107 replies to this topic

[GBxGhostRyder]

Brain Cancer, on 24 March 2018 - 12:36 PM, said:

You could revive the game, but you'd have to first remove it's current engine and replace it.

Nothing else will work until then, as PGI is barely able to improve the game as a result of no capacity to significantly modify it.

After that, it'd probably take handing the game over from it's current primary caretakers. Competency is very much the second most important issue.

I will tell you what's funny about PGI and the Devs from my point of view How can you make such great mechs like my new free Sunspider just played a game after what almost a year and get 600 damage and 4 kills had so much fun because the mech is very solid and took a lot of hits and damage to win the game.

And basically let your community go to heck? And lose so many players? If PGI would have made all mechs like the sunspider to start with as in being able to play a game have fun take good damage and get a kill or 2 from the start the game might be different now.

I could make a list to fix MWO like so many of you have before me but the question is are the Devs going to listen to me or you or anyone to fix the game? I don't know but just like our long lost player counter there is always hope Russ might be listing to a player here who still believes he can do the job of resurrecting MWO from the ashes it has become.

I read about Solaris 7 it looks like the old leagues I used to play in VL And MWA for mechwarrior4 I hope it works out ok but to me the best part of MWO was the old 8v8 CW and my friends that played now I cant find a match and when I did it was not like it once was being rolled in like 3 minutes a battle which really sucks.

SO Russ and PGI bring back the player counter to the Forums be proud of your game make good decisions for the games community listen to what they want to play not what you think they want to play MWO is a horrible FPS E-sport prospect.

MechWarrior was always a bunch of players supporting there community and games for hard stompy robot action and fun Social gameplay not some 1 shot kill FPS shooter.

[Summon3r]

sadly MWO is going the way of mw4 and will slowly dwindle to a handful of players till the servers are shut down. PGI went no where with this when they had all the potential in the world to work with years ago. releasing a failed faction warfare after failed faction warfare and then nothing more then mechs (granted they make them $$ look cool and HBS can use them plus MW5).

only silver lining for all the money i spent here is MW5 which i will spend what ever they want for on. fingers crossed it isnt another half baked try and full of empty promises.

[GBxGhostRyder]

Summon3r, on 24 March 2018 - 01:53 PM, said:

sadly MWO is going the way of mw4 and will slowly dwindle to a handful of players till the servers are shut down. PGI went no where with this when they had all the potential in the world to work with years ago. releasing a failed faction warfare after failed faction warfare and then nothing more then mechs (granted they make them $$ look cool and HBS can use them plus MW5).

only silver lining for all the money i spent here is MW5 which i will spend what ever they want for on. fingers crossed it isnt another half baked try and full of empty promises.

Yes I remember when Mechwarrior3,Mechwarrior4 on the MSN gamming zone went offline because of that loser Steve Balmer and Xbox.

Then all the BS with Mektek for 10 years on there servers all they did was basically make mech after mech after mech and no content all the extra content was made by the community as far as game modes ,maps and Co-op play and the leagues that were still around.

Most old players thought MWO was going to be a updated version of MechWarrior4 with better graphics ,Sound and gameplay LOL boy were we all shocked when we started to play MWO and found out it was just a FPS almost 1 shot kill repetitive game.

Why so many kept supporting MWO to me is still a Mystery I guess it was the only mech game in town but I played Hawken as well and did like some things they did like Siege mode and the mech cockpits.

Haha I guess MWO will go the way of the DODO Bird unless Russ says hey lets do the game over and do it right this time like segregating teams and solo players and a lot more development ideas from the community that plays the game and pays into it.

[MechaBattler]

Summon3r, on 24 March 2018 - 01:53 PM, said:

sadly MWO is going the way of mw4 and will slowly dwindle to a handful of players till the servers are shut down. PGI went no where with this when they had all the potential in the world to work with years ago. releasing a failed faction warfare after failed faction warfare and then nothing more then mechs (granted they make them $$ look cool and HBS can use them plus MW5).

only silver lining for all the money i spent here is MW5 which i will spend what ever they want for on. fingers crossed it isnt another half baked try and full of empty promises.

