47 replies to this topic

[Novakaine]

The problem is CRYTEK.

[InvictusLee]

JC Daxion, on 04 February 2018 - 04:19 PM, said:

Maybe i am wrong on this, But don't you find it interesting that came when PGI was splitting with IGP, and the downfall of mech warrior tactics? IMO i don't think players know how close this game came to folding and that was the whole reason why that happened. Maybe i am wrong, but the clues are all there. In the end the got the rights, and did not have to venture on with their own IP..

Maybe i'm wrong but transverse was all about trying to keep a game company going before a deal was made that gave them the rights to continue. they wanted a what if, worst case this whole thing goes all sorts of wrong and we can't make Mech warrior anymore. I don't have any proof of this, but it sure does fit the scenario. especially seeing how much of a different direction it too at the split right after transverse, and the entire new life that came to the game, despite it not pleasing some.

Precisely why we have to hold PGI's feet to the fire every ******* time or we will lose out.

ForceUser, on 04 February 2018 - 09:53 AM, said:

*illuminati music*

Fix'd

Kaeb Odellas, on 04 February 2018 - 02:19 AM, said:

What? Lack of physical goods manufacturing and distribution doesn't mean lack of overheads. PGI have staff salaries. They have bandwidth and server costs. They have rent and utilities. They have taxes. They have benefits packages. None of this is free.

I run an online business also.

My costs are literally 1/100th less than what a traditional business are in the same niche or industry with a property and the same amount of employees. So I make more of a profit on nearly everything I do. Which is why I can throw money at PGI for whatever mech pack I want.

I wasnt saying that they dont have overhead. What I'm saying is that they make alot more money than we give them credit for with the game being so broken balance wise.

Dnyarri, on 04 February 2018 - 12:59 PM, said:

It is all about economics and mathematics. If I spend $5.00 to make $10.00 I make $5.00 profit. If I spend $10.00 to make $14.00 it is only $4.00 profit. If they choose to hire an additional programmer that person needs to be worth at least their salary in revenue or it isn't worth it financially.

Actually. When it comes to digital products with digital distribution, profit margins are literally obscene, which is why everyone and their mom is writing a kindle E-book. If I could charge 5-70$ on an ebook, I would literally spend .45 cents to 5$ to pay my dues to amazon for their service and my credit card processor. This is why micro-transactions are so friggen flippin profitable much to the chagrin of any player base. My personal time and effort is not factored into into my profit nor are my personal expenses such as food, shelter, soda, ect. IF I were to include advertising which is 5%-10% what I spend, I'm still making a massive profit.

I could and should hit you with like three pages worth of math and spreadsheets, but that would literally be a complete waste of time as they are lost on the player base on the forums and no one here really cares. I'll leave that to people who actually care like 6th.

MadBadger, on 04 February 2018 - 09:12 AM, said:

"Always fun to see someone who has no clue what it takes to run a business"

Stfu Noob. Your argeument is invalidated by your own ignorance and condescending tone. Fight me.

Escef, on 04 February 2018 - 09:56 AM, said:

While I don't think PGI is crying poverty, I don't think they're making money "hand over fist", either. If they were poor they wouldn't be able to afford to make MW5. If they had the money some people think they do than they would not have needed to try to crowdfund the aborted Transverse project. PGI has had a few years since Transverse to bankroll money (and I think part of that bankroll was reserved for legal costs for the eventual HG lawsuit), so between the money the company has saved up and the relative safety of the franchise they've pushed forward with MW5 without crowdfunding.

ForceUser, on 04 February 2018 - 09:53 AM, said:

Or maybe they did actually hire a whole second team to work on MW5.

Honestly, while I am grateful that Mwo5 is on its way, its literally no excuse for the sate of MWO as stated by Mech the Dane in his video and his follow up interview with Kanajashi. They could have simply crowd funded that game to keep their financial resources on target with Mwo, and if you wanna look for examples you have to look no further than the BT dev team who are doing amazing things with a tiny, tiny budget in comparison. Where the heck is razorfist when I need him eh?... ohh wait....

