98 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

Short answer is... "Because PGI bailed on the full potential and capacity of this IP".

The MWO we have right now is but a shadow of the bill of goods we were sold waaaaay back in the day.

Today We got mechs and maps... All the glory of the space opera, resource management and meaningful investment in the IP (Four pillars anyone?) gave way to eSport'esk derivative, lazy development and squandered opportunity.

That said... I think the smarter folks in this community saw this hollow shell developing early on. People like me, maybe were far too forgiving and optimistic and gave PGI way too much credit and leeway only to come to our senses far to late.

Honestly, I think MW5 is what they were shooting for all along and MWO was nothing but a funding source for it...

[Burke IV]

DaZur, on 13 February 2019 - 07:31 AM, said:

Honestly, I think MW5 is what they were shooting for all along and MWO was nothing but a funding source for it...

I think they might have mis calculated that one tbh. Nvr mind, remember the early days? It was a great game and i got alot of enjoyment out of it. Even in the clan days it was still pretty good, just unforgiving to player mistakes.

[DaZur]

Burke IV, on 13 February 2019 - 07:35 AM, said:

I think they might have mis calculated that one tbh. Nvr mind, remember the early days? It was a great game and i got alot of enjoyment out of it. Even in the clan days it was still pretty good, just unforgiving to player mistakes.

Oh, no doubt... I still play as much as possible and do enjoy the basic premise of "shooting stompy robots". Hell, I don;t have one game in my large library of games that I've come close to playing for as long as I have MWO. That said... It's likely more so a testiment to my love of the IP and less-so the actual quality of the game.

[Asym]

El Bandito, on 13 February 2019 - 06:06 AM, said:

All good points, OP. It is a shame how much potential this game had and how much of that PGI has squandered.

El, it's worse than that. This game is an extreme, mature, small niche market with IP that is so identifiable in the game market that it's value is.......well, priceless. We ran a strategy canvas competition two years ago on existing video games (combat themed, F2P's) and guess who was the winner by a large margin.............

What has been said above is spot on. And, that makes this game all but sure to finally stop..... There literally is no one left and little or no prospect of growing the new player base because of everything said above. This game's reputation among new players, the younger players is non existent. I know, because I demo'd the game several times to groups of them at school.....to measure their reactions..... But, the IP itself is soooooooooooo valuable.........in the right hands.....

[El Bandito]

Asym, on 13 February 2019 - 07:47 AM, said:

There literally is no one left and little or no prospect of growing the new player base because of everything said above.

The population is lower than ever thanks to PGI's mismanagement true, but there are still literally hundreds of people playing it round the clock. So you might wanna redefine that word "literally". https://steamdb.info.../342200/graphs/

Edited by El Bandito, 13 February 2019 - 07:54 AM.

[Asym]

DaZur, on 13 February 2019 - 07:31 AM, said:

Short answer is... "Because PGI bailed on the full potential and capacity of this IP".

The MWO we have right now is but a shadow of the bill of goods we were sold waaaaay back in the day.

Today We got mechs and maps... All the glory of the space opera, resource management and meaningful investment in the IP (Four pillars anyone?) gave way to eSport'esk derivative, lazy development and squandered opportunity.

That said... I think the smarter folks in this community saw this hollow shell developing early on. People like me, maybe were far too forgiving and optimistic and gave PGI way too much credit and leeway only to come to our senses far to late.

Honestly, I think MW5 is what they were shooting for all along and MWO was nothing but a funding source for it...

Yes, they did and left Pre-new skill tree and were made fun of by the community of that time......entire teams en masse.

And, yet, that was completely ignore by the corporation whom could have at least tried to remediate the insane changes they were making to get us to Solaris, which had ZERO change of success.........and, here we are.

Integrity is like virginity........you only have it once. And, Leadership is not about what you say, it's about what you do........ So, here we are..........'under a grave yard sky'.......to quote two author's and a book.....

[Tesunie]

Greyhart, on 13 February 2019 - 05:11 AM, said:

I've come back to the game after about a year off. Not a great deal of difference.

The thing is the core game is good. Shooty shooty robots. So why isn't it a great game?

The problems is some core design decisions IMHO. So in no particular order:

1. Hard points. They are the right idea, but the fact that 1 laser hard point can take a Large Laser or a small laser makes the smaller laser redundant as an option. The sized hard points in MW4 would've been a better long term choice to ensure that mechs didn't become all too similar.

