159 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

HammerMaster, on 02 December 2018 - 04:42 PM, said:

Dartboard?
Vocal minority?
E-spurts pundits?
All equally bad.

I hate it when the phrase "vocal minority" is thrown in there as a bad thing. Those who actually care about this game enough to give feedbacks to PGI are always in the minority. Without them I am 100% sure this game woulda been even worse.

Edited by El Bandito, 04 December 2018 - 07:31 AM.

[Dee Eight]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 December 2018 - 10:56 PM, said:

So had my flight back home from Vancouver today

wait....so you work for PGI but not AT PGI ? Just how many actually work in the PGI office and how many do not ?

Edited by Dee Eight, 04 December 2018 - 07:42 AM.

[Joshua McEvedy]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 December 2018 - 10:56 PM, said:

I'll have to leave it at that for now. I'll swing by here tomorrow after I recover a bit more from the long weekend.

All right Chris, since you're here now and in thread, I'll just ask you directly, and please give us a straight answer since most of us are grown men and women and can handle the truth. Has PGI ended further content development on MWO and diverted most, if not all, of its resources and staff to the development of MW5? There hasn't been an updated road map since June (https://mwomercs.com...une-july-august), and quite frankly, when you and Paul were up on that stage, you literally had nothing. (https://www.twitch.t...ge=7d&sort=time). Heck, you guys even made the B33F cry:




So what about it? Does MWO have a future looking forward into 2020 and beyond, or is it sunsetting in favor of MW5?

Edited by Joshua McEvedy, 04 December 2018 - 08:37 AM.

[B0oN]

Sunsetting .
Definitely .

[Daurock]

In my opinion, the recent rounds of testing on the PTS for clan lasers were a (mostly good) example how proper feedback and community listening is supposed to be done.

- At the beginning, the goals of the testing were laid out in broad strokes. Not everyone is going to agree with the broad strokes, but it does give a baseline for where the heads of the developers are, and where to go with proper feedback.

- A PTS was made, to attempt to see what these changes look like. Big changes need feedback before they go live.

- They used feedback on the first few test servers to create more than 1 PTS iteration. The tarrogato thread on Laser Burn time absolutely led to PTS 1.1 (where it consequently died, due to it not only being un-fun, but not meeting any of their goals either) Without that PTS, discussions around using burn time as a primary balancing factor would still be raging.

- The developers were Flexible in their goals, and open to improvements outside of them. Note that they KNEW that the major heat change in PTS 2.1 (And eventually live) Would not accomplish their original goals. They said as much on the results post (Section on PTS 2.0 and 2.1) they made after the rounds were finished. Despite Knowing that, they discovered from player feedback and testing, that the heat change was fun for most. Since it was a general improvement even outside of their original goals, they still pushed it live.


I'd like to see more of these kinds of PTS servers, probably one of them every few months. Some examples of interesting ideas, that the community has had from time to time that may be worth a PTS test -
- A PTS testing out different LRM models, (for example, a faster traveling, faster locking, but much higher spreading, and thus lower DPS model instead of what we have.)
- A PTS round that makes clan Autocannons a single slug, lower DPS/Ton (but much higher alpha/Ton) alternative to IS autocannons.
- A PTS round for the Ultra AC's that removes the jam chance entirely, but replaces it with a dramatically longer cooldown, Removing RNG, but making them a less desirable pure DPS choice.

Now, i'm not saying that all of them would pan out. PTS 1.1, used a community suggestion of using longer burn times as a balancing factor instead of lowering the damage of clan lasers in PTS 1.0. It was... not very fun, hurt lots of stuff that didn't deserve to be, and managed to not even hurt the stuff that needed it, all at the same time. Some of these kinds of changes may be the same way. But, it WAS worth a test, and those are the ways you keep a community engaged and interested in what's new.

Edited by Daurock, 04 December 2018 - 08:53 AM.

[Tom Sawyer]

Who does PGI listen to?



Well they ARE a business and if it can sell a mechpack they are all ears

[Sigmar Sich]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 December 2018 - 10:56 PM, said:

Anyways, the short answer to the OP's comment is that we listen to everyone. There are no favorites when it comes to player feedback.

This is very good intention, but i'm afraid it may be a part of the problem.
One can't seat on multiple chairs at the same time, as proverb says.
There isn't much agreement in the community, never was. Well, maybe except earlier times, when we all were full of hopes.
So this means you are being pulled in opposite directions, resulting in you moving nowhere.
You have to have your own creative vision of the game.

