69 replies to this topic

[Felbombling]

My company ran a sales competition event in house, and within twenty-four hours of it starting one of us had created a web-page with all the 'teams' listed and in brackets, a schedule, standings, etc. I came to the conclusion early on that, despite putting up a one-hundred thousand dollar prize pool, PGI wasn't really otherwise invested in promoting their own World Championships. The whole thing was rather sad to watch, really... the games leading up to the finale being played in near obscurity, the lack of coverage or updates on their own forums / website. Oh well...

Edited by StaggerCheck, 09 December 2016 - 08:46 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

I had zero interest in the tourney, but even I'm surprised at how easy it's been to still not know who won ( I really don't care)

Keep up the good work P.G.I

[Snazzy Dragon]

Between the 720p streaming that dropped to 360 a several times, awful production company hired for the event, lack of news coverage, not so exciting gameplay (third person MWO is very underwhelming to watch, and extremely little first person view was used), lack of replays, not so great spectator tools/interface, and matches that were all extremely one sided.. uh, yeah. I think it's a bust.

Edited by Snazzy Dragon, 09 December 2016 - 09:10 AM.

[TLBFestus]

Tristan Winter, on 09 December 2016 - 01:37 AM, said:

The esport thing is turning out to be as much of a missed opportunity.......

I see it as more of a misguided opportunity.

At this time this game is/was simply not big enough to become a eSport . Just that fact, ignoring all the other issues revolving around and challenging the eSport issue (lag, framerates, etc) is enough.

The fact that PGI managed to collect enough money to put $100,000+ in as prize money was a big surprise. If they put up all the money, which I'm pretty sure they didn't, it was wasted for the ROI (return on investment).

If it was sponsors money, well at least that didn't hurt PGIs bottom line too much. Looking at it from a potential sponsors point of view, wouldn't you wonder about the (lack of) effort put into promoting this, the paltry numbers (about 3000 views at peak), and the weak follow up after it's all over, and question if you'd put that kind of money into it again?

I did some (admittedly) simple math on it and at 3500 peak viewers, and $125,000 prize money the sponsors were paying about $350 per viewer. That's INSANE. Even if you count total views, which I don't have, it's a poor ROI in advertising.

Now, if the same companies sponsor it again, I would venture to say that either they are going to hand out a lot less cash next time, OR they have some other vested interest in the game itself, (......cough, cough,.cough....free mech artwork anyone?) that makes it worthwhile.

I'm not saying that they aren't going to do it again, cus I think that they will, but I'd be willing to say that the prize pool will be reduced. UNLESS the release of MW5 SP is going to spike this games population significantly. Even at MW's peak the numbers weren't anything to compete with the giants in todays market. Still....it could be good enough I suppose.

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

Peter2k, on 09 December 2016 - 02:42 AM, said:

You know there is a full article on the final matches

EON vs EmP right?

The strategies MechWarrior Online's best team used to become world champions

https://twitter.com/...911426287669248
It's just this weird thing that no one bothers to post it on the own homepage but uses Twitter
EXXLUSIVLY

I log into the forums every day. Usually through the website front page.
I follow MWO on facebook.
I even remember signing up for the MWO mailing list.

1st i've heard of this.

DoctorDetroit, on 09 December 2016 - 04:33 AM, said:

MWO really needs to be streamed in hd or you cannot really see what is happening.

I'd think sometime during a 12 hour stream someone could have fixed the "technical difficulties" that forced them to drop to 780p. I guess with PGI we should just accept sub-standard performance.

#minimumviablestream

#minimumviabletournament

[Big Tin Man]

So the hindsight committee is in force here. Should we be surprised that a small group of computer programmers and battletech nerds didn't have enough social skills and experience to put together an amazing flawless production with perfect marketing, camera work and 12 hours of live video commentary? Has anybody watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in the last 10 years? It's everything they can do to have running commentary and make a 3 hour parade entertaining with the best of the B-list celebs and the full backing of major networks. Everyone slammed BB Wolfe for her attempt to get people to talk to her at the Steam launch as well, but when people are standoff-ish when faced with a camera and someone trying to make something of the coverage... well... even the best sports broadcasters have trouble with that.

