144 replies to this topic

[Dimento Graven]

Koniving, on 24 August 2018 - 11:01 AM, said:

A focus on content.
And no, I don't mean yet more cookie cutter mechs.

Like what?

More weapons? Got 'em.
More maps? Got 'em.
More game modes? Got 'em.

By "content" to what are you referring?

[The Teddy Bear]

mad kat, on 24 August 2018 - 12:11 AM, said:

The Absoloute first thing they need to do is bin PSR. They then need to get their heads together and come up with a matchmaker that works.

That the matchmaker is broken is not exacly a new thing. Me and my old team mates stopped playing FP in early phase 3 due to far too big win rates, 70-90%, compared to the skill that we thought we had and just split up (tired of stomping). Returning to QP was a terrible experience for all of us. All we wanted was some matches against equally skilled players. Our best player in FP turned out to be in tier 4 and I have never seen him since. Some of us still play together in other games though.

Personally I liked the game so much I decided i`ll log in once in while and see if I got "rusty" enough to get some challenges. Made up a target that if I go below 2.0 K/D or below 300 MS avg I´ll grind it out again. Somehow, it still does not work out after so long time. How is it even possible?

[Bishop Steiner]

Jackal Noble, on 20 August 2018 - 01:46 PM, said:

ya the 3 UAC20 DWF is terrible lol.

yeah.... doesn't the GH on that pretty much auto shutdown anyhow?

[Quxudica]

XX Sulla XX, on 20 August 2018 - 10:22 AM, said:

So I was thinking. What is the very least PGI has to get right to start getting players back in decent numbers?
Here are things I think they could do that are low risk and high reward.

• 
  
  Buff mobility on most mechs. With under performing mechs getting the largest buffs. This makes the game more fun over all, increases time to kill and buffs under performing mechs.
  
• 
  
• 
  
  Buff under performing mechs that have bad hard points, tiny engine caps, terrible hit boxes etc. Stop being afraid to make things work better. There are so so many mechs never used because they are just bad.
  
• 
  
• 
  
  Figure out a way to cut down on match search times and waiting times in general. The matches are already terrible because of the low player base and terrible tier system. So if we are going to get bad matches at least give us fast matches.

Just those three things would get me to play a lot more and have hope they would fix more complex things later. What do you guys think?

Move away from treating mechpacks like content. They aren't. They never have been and never will be exciting content. I've been around since late Alpha and I could not care less about those massively over priced things, and frankly I barely take notice of new mech announcements anymore since I know that means said mech won't actually be out till roughly a year later in a likely heavily nerfed state. New players aren't going to give a damn about these things, not in any meaningful numbers.

Additionally the cosmetic options should be massively reduced in price, and preferably given an in-game means of obtaining them. The idea that a single shade of x color costs 6~ USD is disgusting and puts a hard block on one of the easiest ways to keep new or more casual players interested; cosmetics are a great thing to work for. There's a reason Fashionframe is doing so well, people love to look awesome in online games and frankly a treadmil that focused on that instead of the absurdly grindy skill trees would be far, far better for both game play and new player enticement.

The focus should be on real content; revamping current maps, fleshing out the awfully lackluster current game modes and put forward a new focus on creating true objective-based game modes as so far all the attempts at this have been pretty terrible. For example; I don't remember what it was called but the old Battlefield games had (and maybe the new ones do to, I don't play them) progressive multistage objective modes on dedicated maps made specifically for said modes with attackers and defenders. It's something that would be amazing in MWO (though would likely require a respawn format, though frankly MWO long ago gave up any pretense of being a sim so there's no reason not to have such a thing. CW essentially has it already anyway).