If anything, you guys should have stood by your most faithfull audience, the Battletech fans. Instead you were bleeding your "Old Guard" in favour to all kinds of nonsense incompatible with proper Battletech, like e-sport, twitchy shooter fans, *censored* infantile bolt-ons, etc.
Maybe it helped you made a quick buck, but now it's over, it seems. Even free giveaways are failing to bribe players to play the game. Waiting times grow ever longer, discouraging new and returning players.

I'm looking forward to see your CW update. Please put good effort into it. Also a PR campaign and renaming the game, as you did with Solaris, may help. (and screw that "microchanges" doctrine, MWO doesn't have time for it anymore, IMO).
I believe it is your last chance to save the game. Not sure if it will work, even if you do it perfectly - too much time wasted, too much salt accumulated. But you, PGI, have to try.

P.S. Thank you for visiting forums! It can be a harrowing experience. I hope it wasn't a penal action for the presentation, and devs will start communicating more often with what's left of the playerbase.

[Nightbird]

El Bandito, on 04 December 2018 - 06:16 AM, said:

I hate it when the phrase "vocal minority" is thrown in there as a bad thing. Those who actually care about this game enough to give feedbacks to PGI are always in the minority. Without them I am 100% sure this game woulda been even worse.

Well, feedback is always good, but basing decisions on influencers without openly discussing ideas is bad.

For example, with Solaris which they announced last year, many people were in disbelief because they knew how the hard it would be to have arrange matches in a fair way and how the player base would receive a 'no one to blame other than yourself' mode and 'meta-only mode'. Only a vocal minority is for it.

Now, with the proposed new FP matchmaker that a few have clamored for, many people pointed out with low pop and priority queues, the MM will accomplish worse than nothing. If the two buckets have unequal number of people in queue (100% guaranteed) the worst skilled of the longer queue will be priority matched against the largest team in the short queue. There are other ideas will can create better matches, but PGI is not interested in reading the forums and even doing a simple Pros and Cons assessment.

They don't have to agree with anyone, they don't need to follow the majority opinion, but they do need to weigh costs and benefits, and if they're getting too much of a rosy outlook for a proposal, they need to be smart enough to share the idea to see if people can tear it down with rational arguments.

[Roland09]

Grumpy Old Man, on 03 December 2018 - 02:54 AM, said:

Since people disagree on pretty much every topic, it is physically impossible to "just listen to the community".

Hm. Feedback on LongTom was pretty unequivocal, for example How many players / entire units quit because of this very specific, disastrous design decision, the most probable results of which were made plain to see for everybody but some blind fish?

Yet it took them how long again to get rid of this feature? It's almost like LT was the favourite brain child of somebody high up in PGI's food chain. Like, some head Hanswurst who couldn't stand being told that his brilliant idea might actually be a tiny bit less than brilliant. By whom I refer to the gas bag who tells the CW community they live on an island, and it is what it is, and programming is hard.

[Nightbird]

Roland09, on 04 December 2018 - 10:36 AM, said:

Hm. Feedback on LongTom was pretty unequivocal

Feedback was easy, follow the lore damage. 30 total spread over your mech for a direct hit, decreasing quickly to 20 then 10. No damage through walls and mountains. Decrease the frequency to every 4 minutes. No one asked for something that 1hit kills assaults. PGI just threw a tantrum when people didn't like their 8kills of fresh mechs in 1hit Long Tom, refused to tone it down, and just removed it.

Edited by Nightbird, 04 December 2018 - 10:44 AM.

[Chris Lowrey]

Ok, for the first time in four days I've had a full nights sleep so lets catch up with where we left off last night....

Wil McCullough, on 04 December 2018 - 03:22 AM, said:

Chris's answer is great for pr but terrible from a balance standpoint.

You shouldn't balance for "everyone". That's a recipe for failure. It's like a marketer saying "my target audience is everybody". No one gets what they want and no one ends up happy. That is why there's so much salt.on the forums and players leaving faster than new ones come in.

Never said we balanced for everyone. I explicitly said that we utilize Solo, Group, and Competitive play as our primary balance "anchors." But this does not mean that all decisions are made exclusively because of the anchors. Although looking over the statement again with a full night's sleep, I am noticing I neglected to include that we utilize the "high end levels" of Solo, Group, and Competitive play as our anchors. But reiterating again, this does not mean that 100% of the changes to the game are exclusively made for that level of play.