There's a place in the world for all kinds of folks, including communication, self-promotion, organizing and advertising. That is a completely different skill set than anyone at PGI has, and I'd be quite surprised if 1% of the people on this forum could handle it either. I'm not defending how it went down, there is a lot of room for improvement. There should have been a lot more homework done prior to the main event on what other e-sports do leading up to a major event. Pre and post interviews with the teams, discussion with the level designer to answer the question "why Canyon Network". Weekly updates on tourney progress. There should have been a complete marketing blitz. The early matches were promoted well, but the long schedule crippled interest as the later matches turned into one forfeit after another as teams realized they had no chance and dropped out. The whole MWOWC and Mech_Con could have been a lot bigger in the right hands.

That said, there are plenty of other e-sports and conventions out there that go off and are catastrophically worse. Like prepaid vaporware worse. Like nobody showing up at all worse. Hopefully they can learn from this and do better if there is another go of it in 2017.

PGI flat out needs someone in charge of marketing. Not a community manager, a marketing person whose sole job is to keep the website/facespacetagram updated with news, and organize and promote events. That's it. No interaction, just straight 1 way communication.

[Lyoto Machida]

Hunka Junk, on 09 December 2016 - 06:07 AM, said:

Yeah, I saw you.

You were that guy that walked by at 7:35 during 12 HOURS OF NON-STOP COVERAGE (that started an hour late).

I especially enjoyed the people sitting alone saving tables for their friends, that one guy that bought like 12 beers, and the super-exciting moment when they gave everybody...what was it...nachos? Poutine?

I was right in the thick of it. Breathing it. Maybe not smelling it.

How did you know it was Imperius? Did he go in cosplay as a Mad Cat. MK. II???

[Tristan Winter]

Big Tin Man, on 09 December 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

So the hindsight committee is in force here.

"According to PGI, they are planning to do X. They should do more of Y and less of Z."
"They haven't even started yet and you're already complaining?"
"PGI is now doing X. This won't work and I'll tell you why."
"It's not over yet! Why are you being so negative?"
"Ok, it's over and PGI didn't do what we told them."
"Wow, thanks a lot, Captain Hindsight! Why didn't anyone say anything before now?"


(Before you object, I'm not putting words in your mouth here. I'm just saying that whenever anyone criticizes PGI, someone will tell them that it's either too soon or too late to make such criticism)

Big Tin Man, on 09 December 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

Should we be surprised that a small group of computer programmers and battletech nerds didn't have enough social skills and experience to put together an amazing flawless production with perfect marketing, camera work and 12 hours of live video commentary?

No. We should be surprised they didn't hire anyone who could put together a decent production, while realizing they themselves didn't have the skills required. Plenty of people make a living organizing and hosting events like this.

Big Tin Man, on 09 December 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

PGI flat out needs someone in charge of marketing. Not a community manager, a marketing person whose sole job is to keep the website/facespacetagram updated with news, and organize and promote events. That's it. No interaction, just straight 1 way communication.

I agree.

And also, a community manager. I was unsure what the current community manager was doing before, because she started out strong then disappeared. So I figured there was a tiny chance she'd been working on MWOWC full time or something. But we haven't really seen anything by the community manager in relation to the MWOWC either, except some Instagram pics that probably took 5 minutes. It was Alexander Garden who posted the announcement of the winners too. So what does the community manager do? Answer emails? Actually, it seems to be Alexander Garden who is doing that too, along with GM Patience and a few others.

[Jackal Noble]

Wait, there was a tournament last weekend? You're kidding, right?

Who won? Shouldn't there be like a snazzy front page with some details and such?

[Hunka Junk]

Big Tin Man, on 09 December 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

So the hindsight committee is in force here. Should we be surprised that a small group of computer programmers and battletech nerds didn't have enough social skills and experience to put together an amazing flawless production with perfect marketing, camera work and 12 hours of live video commentary? Has anybody watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in the last 10 years? It's everything they can do to have running commentary and make a 3 hour parade entertaining with the best of the B-list celebs and the full backing of major networks. Everyone slammed BB Wolfe for her attempt to get people to talk to her at the Steam launch as well, but when people are standoff-ish when faced with a camera and someone trying to make something of the coverage... well... even the best sports broadcasters have trouble with that.

