60 replies to this topic

[Sunstruck]

Then why doesn't PGI do more promotional videos and advertisements.

What if, instead of "merging buckets" as the answer to low population with CW, PGI decided to "find new players". It would have helped the quality of the MWO experience don't you think?

[RestosIII]

What really shocks me is that PGI has never worked on doing banner ads on websites. One of the most basic ways of advertising on the internet, but nope. Only explanations I've got for the lack of advertising is that they don't have an actual marketer/advertisement manager employed, or that they believe they're a niche enough game that the players they have now will be the best they're gonna get, so they want to work on player retention.

[Ced Riggs]

With ~17500 actives, and a small target audience combined with a milled player pool, IS it a problem and could it be solved with increased advertising? ROI is an important factor here. Not insinuating anything, just thinking out loud.

[PhoenixFire55]

Advertise all you want, unless you have player retention you won't get population. For a non-diehard BT/MW fan there is zero reason to play a bad game.

[LordNothing]

the dated engine and lack of progress after some years of being online is not going to be a very good magnet for people and if they dont fall in love with the game over night what makes you think they wont slip off to some other f2p that is a bit more shiny and chrome.

[Paigan]

RestosIII, on 13 June 2017 - 01:14 AM, said:

What really shocks me is that PGI has never worked on doing banner ads on websites. One of the most basic ways of advertising on the internet, but nope. Only explanations I've got for the lack of advertising is that they don't have an actual marketer/advertisement manager employed, or that they believe they're a niche enough game that the players they have now will be the best they're gonna get, so they want to work on player retention.

Good points

Ced Riggs, on 13 June 2017 - 01:15 AM, said:

With ~17500 actives, and a small target audience combined with a milled player pool, IS it a problem and could it be solved with increased advertising? ROI is an important factor here. Not insinuating anything, just thinking out loud.

~17K actives might not be as much as it sounds.
Many (most?) of them don't spend money or only tiny amounts.
A company like PGI has MILLIONS of dollars of costs. License, hardware, wages, insurances and what not.
Even a 1000 whales who spend $1000 per year would bring only a fraction of the cost they have to cover.

As long as a single new unit costs up to $50 (the price of a full-blown AAA game title), player numbers are clearly too low.
Also, just look at the quickplay queue:
Can't choose maps because too many buckets for a too low population.
Can't choose modes because too many buckets for a too low population.
Can't make a clan vs IS quickplay because too many buckets for a too low population.
Can't make a stock mode because ... you guessed it.
It's always the argument of deviding too few people accross too many buckets.
This allows only one conclusion:
The population is WAY too low.

So I'm more with RestosIII: Why don't they put effort into getting the population up?

Even if the content is a little stagnant: They could attract 10K new players who spend another million or so and then disappear again. It's only stagnant for people who play it for years. For new players, it's not so bad, at least for a couple of months.

Edited by Paigan, 13 June 2017 - 02:19 AM.

[Bud Crue]

PhoenixFire55, on 13 June 2017 - 01:42 AM, said:

Advertise all you want, unless you have player retention you won't get population. For a non-diehard BT/MW fan there is zero reason to play a bad game.

If it were a game directed at a niche IP, and merely diehard BT/MW fans, then would it not behoove PGI to do market research to find out what that audience wants in a game? Maybe raise a few million bucks off that dedicated population and build an immersive game environment for such dedicated fans to play? And yet the "immersive" game play environment that was once promised (oh so very long ago) was shelved in favor of the current arena shooter that we play.

-Scene: PGI headquarters. Conference room. The team has just looked at revenue numbers from 2014-

So we've got us a fairly functional arena shooter that we paid Microsoft over a million bucks to license in a niche IP that only a few thousand die hard nerds are interested in. Now what the f*** are we supposed to do? I'd like to put me kids through college before they are 50 for christ'sake!

Well who plays arena shooters?

Hmmm...sounds like something the kids these days would enjoy! Lets go with it. Esports baby!! That's the future! Now...about that advertising budget...aww nuts.

Hey I know! We do have diehard BT/MW fans right? We offer em some nice mechporn, I mean mechpacks, to buy every month, constantly muck with underlying values to encourage them to keep buying more no matter what the meta is at the moment, then use that money to run the esports angle. We get the nerds...I mean players...to tell their kids and younger friends about our esports tournaments and new competitive mode! Boom! We got cash flow...screw advertising.