Kroete, on 04 February 2018 - 01:23 AM, said:

Crytek offered different license models at that time,
one was pay nothing but 20% of the income from the game you have done with the engine. Some you have to invest heavy before to use the engine ,... Guess what license they choose?
Mickysoft want something too because mw license, that slow and recourceshungry scaleform ui is licensed too.
Half or more of the money is for licenses ...

Interesting.... But I'm not sure thats the whole story.

Daggett, on 04 February 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

Wait, what? Let me give you a short example:

According to wikipedia they have 65 employees. I don't live in canada but i think an average of 50k yearly salary including on-cost/taxes could be a nice conservative estimate, it's probably more. That's $3.25 million they have to earn each year just to pay their staff. If you factor in everything else like marketing, office cost, licensing or taxes you can easily get to 5 millions each year to keep the company alive without firing lots of employees. No profit being made so far.



What do you think a game with only about 60k active monthly players will make each year? Hint: Its not 166 millions as you suggest, it's probably below 10, maybe even only just enough to get going.


Also from a business standpoint you should _not_ reinvest your whole profit into your only game because each game has only a limited audience and lifetime. If they would throw 10 millions at MWO they MAYBE would make SOME of us super-happy but i doubt they will ever see their investment back.

First of all, let me give you kudos for making me groan, roll my eyes and giving me reason to sit down at my computer and defend my logic.

TL;DR: I hate writing/reading/editing/re-reading walls of text.

So. According to the numbers you've thrown at me, they have to sell 20833.333333333333333333333333333 mech packs a month over 12 months, at 20 dollars a pack for a base package because not everyone is a baller, for 250k dollars a month right up too 5 million at the end of the year. That seems fair and reasonable considering the scale we are talking about. Thats literally a 3rd of the player base if we only have 60k active users at any one time. Again, according to your logic, that would only increase the impetus to improve the game quality and the many buy tiny " quality of life" changes that can easily be made that help maintain over all player happiness. The more players that are retained, and kept happy, would then in turn, make purchases to keep the game goingand if those mechs happen to be super popular nastolgia-trash, then we can then assume that they are going to sell like hot cakes AND more than a few collectors packages will be sold on top of them. Then add in MC which isnt cheap, and in many cases causes some mechs to cost 3 times their real money value simply by being used instead of c-bills. However MC is needed not only for mechs, but also decals, colors, heros, xp conversions, ect. (lets be fair, we are all vain creatures to some degree) Then you add in the "MC" sales that are a bimonthly constant... and you get a whole hell of a lot more than 5 million dollars.

It literally makes dollars and cents (read sense) to keep the player base happy from a business stand point.

Daggett, on 04 February 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

Instead you need to invest into other games as well at some point to make your company safe for the future. That's what PGI tries with MW5.

Of cause you will still reinvest some of your profits into your existing game because that's what's keeping you alive and allows you to develop new games. With a big feature like Solaris you can see that PGI indeed does this. It may not be the feature everyone here in the forums wants, but it's a new feature nontheless...

please see my above groanings about crowd funding and how BT is actually doing a fantastic job which is why I threw my money at them too.

Daggett, on 04 February 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

I tell you a secret: Almost all online games are super-broken if you ask their community. Take a look into any successful game forum and you will see threads stating that they are broken almost daily. This is the result of today's sample:

Don't get me wrong, this is not meant as whataboutism. MWO indeed has problems including some balancing aspects. PGI has done many mistakes and will do more in the future. But they also did a lot right, otherwise we would not play this game.

I'm ignoring this mostly because it isnt true of all mmorpgs or games or even arena shooters. Look at overwatch, EVE online, WOW, Runescape, SC2. Games are fair and balance and constantly go through re-balancing with out earth shattering nerfs. Hell, I'd still be playing EVE if the whole spread sheet warrior thing didnt put me to sleep. I've experinced first hand games that are deeply unblanced because it makes money via microtransactions. I played RO for years man. I get it. I get the temptation. I get the causation. Its still not an excuse.

