143 replies to this topic

[Verilligo]

RedDragon, on 18 September 2017 - 05:09 AM, said:

He just used it as an example to question the complete lack of any effort in everything PGI does. And he has a point.

PGI has released a game, though. MWO is a complete and playable game that also happens to be receiving content updates. Star Citizen is, at best, early access. PGI at least seems to understand they're a small studio and adjusts accordingly. Chris Roberts had no problem selling you a thousand dollar ship before there was even a game to play it in. Not to say that Star Citizen will never come out (lulz Derek Smart), but my faith that the game will live up to its hype and those lovely brochures is pretty low.

[B0oN]

Vellron2005, on 18 September 2017 - 03:00 AM, said:

True.. but if they did things like that, and put in the same amount of effort.. they would not be on a budget..

† A M E N †

[Trissila]

Asym, on 18 September 2017 - 05:37 AM, said:

You 'all are missing an important point:

SC is new when compared and MW is decades old....
SC is a 3D high technology game competing with other 3D high technology games....
MWO is a 2D game now and looking for even simplier gameplay (Solaris) to reduce its costs.....

SC is changing to adapt to a new player base that is "un-sure" of the ligitameticy of the corporation hosting its creation ! Many of us thought it was a scam for years.....and, if they don't actually get am actual "game" soon, they may just be that.....

MW is and has been around and has a niche audience built it. YES, a small niche' but, a secure niche that will play "anything" PGI throws at them and buys crap products no matter what the quality is.......SC can't do that.....

So, as many have said earlier, PGI is smaller and if they had 1/2 a brain, they'd take the time and do the "simple things" that attract new players and "reasonable" marketing is and should be one of those activities; as well as, a solid customer support team that is actually there, full time to rid the game of the "Obnoxious few" who haunt this game.

And you're also missing a very important point:

SC is a game that is selling ships for nearly $300 a pop. Not lulzy "just for the bling skinz" gold-plated versions of normal ones. Normal ships for that price. Granted, better than other ships, but that just means it's quite literally Pay 2 Win. And when your ship gets blown up? Better hope you were paying the monthly ransom insurance, otherwise the ship and your money are gone.

Yes, you can afford to blow a lot of time and resources on fancy ad brochures when people are crapping money down your throat based merely on the idea of a game that does not exist, lining up to skip mortgage payments to buy some of your pixels.

[The Basilisk]

Vellron2005, on 18 September 2017 - 02:48 AM, said:

https://robertsspace...phony-In-Motion

So, the above link leads to a brochure for a new ship in the Star Citizen videogame.. scroll down and open the brochure..

By the looks of it, you'd think you were buying a real-life Mercedes, or yacht. It's got all the trimmings of luxury, style, immersion..

Every little detail is thoroughly exaggerated, hyped, and portrayed in maximum style, and after just seeing the brochure - I WANNA PLAY THE GAME.

PGI, why don't you make brochures like this for mechs? Why don't you put this much effort into anything in this game?

You could learn a lot from Star Citizen and Robert's Space Industries..

Those people are not selling a videogame.. they are selling a lifestyle!

P.S.

The brochure is better than many I've seen in real life.. omg, my mouth is watering from seeing this..

Well...PGI sure did lofty promises in the past but in contrary to starciticen they deliver at least a minimum viable product...not outright nothing but unrelated demo scraps.
Starcitizen sure is the biggest scam in gameindustrys history.

[RedDragon]

Verilligo, on 18 September 2017 - 05:56 AM, said:

PGI at least seems to understand they're a small studio and adjusts accordingly.

That is exactly what they are NOT capable of, apparently. Back in 2012: "We totally promise to give you 4 pillars, meaningful factions, Community Warfare and whatnot!" I'm sure you know how this went. In basically every endeavour they have taken since then, they have grossly overestimated themselves. Being a small studio/company is no excuse for selling inferior/bad/unfinished products.

[Appogee]

What's this "Star Citizen is a new game/franchise" malarky...?

Star Citizen is the modern update or Wing Commander and Freelancer, the former of which was released in 1990.

[o0m9]

El Bandito, on 18 September 2017 - 05:53 AM, said:

5 million. You are one zero too many.

Correct, I was reading their total amount of crowd funding as of the 2014 Gamescom. My bad.