I like it, but lets tone down the whole Battletech or Mechwarrior thing ok? We don't want to scare the kids away with that nerd 80s crap got it? Now get out there and start spreading the esports gospel! (My kids are so going to Harvard!!!).

[El Bandito]

PGI should stick to catering to the niche crowd. Trying to butter up to the "wider audience" will most likely result in even worse product that will neither make the existing players happy, nor help PGI to earn money.

Dawn of War 3 is a clear example.

[STEF_]

Sunstruck, on 13 June 2017 - 01:09 AM, said:

Then why doesn't PGI do more promotional videos and advertisements.

What if, instead of "merging buckets" as the answer to low population with CW, PGI decided to "find new players". It would have helped the quality of the MWO experience don't you think?

I wrote about this directly to pgi and community manager of the time (that guy who has been fired )
The answer: promo videos cost too much, so nope.

[Father Tork]

Advertising for F2P games is tricky. Every new download has an average cost, and every new download has an average amount spent.

If PGI gets approximately 1 new player for every 100$ spent in advertising, but only makes an average of 50$ per new player, then advertising is simply a bad investment.

It is difficult to figure out the exact cost per acquisition, and separate it from organic acquisition, but very close estimates can be made.

[Bud Crue]

Stefka Kerensky, on 13 June 2017 - 04:03 AM, said:

I wrote about this directly to pgi and community manager of the time (that guy who has been fired )
The answer: promo videos cost too much, so nope.

Speaking of which, what ever happened to that promo video they made for CW? The one with the misleading nature of scouting, and the hilarious voice acting (especially the clanner)? Surely they made some use of that?

[STEF_]

Bud Crue, on 13 June 2017 - 04:05 AM, said:

Speaking of which, what ever happened to that promo video they made for CW? The one with the misleading nature of scouting, and the hilarious voice acting (especially the clanner)? Surely they made some use of that?

Dunno.

BUT, I managed to find that aswer pgi sent to me:

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 21 September 2014 - 01:09 PM, said:
Hey there!

Great concern. Since we are taking a new approach to marketing, we have stepped back from the regular hero Mech videos to see what kind of an impact those have truly had on sales before deciding how to better utilize our time and video resources.



and of course videos disappeared

[Paigan]

Father Tork, on 13 June 2017 - 04:05 AM, said:

Advertising for F2P games is tricky. Every new download has an average cost, and every new download has an average amount spent.

If PGI gets approximately 1 new player for every 100$ spent in advertising, but only makes an average of 50$ per new player, then advertising is simply a bad investment.

It is difficult to figure out the exact cost per acquisition, and separate it from organic acquisition, but very close estimates can be made.

By that logic, should a corporation in such a situation not do any marketing at all?
And then?
Then the death of the corp is 100% certain.
Shouldn't they do aggressive (if you like buzzwords: "pro-active") marketing, even if it's a loss at first?
Marketing can perpetuate itself. You attract 10K people and make a deficit with them, but they in turn get in another 5K people and another 5K or even 10K and so on and all of a sudden, your initial deficit turns into a plus.
You have to invest to grow. Shying away from making investments is a certain way to death.

If in the long run $100 marketing effort yields only $50 in return, then either marketing is cost-inefficient or the product sucks (or both).

MWO might have a lot of flaws, but I am 100% certain of one thing: there are a LOT worse games out there that make a LOT more money. So even if the spite-crowd loves to jump on the "the product sucks" train, I'm pretty sure it's more on the marketing end.

Which leads back to the initial question: why aren't they doing more marketing?

Just hiring a guy who does nothing else than banner ads, ingame videos and spamming advertisement in forums all day would create a LOT of online visibility for a relatively small cost.

Edited by Paigan, 13 June 2017 - 04:24 AM.

[Bud Crue]

El Bandito, on 13 June 2017 - 03:58 AM, said:

PGI should stick to catering to the niche crowd. Trying to butter up to the "wider audience" will most likely result in even worse product that will neither make the existing players happy, nor help PGI to earn money.

Dawn of War 3 is a clear example.

But then they should in fact "stick to catering to the niche crowd". But now here we go with who/what is the "niche crowd" that they should stick to:

The folks who just want to play in the "battletech universe"...lorenerds?
Founders?
Folks who are still waiting for the immersive game play enviornment of the CW that Bryan presented way back when?
Folks who just want MW4 or MW3 or MW2?
Stompy robot fans?
Esports fans?

