467 replies to this topic

[Mech Nuggets]

naterist, on 30 January 2018 - 11:59 AM, said:

im hurt, what, is MY troll thread not good enough to get deleted? pft, what a let down.

You lack subtle passive aggressive undertones... step up your game bro! XD

[Ken Harkin]

I find it laughable that people talk about having to spend a ton of money to compete in this game. Let's be honest, most mech packs can be bought for $20. PGI isn't a charity and needs to make money somehow. Those same people bitching about spending $20 on a mech pack probably have stacks of PS4/XBOX games at $60 a pop.

The thing which is most poisonous to this game is the negativity in these forums.

[Bud Crue]

Ken Harkin, on 31 January 2018 - 03:08 PM, said:

The thing which is most poisonous to this game is the negativity in these forums.

Huh. See now, I would have put negative forums way lower on the list of "most poisonous" things in this game.

I think negativity of the forums is somewhere behind: the awful NPE, the lack of meaningful tutorials, the contradictory messaging from PGI, their never ending random balance passes despite assertions of near perfect balance, the over promising and under delivery of virtually all content, the horridly stagnant if not totally underdeveloped state of their "end game" content, Russ's publicly exhibited contempt for his customers, and oh, probably a few other things, but ya know I don't want to be overly negative.

[50 50]

Disappointing though it may be, this little clip seemed to me to represent these forums and our hopes and dreams for the game.

[Johnathan Tanner]

50 50, on 31 January 2018 - 08:57 PM, said:

Disappointing though it may be, this little clip seemed to me to represent these forums and our hopes and dreams for the game.

10/10

[Sunstruck]

Same reason old players quit, boring gameplay, single bucket / low population, no reason to actually care about a faction, its quickplay with respawns, and oh yes the stomps against the few that still do play it.

[Monarch Meowrauder]

I haven't quit...yet. But it seems to be the same old stuff again and again, even with my short 3 months or so actively playing...Outside of events anyway.

Its better with friends tho, i can't imagine sloughing though this damn **** without some guys to derp it up with!

[Ivor]

Monarch Meowrauder, on 02 February 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

I haven't quit...yet. But it seems to be the same old stuff again and again, even with my short 3 months or so actively playing...Outside of events anyway.

Its better with friends tho, i can't imagine sloughing though this damn **** without some guys to derp it up with!

Pretty much. And the same is true for most multiplayer games. It's about the community more than it is the game. If you have friends that play or can find a group of friends to play with, you're more likely to stick around. I was kinda on the fence about leaving when MAZR picked me up. Not only did the game become more fun, but I improved rather quickly.

[Eisenhorne]

True about the community. I just rejoined HHoD after a 4 year hiatus, the game is way more fun now than I remember it being because community warfare is pretty cool (compared to nothing but quickplay, which is all there was when I left). They also do this NBT thing which I don't really understand, but seems like it's everything that community warfare should have been, what with units holding planets, and having to do multiple drops to defend sectors and worlds which determine which mechs you have available. Combined with tournaments / events like the MAZR Invtiation this weekend, its pretty enjoyable.

None of that fun would be had by pugging solo though. Gotta join a unit, or else there's no point to this game.

[Asym]

OK, what is NBT? New Battle Tech?

I've been here just about a year now. So long as a large number of this niche community keep buying new mechs, nothing will ever really change.... Solaris will come and go.

PGI will then look at Faction Play and trysomething else at the usual minimal level of effort because new mach sales says"they don't have to..."

New players like me:

1) Can't figure the game out fast enough to get over the anti-social behaviors we see each and everyday: farming, clubbing, etc...
2) PGI keeps stealing "skill" and abilities every patch in an attempt to force you to "buy something else".....
3) Teams are nice but, to what end anymore? Solaris isn't a team strategy. Faction play isn't developed enough for ongoing conquests and faction expansion?
4) The game itself is "boxed in" and there really isn't anyway to explore anything other than brawling.... There's no real Scouting.... There's no real In-Direct-Fire support role anymore? There's no Leadership role anymore so all you see are pre-made meta teams that relish anti-social behaviors and call that "good".....