Daggett, on 04 February 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

The problem is that everyone of us has a different vision on what MWO should be like and how we would like them to balance it. PGI can't make all of us happy, it's impossible (and i use this word very rarely).

I have no idea what mwo you want, but I'm actually pretty content with the over all state of the game, I just want a few small quality of life fixes and or bugs addressed.

Daggett, on 04 February 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

And by looking at other much more successful games you can see the truth in this. They all have many players who do not agree with the current game state or it's direction regardless on how successful it is and the devs never seem to listen to the community.

this isnt true, and if you want direct evidence of how a game massively changes when leadership starts caring about the opinions of its player base, please look no further than runescape. The game is vastly different today, then what it looked like back when I was harrassing devs on the forums about bugs and glitches and quality of life crap back when I actually played the game. Now its really hard to find people who have valid reasons to be upset with the game, devs or the economy.

Daggett, on 04 February 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

In the end we should of cause keep saying in a constructive way what we don't like (that's important), but we can't expect that MWO will ever become our personal dream-game. The possibility is VERY slim given all the many directions the game could take and the sometimes vastly different opinions in the community.

I dont have a dream game, I just want my HUD to quit flipping glitching the hell out in FP so I can actually hit the other team. Its a small thing but would go such an ever so long way to soothing malcontentment.

Daggett, on 04 February 2018 - 05:55 AM, said:

I think by keeping this in mind we can have more fun playing the game instead of getting dragged down by what we think is problematic. For example my fun and performance increased significantly as soon as i stopped caring for MM and the bad teams it brings sometimes. I just do my best to enable even the most potato team to win and this attitude seems to have an impact on my stats too.

I try to be positive, and I rarely ask questions of the community in a sardonic or hateful tone. I'm a rather deadpan guy. I'm actually quite hopeful that by raising questions, being a squeaky wheel, and ratting cages, that we as a community will actually see the changes that are worthy of our praise and respect. I wouldnt be so vocal if I didnt care at all. I'd simply quit, or make a long winded exit topic about how im quitting and why PGI sucks blah blah blah... but I dont. PGI is working hard for my money. They are just misappropreating monetary resources on the whim and passion projects of the missguided company CEO, which we all know will tank the game and the franchise and will result in another DECADE before we see another BT or MW game. To which, I say, **** that. Lets right this ship, right now.

Edited by November11th, 04 February 2018 - 05:46 PM.

[Escef]

JC Daxion, on 04 February 2018 - 04:19 PM, said:

Maybe i am wrong on this, But don't you find it interesting that came when PGI was splitting with IGP, and the downfall of mech warrior tactics? IMO i don't think players know how close this game came to folding and that was the whole reason why that happened. Maybe i am wrong, but the clues are all there. In the end the got the rights, and did not have to venture on with their own IP..

Maybe i'm wrong but transverse was all about trying to keep a game company going before a deal was made that gave them the rights to continue. they wanted a what if, worst case this whole thing goes all sorts of wrong and we can't make Mech warrior anymore. I don't have any proof of this, but it sure does fit the scenario. especially seeing how much of a different direction it too at the split right after transverse, and the entire new life that came to the game, despite it not pleasing some.

Plausible. Not going to guess as to its accuracy, but definitely plausible.

[PocketYoda]

kuma8877, on 04 February 2018 - 08:50 AM, said:

Or companies like Amazon and Cloud Imperium Games have scooped up all the really talented code level engineers in Cryengine to make it harder to bring in talent to make deep level changes. It's not like Cryengine had really saturated the market with games so that most of the industry was working with it. There's just not that many experts in CE's use and they are probably well paid at either Amazon or CIG at this point. And with Crytech being on the financial ropes, there's not a ton of incentive for up and coming coders and designers to become proficient in it's use.


It's actually gotten much better there if you read the reviews in chronological order and account for the fact that many were written around the time IGP and PGI split.

I never said it was bad at PGI i just said if you are a Developer (With talent) looking to be hired that is a good place to get some idea.

[Scyther]

There's a post a couple spots above this that comes under the heading 'then baffle them with ********'.