I think PGI is banking MW5 being their new money maker. If they can keep turning a profit with expansions they'll renew their license. But I think MWO will not see any big developments. Not unless they make a serious effort with an engine change and reworking it from the ground up.

GBxGhostRyder, on 24 March 2018 - 02:23 PM, said:

Yes I remember when Mechwarrior3,Mechwarrior4 on the MSN gamming zone went offline because of that loser Steve Balmer and Xbox.

Then all the BS with Mektek for 10 years on there servers all they did was basically make mech after mech after mech and no content all the extra content was made by the community as far as game modes ,maps and Co-op play and the leagues that were still around.

Most old players thought MWO was going to be a updated version of MechWarrior4 with better graphics ,Sound and gameplay LOL boy were we all shocked when we started to play MWO and found out it was just a FPS almost 1 shot kill repetitive game.

Why so many kept supporting MWO to me is still a Mystery I guess it was the only mech game in town but I played Hawken as well and did like some things they did like Siege mode and the mech cockpits.

Haha I guess MWO will go the way of the DODO Bird unless Russ says hey lets do the game over and do it right this time like segregating teams and solo players and a lot more development ideas from the community that plays the game and pays into it.

Depending on which part of the community you listen to. You'll get a very different game from each. And I don't think PGI has the resources or design skills to deliver on the kind of amalgamation that would make the most people happy.

[GBxGhostRyder]

MechaBattler, on 24 March 2018 - 02:36 PM, said:

I think PGI is banking MW5 being their new money maker. If they can keep turning a profit with expansions they'll renew their license. But I think MWO will not see any big developments. Not unless they make a serious effort with an engine change and reworking it from the ground up.



Depending on which part of the community you listen to. You'll get a very different game from each. And I don't think PGI has the resources or design skills to deliver on the kind of amalgamation that would make the most people happy.

Your right but like our long lost player counter it can be resurrected again.

First you have a QP game mode that is good it just needs some more maps and game modes and stay a segregated solo mode.
Then you have group QP which is ok but should be left as team orientated only,
Then you have a comp mode which is Organized team only which is good
Then you have private team play and leagues which is great but lacks a Social lobby to support it like the old MSN gamming zone did.
Then you have CW or FP which should have been segregated long ago so solo and teams have a good time playing and both contribute to the planetary game mode theme.

I could go on with many possibility's to fix MWO many suggestions are out there from so many good players but do the DEVS even see what is posted here? And I'm not wasting my time on twitter with short idiotic comments to see if I can bend a devs ear.
I do think PGI after 5 years has the talent to fix MWO and resurrect its player base but that is the owners decision fix the game right or let it die as a bad representation of this great BattleTech MechWarrior IP games legacy.

[Krivvan]

GBxGhostRyder, on 24 March 2018 - 02:23 PM, said:

do it right this time like segregating teams and solo players

They're already segregated. They've been segregated for years.

I'm guessing you don't actually play at all.

EDIT: It seems you have played about 8 games in the past 2 years, so I'm not sure how you missed that.

Edited by Krivvan, 24 March 2018 - 04:40 PM.

[GBxGhostRyder]

Krivvan, on 24 March 2018 - 04:35 PM, said:

They're already segregated. They've been segregated for years.

I'm guessing you don't actually play at all.

EDIT: It seems you have played about 8 games in the past 2 years, so I'm not sure how you missed that.

Ohh did I say segregation in CW was needed long ago so the past 4 years could be forgotten from seal clubbing new players and solo players until the player base has shrunk 80% of its original size?

As to my game play don't always juge a book by its cover.

[Rick T Dangerous]

GBxGhostRyder, on 24 March 2018 - 09:09 AM, said:

I guess the big question is could anything at this point revive the game?

And nullify all of PGI's efforts to make the player base play other games instead of MWO? You realize that instead of going to 8v8 they go to 2v2 and 1v1. They couldn't do that with thousands of players. MWO is supposed to be like golf: an exclusive "sport".

GBxGhostRyder, on 24 March 2018 - 01:25 PM, said:

[..] there is always hope Russ might be listing to a player here who still believes he can do the job of resurrecting MWO from the ashes it has become.

sarcasm, right?

[Mawai]

I just thought I would comment that the steam data and the data from the website that collates the leaderboard data are pretty consistent

Steamspy reports the 2 week audience for MWO at about 23k. This is the number of players playing at least one MWO match on steam in the last 2 weeks.