I just started a "ship based game" a month ago to stay with the team I am a member of in MWO. Yes, BR is mostly gone beyond MWO everynight. Here's the differences and you figure it out:

This is not an endorsement: just a comparrison:

1) The ship game has a long grind to get to Tier X ships..... BUT, it is fun and their MM seems to be about 80% better than MWO's...
2) The ship game has a long grind and you almost have to "pay" to keep from quitting: same as MWO w/o premium time.
3) The ship game has no in-game VOIP and really isn't about teams at all.....
4) The ship game has a lot of players and a lot of 3 person teams and larger team organizations than MWO and they all use TS or DC to communicate. Gameplay, as a team isn't all that different than being a PUG.
5) The ship game is an "open" battlefield with tens of thousands of meters on each map and weapons are based on real weapons; not, science fiction physics or made up nonsense....

6) The ship game, and most importatnly, is FUN !; with clear goals and objectives; with real gameplay physics; with roles that are logical and based on real history and physics; and, even though it is P2W, you can with a minimal investment, reallyy enjoy the game and no one, in 2 months, has ever clubbed me, spawn point destroyed me; TK'd me because I'm new; or, verbally abused me during gameplay because I am new.................

Often immitated but never duplicated.... Video FPS games "are or are not" fun based on the baseline story and game play physics.....anti-social behaviors often ruin player expansion, the learning curve is based on the dimensional complexity (close game as far more difficlt that open games) and a lack of "logical balance" to include a good MM ruins the rest. JMO

[Ssamout]

Asym, on 04 February 2018 - 07:52 AM, said:

OK, what is NBT? New Battle Tech?

I've been here just about a year now. So long as a large number of this niche community keep buying new mechs, nothing will ever really change.... Solaris will come and go.

PGI will then look at Faction Play and trysomething else at the usual minimal level of effort because new mach sales says"they don't have to..."

New players like me:

1) Can't figure the game out fast enough to get over the anti-social behaviors we see each and everyday: farming, clubbing, etc...
2) PGI keeps stealing "skill" and abilities every patch in an attempt to force you to "buy something else".....
3) Teams are nice but, to what end anymore? Solaris isn't a team strategy. Faction play isn't developed enough for ongoing conquests and faction expansion?
4) The game itself is "boxed in" and there really isn't anyway to explore anything other than brawling.... There's no real Scouting.... There's no real In-Direct-Fire support role anymore? There's no Leadership role anymore so all you see are pre-made meta teams that relish anti-social behaviors and call that "good".....

NBT

1. "Clubbing" and "Farming" are just elements that happen because how this game plays. Things tend to landslide, and you are rewarded for dmg and killing mechs. Hard to blame players. Just a game, should not take things too personally.
2. Constant nerfing is stupid if you want to keep up player interest. Just normal human psychology.
3. Playing with a team is so much more fun and rewarding in a team based game than just solo yolos doing stupid stuff. Also most humans are social animals, so chatting stupid crap while shooting robbits is fun.
4. Recommend trying out that "teamplay" aspect if you want to explore new stuff. That much despised Comp is really dependent on scouting for an example. Game is very repetitive. Cant say much new stuff except mechs have come out since beta. CW, but thats basically just 4x normal shootout. You either love it or leave it.

[Yumoshiri]

Well, as to why do people quit FP:

Games last 30 minutes, some people prefer short games for various reasons: Busy RL, Bad team for 30 minutes is bad for motivation.

Immersion is poorly inviting, not well explained and new players ask themselves: Why should I care about FP? What is this clan vs IS thing?


Pugs..pugspugs... vs pre-made = stomp. Obviously that gets boring if you meet the same pre-made for the third time in 2 hours, wasting another 20 minutes of your time.

If you survive all those things, but find yourself still sitting at 0.2 K/D... you find yourself at the next barrier: where do i go to? how can i improve? what do i need?

and we can tell them: ask a veteran!!

If you ask me, that's not how you run a game. At least - not if you want more players.

[zolop]

Why people have quit MWO or not spend any money (MC Credits) that I spoken to

-No endgame meta (EG warframe)
Examples include, owning your own base (EG owning a clan ship in warframe)
No economy (EG salvage mechs, rebuild mechs, coporations that sell weapons, buying items on the black market at cheaper prices due to planet ownership/Faction relations.