Cbill mech prices should also be reduced. Half the fun of the game comes from experimenting with builds but the game is so grind-intensive that doing so is impractical for new players. My better half spontaneously decided they wanted to try and get into MWO about a month ago (it's why I came back from a long absence myself) and I was struck by just how little they actually had to do. The tutorial missions yielded a decent enough chunk of cbills for one mech, but that was hardly enough for someone with no real MWO experience to figure out what they wanted. It took very little time before my better half decided that, with everything gated behind absurd pay walls or lengthy grinds.. there were other better ways for us to spend that time. We are vets of MMORPG's too so it's not like grind is a foreign concept to us (hell my better half has played Eve for quite some time). It was just that the grind didn't seem like it was going to be fun enough to stick with it, and there was nothing to work toward in the interim. To be honest I could hardly lay any blame. I have a stable of 40 mechs and had a couple thousand skill tree points grandfathered in from pre-skill tree masteries.. but without those things I doubt I would have even bothered coming back on my own.

As for what I'd like to see personally as a veteran player, things that would actually excite me about MWO again;

Push Role Warfare into being the pillar of gameplay it was supposed to be. Introduce equipment and gear that makes it competitive to dedicate significant tonnage to something other then just-another-weapon or ton of ammo. Let mechs be more than just giant walking guns. In concert with this a total redesign of the games heat system that adds penalties for not just overheating, but for running hot for an extended time period, a system that also encourages chain fire and smaller groups of weapons being fired at once. Move the game away from being so tunnel-vision focused on huge alpha strikes and burst and back towards the methodical thoughtful game they sold us on originally. This has the knock-on effect of also making the game easier for new players to get into since they don't have to worry about taking 50~~ instant, unspreadable pinpoint damage to a torso just for taking two seconds to pass a gap in cover. There's also a very solid argument to be made for size-restricted hard points, as being able to stuff any weapon in any slot actively hurts many chassis (example being the entire point of a Hunchback's easily-focused hunch is that said massive hunch is what allows a mere medium mech to bring an equally massive AC20). The physical design of mechs should have more impact on their game play than just "are the hardpoints high enough to peak with". Right now so many mechs play so similarly, with only general discrepancies in maneuverability.. it quickly starts to feel samey. Would also be nice if arms and arm mounted weapons weren't a nearly total liability.

[Taffer]

Asym, on 23 August 2018 - 04:10 AM, said:

So, how do you get an extreme, highly polarized and older niche market back? That is a simple answer: an Occam's Razor moment: give them what you said you were going to build day one: a complete Universe to support the power struggle between the Inner Sphere and the Clan........ AND, of course, have mercenaries because the last single player game was about mercenaries and additionally, mercenaries are a good place for "everyone else" not interested in either IS or Clan stuff.... Just build what you said you were going to build and get the heck out of the nerf and buff BS business.....

Not to sound like an idiot, but what did they say they were going to build?

I used to think they were going to have a sort of metaverse thing going on where the battle outcomes changed a map (in this case a galaxy i guess) and there could be a winner and a reset to start the fun again. In my mind it was going to be something like Steel Battalion online campaign multiplayer. Remember that? It was neat as hell ( https://en.wikipedia...t#Campaign_mode ) That together with repair and rearm costs sounded really cool to me.

Instead it turned out to be plain old random arena deathmatch and I think people just hated repair and rearm. So what I got was arena deathmatch where you grind for the best stuff and then........you do more deathmatch because.........it's fun? No overarching campaign that you can win, no real factions to join (solos not allowed, you have to join some player clan [also, there's way too many factions for what I had in mind]), no goals at all really. Sure EVENTUALLY they added CW, but that's lame too. It goes on forever and nobody can actually win. And again there's too many factions to really do anything with it. It's unplayable unless you join a player clan.

[Koniving]

Dimento Graven, on 24 August 2018 - 11:16 AM, said:

Like what?

More weapons? Got 'em.
More maps? Got 'em.
More game modes? Got 'em.

By "content" to what are you referring?

Edit: This was typed on a phone during a break. Cleaned up autocorrect nonsense.