2. Team based shooter. Yes this is the core of MWO, but the failure to have an ability to do a drop in drop out game mode limits the fun. Every game mode must have a team and those teams have to be balanced on skill and weight. This also creates a rather stilted play environment in that every mode (even attempting to take over a planet) becomes a calculation of win/loss statistics. It also makes kill all the enemy team the only real objective.

NB this is not to say that group/team play should be removed. Just that the requirement to create a team before starting limits the game play options.

3. The adherence to table top mechanics. The table top game should be taken as a starting point and then changed to better facilitate game play. Turned based games don't make good real time games. They should've identified weapons systems from the TT and then applied roles (advantages/ disadvantages) to the weapons. a small laser currently has no advantages over a large laser except that it weighs less. If you have a choice of large vs small you go large as it has longer range better damage output and takes up the same hard point.

They could've put a minimum range on large lasers that would've made them a real trade off with small. Again going with sized hard points would make a difference in this area. They could've made pulse lasers like machine guns rather than faster cycling lasers etc

4. The Heat system. following on from 3 we have the heat system that attempts to recreate TT rules but ignoring all the penalties that apply before shut down. This system basically ends up with high alphas being the end goal. We have ghost heat that is attempting to paper over this fundamental design flaw.

5. Pin point accuracy. If a cone of fire had been in the game from the start (like almost every other shooter) no one would be requesting pin point accuracy. I know they started with convergence but found it problematic. However combining this with the heat system and the way weapons have been implemented again drives the game to large alpha strikes and the poking game play. It also defeats the purpose of the armour system.

6. The lack of a pilot. There is no pilot in the game, there is no mechwarrior there is only the mech. A customizable pilot in a customizable mech makes for more options and a long term hook and better RPG elements.

7. Lack of consequences/ management. it's all just a grind upward, there is no real risk or loss. It is just buy mech bay, buy mech, grind mech repeat. This again causes problems with the game modes, if there was a real risk involved in them (that being recognized and bug outs being available) then they wouldn't all be a do or die game mode. Management of the mechs maintenance and mech bays could've made all the difference in modes like faction play.

8. Lack of an economy. X will always cost X no matter what and there is an infinite amount of X. There is no rarity value. This does not mean player trades; look at elite dangerous they model commodity prices per system based on the trade between all the systems. If a real economy was in place then you could get actual salvage from games and sell it or use it. This then all feeds into meaningful game play.

I look forward to MW5 as I hope it will deal with some of these issues.

I enjoy the core game and grinding a mech has a level of satisfaction, but once a mech is maxed out what is the point in playing it again?


I hope that when MWO gets ported to the new MW5 engine they spend some time on sorting out the underlying problems preventing the game achieving greatness.

In response to some of your points:
1. I hated that system, personally. I felt it was too limiting and made it so some stock builds could not be made (in the base game). (Do also realize that the system you are referring to didn't have variants at all. It was one hard point load out for that chassis.) If Hard Point Size was in this game, I'd be a lot less thrilled about it. (Personal opinion.)

2. Unless this game was PvE, you can never really achieve "drop in and drop out" game mechanics. Being a PvP game means that you need as even of teams as possible to duke it out between the two. I can't see this getting any other system without incorporating a PvE mode.
I do agree that game mode should have more relevance over "kill everyone". Having a dropdeck in every mode probably would help, but QP matches would be shorter. This would most likely force players into playing the objective, or lose by the mode's objective. Rather than always "skirmish with a secondary win condition". (Of course, in the event of a tie, highest kill count wins.) Not sure how good this suggestion might be in practice, but it seems reasonable on paper...

3. TT is the core of anything Battletech pretty much. If it wants to be called a Battletech related product, it should at least reference and take inspiration from the TT game. This doesn't mean it needs to be an exact copy, mind. But it should take notes from it at least.
As for weapons... the difference between a LL and a SL in this game is not only range and damage, but also weight, heat, recycle rates, beam duration... a SL has better DPS (in theory) were as the LL has better burst damage with better range. AKA: Taking equal weight of weapons, a SL boat will beat a mech with a single LL (even though it's the same tonnage invested) when in close ranges.

4. Heat. Heats been an issue for a long time. We all seem to want to change it, but when anyone makes any suggestion to do so it tends to get slammed down by the masses. So, it's unlikely to see any real changes here. It would be great to have movement/mobility and accuracy penalties for higher heat levels. Ghost heat is around to try and curb a player's natural instinct to find the best combos for the best damage. It does an okay job, but not a great job at it either.