[Verilligo]

RedDragon, on 18 September 2017 - 06:12 AM, said:

That is exactly what they are NOT capable of, apparently. Back in 2012: "We totally promise to give you 4 pillars, meaningful factions, Community Warfare and whatnot!" I'm sure you know how this went. In basically every endeavour they have taken since then, they have grossly overestimated themselves. Being a small studio/company is no excuse for selling inferior/bad/unfinished products.

Actually I don't know how this went, I've only been playing the game actively for three to four months. Regardless, it seems they HAVE given you those things. The implementation leaves something to be desired, but they are still actively working on it. Would you rather they not have released those things at all until their development was finished, breaking their promise even worse and without player input?

Even more to the point, if you think being a small studio is no excuse for selling unfinished products, then we definitely shouldn't be calling out Star Citizen as an example of doing things right. PGI isn't a blameless saint, but saying they put NO effort into what they do is a little harsh.

[Thorn Hallis]

Ah yes, those "feelies" Origin was famous for. Great stuff to create immersion but little else.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

SC is like complete opposite of MWO. SC is nothing but immersion and no gameplay, MWO is nothing but gameplay with veeery little immersion whatsoever.

While we're at that, there is one aspect in which I kinda agree with OP's sentiment

PGI could really do a bit of work on immersion. There is a lot of things you could implement to improve the feeling of the game at very low cost. Proper mech descriptions is one, proper pre-mission briefings accessible while you wait for people to connect anyway is another (you could have a button to press and see a bigger map with your dropzones marked, approximate enemy dropzones marked + some flavour text about the mission composed of previously prepared scripts (like: 2-3 sentences about objective <based on mode>, 2-3 sentences about the map <based on map>). And bam. Whole lot of more immersion at the cost of like 2 weeks of work of a writer and 2-3 days of work of a UI designer.

Or cracked cockpit glass and a cracking sound after receiving a headshot. You can make the cracks subtle and on the edges so they don't obscure the vision. Bam, immersion again, at the cost of creating a slightly variating versions of already existing cockpit glasses.

Or the dreaded long tom. It was cool on the immersive side, why did they remove it entirely instead of making it rare and close to useless tactically, but existing, so that people could just experience it once in a while as a boogeyman, instead of getting it rained on their heads every 3 minutes? (what was the actual problem). You could limit Toms to like 1 per hour, 15 second delay after smoke and add a warning mark on the map so that it will be almost useless, but still a cool thing to see.

Especially things like glass cracking and toms would help with immersion. The problem with boredom in pvp games is that you see everything there is to see constantly, there's no secrets or rare things to admire. PGI could give us these things, but for some reason it doesn't want to. Or doesn't know how.

Edited by Prof RJ Gumby, 18 September 2017 - 06:58 AM.

[El Bandito]

Prof RJ Gumby, on 18 September 2017 - 06:56 AM, said:

Or cracked cockpit glass and a cracking sound after receiving a headshot. You can make the cracks subtle and on the edges so they don't obscure the vision. Bam, immersion again, at the cost of creating a slightly variating versions of already existing cockpit glasses.

Nah, man. Headshot that managed to get through armor should crack that cockpit glass wide open and paint some blood stains in the cockpit too. Gotta make the player feel the urgency and desperation.

[Sjorpha]

I'll take comparisons with star ctizen seriously when, and more importantly if, it becomes an actual game.

Don't get me wrong, that is impressive hype, that is great marketing. But it's not a game yet and until it is that hype is still a promise yet to be delivered. PGIs original hype over community warfare also impressive, but here we are...

[Novakaine]

Is Star Citizen even a game yet?
100 million bucks and still..........

[PyckenZot]

Vellron2005, on 18 September 2017 - 02:48 AM, said:

PGI, why don't you make brochures like this for mechs? Why don't you put this much effort into anything in this game? You could learn a lot from Star Citizen and Robert's Space Industries.

PGI is a small studio that has a game to run. They need to focus their resources on keeping us happy and playing whilst selling enough to keep'em going. I'm actually glad they don't waste resources on such brochures (am sad though they don't do their vids anymore)

RSI is a huge studio that is spending a lot of time getting more and more funds in to continue developing the marvel that SC is turning into. To that end they need to convince people to pay a lot of money for things they will be able to get for free later on. Hence the hyping.

Edited by PyckenZot, 18 September 2017 - 07:38 AM.

[rollermint]

CapperDeluxe, on 18 September 2017 - 03:38 AM, said:

Star citizen has like 10 times the number of employees so it's just not realistic to expect from a smaller dev team.

