37 replies to this topic

[r4zen]

SO I went back and listened a couple of times and figured I'd put my background in audio transcription to good use. No personal commentary, this is just what was said on the stream.

Original VOD of the podcast (timestamp when they begin talking about FP): https://www.twitch.t...585?t=01h35m40s

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Daeron: Uh, Faction play. People have been, uh, clamoring for some news on Faction Play. So, obviously with the roadmap you mentioned, um, upcoming, uh, potential changes to Faction Play, or that it was going to be examined, re-examined. What do you have to say about Faction Play, Russ?


Russ: ... Well, I mean, I know there's a bunch of you out there that play Faction Play, um, almost exclusively. And ... I hope you'll believe me when I say I ... It's a, it's a feature set that's very, um, important and significant to us. But ... There ... It's in need of a number of improvements, in particular, especially when you consider, uh, meeting the players' expectations. I don't know if we could ever meet your expectations when you're looking at an evolving feature set, um, from Mechwarrior Online to today. But, we certainly haven't given up.

And the only thing that's stalling us at the moment is, you have a very important feature called Solaris that's coming out, that comes out in April, and ... It's almost certain that we're going to be supporting that feature for a couple months post-release, May and June let's call it, it's important to determine specifically. But we have not given up on giving significant time to, uh, faction play moving forward.

Um, I guess beyond that, Daeron, I guess all I'd really say is ... Um, we want this game to succeed as much as you guys do. I mean, we know how much you guys love Mechwarrior and Battletech. I mean, we're all fully invested. Certainly we are, um, completely, when it comes to developing Mechwarrior Online, Mechwarrior 5, um, well, I mean it's the livelihood of almost 70 staff here, and a company that's been around for, um, approaching 20 years. So believe me when we say we do our best to, uh, match the needs and desires of our entire community.

So we're gonna release Solaris, we'll be supporting it completely. Um, we're gonna be re-assessing Faction Play. So in the short term, we found ourselves in the position saying, "Well, we can't do significant development to Faction Play while we're working on Solaris, so what can we do in the short term?" Well, in the short term we can modify the barriers. And so the barriers of Faction Play from the faction restrictions to the changing faction and breaking contracts, and we thought, "Okay. In the immediate future, let's, let's lessen those things. Let's make them very, very easy. Let's let people change factions in a very quick notion and all those kind of basic aspects of Faction Play." So that becomes, um, uh, live as soon as the March patch. And then we're kind of committed to making sure that the March patch has those changes as well as a number of Faction Play events, you should see a number of Faction Play events in the months of mid-March to mid-April, to finish off what would say is that season of Faction Play.

And then, then Solaris is going to release. I think, just to be really upfront, we should all expect that Faction Play should at least anticipate a small, couple week, 2-4 weeks, of a period where there's no conflict. This would allow Solaris to launch with the most probability of success. That there isn't a Faction Play conflict going on which may be, um, understaffed, and would create any kind of, you know, negative aspect of, you know, not being fulfilled.

And I think we're gonna make sure that March is a very strong Faction Play event, with these new, um, reduced, um, barriers around contracts and so on and so forth. And then once Solaris launches, we're gonna actually do a full map reset, a full contract reset, which is something we haven't done in a very long time, we're gonna let Solaris run out for at least 2-4 weeks, and then we will re-introduce a Faction Play conflict.

And we will consider, you know, at that point, being able to, freed up from Solaris, being able to consider a development timeline for what Faction play is. And where we should go. And what we should do. Um, it still remains a priority, it's just that Solaris will be the polarity, er, will be the priority in the short term.


Daeron: Well, and obviously, you know, like you just said; any major changes to Faction Play, it's going to take development time. Um, and not the next subject, but the subject after that, we're going to talk a little bit about what the second half of this year, potentially, could entail as far as development. Which Faction Play is certainly, uh, one of those options, and there's other things.

And like you mentioned, you know, although we're up to 70 employees, it's still a small company. So we can't do everything, and there needs to be some prioritization, which, um, you know, will come internally, as well as externally from the community. So we'll get into that shortly, about, um, what the second half of the year will hold.


--end of FP discussion--

Edited by r4zen, 03 March 2018 - 12:16 PM.

[ccrider]

Nice work transcribing.

[Joshua McEvedy]

Complete trainwreck of a discussion.

Thanks for the great transcription, BTW.

[Grus]

[DevlinCognito]

Thankyou for that.

[Darth Hotz]

Thanks for the work.


Bottomline: Nothing will change, we are too busy with MW5 and Solaris.


RIP Faction Play!