5. No matter how much I may agree with you... It will probably never happen. The "skillful play" crowd thinks that adding a cone fire (which can expand and contract based on speed, heat and/or weapon/mech) takes away from their perfect accuracy. They want it to be that their shots, all their shots, will always land right where their reticle is pointed at. Anything else disrupts their "skill"... Even though the different hit box mechanic of BT does not play well (and never has) with perfect convergence and aiming skills. So as much as this could be a good thing, it's highly unlikely to happen...

6. The pilot, as cool as it would be to have one to customize and stuff, is a mild point. You'd never really see it (besides maybe some gloves) while in combat. You'd probably only see it if it was a part of the mechlab or if they had a "you are destroyed, hop into your pilot version with a rifle and shoot other pilots who has also been shot down" mini-game. It's relevancy is just so small, it's basically insignificant from what I can think of. Most other MW titles didn't incorporate a pilot per say. (Cool idea, so don't get me wrong.)

7. We use to have Repair and Rearm... but people complained about it, abused it, took advantage of some features, trolled their team by playing mechs with no armor left on them (didn't repair them) etc. As much as I loved R&R for flavor and my time playing with it, it really did need to go or see some MAJOR readjustments/reworking. Once again, without a PvE element, any risk/reward system becomes either abuse-able, frustrating or more of a detriment to game play than it is worth.

8. Once more, PvP gameplay for MW:O sabotages your suggestion again. With no PvE elements, it could become impossible or very hard to "grind" some basic stuff. For example, if you could only get a Mad Dog by killing them in your matches and getting specific salvage components, then you have to wait for someone else who either paid real money to progress and get it, or for someone else to salvage it, make it, so you can blow it up and get it yourself. Meanwhile, you may be stuck (as well as anyone else in the "F2P" crowd) with your basic "Starter" mechs for a long time.

As much as I would love a more active economy, I don't see a way to implement one within this system. If you go by Faction and Faction Play, people would just hop to the next faction with the best sales to get what they want, and then leave. If you have it based on popularity of the mech increasing or decreasing the cost, then we have issues where the more powerful "meta" mechs at the time become insane to purchase (and thus, insane to try and fight against to save for one) and leave newer/poorer players stuck with the bad "non-meta" mechs as their only real option for easy purchase and progression.

---

One thing I did like from another game I play (Warframe) is "mastery rank", which is determined based on how much game content you've played. It's a primarily PvE game, but the idea is basically for every weapon you rank to level 30 (for the first time) counts towards your MR. Imagine if for every mech you master (in skill points) would increase your rank. Question would be, what would this earn in game? (A good idea from this would be to have FP mastery ranked so you need to have played to mastery so many mechs/weapons...?)

This is the only way I can see a game like this having some form of "economy" right now, which would encourage players to cycle through different mechs and playstyles. We'd just need to have some reward for progressing through ranks...

[Tesunie]

El Bandito, on 13 February 2019 - 07:53 AM, said:

The population is lower than ever thanks to PGI's mismanagement true, but there are still literally hundreds of people playing it round the clock. So you might wanna redefine that word "literally". https://steamdb.info.../342200/graphs/

And that only logs in those who play on Steam accounts. As I don't use the Steam version for this game, people like me are not counted on that logger. So the number actively playing are most likely higher than displayed...

[ImperialKnight]

TL:DR, they didn't capitalise on their strengths, and did not do enough to correct core mistakes.

MWO has great shooting mechanics, the ability to pick off part of the mech, and knowing where to shoot is more important than how fast you shoot. And MWO has great mech art. And these has kept the game going for many years. but they were never really expanded upon. Why?

They never corrected 2 core mistakes.

No one on the team knows how to design a "game". They have this weird idea of normalising stuff, instead of making each chasis unique and fun to play. The HSL+1 on the Awesome-8Q is a step in the right direction, but they are so scared of not "normalised" stuff, they squander the opportunity to make each mech fun.

Image if the Atlas has +75 armor/structure on its torso parts, but no weapon quirks. It would be on the field a lot more often, because you present a unique opportunity to play a tanking beast. The marginal quirks it has now doesn't give enough reason to take it over other 100 tonners with more firepower. But with the armor quirk, there would be reason to take it.

Or give the Centurion +100 armor on its shield arm instead of quirking the weapon arm. It would give players a reason to play the Centurion as a pure sword and board mech. It could even lead assaults that even the DWF can't.