There's a place in the world for all kinds of folks, including communication, self-promotion, organizing and advertising. That is a completely different skill set than anyone at PGI has, and I'd be quite surprised if 1% of the people on this forum could handle it either. I'm not defending how it went down, there is a lot of room for improvement. There should have been a lot more homework done prior to the main event on what other e-sports do leading up to a major event. Pre and post interviews with the teams, discussion with the level designer to answer the question "why Canyon Network". Weekly updates on tourney progress. There should have been a complete marketing blitz. The early matches were promoted well, but the long schedule crippled interest as the later matches turned into one forfeit after another as teams realized they had no chance and dropped out. The whole MWOWC and Mech_Con could have been a lot bigger in the right hands.

That said, there are plenty of other e-sports and conventions out there that go off and are catastrophically worse. Like prepaid vaporware worse. Like nobody showing up at all worse. Hopefully they can learn from this and do better if there is another go of it in 2017.

PGI flat out needs someone in charge of marketing. Not a community manager, a marketing person whose sole job is to keep the website/facespacetagram updated with news, and organize and promote events. That's it. No interaction, just straight 1 way communication.

That's original. Most people just kind of jabber, but invoking the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade to defend PGI?

Hats off to you!

I almost wanna buy you a mech pack, but I can't. My own rules.

[Tristan Winter]

TLBFestus, on 09 December 2016 - 09:23 AM, said:

I see it as more of a misguided opportunity.

At this time this game is/was simply not big enough to become a eSport . Just that fact, ignoring all the other issues revolving around and challenging the eSport issue (lag, framerates, etc) is enough.

There was never any chance that MWO would be one of the biggest esports in the world, but I think it was smart to do a world tournament. After all, this is a strictly PVP game. Why would you not cater to the competitive crowd in a strictly PVP game? Especially when MWO is essentially 50 shades of team deathmatch. This isn't some open world PVP adventure and exploration game. The whole game is basically set up perfectly for tournaments, except for the major missing pieces mentioned above (replay function, framerates, etc)

It was always going to be a fairly minor thing, but I think it made a lot of sense to give the competitive players something to work towards, now that CW / FP collapsed and everyone realized their efforts there were a complete waste of time. Capture Terra and your reward is... a map reset! Yay!

You can only have so many weekend leaderboard grinding competitions before the comp players get bored.

[Lyoto Machida]

Tristan Winter, on 09 December 2016 - 10:22 AM, said:

There was never any chance that MWO would be one of the biggest esports in the world, but I think it was smart to do a world tournament. After all, this is a strictly PVP game. Why would you not cater to the competitive crowd in a strictly PVP game? Especially when MWO is essentially 50 shades of team deathmatch. This isn't some open world PVP adventure and exploration game. The whole game is basically set up perfectly for tournaments, except for the major missing pieces mentioned above (replay function, framerates, etc)

It was always going to be a fairly minor thing, but I think it made a lot of sense to give the competitive players something to work towards, now that CW / FP collapsed and everyone realized their efforts there were a complete waste of time. Capture Terra and your reward is... a map reset! Yay!

You can only have so many weekend leaderboard grinding competitions before the comp players get bored.

So no lore/CW and no e-sports...what else is left?

[Novakaine]

Seems like somebody turned the MWO bus this way.


On a side note I watched the whole event.
And although it good to put faces to some of the names I know.
It was a definite snooze fest.
Player interviews at the bare minimum would have filled up the dead air time.
Great fights comp boys, but that was a snooze-snipe fest also.
No flair no panache.
Next year bring some lurms if anything for the visual impact.
And PGi can we get some random radio chatter from the teams.
I've saw more excitement from my kids dodge ball tourneys back in the day.
Oh and get a dance floor that would have been funny as hell to see.
Come on PGI stop the bus and take the next exit get off this highway to mediocrity.

Edited by Novakaine, 09 December 2016 - 10:51 AM.

[Elizander]

They need to cut competitive matches down to 4 players or 5 at most to match the size of other team e-sports titles. 12 is too many.

[Tristan Winter]

Lyoto Machida, on 09 December 2016 - 10:24 AM, said:

So no lore/CW and no e-sports...what else is left?

A skeleton crew pumping out mechpacks while more and more resources are shifted to MW5?

May not be a bad thing, mind you. I'd rather see MWO stagnate until 2018 and get a solid product in MW5 rather than seeing them waste a lot of money trying to keep MWO alive beyond its expiration date. In my mind, it would be just fine if MWO started dying just when MW5 is released. Then we can start building up the hunger for MWO2, which I hope is coming at some point.

