57 replies to this topic

[mesmer]

a s s a i L, on 06 January 2017 - 07:58 AM, said:

I was told they have around 55 employees. close though.

Fair enough. I edited my post.

They're still tiny and that's that.

[Sjorpha]

mesmer7, on 06 January 2017 - 08:01 AM, said:

Fair enough. I edited my post.

They're still tiny and that's that.

Still, 55 people getting paid to work with the game.

Versus 1 person without payment doing something on his free time.

I'm not sure "we're tiny" is such a valid excuse...

Edited by Sjorpha, 06 January 2017 - 10:35 AM.

[Commander A9]

They already do.

They just do it in the form of dev blogs with a more serious tone.

Anything other than development on mechs and maps would be considered "side projects" that detract from the path of development and bring no revenue into the company.

That's what it isn't done-it doesn't make any money for them. Remember that PGI is a business profiting off of the sales of mechs and MC.

[Monkey Lover]

They started doing this don't you remember? They have a comstar forum they never use.

https://mwomercs.com...tar-intercepts/

Edited by Monkey Lover, 06 January 2017 - 11:12 AM.

[MischiefSC]

All the Dane did was get enough people to say "I'll be on, playing in TS at this time to hit a critical mass that drew other players in to the promise of filling 12mans.

That's it. People committed to play. PGI would need to give more reasons to do that. For a while the sense of Faction identity and "helping my side win vs the other guys" did that but it was very shallow. That has been removed and now it's down to "It's need maps/modes" but at least it's something.

I'm really cagey about having PGI try to do the same. I can just picture there response being to give a cbill penalty to dropping in a premade to promote more pug play because.... reasons.

If there is one thing you see time after time it's that we've done a better job of making the game fun and engaging than PGI has.

[Jarl Dane]

MischiefSC, on 06 January 2017 - 01:19 PM, said:

All the Dane did was get enough people to say "I'll be on, playing in TS at this time to hit a critical mass that drew other players in to the promise of filling 12mans.

Darth Hotz, on 06 January 2017 - 02:24 AM, said:

His roleplaying work brings so much needed flavor into MWO FP again and it pays of: People are interested in FP again, they check the forums, they start playing.

All this just because a single dude uses creativity, acting, humour and a viking helmet.

[mesmer]

Sjorpha, on 06 January 2017 - 10:34 AM, said:

Still, 55 people getting paid to work with the game.

I don't buy they have 55 people. Where'd you get that idea? I saw a handful of PGI people at MechCon.

I took the number out of my post because I wasn't sure. Y'all aren't sure either.

[Sjorpha]

mesmer7, on 06 January 2017 - 03:19 PM, said:

I don't buy they have 55 people. Where'd you get that idea? I saw a handful of PGI people at MechCon.

I took the number out of my post because I wasn't sure. Y'all aren't sure either.

No, I'm not sure.

The point stands though, maybe it's 20 people, 30? Whatever.

They have people getting paid to work on the game and they don't bother to do some very minimal engagement to breath some life and immersion into their own game.

I'm not saying they should to the same thing Dane did, in fact they probably should not do that kind of thing because it's better suiter to be player driven.

But they could do a lot of things, some missions, some lore, some in character communication. Just little things to pep stuff up a bit in general. Things like that generate money too, happy players pay more and stay longer.

It all just feels devoid of that cruical pride, engagement and love for your game that marks a good indie developer.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Why can't the players do this themselves?

[Jarl Dane]

What I'd like is for PGI to work with me, in whatever capacity, to make 'official' events.

[Deathlike]

BLOOD WOLF, on 06 January 2017 - 05:37 PM, said:

Why can't the players do this themselves?

You can't convince people every day to play a mode that isn't very interesting.

If the mode was interesting, it wouldn't need much attention than it currently does to function properly.

Edited by Deathlike, 06 January 2017 - 05:51 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Mech The Dane, on 06 January 2017 - 05:42 PM, said:

What I'd like is for PGI to work with me, in whatever capacity, to make 'official' events.