Who is the audience? Who is willing to pay cash for the product? What is the relative growth potential for a given sector of the market or the relevant needs/desires of that sector that we can focus the game to be as attractive as possible to that sector? etc.

PGI doesn't need an advertising budget they need a psychiatrist. Until they first figure out just who they are making their product for and who they want to be within the market, they would just be throwing advertising dollars into the wind.

[Father Tork]

Paigan, on 13 June 2017 - 04:23 AM, said:

By that logic, should a corporation in such a situation not do any marketing at all?
And then?
Then the death of the corp is 100% certain.
Shouldn't they do aggressive (if you like buzzwords: "pro-active") marketing, even if it's a loss at first?
Marketing can perpetuate itself. You attract 10K people and make a deficit with them, but they in turn get in another 5K people and another 5K or even 10K and so on and all of a sudden, your initial deficit turns into a plus.
You have to invest to grow. Shying away from making investments is a certain way to death.

If in the long run $100 marketing effort yields only $50 in return, then either marketing is cost-inefficient or the product sucks (or both).

MWO might have a lot of flaws, but I am 100% certain of one thing: there are a LOT worse games out there that make a LOT more money. So even if the spite-crowd loves to jump on the "the product sucks" train, I'm pretty sure it's more on the marketing end.

Which leads back to the initial question: why aren't they doing more marketing?

Just hiring a guy who does nothing else than banner ads, ingame videos and spamming advertisement in forums all day would create a LOT of online visibility for a relatively small cost.

You're not far off.

I work in the Mobile F2P Gaming industry, so I can only speak on my experience there. What I've seen is that player retention of 20% is considered a HUGE success. Which is why Advertising is so very problematic. Assuming PC would be double that on average, you'd still need a HUGE amount of new players.

You could look at Steam stats for players on MWO and see they've been about even for the last year;
http://steamcharts.com/app/342200

Which suggest their player acquisition is keeping up with players dropping.
If that is the case, and they're profitable, there is an argument that making a risky investment on an advertising campaign might not be in their best interest.

Although I agree if they don't do something... then this game will likely start to stagnate and die...

[Asym]

Oh Boy,

Look to successful video game franchises and the answer is there. League of Legends (LoL) has a "million" players on line everyday....... A million: get your head around that. Think of the micro-sales implications....... Look at their world game e-sports events. Geeze.

Why? How is that possible in a game that is just about impossible to play??? Ever try it? Don't, unless you have patience.

Their entire company is made up of actual LoL players of the game and their customer support actually responds and listens, adapts and makes changes that support the community. LoL is used at many Universities as a business teaching example/model, so don't take my word: google it. I know, we just used it last semester.....

The question then is, why PGI has done nothing? I believe they are about to change the game play model because the change is: less expensive to operate, will force "must buy to remain relevant" sales (they will Nerf any mech that is competitive) and simplify the game for players who simply want to destroy stuff without having to worry about anything else...won't need teams, won't need factions, won't need anything but more ammo, perks (you can buy) and bigger and stronger mechs (you'll have to buy because the stuff you own will be degraded)......

Let's compare games: EliteDangerous and Eve are free and there are thousands of maps and the grind is up to you! All of the students I interact with are moving towards them and have abandoned WoT's, WoW's, Hawken, and several others BECAUSE of the impossible "grind" and the games not being "value-added" in their lives. After all, it took me 134 games to master a medium mech with a win/loss ratio of .42........ I was losing so much, why pilot skill rating was going backwards almost 60%...... PGI nerf'd the mech series I purchased to the point they are only 80% of what they were (have to buy something better). Is this Value Added, Hmmmmmmmm? No. 17K players is a miracle and all of my "retired" friends, you know us "Baby Boomers", that have all of the disposable money the papers report have gone off to space and may not be back anytime soon....

I am only staying to observe Civil War and relate what I see to the friends that actually talked me into playing MWO in January. I resisted because the rating were, let's say...........not so hot.... They all left and I'm their scout so to speak and the POC for the students I interact with everyday who play video games.....

[Mawai]

Paigan, on 13 June 2017 - 02:17 AM, said:

Good points


~17K actives might not be as much as it sounds.
Many (most?) of them don't spend money or only tiny amounts.
A company like PGI has MILLIONS of dollars of costs. License, hardware, wages, insurances and what not.
Even a 1000 whales who spend $1000 per year would bring only a fraction of the cost they have to cover.