Also, "I run an online business and my costs are 1/100th" shows how clueless you are on the subject. You even say 'in the same niche' and yet don't catch on that your cheapo business isn't in the 'online gaming developer' niche.

I doubt you need a stable of programmers, IP licensing fees, engine licensing fees, server farms, worldwide bandwidth and a graphics development team. Expecting everyone else to run a business on the cheap because you do shows the usual level of internet intelligence. A global access MMO isn't 'digital product distribution' as a business.

Posting massive textwalls full of bafflegab doesn't make your point any better. It just makes it easier to ignore.

Edit: I don't disagree with holding PGI to a decent level of expectations regarding game development. You're simply approaching the issue from an irrational starting point.

Edited by MadBadger, 04 February 2018 - 07:40 PM.

[LT. HARDCASE]

IF PGI is making money hand over fist?

What gave you the idea that they might be?

[MechaBattler]

Programmers aren't cheap. And I doubt they're making money hand over fist. MW5 is probably taking the bulk of their resources at the moment. And I can't really blame them. If it does well it's a cash infusion. And I wouldn't be surprised if they keep their resources on MW5 expansions. Though theoretically they could swap people around between the two games as needed. There's diminishing returns on how many people you can put to work on one thing.

[InvictusLee]

MadBadger, on 04 February 2018 - 07:35 PM, said:

*indignant ******** by someone who doesn't understand business trying to explain business to a businessman*

STFU and please get the **** out.

Edited by November11th, 04 February 2018 - 08:36 PM.

[InvictusLee]

MechaBattler, on 04 February 2018 - 08:17 PM, said:

Programmers aren't cheap. And I doubt they're making money hand over fist. MW5 is probably taking the bulk of their resources at the moment. And I can't really blame them. If it does well it's a cash infusion. And I wouldn't be surprised if they keep their resources on MW5 expansions. Though theoretically they could swap people around between the two games as needed. There's diminishing returns on how many people you can put to work on one thing.

You have a Valid point there.

LT. HARDCASE, on 04 February 2018 - 08:02 PM, said:

IF PGI is making money hand over fist?

What gave you the idea that they might be?

its a F2P filled with microtransactions and although it isnt pay to win it is absolutely pay through the nose to optimise and decorate. To boot balance changes are slow, ans PGI doesnt respond well to fixing bugs. Signs they are making too much money to care and they literally have their focus elsewhere.

[Khobai]

I dont think PGI is earning boatloads of cash. They literally do the bare minimum for MWO to subsist. And mostly they add paid content like mechpacks and bolton geometry.

Its fairly obvious MWO has peaked. And PGI has already made the bulk of their money off MWO that theyre ever going to. Its only downhill from here.

Theres also the fact cryengine is basically a developmental deadend. PGI would be better off creating MWO2 from scratch using unreal engine than trying to save MWO.

Of course thats entirely contingent on MW5 being commercially successful. But the preview videos dont exactly entice me to buy MW5... at least not at full retail price. If they did a kickstarter I might be willing to pay $20-$30 for it.

Quote

IF PGI is making money hand over fist?

What gave you the idea that they might be?

well I wouldnt exactly say theyre poor either

theyre publishing MW5 themselves

it costs at least 10 million dollars to develop a game like MW5

and thats assuming its a minimally viable product

MW5s success is going to depend a lot on mod support and player fixes for PGI bungling

Edited by Khobai, 05 February 2018 - 12:32 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Khobai, on 04 February 2018 - 11:50 PM, said:

it costs at least 10 million dollars to develop a game like MW5

and thats assuming its a minimally viable product

I've heard this $10 Million number thrown out before and if its true, how likely is it that MW5 can be the "success" that folks keep assuming it will be? There are what? 30K players of this game? Lets call it 50K. Screw it, lets double it and call it 100K players to include everyone even remotely interested in this game at any time. If every single one of these people buy the presumed ~$50 stand alone MW5 product, that is still only $5 million in sales. They need another 100K people, people who have shown zero interest in this game, just to break even on their new game. 200k people need to become aware of, enticed by and then buy the game, just to break even; and yet some folks around here are assuming that this game is going to be a smash success. To do achieve that, they are going to need a hell of a lot more folks over the 200K to buy the thing. Good luck.