-Cost (MC and C_Bills) of mechs, cosmetics
The cost of a single color in comparison to warframe is 4 times as much, while warframe having much more content. The grind to build C_Bills as a new player is alright in the beginning, but later on after the extra money is stopped, their is no meta that keeps the player playing (besides buying new mechs).

-UI Issues/more immersion
Cockpit screens are eye candy, no useful at all in most case. It would be nice to have a screen use as a reverse camera. Damage could be more used in a more interesting way. Arm actuators could fail while in a battle, coolant leaks, rare engine damage cause a mini nuke damaging other mechs nearby. No repair and rearm system so that a suicide mech comes at a cost. No real economy...


In my Opinion....
Dream solution sell the IP with the MWO content to another company (EG Harebrained Schemes) and let them take MWO reigns, because PGI seems like they have no idea where to take MWO.

Edited by zolop, 04 February 2018 - 01:11 PM.

[Hanky Spam]

Yumoshiri, on 04 February 2018 - 08:51 AM, said:

If you ask me, that's not how you run a game. At least - not if you want more players.

That's how less or more CS:GO runs. Battlefield also works in a similar way - in terms of duration of a match and sometimes also of skill or premade discrepancies...
Also such players should stop blaming others for their inability to improve their FP situation.
No one is restricting them of searching an unit to join and to form up their own premade.

Just one thing is bugging me...
I've started this week an alt account and had to figure out that they reduced the premium time from 7 days to 1 day.
I do wonder how new players shall be able to buy at least a few basic mechs of every weight-class without spending money for mech packs or premium time.

This is just pure madness, especially when you want to skill your mech without premium time. You get like 150k cbills without premium time and you have to spend like the same amount of cbills to activate 2-3 nodes in the skill tree....
The grind is endless in this game and PGI needs to do something so that this situation will be less stressful for new players.

Give them their 7 days of premium time back, and even 2-3 days of additional double xp. If someone then plays a new account for 7 days, he may find himself back with at least 4 leveled mechs. That's the first thing I would (re)introduce.

[Mole]

I started playing this game with three friends. I was the only one that stayed more than a couple of weeks. What turned both of my friends off was that building new 'mechs was not very intuitive. For a new player, building a good 'mech is a whole lot of trial and error and a steep learning curve. A steep learning curve is fine except for the fact that every time you realize your build is not working and need to experiment with something new, it costs you a damned fortune to refit your 'mech, which results in a lot of very unpleasant grinding in a very unpleasant build that you are stuck with until you can raise the funds to change it. I stuck around because I was able to quickly pick up what weapons were good and what weapons were bad, so I had less of a curve when it game to builds. One of my first ever realizations was that it was a pretty good idea to boat Medium Lasers. My friends, well, they kept wanting to use other weapon systems. One of them left because in the lore his favorite 'mech was the Catapult and he just could not make his LRMs work for him, then he spent a fortune getting a K2 and equipping it with 4 PPCs only to get slapped with ghost heat after spending all that money. My other friend picked up a Firestarter and attempted to use Flamers. This was back before Flamers were actually useful at all. They both quit out of frustration because they were in a constant state of grinding cash in a ****** build to rebuild their 'mech to a new experimental build that stood a pretty good chance of being ****** as well, thus leaving them stuck in such a situation.

[Windscape]

Mole, on 04 February 2018 - 05:18 PM, said:

I started playing this game with three friends. I was the only one that stayed more than a couple of weeks. What turned both of my friends off was that building new 'mechs was not very intuitive. For a new player, building a good 'mech is a whole lot of trial and error and a steep learning curve. A steep learning curve is fine except for the fact that every time you realize your build is not working and need to experiment with something new, it costs you a damned fortune to refit your 'mech, which results in a lot of very unpleasant grinding in a very unpleasant build that you are stuck with until you can raise the funds to change it. I stuck around because I was able to quickly pick up what weapons were good and what weapons were bad, so I had less of a curve when it game to builds. One of my first ever realizations was that it was a pretty good idea to boat Medium Lasers. My friends, well, they kept wanting to use other weapon systems. One of them left because in the lore his favorite 'mech was the Catapult and he just could not make his LRMs work for him, then he spent a fortune getting a K2 and equipping it with 4 PPCs only to get slapped with ghost heat after spending all that money. My other friend picked up a Firestarter and attempted to use Flamers. This was back before Flamers were actually useful at all. They both quit out of frustration because they were in a constant state of grinding cash in a ****** build to rebuild their 'mech to a new experimental build that stood a pretty good chance of being ****** as well, thus leaving them stuck in such a situation.