In the last five years we got a few variations on existing weapons (and weapons mentioned as being looked into as early as 2012 such as mech mortars....none here.), hundreds of mechs (including variants) all using the same five animation sets with some mix of them, each with degrading quality. A total of 6 maps in the last three years, plus a couple of ones being finished after being in limbo for almost 3 years (many Solaris maps already existed as private match test maps). We have a total of 8 game modes, mostly derivative of "skirmish plus x". All of which feel like gamey mechanics and not really grounded in any sort of in universe reasoning. In the mean time with only 1.5 years of actual usable content development, Mass Effect Andromeda had boatloads more and was still chastised for its problems, beyond animation issues on consoles there was quite a lack of depth....which is still monumental in comparison, as is the number of levels, etc while still having pretty much everything mwo has.

My point is for what the developer has had in terms of time and income... There isn't much here. Their second game, mw5, may have had 3 years or so after December. Probably more. And there's more content on that incomplete game shown on YouTube in various 10 minute clips than MWO has EVER had. Most of mwo's work has been balance bandaids addressing how people are exploiting mechanics that pgi introduced into their game which mostly aren't even part of the source material. There was also the year+ of limbo which pgi says is due to igp.

Whatever the case, the game has not changed much in content. But each year it pulls further away from the aim it once tried to be in favor of what it originally was marketed as the antithesis of.... A twitch fire shoot em up with robots...as opposed to the thinking man's shooter.

Also... perhaps this content?

We don't have this content in any meaningful way.

Edited by Koniving, 30 August 2018 - 07:49 AM.

[Koniving]

Taffer, on 24 August 2018 - 04:56 PM, said:

Not to sound like an idiot, but what did they say they were going to build?

I used to think they were going to have a sort of metaverse thing going on where the battle outcomes changed a map (in this case a galaxy i guess) and there could be a winner and a reset to start the fun again. In my mind it was going to be something like Steel Battalion online campaign multiplayer. Remember that? It was neat as hell ( https://en.wikipedia...t#Campaign_mode ) That together with repair and rearm costs sounded really cool to me.

Instead it turned out to be plain old random arena deathmatch and I think people just hated repair and rearm. So what I got was arena deathmatch where you grind for the best stuff and then........you do more deathmatch because.........it's fun? No overarching campaign that you can win, no real factions to join (solos not allowed, you have to join some player clan [also, there's way too many factions for what I had in mind]), no goals at all really. Sure EVENTUALLY they added CW, but that's lame too. It goes on forever and nobody can actually win. And again there's too many factions to really do anything with it. It's unplayable unless you join a player clan.

Wouldn't say hated r&r. More like when it was in the game it didn't serve a purpose. There was no overworld. No supplies to protect/gather/ferry. No ways to make money besides carry a big gun and make everyone else take all the damage. The game punished you for fighting and paid you more to avoid the fight altogether. The game was for all intents and purposes...poorly planned. Such things were meant to limit the number of assaults running around but without a proper system and asymmetric teams...it was just punishing and brutal.

Edited by Koniving, 25 August 2018 - 03:02 PM.

[Koniving]

(Edit: This was typed on a phone, so cleaned up the autocorrect nonsense.)

If it says anything my record for earnings is just over 3 mil. That's goodies given to me by spotting assists paid out for myself and everyone else with a lock on weapon during lurmpocalypse. My mech's repair bill upon death? 38,000. An assault mech's repair bill after a brutal fight, around 600k to 800k. And his earnings? If he was lucky he broke even. That's not fair to anyone. And the game had nothing in place to work it out. Had it come much later with a sort of MP campaign system like Fallen Haven, Liberation Day, Xcom or even the old Star Wars Battlefront games (not ea's versions)... Or General Choas even. Then it would have gone far better as a viable mechanic and consideration.

Edited by Koniving, 26 August 2018 - 07:59 AM.

[Thorqemada]

They should first and foremost have stopped to exclude Players by changing their ingame mechanics to a very narrow type of playstyle!

[JC Daxion]

a better question is what can players do to help new players, and make the boards less toxic..I know i get sick of the 2k hours played, 10k matches played... worse devs ever hyperbole. Bad games get maybe 20 mins before i give up never to be seen again.

