23 replies to this topic

[Alistair Winter]

EDIT: I guess my original OP wasn't clear enough.

• If you somehow provided feedback to PGI during the PTS and you're now either happy or not happy about the changes, that's cool.
  
• If you did not provide any kind of feedback to PGI during the PTS and you're not really vocal one way or the other right now, that's cool.
  
• If you did not provide any kind of feedback to PGI during the PTS, but you're still pretty vocal about your unhappiness right now, I heartily recommend that you give feedback next time.

Feedback = voting in polls, liking posts, posting on the forum, etc.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 14 March 2017 - 06:04 AM.

[Tarogato]

It doesn't take hundreds of people to post the same feedback. It only takes a few, and once other people read and agree with that feedback, they have nothing more to add other than upvote/like/share/agree.

But when PGI actually takes action, all of those people who silently agreed with the feedback are now discontent that the feedback was not listened to. This is why it seems like there are more people/energy than before.

[kesmai]

Alistair Winter, on 14 March 2017 - 04:33 AM, said:

Suddenly I'm seeing hundreds of people posting every day, with their own little factions and nicknames for each other. So much energy and engagement! Boy, this takes me back! But where were you guys when the public testing was going on? I didn't see you in the PTS forum. Would have been nice to see more people participating. Constructive feedback and all that.

Now, a few of you probably didn't feel like participating because you're not really that invested in the game anymore. So you're probably pretty laid back about the whole process, which is understandable. Que sera, sera, and all that. That's fair.

But if you're particularly vocal about what's going on right now, I hope to see you in the next session of public testing. Because, man, I had a hard time getting a match the last time!

Take a look at the pts forum.
No need to post every concern 10 times over. Either that forum is a decoy or is read by the devs. I question the latter.

[oldradagast]

Tarogato, on 14 March 2017 - 04:37 AM, said:

It doesn't take hundreds of people to post the same feedback. It only takes a few, and once other people read and agree with that feedback, they have nothing more to add other than upvote/like/share/agree.

But when PGI actually takes action, all of those people who silently agreed with the feedback are now discontent that the feedback was not listened to. This is why it seems like there are more people/energy than before.

Exactly. Here's the thing: I have relatively slow broadband and not a lot of free time. While I honestly would like to participate in the PTS, I don't have the time to download the whole game again and then wait around... waiting... waiting... waiting... for there maybe to be enough players on the PTS to get in a game. Some of that is "my fault," I guess, but PGI should offer some incentive for folks to get on the PTS - some cbills or something - instead of often running live events with rewards opposite PTS sessions. It wouldn't help me - my "problems" have nothing to do with needing more cbills - but it might encourage some more testers, which is good.

More importantly, though, as others have said, there's really no need to test the same thing repeatedly with the same data when other people have already found the glaring problems. I don't need to "see it myself" to know that stripping IS mechs of nearly all their quirks will make them unplayable unless they get god-level skill tree buffs, which they didn't. I also don't need more than a few YouTube videos of the skill maze UI to see that it is terrible. Finally, one only needs a basic understanding of economics to know that punishing existing "whales" with regrinding mechs is a horrible idea if you want to sell more mechs; similar idea with adding a respec cost in a game that depends upon customization to stay interesting.

All that being said, I hope there are plenty of folks who do have the time and resources to test on the PTS next time there's something there worth testing. I also hope PGI is willing to make real changes to their latest proposal vs. shuffling things around, fixating on only part of the problem, and then scrapping it because their pride gets in the way of them making real changes and truly listening.

Edited by oldradagast, 14 March 2017 - 04:46 AM.

[Alistair Winter]

Tarogato, on 14 March 2017 - 04:37 AM, said:

It doesn't take hundreds of people to post the same feedback. It only takes a few, and once other people read and agree with that feedback, they have nothing more to add other than upvote/like/share/agree.
But when PGI actually takes action, all of those people who silently agreed with the feedback are now discontent that the feedback was not listened to. This is why it seems like there are more people/energy than before.

I'm not saying everyone should post the same feedback. However, I'm saying it's important to communicate in some way or another, either by pressing that 'Like' button or by participating in polls, at least. Obviously, there wasn't a whole lot of that. Only a small number of threads where more than a dozen people were involved in liking / voting / posting.