[Khobai]

Quote

how likely is it that MW5 can be the "success" that folks keep assuming it will be?

who assumed it would be a success?

I think most people assume its going to be a trainwreck because PGI

[Bud Crue]

Khobai, on 05 February 2018 - 04:08 AM, said:

who assumed it would be a success?

I think most people assume its going to be a trainwreck because PGI

Just the folks in the various threads over the last few months who have been presuming that the “success” of MW5 willl allow PGI to come out with MWO2. Hell, there was a “theory crafting” MWO2 thread just last week. But none of that oh so hopefull MWO2 stuff can be a reality unless MW5 shows some significant degree of commercial success for PGI. Needless to say, I have my doubts. But I do think that this is PGI’s plan: to leverage their presumed success of MW5 to eventually make a MWO2 on the unreal engine so as to keep selling us what they have proven their limited customer base seems to want: mediocre game play with zero underlying stability and power creep all made possible by a never ending parade of mech packs, lots and lots of mech packs. And this of course is where the little problem of the “trainwreck” that you mention comes in to play, and which might put a wee bit of a damper on their plans.

Guess we will see.

My take on the past and future (aka: word vomit as therapy):
Its funny, my own roller coaster of personal emotional investment in this game, and to an extent my hopes for PGI’s continued success, has gone from that of a total nostalgia driven, lorehole, white knighting, whale for this game to someone barely interested in its further development as a direct result of PGI’s conduct since early 2016 through today, and also because I assume PGI is going to abandon MWO within the next couple of years. There is no way this game, on this engine (with PGI’s own repeated assertions of being unable to code it properly) with this economic model and limited and declining player base, survives for more than a couple of years with or without the success of MW5. If a miracle does occur and MW5 is a smash hit, then I think MWO2 becomes an inevitable reality shortly thereafter with this game and all of its player accounts -gone (yes I expect PGI will give some sort of loyalty bonus for MWO players coming over to MWO2 but that is all it will be a bonus to allow you to start over with a bit more ingame currency that a fresh player, but your account with all its mechs and progress is NOT being “ported” over to a whole new game on a whole new engine). If MW5 is not a success, then in light of PGI’s own comments about this game’s limitations, added to the long term trend in player numbers (slow decrease over time according to leaderboard stats) will combine to inevitably close the doors.

Edited by Bud Crue, 05 February 2018 - 04:50 AM.

[Khobai]

MW5 could do okay as long as PGI realizes their mistake with MWO. mechwarrior is supposed to be a sim game not call of duty with mechs

[Ensaine]

Bud Crue, on 05 February 2018 - 02:52 AM, said:

I've heard this $10 Million number thrown out before and if its true, how likely is it that MW5 can be the "success" that folks keep assuming it will be? There are what? 30K players of this game? Lets call it 50K. Screw it, lets double it and call it 100K players to include everyone even remotely interested in this game at any time. If every single one of these people buy the presumed ~$50 stand alone MW5 product, that is still only $5 million in sales. They need another 100K people, people who have shown zero interest in this game, just to break even on their new game. 200k people need to become aware of, enticed by and then buy the game, just to break even; and yet some folks around here are assuming that this game is going to be a smash success. To do achieve that, they are going to need a hell of a lot more folks over the 200K to buy the thing. Good luck.

^ math is scary, but probably close to accurate.

IMO, they need to do some highly visible and amazing stuff to MWO, like NOW, to get people to take a good look, and other people to perhaps take a second look......now.... to build more anticipation for MW5, and maybe bring in a few (back) to MWO......

Build the base you want to attract now. OR, wait till it launches, and have it what... stand on it's own? I don't think BT/MW/MWO has near enough of a following for yet another game from a company that, well, simply has a poor reputation.......

These guys should be wow'ing us, amazing us, right now........or what's left of THIS community will be THE base deciding on whether or not to take another chance on PGI.

Kinda makes Bud's math a bit scarier.......