I second this. While most experienced players say they have several million CBills in the bank, i am constantly broke trying to skill up and configure mechs. It would be nice if PGI at least lowered the CB price of skilling mechs.

[zolop]

Windscape, on 05 February 2018 - 07:57 AM, said:

Mole, on 04 February 2018 - 05:18 PM, said:

I started playing this game with three friends. I was the only one that stayed more than a couple of weeks. What turned both of my friends off was that building new 'mechs was not very intuitive. For a new player, building a good 'mech is a whole lot of trial and error and a steep learning curve. A steep learning curve is fine except for the fact that every time you realize your build is not working and need to experiment with something new, it costs you a damned fortune to refit your 'mech, which results in a lot of very unpleasant grinding in a very unpleasant build that you are stuck with until you can raise the funds to change it. I stuck around because I was able to quickly pick up what weapons were good and what weapons were bad, so I had less of a curve when it game to builds. One of my first ever realizations was that it was a pretty good idea to boat Medium Lasers. My friends, well, they kept wanting to use other weapon systems. One of them left because in the lore his favorite 'mech was the Catapult and he just could not make his LRMs work for him, then he spent a fortune getting a K2 and equipping it with 4 PPCs only to get slapped with ghost heat after spending all that money. My other friend picked up a Firestarter and attempted to use Flamers. This was back before Flamers were actually useful at all. They both quit out of frustration because they were in a constant state of grinding cash in a ****** build to rebuild their 'mech to a new experimental build that stood a pretty good chance of being ****** as well, thus leaving them stuck in such a situation.

I second this. While most experienced players say they have several million CBills in the bank, i am constantly broke trying to skill up and configure mechs. It would be nice if PGI at least lowered the CB price of skilling mechs.

Same, I have +100 mechs some of them are at max skill level, most are not. Unlocking skill nodes should only cost XP not another C_Bill cost. It doesn't make any sense on any immersion level because the pilot has been in battles to get XP, so the player isn't spending money to send him into training. Unless they want to make some kind of economy system.... EG Repair and rearm, player own bases (to train pilots), player own facilities that could repair mechs over a course of game time, player own dropships, black market, corporation building weapons with certain quirks, salvage anything from the battle including mech parts... etc

Edited by zolop, 05 February 2018 - 09:18 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Windscape, on 05 February 2018 - 07:57 AM, said:

I second this. While most experienced players say they have several million CBills in the bank, i am constantly broke trying to skill up and configure mechs. It would be nice if PGI at least lowered the CB price of skilling mechs.

Triggered!

How PGI has sucked up my cbills in the last year including the nearly 300 million I got from the module refund:

December 2017 through the skills tree PTS:
PGI: (I’m paraphrasing) “we are removing all quirks, okay not all quirks, but most quirks, okay maybe not removing, but we are dramatically reducing all quirks.” That was the evolution of their messaging for half of 2017. All the way through three iterations of the PTS. All the while I asked for and begged to understand how the quirk reliant IS mechs were to be made viable without quirks, and until the skills tree dropped in May it wasn’t clear to what extent they were really going to kills most of my mechs.

So what did I do with my refund based almost exclusively on PGI’s repeated insistence that quirks on IS mechs were going to be eliminated? After 2 years of lorehole dedicated IS faction play. I left CW entirely and abandoned my IS mechs. With half my refund I bought 12 clan mechs, insta leveled them with GSP.

June through August.
The nerfs to the IS mechs were not as dramatic as PGI had been insisting without fail that they would be (even as late as Paul and Chris Q&A they had been making these assertions of a need for dramatic reduction of “overall” quirks). So with my remaining cbills I started (started mind you...I only had about 180 million to work with at this point) outfitting some of my favorite mechs with nu-tech; especially LFE engines. This pretty much brought me back down to my typical state of never having more than about 20 million c-bills at a given time and usually closer to zero.

