idea to push it further to open the golden gates of great success. I'm guessing the mech packs/mc sells are good enough to keep the company at very least afloat and devs themselves content with status quo. But for how long?

[BLOOD WOLF]

Bombadil, on 24 November 2016 - 08:34 PM, said:

Phil is away with his family for the holiday and unable to respond himself, so I will for now.

I'm going to keep this straight to the point, despite how I feel about how rude and misinformed some of this thread is.

Phil and I were not anywhere near being on the inside when IGP formed, and can only base our knowledge on what we've heard over the years, just like you. I can only assume that Phil took the previous knowledge that IGP was formed by an acquaintance, and then expanded on that and unfortunately said or implied some things that simply weren't fully accurate.

The podcast was unscripted, and we had no idea what they were going to ask us, so we were just answering as best we could off the top of our heads. Phil made a mistake, he's human. I think that's what Russ meant when he said words are words, meaning that they can easily be misspoken and/or misunderstood, not that they are unimportant. But I think most of you already knew that.

don't even bother with these guys, your gonna end up getting nowhere. Now it would be nice if russ and them interacted with the people who aren't trying to tangle with them every time they post

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 25 November 2016 - 06:37 AM.

[cazidin]

BLOOD WOLF, on 25 November 2016 - 06:36 AM, said:

don't even bother with these guys, your gonna end up getting nowhere. Now it would be nice if russ and them interacted with the people who aren't trying to tangle with them every time they post

Excuse you? Scroll up past lazytopaz's well written response to an equally lengthy quote and see what I wrote! We are *not* unreasonable and it isn't wrong that we demand answers from the very top, and that they directly address our grievances. For far too long they've ignored them or tried to push us to Twitter, where they know very well we can't articulate a grievance in under 140 characters.

Actually, no. Scroll up, read mine, THEN ready what Lazytopaz quoted and THEN read his response. I think we're being very reasonable here.

Edited by cazidin, 25 November 2016 - 06:42 AM.

[Hunka Junk]

lazytopaz, on 25 November 2016 - 06:29 AM, said:

Maybe if we all start quoting you they will come back and see 50 pages of your post and actually response to something that actually matter rather than swooping in to put out a imaginary fire to imaginary and nonexisting problem.

Who gives a s#it if PGI is IGP or not. It feels like we're looked over by people who have attention span of a ferret "so we belive that we need to.. .oh look at the kitty/something shiny (mechpacks money)".

Still it feels like they don't give two f#cks about what the majority wants and I presume what majority wants is new weaponry and equipement, new game mods (maybe mode with more than 12v12), melee mechanic and those are just three things that I believe everyone would enjoy a lot if it was implemented in very near future.
So yeah we're back to status quo, sell the mech packs... and add nothing more of any value apart from that into the game.

Why I'm getting so emotional about a game? Because in a year time I've fell in love with it... and it pissess me off to see how little have changed for good/better.
The only positive change about this game I can list is the fact that they've actually put some work into the levels and overally the remaking process is outputting good looking maps (but even that is two steps forward and one step back - look frozen city aka sniper city; previously one of the best brawl maps... now a sniper fest idiocy).
Oh and they've finally sorted out loading/refreshing info/mechlab. So yeah that's the second good thing that happened to the game over a period of year.

This game has such a great potential its gameplay mixed with the ability to customize your ride is a golden key to victory and for me it's kind of a unique being sitting in a niche that's not so overpopulated... yet devs don't want to develop and work on this idea to push it further to open the golden gates of great success. I'm guessing the mech packs/mc sells are good enough to keep the company at very least afloat and devs themselves content with status quo. But for how long?

I 100% understand.

At this point, it's the game v egos.

[Alienized]

Hunka Junk, on 25 November 2016 - 06:08 AM, said:

I just listened to 30 minutes of that.

Musically, it's roughly at the same place our community management is.

and the players are the singer?

[BLOOD WOLF]

cazidin, on 25 November 2016 - 06:42 AM, said:

Excuse you? Scroll up past lazytopaz's well written response to an equally lengthy quote and see what I wrote! We are *not* unreasonable and it isn't wrong that we demand answers from the very top, and that they directly address our grievances. For far too long they've ignored them or tried to push us to Twitter, where they know very well we can't articulate a grievance in under 140 characters.

Actually, no. Scroll up, read mine, THEN ready what Lazytopaz quoted and THEN read his response. I think we're being very reasonable here.

I 100% agree, if you are trying to have an area of mutual respect, then it is not unreasonable that you should be able to interact with the devs.

I agree with some of his points but the problem is the way its presented. They are going to say that the development is going to take the time that it takes, and they know we want new things. There are the appropriate channels for that.

The interaction that happened here was of poor taste, and it looks as if russ is annoyed as well as the other guy. That is not good

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 25 November 2016 - 07:03 AM.

[cazidin]

BLOOD WOLF, on 25 November 2016 - 07:02 AM, said:

I 100% agree, if you are trying to have an area of mutual respect, then it is not unreasonable that you should be able to interact with the devs.

I agree with some of his points but the problem is the way its presented. They are going to say that the development is going to take the time that it takes, and they know we want new things. There are the appropriate channels for that.

The interaction that happened here was of poor taste, and it looks as if russ is annoyed as well as the other guy. That is not good

PGI is caught in the unenviable position of having a license like Battletech with a large fanbase, larger than most really know, tbh, and being woefully unable and inadequate to deliver upon the needs or changes that they promise in a timely manner. As an example, the Command Console buff that I always bring up.

They are stuck with MW:O. They lack the resources, funding and personnel to develop a secondary title, and because of how they've mismanaged MW:O, they will likely never have the resources, funding or personnel to expand but hey, their new rec room looks nice.