Wil McCullough, on 04 December 2018 - 03:22 AM, said:

Unless of course you only listen to all but act on the opinions of a few.

Sort of. More like we listen to all, and pull from the relevant feedback pool depending on what we are internally targeting for improvement. In fact just glancing over a number of responses from last night, I feel I have to re-quote and highlight a key part of my original post that seems to be getting lost in the shuffle here:

Chris Lowrey, on 03 December 2018 - 10:56 PM, said:

We listen to all forms of feedback from the forums, tickets sent through our support e-mails, personal interactions through streams or talking with anyone in-person at Mech_Con to get the opinions of all parties and then discuss internally where we see the red flags in the feedback we get and if this is the design intent behind how certain things are supposed to work.

As an example for the changes that Paul is targeting for faction play, we listened to everyone that posted in the thread that was started a bit ago. But naturally, we would lean on the experiences of those that spend a great amount of time in Faction play over those that have never dropped once into the mode when it comes to targeting improvements that those that enjoy the mode would wish to see.

But this does not mean that those that have never played the mode opinions are entirely irrelevant, as depending on what is being talked about, their impressions as to why they don't choose to touch faction play can be just as relevant as those that primarily play faction play. It all depends on what we are internally targeting for improvement.

[TinFoilHat]

Chris Lowrey, on 04 December 2018 - 11:11 AM, said:

As an example for the changes that Paul is targeting for faction play

This here is one of the major gripes from the weekend Chris - nothing was presented at Mechcon about these changes. We got a "stuff we agreed on from the thread", what *what* exactly are those changes you are looking at? Which ones are upcoming other than a rework to the match maker? That's what's making people cranky - we didn't seem to get anything other than looks at MW5

[Chris Lowrey]

Dee Eight, on 04 December 2018 - 07:41 AM, said:

wait....so you work for PGI but not AT PGI ? Just how many actually work in the PGI office and how many do not ?

As my forum title has always said, I am a Design Consultant. It comes up every now and again in streams and podcasts, but no I am not a member of PGI's internal staff, I am currently stationed in the US, not in Vancouver. While I am not a member of PGI's internal staff, I still work on MWO unimpeded on a full time basis and have been for going on 2.5 years now. This is due to a number of reasons that I will not be discussing here.

The second part of that question is not one I would be able to answer even if I did have that information. (Which I don't.)

[Jackal Noble]

A simple systems analysis chart would speak volumes to the player base, or at least let us see a visual representation on layout priorities.

[Chris Lowrey]

Joshua McEvedy, on 04 December 2018 - 08:00 AM, said:

All right Chris, since you're here now and in thread, I'll just ask you directly, and please give us a straight answer since most of us are grown men and women and can handle the truth. Has PGI ended further content development on MWO and diverted most, if not all, of its resources and staff to the development of MW5?

No.

We just pushed a full blown heat system re-vamp a few months back that still has a number of Known Issues that need to be addressed, announced at 'Mechcon that we will be moving forward with a number of Faction play improvements, and said that we will be looking into other systems in a similar way to how we came to the heat system changes. Development has not stopped on MWO. As it would be fairly pointless to have a designer such as myself 100% attached to MWO (which I currently am,) if I did not have anyone around to implement any changes that I have worked on designing.

As Russ said in the PGI Mech_Con block, we are looking at a more open ended approach with how we align the next series of changes. So Faction Play is what is on deck right now. And we want to hear from everyone what else we can target ahead to see that past faction play, what is the next squeaky wheel that needs the grease for some potential improvements in a similar vein to how we conducted the recent PTS series that ultimately brought about the recent heat changes.

Between ensuring that this year's Mech_Con was the best yet, American Thanksgiving that saw some of us with family in the US take time off, and the upcoming Christmas / New Years holidays that will see even more heading home to spend time with family, things around this time of year do slow down, but they will pick back up again in the new year.

I know many want specifics. On that front, the only thing I can say are the things I was cleared to say at Mech_Con for the QA session but was never asked. At the moment that is that we are "targeting" a Stealth Armor re-work for Dec. as well as carving out as many of the mobility improvements to mechs as we can. December "should" see a great deal more mechs getting improvements over previous months.

I say "targeting" and "should" only because QA at this point is on-going for these changes, so there is still the possibility of some being bumped into January depending on what happens.