Look at the 2 week audience data and both the concurrent users by day and hour to get a break down of how many folks are playing and when.

http://steamspy.com/app/342200

On the other hand the leaderboard data puts the current audience based on the leaderboard (which has a longer time frame) at about 54k active players. Comparing the steam and leaderboard data, you get that a bit more than 1/2 the players use the stand alone client.

Of these active players, about 600 to 2k are playing at any one time with instantaneous game population varying by both time of day and day of the week. The population is also spread over the NA, Euro and Oceanic servers.

[PocketYoda]

Alpha MWO looked amazing, wish i'd been here then, this we have now Call of Duty with mechs gets old fast and no content for years with dribs and drabs is not working..

Mechpacks every month is not content... and holding mc mechs ransom for months and years is not helping..

Roll on April thats all i can say..

Mawai, on 24 March 2018 - 06:36 PM, said:

you get that a bit more than 1/2 the players use the stand alone client.

People always say that but there is zero proof?

Way more accurate
http://steamcharts.com/app/342200

Edited by Samial, 24 March 2018 - 07:17 PM.

[Anjian]

TLBFestus, on 24 March 2018 - 12:49 PM, said:

There is one simple solution that I believe would re-invigorate the game;

Would be hard to find a new buyer for MWO because its content potential has already been greatly exploited. Its like a mine that already has much of its valuable ore mined out.

[Kiiyor]

Krivvan, on 24 March 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:

Do you know many games in general that proudly show their player counts as a big counter? The information is already public enough and available on the website and in the game. You're literally just talking about why they don't put a giant garish counter in the game UI. There's not much hiding of the player count that's going on otherwise. You're starting to make me sound like a white knight or something here but really, how many games actually do that? Even the most populated ones?

I was in the first wave of the Closed beta and I don't really remember an announcement quite like that. I remember one about several million being made off the Founder's program though, which would translate to more like 100k to 200k accounts.

Yeah, I just did a site:mwomercs.com search of the forums and a separate search of the social media accounts, and I can see a few people on the forums referencing account numbers back in 2015 (interestingly, it was by people arguing player counts with sauceless numbers too...) someone mentioned 1 million, someone 1.6 million, but I can't find any official word from PGI/IGP whoever back then about it. Not to say it didn't happen, but I can't find evidence of it after my 8 minute Google quest.

Who can say how registered accounts convert to returning players anyway? All we have is speculation - but, for a FTP game where anyone with an email address can register, i'd say that any type of speculation without knowing how other games or the industry as a whole compares is probably a waste of time. I know, for instance, that Dreadnought has thousands of new accounts registered per month by bots for the express purpose of distributing forum spam, so who knows how much of an impact bots have... or people creating smurf accounts, or people just signing up because it looks interesting.... i'd say that without any context, that 1 million number is meaningless.

So, i'd still say the Jarl's list is the best authority on player counts. People here arguing about the authenticity of the data is kind of irrelevant, when there's absolutely nothing else to compare it with except the gut feeling people seem to be lending more credence to.

Maybe the Jarl's part of the conspiracy! /s

[Asym]

If you use any published non-PGI data, you must take into consideration alternative accounts. On the team I use to play with in MWO, we had several team members with no less than 5 MWO game names and accounts. An account for their old team. An account for their new team. A Clan account. An IS account. A Mercenary account. And, this isn't just 3 or 4 players...... Dozens have more than 2 accounts......

OK, try and figure that out? Multiple IP's, same person? I hate to say this but other game use "live player count" meters at MM time so you can exit MM before selected if you don't want the "power shift" when player counts are low..... If MWO did that, many of us from other games might never log in because, as someone above said, we're playing with the same pilots all day/night long.... In fact, of late, In Scouting, I waited 5 minutes between matches and saw the same dozen names, match after match after match......make you wonder.......... What will Solaris actually do to player numbers?

[PocketYoda]

Asym, on 25 March 2018 - 07:06 AM, said:

If you use any published non-PGI data, you must take into consideration alternative accounts. On the team I use to play with in MWO, we had several team members with no less than 5 MWO game names and accounts. An account for their old team. An account for their new team. A Clan account. An IS account. A Mercenary account. And, this isn't just 3 or 4 players...... Dozens have more than 2 accounts......