That is not to say i would not like to see things different.. like a better FW system, but over all i think the game is pretty solid



Players make the game enjoyable

Edited by JC Daxion, 25 August 2018 - 10:02 PM.

[xe N on]

In my opinion, PGI can do next to nothing to prevent the decline. It's a natural process for online games. In addition, PGI do not have the resources to completely re-do the current game. Their better option is to make a good MW5 now.

Another problem (that every game has) is merging the different types of players together. For example, I'm more a solo/pick up group player and I really don't like faction play. But there are players that favor it over quick play it and want to play it in a fixed team. Merging opposed play styles into one game mode is very difficult without frustrating one group of players.

Edited by xe N on, 26 August 2018 - 02:32 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

Koniving, on 25 August 2018 - 03:01 PM, said:

Wouldn't say hated r&r. More like when it was in the game it didn't serve a purpose. There was no overworld. No supplies to protect/gather/ferry. No ways to make money besides carry a big gun and make everyone else take all the damage. The game punished you for fighting and paid you more to avoid the fight altogether. The game was for all intents and purposes...poorly planned. Such things were meant to limit the number of assaults running around but without a proper system and asymmetric teams...it was just punishing and brutal.

Despite me mostly agreeing with you.


Lets be fair to P.G.I here, all games with solo Q.P have this thing of lets get a big score use all my team in an incredibly selfish way, then crow about how I carried the potatoes, and did my job.

And honestly how are P.G.I going to get out this Cycle, when Wargaming completely fail with far more money behind them.

Whether I play World of Tanks, Ships or the other one.

Q.P match making is still terrible with ten times the population in world of warships, and twice that in world of tanks.

Before people start challenging this, war gaming post their active population, and using Jarl's list, or doing a count up on leader board.

World of War ships, far less popular, than world of tanks has in prime time Euro servers nearly the same number of 'live' population, each day, as this game has in total monthly numbers of people that play ten games in total over a month.

Also unlike this game, you can't cross over servers, your locked into Euro, Russian, Asian, or American, and unlike here, where they're the highest populated, N.A servers are Wargaming's least populated.


The biggest issues this game has, is that they have one paid staff member that's quite good, one that's average, the rest are Potatoes.

Wargaming's dev's are for the most part exceptional players of their game, the super testers are all good players.

This is where P.G.I fail, and why the game is getting very stale and very dull.

P.G.I read a spread sheet, and have very little idea of why Mech A works better than Mech B. also the same mech can have so many variations on load out.

W.G.N Dev's come up with dumb **** and farm their solo queue for fun, much like how 228 did the lurm boat faction play.


So the bottom line is you have a Dev team here with, I'll be kind, trying to make a game three times more complex with a quarter of the resource.

It's not really surprising they fail so badly, when you try to look at things from an objective point of view.

[Wil McCullough]

Mystere, on 24 August 2018 - 07:47 AM, said:

It's already here:





I'd rather PGI just implemented random matches and spent their limited resources on something more important --- like putting more meat into this barely emaciated skeleton of a game.

i saw the emotiv headset. it's pretty primitive in that you can't control where the toy car goes. it's a simple on/off kinda trigger. if you focus, it moves the car. if you stop focusing, it stops. focusing on making it go left or right doesn't do jack. it just goes forward.

there is some current research on gear that interprets more detailed mental commands, but it's kinda iffy and slow af.

[Mystere]

Wil McCullough, on 26 August 2018 - 04:37 AM, said:

i saw the emotiv headset. it's pretty primitive in that you can't control where the toy car goes. it's a simple on/off kinda trigger. if you focus, it moves the car. if you stop focusing, it stops. focusing on making it go left or right doesn't do jack. it just goes forward.

there is some current research on gear that interprets more detailed mental commands, but it's kinda iffy and slow af.

I am sad to say that the force was not with the person controlling the car.

On a more serious note, the Emotive is probably still best used as a research tool.

[Mystere]

xe N on, on 26 August 2018 - 02:30 AM, said:

In my opinion, PGI can do next to nothing to prevent the decline. It's a natural process for online games. In addition, PGI do not have the resources to completely re-do the current game. Their better option is to make a good MW5 now.