[Sigmar Sich]

Ensaine, on 05 February 2018 - 06:07 AM, said:

IMO, they need to do some highly visible and amazing stuff to MWO, like NOW, to get people to take a good look, and other people to perhaps take a second look......now.... to build more anticipation for MW5, and maybe bring in a few (back) to MWO......

Wise words. There's a reason to bother to fertilise soil, if you hope for a good harvest.

In other words:


Let's hope new roadmap in a middle of this month will do just that.

[Daggett]

November11th, on 04 February 2018 - 05:44 PM, said:

... and you get a whole hell of a lot more than 5 million dollars.

You can't know that. We don't have access to their KPIs like conversion rate, ARPPU, Day 1/7/30 retention and such so we can only guess how much money they make.

Let me try to make an educated guess based on current average and maximum KPI's for f2p games:
The average conversion rate (players who spend money) is 2%. Very successful games like World of Tanks have achieved about 25% at their peak but this is a rare exception. Everything beyond 10% is very unlikely even for most current top-grossing games.

The ARPPU is the amount of money paying users spend on average. Very successful mobile games like Game of War achieve about 500$ per year, Clash of Clans does about 100$.

So now we can assume some very optimistic numbers to calculate PGI's maximum yearly revenue:
Let's take the phenomenal 25% conversion rate that WoT once had and the insane 500$ ARPPU of Game of War. We can also assume that 60K active players is not that far from the truth given the data we have.
So for 60.000 active players that's 15.000 who pay. And each of those pays on average 500$ each year. That's 7.5 million each year. That's what PGI can make if they have perfect KPIs matching those of the best performing F2P games. They lack active players to do more than this.

But if we use more realistic values we will easily end up in a region which is close to their estimated cost of running the business. So it's highly unlikely that they will make money 'hand over fist' even with very good KPIs, they will probably barely have the profits/reserves to enable them to do MW5.

November11th, on 04 February 2018 - 05:44 PM, said:

I'm ignoring this mostly because it isnt true of all mmorpgs or games or even arena shooters. Look at overwatch, EVE online, WOW, Runescape, SC2. Games are fair and balance and constantly go through re-balancing with out earth shattering nerfs.

Well maybe those games are only balanced from your perspective. There are different opinions:

Balance is a joke in this game, when you consider how OP Mercy was after her initial rework it just makes you think, how the !@#$ can they get it so wrong?
At the current pace Overwatch is being balanced and the quality of each patch, it is impossible for this game to ever be balanced!

Also keep in mind that MMORPGs like EVE, WOW and Runescape have different requirements and goals in terms of balance and are not as easy to compare to arena-shooters like MWO or Overwatch.

From my perspective balance in MWO is not as bad as it seems considering the huge complexity of options it has compared to other games.

Take Blizzard for example: Besides having simply more resources dedicated to balancing, their games are primarily 'better balanced' because they throw away most 'build' options other games have:

- Overwatch only has to balance their characters against each other. They can't be equipped with anything, there are no character builds.

- Heroes of the Storm dumped the whole item-tree other MOBAs have so they too only have to balance their characters against each other.

- Same is true with Starcraft. They only have to balance three factions which can't be modified against each other.

- And hearthstone has very stringent deck-building and gameplay rules MTG-players can only smile about.

MWO however has not only 'characters', they can also be equipped with a myriad of equipment options + skilltree. And it has to stay true to a lore which is more than 30 years old and was never designed for realtime FPS games. MWO's complexity is greater compared to any Blizzard game which makes it much harder to balance.

Given those obstacles i think while balance is not perfect, it's quite okay so far. But of cause this is only my opinion as a solo QP player.

November11th, on 04 February 2018 - 05:44 PM, said:

I've experinced first hand games that are deeply unblanced because it makes money via microtransactions.

Overwatch, EVE and Runescape make a big chunk of their money through microtransactions too. There have been calculations that Runescape could probably not be profitable anymore without those microtransactions.

I agree that microtransactions CAN make a game worse (EA proves this regularly) but it's also possible to design a game to work well with microtransactions.