And just as a minor point.. it clearly does seem to have an effect when people post the same feedback multiple times, even though that is not what I'm advocating.

oldradagast, on 14 March 2017 - 04:43 AM, said:

Exactly. Here's the thing: I have relatively slow broadband and not a lot of free time. While I honestly would like to participate in the PTS, I don't have the time to download the whole game again and then wait around... waiting... waiting... waiting... for there maybe to be enough players on the PTS to get in a game.

Of course, I get that. But I'm pretty sure I saw you participating by voicing your opinion, by liking posts or voting. So what I wrote doesn't really apply, in this case.

I'm not even saying everyone should do that. But it's weird when people don't do it, and then suddenly start posting 20 posts per day if things didn't go as they wanted.

[oldradagast]

Alistair Winter, on 14 March 2017 - 04:50 AM, said:

Of course, I get that. But I'm pretty sure I saw you participating by voicing your opinion, by liking posts or voting. So what I wrote doesn't really apply, in this case.

I'm not even saying everyone should do that. But it's weird when people don't do it, and then suddenly start posting 20 posts per day if things didn't go as they wanted.

Agreed. I suspect some of it may have been confirmation bias, in that they thought the skill system as proposed was so great that they couldn't imagine anyone disliking it. It was only when they got to the forums and saw the backlash that they started to post anger in rely to where things were going. Now, that doesn't justify how many of the "white-knights" focused on personal attacks and sweeping insults against the community who opposed the skill maze, but that may explain why so many of them were suddenly late to the posting party.

Another possibility is a disturbing character flaw that seems to be cropping up everywhere these days - disagreeing just for the sake of disagreeing. We all know the type: if the majority of people support a position with facts, these types will suddenly come of nowhere and oppose and insult the majority just to "prove that they are smarter than most people." People with this character flaw generally will not post much until the tide is going in a certain direction because they need to know which position to take so they can disagree with everyone (and perhaps insult them.)

[sneeking]

Who would listen to me if i tested and gave feedback anyway ?

No its much easier to sit it out and see what happens when all you people will do all the noise and i can quietly decide if i want to play the game again.

[J0anna]

I have to agree with Alistair a bit here. I didn't have to time to test PTS1 because of work, but spent quite a few hours on PTS2. I feel a bit sorry for PGI, because they don't get enough data to make the changes they spend significant time working on. The net effect is that all of us lose, players lose PGI working on other game improvements, PGI wastes time on something never implemented (energy draw). People should get involved, and it would have been nice to get more matches, but part of that is on PGI.

Why can't they give a reward for testing their stuff, like one day of premium (on the live server) for 10 drops, 2 days for 15, 3 for 20. Also I would send out a questionnaire to anyone that dropped, asking specific feedback questions, to get the data I was looking for (again offering something for those who answered it). Hell run a contest on the test server with prizes on the live server - that would give them the data they could use.

I also wonder how much benchmarking PGI does (looking at other companies to do similar actions well and seeing how that could be applied to MWO). You wouldn't have to do much of it, but some should always be done, or you'll fall behind.

[oldradagast]

J0anna, on 14 March 2017 - 05:27 AM, said:

I also wonder how much benchmarking PGI does (looking at other companies to do similar actions well and seeing how that could be applied to MWO). You wouldn't have to do much of it, but some should always be done, or you'll fall behind.

Just to toss out some data on that, I also play World of Warships. While not perfect, I generally enjoy it more than MWO these days, and the developing company is more on the ball from what I've seen. Yes, yes, their forums are also full of salt - what forum isn't? - but the truth is in the fun game play and solid player numbers, which are far higher than anything MWO has had in years, if ever.

Wargaming regularly sends emails to its customers with survey questions asking detailed thoughts about the game, allowing us to rate things and provide open-ended feedback. While the number of these surveys has declined in recent months, I guess because the game is further along in the design cycle, they recently added a feature where after a random match, the game will ask you a simple question "how satisfied were you with this match?" and you can rate the match you just played.

This is not high-tech stuff here - basic emails and customer satisfaction surveys. Meanwhile, in MWO, I have to either Twitter Russ or drown the forums in posts repeating the same facts over and over to have any hope of anyone listening. That's honestly rather sad.

Edited by oldradagast, 14 March 2017 - 05:38 AM.

[NeoCodex]

You don't have to install the PTS client to see that the proposed changes were abysmal. I got enough information from Kana's and other youtubers videos to see that this is not going to work. I maybe posted my response in PTS forums once or twice, agreeing with others and that was it, expecting they will hopefully listen to the feedback (which was plentiful enough) and change things.