I'm gonna...chip in and reinforced what another guy, a graphic designer, said. I also used to do those things, graphic/video/film editing etc etc Those things are pretty easy to do. You don't need a whole TEAM to do it, a single person can do it within 2-4 days.

Look, the game don't even BOTHER to include simple basic LORE information into the game, like basic Mech histories, weapon systems etc etc. What does that tell you? Does it take a studio of 500 employees, 3 different global studios and 150 million dollars to include basic lore summaries into a game that already has well-established documentations and write ups?

Edited by rollermint, 18 September 2017 - 07:51 AM.

[PyckenZot]

Trissila, on 18 September 2017 - 06:04 AM, said:

And you're also missing a very important point:

SC is a game that is selling ships for nearly $300 a pop. Not lulzy "just for the bling skinz" gold-plated versions of normal ones. Normal ships for that price. Granted, better than other ships, but that just means it's quite literally Pay 2 Win. And when your ship gets blown up? Better hope you were paying the monthly ransom insurance, otherwise the ship and your money are gone.

Yes, you can afford to blow a lot of time and resources on fancy ad brochures when people are crapping money down your throat based merely on the idea of a game that does not exist, lining up to skip mortgage payments to buy some of your pixels.

What a load of **** SC isn't doing anything like that. They are giving you a crowdfunding option and, in some cases, asking A LOT of hard earned cash for it. That is it!

You can get access into SC for just 50-ish dollar. Every single ship sold so far, you will be able to get in the game later with ingame cash. The (life time) insurance has been nerfed into the ground years ago so there as well you have a moot point. Besides, EVE online uses a similar insurance system.

Back on topic.
In the early days, MWO made nice vids to sell new mechs. I can only assume they found out the effort wasn't worth the benefits. Us mechgeeks will buy whatever they throw our way.

[Valdarion Silarius]

Trissila, on 18 September 2017 - 06:04 AM, said:

And you're also missing a very important point:

SC is a game that is selling ships for nearly $300 a pop. Not lulzy "just for the bling skinz" gold-plated versions of normal ones. Normal ships for that price. Granted, better than other ships, but that just means it's quite literally Pay 2 Win. And when your ship gets blown up? Better hope you were paying the monthly ransom insurance, otherwise the ship and your money are gone.

Yes, you can afford to blow a lot of time and resources on fancy ad brochures when people are crapping money down your throat based merely on the idea of a game that does not exist, lining up to skip mortgage payments to buy some of your pixels.

I miss the good old days where you would pay one flat price for a video game and you would get the entire content of the game. The video game industry's greed is really getting out of hand.

[Bombast]

I see the classic 'Star Citizen Conversation' has started.

Fun.

[Jun Watarase]

Vellron2005, on 18 September 2017 - 03:23 AM, said:

Agreed.. it makes me sad too..

But just let me tell you guys something.. The brochure like the one I posted on the link.. I've done those. I'm a graphics designer, and do those for a living.. so I can tell you with all certainty.. it's not that expensive to do those.. Most of the images you can pull from screenshots of the game itself.. or render them in-house.. and the production process for such a high-quality brochure in pdf once you have the picures is maaaybe 1-2 work days at the maximum.

So don't tell me it would cost a pretty penny to elevate the style and add some immersion.. ;-)

This is the same company that takes months to make minor changes to a .xml file for balance. They probably spend most of their work day doing other stuff.

I once had a friend of a friend tell me at a party that her work day at a government agency consisted of everyone arriving about an hour late, browsing the web/checking email till lunch, taking a two hour lunch break and then spending a few hours doing their actual work. Ever wondered why things get done so slowly sometimes? That's why...

[Rekkon]

Novakaine, on 18 September 2017 - 07:33 AM, said:

Is Star Citizen even a game yet?
100 million bucks and still..........

Turns out making a very large software project takes a lot of time? Film at 11!

The problem is the public is used to not knowing a big-budget game exists until it is 1-2 years from release, having been in development for several years before that. People became aware of Star Citizen at the very beginning and did not stop to think about how long it would take. The issue was exacerbated when SC expanded its scope commensurate with its funding. This led people not paying attention to bemoan the wait, feel "something" was wrong, claim it was "never coming," etc., when keeping even cursory tabs on SC's progress would show development has been chugging along consistently, accelerating even, if you look at all the investment that has been made in the foundation systems. It is not like CGI took a bunch of money and went dark. They put out content every week, and the production schedule is on the website.