I have seen lots of bad f2p games too, but in my opinion MWO is more on the bright side given that it's target audience is too small to survive by only selling cosmetics like LoL or Dota can.

If you imply MWO is unbalanced because of having mictrotransactions then your 'good balance'-examples have to be questioned too.

November11th, on 04 February 2018 - 05:44 PM, said:

I have no idea what mwo you want, but I'm actually pretty content with the over all state of the game, I just want a few small quality of life fixes and or bugs addressed.

This sounds very different from your original post:

Id really rather have them fix this super broken game instead of the constant nerfs and rebalances and hot fixes when nerfs go arwy.

If you are content with the overall state of the game, how can it be super-broken then?
And if your demands are only 'small' then why even argue about revenue distribution?

November11th, on 04 February 2018 - 05:44 PM, said:

this isnt true, and if you want direct evidence of how a game massively changes when leadership starts caring about the opinions of its player base, please look no further than runescape. The game is vastly different today, then what it looked like back when I was harrassing devs on the forums about bugs and glitches and quality of life crap back when I actually played the game. Now its really hard to find people who have valid reasons to be upset with the game, devs or the economy.

Runescape is 17 years old. Of cause that's a lot of time to find out what the majority of the community wants. If you give MWO 12 additional years i'm sure even PGI will come to a similar point of player acceptance.

Edited by Daggett, 05 February 2018 - 07:21 AM.

[TLBFestus]

The whole point about "virtual" retailers like PGI is that once the development time (overhead) on a mech model is paid for, the profit per sale soars because the product doesn't really exist.

I have no ideas what it costs them to make a mech, but once they sell enough of them each one they sell after that point if hugely profitable. Why? There's no physical product to increase overhead. Sure, there are servers to run, but they need to be up anyhow to support the venture as a whole, that cost is fixed. There's no increase in costs once you get past point X.

Micro-transactions. What does it cost PGI to "sell" you a color? A buck or more, seriously? Other than a change in the Hex number or RGB number that's the extent of the change. They could sell colors for next to nothing, they didn't create them or the system, they literally have the software in place to change the color, but instead they price it at a point that discourages many from buying them instead of discounting them and making more money by volume of sales.

PGI makes enough to keep the game running and divert cash towards their next project MW5. That in itself is a miracle considering the stunning level of mediocrity they demonstrate time and time again. They have never been able to figure out a way to market this game to a broader base, and if it wasn't for a devoted hard core following, this game would have shut down years ago.

[InvictusLee]

Bud Crue, on 05 February 2018 - 04:48 AM, said:

Just the folks in the various threads over the last few months who have been presuming that the “success” of MW5 willl allow PGI to come out with MWO2. Hell, there was a “theory crafting” MWO2 thread just last week. But none of that oh so hopefull MWO2 stuff can be a reality unless MW5 shows some significant degree of commercial success for PGI. Needless to say, I have my doubts. But I do think that this is PGI’s plan: to leverage their presumed success of MW5 to eventually make a MWO2 on the unreal engine so as to keep selling us what they have proven their limited customer base seems to want: mediocre game play with zero underlying stability and power creep all made possible by a never ending parade of mech packs, lots and lots of mech packs. And this of course is where the little problem of the “trainwreck” that you mention comes in to play, and which might put a wee bit of a damper on their plans.

Guess we will see.

My take on the past and future (aka: word vomit as therapy):
Its funny, my own roller coaster of personal emotional investment in this game, and to an extent my hopes for PGI’s continued success, has gone from that of a total nostalgia driven, lorehole, white knighting, whale for this game to someone barely interested in its further development as a direct result of PGI’s conduct since early 2016 through today, and also because I assume PGI is going to abandon MWO within the next couple of years. There is no way this game, on this engine (with PGI’s own repeated assertions of being unable to code it properly) with this economic model and limited and declining player base, survives for more than a couple of years with or without the success of MW5. If a miracle does occur and MW5 is a smash hit, then I think MWO2 becomes an inevitable reality shortly thereafter with this game and all of its player accounts -gone (yes I expect PGI will give some sort of loyalty bonus for MWO players coming over to MWO2 but that is all it will be a bonus to allow you to start over with a bit more ingame currency that a fresh player, but your account with all its mechs and progress is NOT being “ported” over to a whole new game on a whole new engine). If MW5 is not a success, then in light of PGI’s own comments about this game’s limitations, added to the long term trend in player numbers (slow decrease over time according to leaderboard stats) will combine to inevitably close the doors.