Just if they listened to Kana's videos alone, he made many great suggestions and it was all upvoted, even threads were made about it. That stream alone changed quite a few things and a lot of the community got triggered in response, posting even more feedback.

You can only beat a dead horse so far until PGI gives you a new response on what was said - and those responses were two official posts on tweaking the PTS, and third being the town hall in form of their final response, so here's our final response back.

Edited by NeoCodex, 14 March 2017 - 05:51 AM.

[nehebkau]

Tarogato, on 14 March 2017 - 04:37 AM, said:

It doesn't take hundreds of people to post the same feedback. It only takes a few, and once other people read and agree with that feedback, they have nothing more to add other than upvote/like/share/agree.

But when PGI actually takes action, all of those people who silently agreed with the feedback are now discontent that the feedback was not listened to. This is why it seems like there are more people/energy than before.

T. man is right, I checked the forums and my feedback was already submitted several times by other people so it was more efficient to like and move on. 1000s of messages on the same topic just clouds the issues and makes it hard for PGI to sift the wheat from the chaff.

[Tarogato]

Alistair Winter, on 14 March 2017 - 04:50 AM, said:

I'm not saying everyone should post the same feedback. However, I'm saying it's important to communicate in some way or another, either by pressing that 'Like' button or by participating in polls, at least. Obviously, there wasn't a whole lot of that. Only a small number of threads where more than a dozen people were involved in liking / voting / posting.

Come to think of it, I don't think I participated once on the forums during this skill tree PTS. I (and a lot of others) just stuck to reddit, and tweeting russ/paul links to good videos/ideas like solahma's.

[Thorqemada]

Well, my mobile Internet connection runs at ~1MBit Downstream and ~50KBit Upstream.
No fun in playing and even less fun in downloading something (god beware uploading).

YouTube Vids at low to medium qulity run quite okish...

In the end PGI, as allways, takes an approach as cold and technocratic, giving the Skilltree a cold Look, no Skill-Flair to motivate Players "leveling" their specific Pilot and lets the Clans live out theor Superiority at the cost of everything else.

Nothing new - nothing to see here...

Hope for Battletech soon and MW5 later...

PS: PGI has come quite far with MWO but pls, todays Software makers seem to have so become so much streamlined that they dont understand the Motivation of "Skill-Flair" and "Visual-Flair".
The combat-game has much Flair (at least the pre-Cöan game had it) but the Menus, Lists, Rankings, ost of the Website etc were allways presented in a very technocratic thus unintersting/unotivating way preventing MWO develop to its full potential.

[Alistair Winter]

Tarogato, on 14 March 2017 - 05:56 AM, said:

Come to think of it, I don't think I participated once on the forums during this skill tree PTS. I (and a lot of others) just stuck to reddit, and tweeting russ/paul links to good videos/ideas like solahma's.

So what?

[sneeking]

Oh well, it appears there will be no changes to the game any time soon so i can just dissappear again.

Skill tree was the only reason i had to come back so i could have a tinker, guess ill go back to monthly forum scans and three to six monthly comments while they decide which of my digital assets to nerf or take away next....

[Ghogiel]

There isn't any point in competent designers wasting time giving PGI their own ideas when they usually listen to the wrong people anyway.

I just comment and give feedback on what they give but not what I think they should do. They don't want my input at the end of the day

[Bud Crue]

Ghogiel, on 14 March 2017 - 06:17 AM, said:

There isn't any point in competent designers wasting time giving PGI their own ideas when they usually listen to the wrong people anyway.

I just comment and give feedback on what they give but not what I think they should do. They don't want my input at the end of the day

That's one of my favorite parts of PGI's or at least Russ's particular brand of double-think: Telling folks in no uncertain terms that he wishes we would stop telling him how to improve this game because he knows best. Then when they screw something up asking the community to tell them how to fix it. And then not listen to the actual criticisms and go off on some tangential aspect of the "fix" or killing it outright. It's a self contradictory and self-defeating cycle. But it is entertaining, though a tad depressing, to behold.

[Wildstreak]

OP forgot one

• If you gave feedback before multiple times and got ignored (not every time but you would think once or twice?), you're shafted. Might as well quit giving feedback.

Really, this PTS was broken from the start anyway.

[Coolant]

don't need a PTS, need content

[QuePan]

i can only speak for myself , but i took time to look at both PTS for the skill tree and posted either in agreement to what someone else posted , or put in additional information to said post . We don't need 15 separate threads on a single issue if someone started a thread for that concern .