[Lanancuras]

I really hope they'd reconsider. People exclusively playing faction play aren't really the types that will love Solaris. As for me I'm going to try out Solaris regardless but I do think it's ****** they'd restrict our ability to play FP just to give Solaris some kind of publicity boost. On top of that Solaris is gonna rely on 1v1 matches, even with 7 different brackets I doubt matchmaking is going to be very slow for that regardless of FP still being playable.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

When PGI cat on the right touches the Faction play cat community on the left with the bomb of 2-4 weeks no faction play.
And of course the quick play potato cat in the back acting like a derp.

[Grus]

[Jonathan8883]

I don't see anything saying "Faction play will shut down." I see them saying "We aren't going to run any Faction Play Events for a couple of months because we'll be busy with Solaris and don't want to do a bad Event."

Thanks for the transcription confirming that.

[Stealthrider]

Quoted in the other thread but will post here too because relevant.

From Russ' twitter today:

Quote

Got a lot of tweets @ me about not wanting FP to come down at launch of Solaris. Our intention was just to not have FP struggle harder to fill its games, but I will strongly consider keeping the conflict running.

[LordNothing]

this reads like a script to bevis and butthead.

Lady Alexandra Cousland, on 03 March 2018 - 02:14 PM, said:

When PGI cat on the right touches the Faction play cat community on the left with the bomb of 2-4 weeks no faction play.
And of course the quick play potato cat in the back acting like a derp.

kitties!

[r4zen]

Jonathan8883, on 03 March 2018 - 02:55 PM, said:

I don't see anything saying "Faction play will shut down." I see them saying "We aren't going to run any Faction Play Events for a couple of months because we'll be busy with Solaris and don't want to do a bad Event."

Conflict isn't Event. He specifically talks about the March Event, not the March 'Conflict'.

[Khobai]

[justcallme A S H]

Honesty reading / listening...

Russ once again has no clue as to what the community actually wants it the issues with the mode.

I guess when soooo many post rubbish on the forums and tweet him, it's hard to get a clear picture of the actual problems. What they are doing isn't even a proper fix, it's legit just another band-aid fix.

[Stealthrider]

justcallme A S H, on 03 March 2018 - 04:38 PM, said:

Honesty reading / listening...

Russ once again has no clue as to what the community actually wants it the issues with the mode.

I guess when soooo many post rubbish on the forums and tweet him, it's hard to get a clear picture of the actual problems. What they are doing isn't even a proper fix, it's legit just another band-aid fix.

In this case it sounds like they know it's a band-aid and are doing it specifically to improve things slightly in the interim between Solaris launching and the review they seem to have planned for after the initial Solaris launch hypefest/impending balance nightmare/inevitable bug avalanche that they estimate will last a couple of months. It's understandable that with Solaris coming they haven't put much thought into FP lately; I'd expect pretty much any company to focus hard on new and shiny over old and busted for at least a little while. A band-aid, in that context, is at least throwing a bone and letting people know that yes, they are thinking about FP but just have other priorities in the moment.

[Duncan1dah0]

Again, Russ only listens to twitter... Why do we even try using his forums to communicate?

#NoShutdownFP

There, maybe he will read this now.

[Cataphractos]

So I'm not concerned with all the "ums" and "uhs" -- that's just how people talk, and that's what you're going to see in a word-for-word transcription. What I'm concerned about is:

r4zen, on 03 March 2018 - 12:14 PM, said:

And like you mentioned, you know, although we're up to 70 employees, it's still a small company.

Any company with over two-dozen employees is not a "small company" by any standard...except maybe for getting certain tax credits and government grants. And it certainly doesn't count as a "small company" in the gaming industry. So if you can't get the job done with 70 freakin' people, it's not because you don't have sufficient manpower. It's because of poor management. I don't know exactly what kind of poor management is going on here, though it sounds an awful lot like PGI hit its Peter Principle limits when it decided to tackle this MW5 project. I've volunteered (briefly) for companies where that happened.

Alternatively, those 70 "employees" are really assorted interns/volunteers/temps/part-timers, equivalent to only 5 or 6 actual workers. That seems kind of scummy for Canadians, but I suppose that kind of toxic Silicon Valley mentality could have stretched its tentacles into the Great White North. "Yeah, let's cut our labor costs by not having a workforce, this is veeeeerrrry savvy business-ing."

[Spheroid]

Russ has a big drinking problem. That was not a mild buzz, he was at least twice the legal limit. Disgraceful to give an interview in that state.

Edited by Spheroid, 03 March 2018 - 05:32 PM.

[MechaBattler]

Saying how important FP is to them. While then saying they're going to shut FP down for 2 weeks when Solaris releases. I don't even play FP anymore. But it sounds like they're giving you a hug, while simultaneously stabbing FP players in the back.

People will try Solaris out. But don't expect everyone to swap over from FP to Solaris. They're completely different modes.