We shall Indeed see. I am really worried about the new players that join this game, find it super frustrating and unintuitive and then quit. We have to get these issues fixed so that the next generation of player can get to kicking the crap out of their peers post haste instead of reading a ten page guide to mech building!

Ensaine, on 05 February 2018 - 06:07 AM, said:

^ math is scary, but probably close to accurate.

IMO, they need to do some highly visible and amazing stuff to MWO, like NOW, to get people to take a good look, and other people to perhaps take a second look......now.... to build more anticipation for MW5, and maybe bring in a few (back) to MWO......

Build the base you want to attract now. OR, wait till it launches, and have it what... stand on it's own? I don't think BT/MW/MWO has near enough of a following for yet another game from a company that, well, simply has a poor reputation.......

These guys should be wow'ing us, amazing us, right now........or what's left of THIS community will be THE base deciding on whether or not to take another chance on PGI.

Kinda makes Bud's math a bit scarier.......

Math is so very scary.

Daggett, on 05 February 2018 - 06:54 AM, said:

*glorious read*

I dont have enough time to give you a proper reply right now, but that was glorious. Yes I seem to have contradicted myself, but the game is truly broken from the tech bases on up. I'm content in that I am able to continue to keep playing this game year after year. It really scratches that "giant stompy robot" itch that I get... I'm sure there's a cream for that, sold by Noni at his haberdashery...

You are alright Daggett. Friend me in game!

TLBFestus, on 05 February 2018 - 08:28 AM, said:

The whole point about "virtual" retailers like PGI is that once the development time (overhead) on a mech model is paid for, the profit per sale soars because the product doesn't really exist.

I have no ideas what it costs them to make a mech, but once they sell enough of them each one they sell after that point if hugely profitable. Why? There's no physical product to increase overhead. Sure, there are servers to run, but they need to be up anyhow to support the venture as a whole, that cost is fixed. There's no increase in costs once you get past point X.

Micro-transactions. What does it cost PGI to "sell" you a color? A buck or more, seriously? Other than a change in the Hex number or RGB number that's the extent of the change. They could sell colors for next to nothing, they didn't create them or the system, they literally have the software in place to change the color, but instead they price it at a point that discourages many from buying them instead of discounting them and making more money by volume of sales.

PGI makes enough to keep the game running and divert cash towards their next project MW5. That in itself is a miracle considering the stunning level of mediocrity they demonstrate time and time again. They have never been able to figure out a way to market this game to a broader base, and if it wasn't for a devoted hard core following, this game would have shut down years ago.

Precisely!

[Daggett]

November11th, on 05 February 2018 - 09:25 AM, said:

We shall Indeed see. I am really worried about the new players that join this game, find it super frustrating and unintuitive and then quit. We have to get these issues fixed so that the next generation of player can get to kicking the crap out of their peers post haste instead of reading a ten page guide to mech building!

I agree, that's my main concern regarding MWO's future. From what i have seen trying to get friends into the game it takes too long for a new player to get his/her first sense of achievement. After my first dozen matches back in closed beta i almost quit. It took a good friend convincing me that the game is better than what i experienced.

Some things have got better since then but i think the learning-curve is still too steep. For example there are still trial-mechs that use more than two weapon groups. I doubt that the average new player can or want to manage three of those, i'm still using only two after years of playing because i'm lazy...

Another problem is the first own mech dilemma. Chances are high that a player does not like his first mech bought from cadet bonus but he is stuck there for quite some time since rewards are low if you can't make a mech work. Maybe it would help to allow them to try any mech at least in the academy. Maybe the whole trial-mech approach could use an overhaul/rethinking...

Edited by Daggett, 05 February 2018 - 10:13 AM.