September through today.
Month after month of nerf passes. Lets use my Quickdraw 4Gs as an illustration of how this process sucked up what little c-bills I had left. Start with a fully skill tree optimized 3LPL build. PGI nerfs the LPLs and then energy overall. I guess I will go to an SRM ML build. Switch out around a 20 nodes to go get that left side of firepower, and done (thankfully a few K GSP makes that easy!) Oh but then we are nerfing the SRM spread and then ML. Well crap. Guess I will try 2 HPPC build. Re do the firepower tree again to focus heat and velocity, and done.

Do that for about 120 of my 199 mechs and the GSP, and HXP goes pretty damn fast. Do that 2-3 times for about half that many mechs (because you’d still like to play at least some on occasion) and a middling skill player is rendered dead broke pretty damn quick.

Where does all this leave me: with a bunch of clan mechs I never wanted but most of which are just better than my IS mechs that I love, with my IS mechs constantly needing to be rebuilt and renoded because despite my lorehole tendencies I do like to bring competently built mechs that actually work in this gaming envionment, but which PGI keeps f***ing with every month making it nearly impossible for me to keep up with (and they like hitting my clan mechs too!). So I have no cbills, no GSP, no desire to build let alone buy anything else because I have to save up what little I have, so that I have enough cbills banked to pay for the inevitable renoding and rebuilding of mechs whose weapons WILL be broken next month on the whim of PGI.

Talk about the unfunning of MWO. It isn’t just becoming unfun, its becoming a downright chore. So yeah lower costs would be nice, but I’d just as soon they stop breaking stuff and maybe even have some foresight when they make changes in the first place.

Grrr.

[Yondu Udonta]

Let's just face it, MWO exists because PGI wants to cash in on the nostalgia of us players who played the older MW games. So they have one tutorial that teaches basic UI and mech piloting that isn't informative enough for totally new players and useless af for the veterans. After this tutorial the new players are left to fend for themselves. They can't practice by playing against bots, can't learn FP because of the lack of a tutorial. Casual players will eventually leave because there's too much effort required to learn MWO and play other games where you run around and shoot like Battlefield or CoD that have similar controls and UI. Only players who are genuinely interested in this game would be bothered to trawl the web and MWO forums to improve themselves. Thankfully there's the initiative led by Ash to train players to play FP which would most definitely help in the retention of new players which are ever so few.

Digressing a little, there are not many new players because come on, I can ask the community and the majority would say they are playing because of the nostalgia factor. Not many would say 'oh it's a niche game and it seems interesting' or whatever reason. The graphics aren't comparable to the newer FPS on the market and to begin with, the MWO community average age is pretty high for a FPS game, so less or even none of one's friends would be playing this game and prospective players would instead decide to play Overwatch or other FPS. To be honest, if I haven't dabbled in the MW franchise when I was a kid, when I grow up and want to play a FPS with big stompy robots I would play Titanfall instead of MWO.

PGI better buck up with MWO because like **** this **** even simple stuff like group chat can be inaccessible after a few FP drops, or my friends list listing players as online when they have been offline for eons just like the bloody artillery in FP. So many things are falling apart and yet I'm seeing new mechs being released all the time to line PGI's pocket with little being done to fix BASIC issues.

[Asym]

Ssamout, on 04 February 2018 - 08:34 AM, said:

NBT

1. "Clubbing" and "Farming" are just elements that happen because how this game plays. Things tend to landslide, and you are rewarded for dmg and killing mechs. Hard to blame players. Just a game, should not take things too personally.
2. Constant nerfing is stupid if you want to keep up player interest. Just normal human psychology.
3. Playing with a team is so much more fun and rewarding in a team based game than just solo yolos doing stupid stuff. Also most humans are social animals, so chatting stupid crap while shooting robbits is fun.
4. Recommend trying out that "teamplay" aspect if you want to explore new stuff. That much despised Comp is really dependent on scouting for an example. Game is very repetitive. Cant say much new stuff except mechs have come out since beta. CW, but thats basically just 4x normal shootout. You either love it or leave it.

Thanks for the NBT..... I've never played the board game.

Did the team thing: both teams left the game..... That's 84 players. One is completely gone and the other is mostly gone: a few pilots come back for MC events.... The skill tree and CW killed it and ran them off: no viable future since PGI isn't listening.
Tried comp last season with a pick-up team: a real no-go for all of us; it caused a lot of player tension; and, several friendships were ruined in and off court as well.......

Good luck and see you at the next event.