OK, try and figure that out? Multiple IP's, same person? I hate to say this but other game use "live player count" meters at MM time so you can exit MM before selected if you don't want the "power shift" when player counts are low..... If MWO did that, many of us from other games might never log in because, as someone above said, we're playing with the same pilots all day/night long.... In fact, of late, In Scouting, I waited 5 minutes between matches and saw the same dozen names, match after match after match......make you wonder.......... What will Solaris actually do to player numbers?

I'm guessing it will lower it, but we will see.

[ThreeStooges]

If pgi ever gave a dam you wouldn't have threads like this show up. Only times I've pgi haul butt was with mini map re-do with many fourm threads ablaze pitchforks covered in the severed heads of past pgi interns and mass histeria for one example, massive cacelations of pre order in which micro$oft took notice and sent in their mib agent to fix it as their percent of mech sales took a hit, and the most recent war horn event that you could win 100 of the same war horn reduced to 1 over night.

Make a game fun and people will spend money on it. I still spend money on swtor. Make a game with community and allow mods and you end up with a Skyrim with people making content and playing it for years after release. There is a reason you see cod make money with every new release. Those people find that type of game fun and the studios usually make them fun while changing the formula enough that it gets old players back and new people to play it.

I play mwo for the team aspect even if it is very poor in qp and group play. I hate those cod,battlefield,overwatch style fps where it's just every one vs everyone. Now pgi wants to do that bs. As long as I can qp a few matches and have fun in my light mechs I'll stay til the end.

[Villainy]

So, Ghost, first off - no one "let's their game die," except Hawken. They are up against tons of FtP competition. You have to realize, War Thunder, World of warships, world of tanks, Warframe, League of legends, Heroes of the Storm, Dota, Over watch, World of War craft. Knights of the Old Republic, Roblox, Robocraft, and many other FtP games are their direct competition. And that list is just the games I've played off the top of my head. FtP is the new model. It's a vastly over saturated market, and Mechwarrior has NEVER been a big license. It just hasn't. Secondly, PGI isn't a big studio. Their not backed by EA or Activision. They don't have massive banks and rooms of dedicated back end programmers. MWO is small fries man.

And to answer a question asked multiple times EVE Online, KOTOR, Warframe and several other games DO list an active player number on their launcher or on their UI, BUT it mostly relates to server activity, not confidence in their product or some weird show of faith.

Also, I believe MWO is trying to pull a League. With this Solaris update, we're going to see them dedicate a lot of effort into pushing "competitive" play instead of immersion or lore, because that's the only way games make it these days. With so much packed into MW5, Solaris is going to decide the fate of MWO.

[GBxGhostRyder]

Villainy, on 26 March 2018 - 06:36 AM, said:

So, Ghost, first off - no one "let's their game die," except Hawken. They are up against tons of FtP competition. You have to realize, War Thunder, World of warships, world of tanks, Warframe, League of legends, Heroes of the Storm, Dota, Over watch, World of War craft. Knights of the Old Republic, Roblox, Robocraft, and many other FtP games are their direct competition. And that list is just the games I've played off the top of my head. FtP is the new model. It's a vastly over saturated market, and Mechwarrior has NEVER been a big license. It just hasn't. Secondly, PGI isn't a big studio. Their not backed by EA or Activision. They don't have massive banks and rooms of dedicated back end programmers. MWO is small fries man.

And to answer a question asked multiple times EVE Online, KOTOR, Warframe and several other games DO list an active player number on their launcher or on their UI, BUT it mostly relates to server activity, not confidence in their product or some weird show of faith.

Also, I believe MWO is trying to pull a League. With this Solaris update, we're going to see them dedicate a lot of effort into pushing "competitive" play instead of immersion or lore, because that's the only way games make it these days. With so much packed into MW5, Solaris is going to decide the fate of MWO.

I have watched and played MWO on day1 until now and I have seen the folly of Devs that really started out with one goal for MWO $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ money in da bank for other game development they assumed would be even more profitable than MWO (TransVerse) and now (MechWarrior5).