As long as a single new unit costs up to $50 (the price of a full-blown AAA game title), player numbers are clearly too low.
Also, just look at the quickplay queue:
Can't choose maps because too many buckets for a too low population.
Can't choose modes because too many buckets for a too low population.
Can't make a clan vs IS quickplay because too many buckets for a too low population.
Can't make a stock mode because ... you guessed it.
It's always the argument of deviding too few people accross too many buckets.
This allows only one conclusion:
The population is WAY too low.

So I'm more with RestosIII: Why don't they put effort into getting the population up?

Even if the content is a little stagnant: They could attract 10K new players who spend another million or so and then disappear again. It's only stagnant for people who play it for years. For new players, it's not so bad, at least for a couple of months.

I agree with most of the comments in the thread. PGI could do more to attract and retain players.

However, I completely disagree with your "list". The game population required to get enough games for everyone in a reasonable time no matter what filters they put on their options would be ridiculous even with a huge population. In addition, the matchmaker complexity would go up exponentially with the number of hard option filters specified by each player. Matches for popular options would be easy but someone who specifies only Escort on Polar in stock mode might have to wait YEARS to get a match even if there were a million active players.


"Can't choose maps because too many buckets for a too low population."

There are 12 to 15 maps .. imagine if everyone had a tick box for each map they would play on .. then try to get 24 people to meet those constraints as well as PSR and mech class. The number of possible combinations for each player is ridiculous.

"Can't choose modes because too many buckets for a too low population."

We had game mode choice. If you played skirmish and enjoyed it, matches were quick easy and fun. If you only wanted to play conquest they you usually had to wait a bit longer. However, when you go from 3 game modes to 4 game modes or more ... the number of possible combinations of game modes goes way up,

"Can't make a clan vs IS quickplay because too many buckets for a too low population."

No. This one is because they aren't balanced. Clans will beat IS about 55% to 45% (based on the recent FW numbers). In addition, if you created queues like this then if you don't have exactly equal numbers of IS and clan folks queuing up then the queue time grows linearly and gets very large very fast depending on how uneven the number of IS and clan folks in the queue might be. PGI learned this when they tried to force 3/3/3/3 weight distribution. On PTS the queue times for heavies were over an hour in less than 30 minutes .. so they had to build relief valves into the matchmaker to take into account the actual distributions of folks entering the queue.

"Can't make a stock mode because ... you guessed it."

The other reason not to have these categories is that some of them aren't that popular. Some folks might be interested in stock mode ... but it is probably 1% to 10% that might be interested in such a match at any specific time. Adding a stock queue wouldn't have much effect on quick play if the numbers are something like that but the folks choosing stock mode might have to wait longer giving then an unacceptable play experience. So why add the option as a general queue?

Anyway, a lot of these options would require a much more complex matchmaker and an unrealistic population level (on the order of a million active I would think) in order to give any reasonable level of performance.

Finally, ALL of these options are available in private matches (which now cost nothing by the way) .. so if you want to have some matches like these then get some friends together and drop in private matches.

[Paigan]

Mawai, on 13 June 2017 - 06:00 AM, said:

I agree with most of the comments in the thread. PGI could do more to attract and retain players.

However, I completely disagree with your "list". The game population required to get enough games for everyone in a reasonable time no matter what filters they put on their options would be ridiculous even with a huge population. In addition, the matchmaker complexity would go up exponentially with the number of hard option filters specified by each player. Matches for popular options would be easy but someone who specifies only Escort on Polar in stock mode might have to wait YEARS to get a match even if there were a million active players.


"Can't choose maps because too many buckets for a too low population."

There are 12 to 15 maps .. imagine if everyone had a tick box for each map they would play on .. then try to get 24 people to meet those constraints as well as PSR and mech class. The number of possible combinations for each player is ridiculous.

"Can't choose modes because too many buckets for a too low population."

We had game mode choice. If you played skirmish and enjoyed it, matches were quick easy and fun. If you only wanted to play conquest they you usually had to wait a bit longer. However, when you go from 3 game modes to 4 game modes or more ... the number of possible combinations of game modes goes way up,

"Can't make a clan vs IS quickplay because too many buckets for a too low population."

No. This one is because they aren't balanced. Clans will beat IS about 55% to 45% (based on the recent FW numbers). In addition, if you created queues like this then if you don't have exactly equal numbers of IS and clan folks queuing up then the queue time grows linearly and gets very large very fast depending on how uneven the number of IS and clan folks in the queue might be. PGI learned this when they tried to force 3/3/3/3 weight distribution. On PTS the queue times for heavies were over an hour in less than 30 minutes .. so they had to build relief valves into the matchmaker to take into account the actual distributions of folks entering the queue.