For the faction play stuff, I can only say that some of it is coming on the sooner side rather then later, but as to what those changes are, that would be something that Paul would have to go into, as he is much more involved with that end of production than I am.

[Bud Crue]

Chris Lowrey, on 03 December 2018 - 10:56 PM, said:

...then discuss internally where we see the red flags in the feedback we get and if this is the design intent behind how certain things are supposed to work.

I for one would just love to know, from a purely academic point of view since this would all be after the fact, but what was “the design intent behind how certain things are supposed to work” for a lot of things in this game. From 1300+ damage longtom back in phase 3, to things like the effective elimination of spls with their mega nerfing. The LRM mess. The whole “our primary balance goal is to increase TTK” only to end up lowering it fairly noticeably. Stuff like that.

Knowing the red flags that you guys considered from feedback, what the actual design intent was in the first place, and even just how any of this stuff is in fact supposed to work from your guys’ perspective I think would be just fascinating to learn.

[Grus]

Chris Lowrey, on 04 December 2018 - 12:13 PM, said:

No.

We just pushed a full blown heat system re-vamp a few months back that still has a number of Known Issues that need to be addressed, announced at 'Mechcon that we will be moving forward with a number of Faction play improvements, and said that we will be looking into other systems in a similar way to how we came to the heat system changes. Development has not stopped on MWO. As it would be fairly pointless to have a designer such as myself 100% attached to MWO (which I currently am,) if I did not have anyone around to implement any changes that I have worked on designing.

As Russ said in the PGI Mech_Con block, we are looking at a more open ended approach with how we align the next series of changes. So Faction Play is what is on deck right now. And we want to hear from everyone what else we can target ahead to see that past faction play, what is the next squeaky wheel that needs the grease for some potential improvements in a similar vein to how we conducted the recent PTS series that ultimately brought about the recent heat changes.

Between ensuring that this year's Mech_Con was the best yet, American Thanksgiving that saw some of us with family in the US take time off, and the upcoming Christmas / New Years holidays that will see even more heading home to spend time with family, things around this time of year do slow down, but they will pick back up again in the new years.

I know many want specifics. On that front, the only thing I can say are the things I was cleared to say at Mech_Con for the QA session but was never asked. At the moment that is that we are "targeting" a Stealth Armor re-work for Dec. as well as carving out as many of the mobility improvements to mechs as we can. December "should" see a great deal more mechs getting improvements over previous months.

I say "targeting" and "should" only because QA at this point is on-going for these changes, so there is still the possibility of some being bumped into January depending on what happens.

For the faction play stuff, I can only say that some of it is coming on the sooner side rather then later, but as to what those changes are, that would be something that Paul would have to go into, as he is much more involved with that end of production than I am.

Nerfs/revamps are not content chris...

New mech packs are not FW content as well...

As for Paul.. well i hope he gets some rest and gets his strength back. Their are a lot of unhappy people on the fourms and abroad that have turned his "to tired" statement into the meme range. I dont know why he did that, could be for very valid reasons, but the masses are not forgiving.

[TinFoilHat]

Chris Lowrey, on 04 December 2018 - 12:13 PM, said:

For the faction play stuff, I can only say that some of it is coming on the sooner side rather then later, but as to what those changes are, that would be something that Paul would have to go into, as he is much more involved with that end of production than I am.

Any chance of getting him to post something up in the Faction Play sub-forum as to what might be coming "sooner"?

[Joshua McEvedy]

Chris Lowrey, on 04 December 2018 - 12:13 PM, said:

No.

Thank you, Chris! I greatly appreciate you taking the time to write out a solid response. This is all I and many others wanted to know. Please keep it up!

[Nema Nabojiv]

• ANH-1X: Torso Based armor quirks being reduced by -5 in each location.
  
• ANH-2A: Torso Based armor quirks being reduced by -8 in each location.

Annihilator Design Notes:
While we have provided the Annihilator with durability quirks to account for its low speed and relatively low mounts, we feel that a handful of variants of the 'Mech simply do too much on their own without the need for teammate support. Coupled with the ability to completely lock down 1v1 combat on a single variant is also something that we feel that no individual variant should be able to achieve to such a great degree over all other alternatives.

Chris Lowrey, on 04 December 2018 - 12:13 PM, said:

As it would be fairly pointless to have a designer such as myself 100% attached to MWO

You are right. It is pointless.