MWO in my perspective was designed wrong from day one of its inception and even back before MWO was made many tried to tell Brian and Russ that a FPS mech game like WOT was a bad idea. And a better idea was to expand into the BattleTech and MechWarrior IP as in fact 2 games in one a Character driven Battletech FPS mode and a MechWarrior4 type mech mode with 50+ maps and 15 + game modes.

Even if PGI is a small studio compared to EA they could have engineered MWO right from day one of conception and not try to Clone WOT with mechs after Alpha 3/4 of the player base left it was not the game they wanted to play and the game has lingered on ever since.

Its funny how a simple thing like a player counter can say hey this game is doing well and the community and players are happy and having fun playing this game not to mention I cant imagine how many millions of dollars PGI has thrown out there studio door by one simple mistake of going with bad core game design that worked for one game and not your game.

[Asym]

Samial, on 25 March 2018 - 07:26 AM, said:

I'm guessing it will lower it, but we will see.

I think so to. I suspect there is a "sustaining number" PGI is using to measure their sales against... Whales keep buying everything so the cash is there.....even if the game is running on minimum numbers, sales aren't affected because they buy literally "everything" offered.

I checked last night with several older members; they have purchased duplicate and triplicate mech packs to cover their four or five accounts.... And, do so, every mech release. We're talking hundreds of mechs....in each account. That's the power of super small niche markets.....Solaris is a "blip" that won't affect their sales.....and, money talks and Faction Play walks.....

They wanted an arena FPS and FP imploded with toxic game-play..... Teams just didn't work in a costly environment (old game engine and thousands of hours of required code changes just to keep FP running)..... So, Solaris is 1/5 as complicated and meets the needs of those who really keep MWO functioning....those players who buy everything !

[Khobai]

Quote

So, Solaris is 1/5 as complicated and meets the needs of those who really keep MWO functioning....those players who buy everything !

solaris is 5 times the garbage fire of FP and meets the needs of no one

anyone who wants to play a good arena FPS is certainly not going to play MWO

solaris was a huge mistake. PGI wouldve been better off improving what their game does well. Instead of changing directions and trying to turn their game into something it isnt.

Quote

MWO in my perspective was designed wrong from day one of its inception and even back before MWO was made many tried to tell Brian and Russ that a FPS mech game like WOT was a bad idea.

they didnt really have a choice because microsoft

they wanted to make mechwarrior 5 originally but microsoft said no. microsoft wanted an online multiplayer game.

and copying WoT's sales model was not necessarily a bad thing given its success

the problem is they didnt copy anything else that made WoT successful... MWO doesnt even have real gamemode; it still has beta test gamemodes like assault, its ridiculous. The lack of a decent, fun gamemode is the games biggest failing IMO. Battletech is supposed to be more than just skirmish or variations of skirmish. Conquest is the closest thing to a real gamemode but even that falls short.

Edited by Khobai, 26 March 2018 - 10:33 AM.

[Krivvan]

Khobai, on 26 March 2018 - 10:26 AM, said:

solaris is 5 times the garbage fire of FP and meets the needs of no one

anyone who wants to play a good arena FPS is certainly not going to play MWO

The 1v1 tournaments have gotten a lot of interest, and there are even 1v1 and 2v2 tournaments being regularly hosted for less experienced players. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it meets the needs of literally no one.

There isn't any FPS that offers the same sort of mechanics as MWO. Tank controls, extreme disparity in movement between mechs, component-split damage, very high TTK, etc. I know I'm certainly not still playing MWO because of Battletech nostalgia or "I like stompy robots" and I know many others are the same.

What the game does well are its core game mechanics. The movement mechanics, the aiming mechanics, the build diversity (compared to most other similar games), the class diversity, and etc. I actually agree that one of the weaknesses of MWO are its game modes and what surrounds the core mechanics. But 1v1 and 2v2 are a new avenue to explore those in ways that aren't explored in 8v8 and 12v12. They are in essence an entirely new game mode. I don't think many are thinking about this in particular but it also creates an avenue for new techniques that can't be explored in 8v8 or 12v12. Things like accel/deccel and turn jukes, constant height variation play, leg-aim compensation, and yomi.

Edited by Krivvan, 26 March 2018 - 10:35 AM.