It's not a matter of redoing. It's a matter of following through with the version of the game that people bought into in the first place.

[xe N on]

Mystere, on 26 August 2018 - 04:51 AM, said:

It's not a matter of redoing. It's a matter of following through with the version of the game that people bought into in the first place.

That version died 2013

[Mystere]

xe N on, on 26 August 2018 - 05:05 AM, said:

That version died 2013

Hence MWO not breaking out of its eternal rut.

[ice trey]

I don't play because I don't like having to wait six minutes to drop after clicking "launch", and waiting thirty seconds to get back to the main menu after I die. I also don't play because the whole experience feels more like running on a hamster wheel. You drop, you kill some guys - always in the same mission mode because everybody else hates anything that isn't Skirmish. You do it over and over again. CW came close, but the LFG cue was very poorly thought out and resulted in nobody wanting to play due to stupid long wait times and big barrier to entry. Solaris is just "1V1 me, Saget", the game.
Further, so many of the maps are so poor visibility that it's irritating. It's either dark, or it's foggy, and you can't dim the HUD, so I find myself squinting at the grey-on-grey landscape peering through my neon reticule trying to find the enemy, only instead to be found by three enemies at the same time from halfway across the map with pinpoint 80-point alphas.


I'd sooner fight against potato-grade AI in a game with a story, than beat my head against the wall in a poor visibility Sisyphus rock simulator with stupidly long match waits. Of course, this is not exclusive to MWO. So far as I'm concerned, this is how EVERY online game plays.

PGI has a chance to redeem themselves with M5M. We'll see if they can deliver.

Edited by ice trey, 26 August 2018 - 06:32 AM.

[FireDog]

So, What do I think PGI should do to start getting the player base back... Well here ya go...

1. Randomize spawn points.

2. Open map creation to the player base in order to get at least one new map a month.

3. Take existing maps and add and delete elements to keep them fresh. (man made structures, weather, visibility, heat vs cold, change up "paths", add tunnels, ramps and bridges and passes.

4. Add AI elements like multi-weapon turrets (Auto-cannon, Lt Gauss, ErLL, PPCs, missles of all sorts, etc.) and Tanks! Even mobile turrets are better than nothing. Anything really to keep the player base guessing.... Mines would be especially devious.

I could think of a few more however the holy grail would be a true mission based play mode that has players doing missions based upon orders.

Take or defend forts, destroy the battery, defend the drop ships until they take off, defend a frontier colony town with second tier lights and mediums (included Urbies) against second tier pirate mechs, all gimped in such fashions such as; having random weapon weapons made inoperative, short on ammo, heatsinks disabled, speed and mobility decreased. Assault a heavily defended, (defense in depth) on a extremely large map with each player having pick of four mechs. Add a few new elements like defending players with an command console being able to take control of their turret grid to grind down attackers.
Match and then go beyond what MW4 did twenty years ago in the mech game mission play world.

[Peter2k]

Dimento Graven, on 24 August 2018 - 11:16 AM, said:

Like what?

More weapons? Got 'em.
More maps? Got 'em.
More game modes? Got 'em.

By "content" to what are you referring?

weapons are the ones we had for a few years with XML tweaks, nothing more


maps seem mostly unpopular, and I can see why really, would love having the old terra therma back even
and 1 to 2 new map(s) every year is kinda lame to begin with
you kinda play only on a few handful normally (and no not all cold)

game modes are universally rated as being trash tacked on to team death match, only conquest really offers a bit more diverse game play

in all other modes its just more efficient to kill the enemy, and we all play to blow stuff up anyway, so the objective better be good


The game that was pitched originally would be fine
QP was officially a placeholder for quite a long time

too bad FP tunred out to be like everything else PGI implemented since MWO left the Beta

the core combat is fun, but that has been there before MWO went 1.0 a long long time ago

Edited by Peter2k, 26 August 2018 - 07:16 AM.