Lots of games let players just email events in and they get an "official" announcement. This lets the players leverage PGI to get the word out on reasons to show up and PGI leverage player initiative to create them.

[Sjorpha]

MischiefSC, on 06 January 2017 - 05:56 PM, said:

Lots of games let players just email events in and they get an "official" announcement. This lets the players leverage PGI to get the word out on reasons to show up and PGI leverage player initiative to create them.

What is need is an ongoing persistent engagement with key community contributors, to make interesting things happen in faction play every week.

PGI needs to be proactive in rewarding and supporting player driven events, not merely reactive. They need to provide resources and incentives, and be part of an open dialogue. Daily work hours and money needs to be allocated.

Also, the clan vs IS balance needs to be fixed on top of that, because no amount of roleplaying or community spirit can sustain this mode for long with this situation.

I play in one of the strongest IS faction play units, we win almost every drop. Some people use this as an example of the balance being fine, they say people just need to "git gud".

The problem with that line of thought is that when we go clan we stomp twice as hard as we do in the IS mechs, the clan mechs are complete easy mode.

The fact that you can have strong and successful IS units beating clanners with skill and coordination doesn't change that, and then sometimes we get bored of playing with inferior tech, take a vacation in clan where we can use much stronger mechs, stomp IS with zero effort and relax.

People constantly conflate the skill disparity question with the balance question, or more correctly dishonestly use the first to obscure discussion on the second.

It is a self serving avalanche of dihonesty and wilful ignorance that is incredibly bad for the game mode and threatens to destroy it.

Edited by Sjorpha, 06 January 2017 - 06:16 PM.

[nehebkau]

Mech The Dane, on 06 January 2017 - 05:42 PM, said:

What I'd like is for PGI to work with me, in whatever capacity, to make 'official' events.

Careful what you wish for....

[Fake News]

because Russ doesn't have a cosplay helmet.

[Karl Marlow]

Deathlike, on 06 January 2017 - 05:50 PM, said:

You can't convince people every day to play a mode that isn't very interesting.

If the mode was interesting, it wouldn't need much attention than it currently does to function properly.

The mode currently has every way to play the game except Escort and Escort isnt even played in Quick play. If FW isn't interesting then nothing MWO can offer ever will be.

[Daidachi]

Forum moderators have the ability to post on certain boards that the rest of us don't.

What would hamper someone like Dane (for IS) and someone else (for Clan) being made 'Faction Play liasons', being given similar forum rights to the mods, and working on comstar intercepts, and messages to be sent out to players?

Note that when I say messages, what I mean is that there are already text messages visible upon logging in to the game for when the servers are going down - giving the liasons the option to put together a small message, which is then reviewed by someone at PGI before being added in shouldn't be a huge amount of work since it uses existing infrastructure.

Hell, even a twitter account (since Russ likes it and that's carried over to a number of players looking for official communications about the game) for FP updates would be good.

These are all ideas that either use existing assets, create next to no extra work for PGI employees, and drive player engagement which is more likely to yield increased sales.

[Appogee]

Sjorpha, on 06 January 2017 - 10:34 AM, said:

Still, 55 people getting paid to work with the game.

Most of whom are probably working on MW5... just like throughout last year.

[Appogee]

Commander A9, on 06 January 2017 - 10:46 AM, said:

They already do.

They just do it in the form of dev blogs with a more serious tone.

...!

And when was the last dev blog?

And where is the January Road Map?

And where is this month's new Mech announcement?

And what does the "Community Manager" do other than 0.75 posts per day?

'Small' is not an excuse for not bothering to put even a minimally viable effort into customer communication. (Other than Mike Forst, who updates the status of the latest server outages.)

Edited by Appogee, 07 January 2017 - 02:46 AM.

[Marius Evander]

PGI isn't good at making money if they dont realise engaging the community and making them happy makes them play more and spend more, League of legends has backstories and huge story events, yes their a bigger company and bigger game, but they understand **** like this is important and part of the product and increases sales.