"Can't make a stock mode because ... you guessed it."

The other reason not to have these categories is that some of them aren't that popular. Some folks might be interested in stock mode ... but it is probably 1% to 10% that might be interested in such a match at any specific time. Adding a stock queue wouldn't have much effect on quick play if the numbers are something like that but the folks choosing stock mode might have to wait longer giving then an unacceptable play experience. So why add the option as a general queue?

Anyway, a lot of these options would require a much more complex matchmaker and an unrealistic population level (on the order of a million active I would think) in order to give any reasonable level of performance.

Finally, ALL of these options are available in private matches (which now cost nothing by the way) .. so if you want to have some matches like these then get some friends together and drop in private matches.

Wow.
I'm usually writing long posts myself, but this one is not worth reading in the full (only skimmed it) and here is why:

Short answer:

1.)
The buckets vs population argument is the one ALWAYS brought up by PGI on such requests. Even if you were right, if it is their answer, then they themselves say that the population is too low and that makes them more less obliged to do something about it.

2.)
Only a quick example: Map selection.
One could easily make a quickplay queue for each map. Say a quickplay "planet", including a little indicator for how close the current planet is to reach a full drop. Like CW used to be, but simpler, because quickplay has no factions. You want to play Terra Therma, you select the Terra Therma "planet" (or whatever). If the population is big enough, it will fill. Maybe not with a wait time of < 1 second like on the Canyon Network "planet", but in a reasonable time. You just want a quick game or lost patience waiting for terra therma: Canyon Network planet it is.
Or say 4 "planets" with one map each to choose from and the maps cycle through. The first always having a popular map, the other three having the other maps.
It won't make the matchmaker any more complex, it's just 4 buckets instead of one.
But nope, can't do it. Must be one singular queue. Why? Population count. Every time.

Edited by Paigan, 13 June 2017 - 07:05 AM.

[Acehilator]

RestosIII, on 13 June 2017 - 01:14 AM, said:

What really shocks me is that PGI has never worked on doing banner ads on websites. One of the most basic ways of advertising on the internet, but nope. Only explanations I've got for the lack of advertising is that they don't have an actual marketer/advertisement manager employed, or that they believe they're a niche enough game that the players they have now will be the best they're gonna get, so they want to work on player retention.

Banner ads on website? What is this, 2005? Are there still people out there using the internet without at least one Adblocker and/or Noscript?

[Zigmund Freud]

Meanwhile some f2p horsepoop MWO (Metal War Online) have ads all over the god damn internet. Are you suggesting Piggy has less money for ads than some sucky browser game company?
People above are right, it's ridiculous that MWO (MechWarrior Online this time) is not advertised with banner ads, game cons shows, etc. It's needed to keep the game alive.

Father Tork, on 13 June 2017 - 04:05 AM, said:

Advertising for F2P games is tricky. Every new download has an average cost, and every new download has an average amount spent.
If PGI gets approximately 1 new player for every 100$ spent in advertising, but only makes an average of 50$ per new player, then advertising is simply a bad investment.

I hear you, but you shouldn't count only profits from players that were attracted by this ad. Yea, let's say 100$ in ads makes us 50$, but it also added some players into the buckets, making the game more playable ==> money. It also expanded the noob players base, so other new players, that came here not because of our ads, have more equally nooby people to play with ==> and eventually money. More players - more fun for whales ==> also money.
It's not exactly pro level marketing strategy, but you got the gist.

And people who says that PGI should keep making the game for small comunity - no, it only brings oblivion. Remember, advertising and attracting new players != changing the game to fit wider audience. MWO is pretty good as is. (Obviously it's not perfect, but it's enjoyable. Most of people here (not forums, but the quickplay que) are not hardcore BT fans, and they don't play because they grew up on MW and TT, or because they like to imagine they're some sort of knights or whatever. They play because it's fun as is. Quickplay, customising in mechlab, this basic things). So plain advertising on some game, mechs, cartoons, robots, sci-fi- related websited would be a nice thing.

Acehilator, on 13 June 2017 - 06:55 AM, said:

Banner ads on website? What is this, 2005? Are there still people out there using the internet without at least one Adblocker and/or Noscript?

A lot of people enable non-annoying ads, because they know it's not a bad thing.