I don't actually want PGI to fail, obviously. I want them to keep the Mechwarrior franchise alive for years and years to come. But I think MWO was a learning experience for them, and they made a bunch of mistakes. Better to start fresh with MWO2. And it's better to start fresh with MWO2 when people have a bit of distance from MWO. You don't want to invest in MWO2 when you just bought your last MWO mech pack a few weeks earlier.

[Jackal Noble]

Wait, so Alexander Garden isn't our community manager? huh, then who is you say?

[Tristan Winter]

JackalBeast, on 09 December 2016 - 12:09 PM, said:

Wait, so Alexander Garden isn't our community manager? huh, then who is you say?

Sean Lang and Bombadil, I think.

[jss78]

I dunno, I kind of wonder what people expect about the esport aspect of MWO. It's a very small game compared to the big esports games, and the comp scene a fringe among the already small player base. Never going to change, and it's no-one's fault really, just the way it is. Ultimately the tournament was handled by a small number of people, probably none of whose day job is live TV production.

I'll say that I have zero connection with the comp scene, and personally play pug matches with a cavalier don't-give-a-sh*t attitude -- but I watched the finals on Twitch and was surprised how enjoyable they were to watch. I shed a couple lore-nerd tears over some of the builds, but the action and tactics were interesting, and some of the matches really close.

Those two guys doing the live commentary (Bandit and...MDMsomething?) were excellent throughout, IMO.

The one really big shame was the stream quality. I hope their system managed to dump a crisp FullHD on disk, and that can be uploaded on Youtube for posterity.

It was the first running, and IMO there were lots of good things about it, I'm sure lessons were learned for next year.

[Big Tin Man]

Tristan Winter, on 09 December 2016 - 10:16 AM, said:

"According to PGI, they are planning to do X. They should do more of Y and less of Z."
"They haven't even started yet and you're already complaining?"
"PGI is now doing X. This won't work and I'll tell you why."
"It's not over yet! Why are you being so negative?"
"Ok, it's over and PGI didn't do what we told them."
"Wow, thanks a lot, Captain Hindsight! Why didn't anyone say anything before now?"


(Before you object, I'm not putting words in your mouth here. I'm just saying that whenever anyone criticizes PGI, someone will tell them that it's either too soon or too late to make such criticism)

No worries, I get it. The criticisms of mech_con and MWOWC came early and often with regards to advertising and marketing. That comment was more of an observation

Tristan Winter, on 09 December 2016 - 10:16 AM, said:

No. We should be surprised they didn't hire anyone who could put together a decent production, while realizing they themselves didn't have the skills required. Plenty of people make a living organizing and hosting events like this.

Two people from my unit went to the event, and they said it was actually pretty well organized, catering and drinks were on par (the tickets weren't that expensive, so adjust your expectations). It seems like PGI had the IRL side of the event handled, they just didn't have a team to take care of internet.

Hunka Junk, on 09 December 2016 - 10:21 AM, said:

That's original. Most people just kind of jabber, but invoking the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade to defend PGI?

Hats off to you!

My kids actually wanted to watch it this year so it's fresh in my mind as the most boring thing I've seen on a screen. First time I've even seen it in 15 years (and I marched in it back in high school). The production that goes into that parade is simply ludicrous. Full dress rehearsal at 2am. Organize for the event at 5:30. Step off at 7. Literally 1,000 people involved behind the scenes in making it go off on parade day, yet I wanted to gouge out my eyeballs when they're talking about the Snoopy balloon for 90 seconds of air time. Somehow the hosts forced themselves to be excited about a balloon of a comic strip dog that hasn't been around for the last 16 years, and they can do that nearly convincingly for 3 hours straight. For as much effort as goes in behind the scenes, it's just flat out hard to keep 3 hours of live TV exciting and engaging even for the pros. A 12 hour convention feed? No way could that remain engaging.

Could it have been better done with more events specifically designed for the stream, i.e. dev and team interviews, Q&A from twitch, Paul avoiding every question and camera, etc? Definitely.

[TercieI]

Elizander, on 09 December 2016 - 10:40 AM, said:

They need to cut competitive matches down to 4 players or 5 at most to match the size of other team e-sports titles. 12 is too many.

You realize all of comp has been 8v8 for a couple years? 4-6 might be better, but 12v12 is long gone.