Or give mechs conditional quirks that lends to their identity to promote non-meta builds. HBK-4G gets double AC20 ammo, or Jagermechs get triple screen shake on the enemy with ballistics, electronic warefare mechs like RVN gains ability to detech enemy mechs within sensor range even without LOS.

The second mistake is tied to the first, which is game modes and maps.
Maps are often poorly designed and unbalanced game modes compound the problem. Some modes give obvious advantage to one team. This problem is less apparently than previously, because they have been solving the problems slowly by moving spawns and objectives. But holy cow, these problems shouldn't have existed in the first place if they had good map and game mode designers in the first place.

[Greyhart]

Tesunie, on 13 February 2019 - 08:29 AM, said:

In response to some of your points:
1. I hated that system, personally. I felt it was too limiting and made it so some stock builds could not be made (in the base game). (Do also realize that the system you are referring to didn't have variants at all. It was one hard point load out for that chassis.) If Hard Point Size was in this game, I'd be a lot less thrilled about it. (Personal opinion.)

2. Unless this game was PvE, you can never really achieve "drop in and drop out" game mechanics. Being a PvP game means that you need as even of teams as possible to duke it out between the two. I can't see this getting any other system without incorporating a PvE mode.
I do agree that game mode should have more relevance over "kill everyone". Having a dropdeck in every mode probably would help, but QP matches would be shorter. This would most likely force players into playing the objective, or lose by the mode's objective. Rather than always "skirmish with a secondary win condition". (Of course, in the event of a tie, highest kill count wins.) Not sure how good this suggestion might be in practice, but it seems reasonable on paper...

3. TT is the core of anything Battletech pretty much. If it wants to be called a Battletech related product, it should at least reference and take inspiration from the TT game. This doesn't mean it needs to be an exact copy, mind. But it should take notes from it at least.
As for weapons... the difference between a LL and a SL in this game is not only range and damage, but also weight, heat, recycle rates, beam duration... a SL has better DPS (in theory) were as the LL has better burst damage with better range. AKA: Taking equal weight of weapons, a SL boat will beat a mech with a single LL (even though it's the same tonnage invested) when in close ranges.

4. Heat. Heats been an issue for a long time. We all seem to want to change it, but when anyone makes any suggestion to do so it tends to get slammed down by the masses. So, it's unlikely to see any real changes here. It would be great to have movement/mobility and accuracy penalties for higher heat levels. Ghost heat is around to try and curb a player's natural instinct to find the best combos for the best damage. It does an okay job, but not a great job at it either.

5. No matter how much I may agree with you... It will probably never happen. The "skillful play" crowd thinks that adding a cone fire (which can expand and contract based on speed, heat and/or weapon/mech) takes away from their perfect accuracy. They want it to be that their shots, all their shots, will always land right where their reticle is pointed at. Anything else disrupts their "skill"... Even though the different hit box mechanic of BT does not play well (and never has) with perfect convergence and aiming skills. So as much as this could be a good thing, it's highly unlikely to happen...

6. The pilot, as cool as it would be to have one to customize and stuff, is a mild point. You'd never really see it (besides maybe some gloves) while in combat. You'd probably only see it if it was a part of the mechlab or if they had a "you are destroyed, hop into your pilot version with a rifle and shoot other pilots who has also been shot down" mini-game. It's relevancy is just so small, it's basically insignificant from what I can think of. Most other MW titles didn't incorporate a pilot per say. (Cool idea, so don't get me wrong.)

7. We use to have Repair and Rearm... but people complained about it, abused it, took advantage of some features, trolled their team by playing mechs with no armor left on them (didn't repair them) etc. As much as I loved R&R for flavor and my time playing with it, it really did need to go or see some MAJOR readjustments/reworking. Once again, without a PvE element, any risk/reward system becomes either abuse-able, frustrating or more of a detriment to game play than it is worth.

8. Once more, PvP gameplay for MW:O sabotages your suggestion again. With no PvE elements, it could become impossible or very hard to "grind" some basic stuff. For example, if you could only get a Mad Dog by killing them in your matches and getting specific salvage components, then you have to wait for someone else who either paid real money to progress and get it, or for someone else to salvage it, make it, so you can blow it up and get it yourself. Meanwhile, you may be stuck (as well as anyone else in the "F2P" crowd) with your basic "Starter" mechs for a long time.

As much as I would love a more active economy, I don't see a way to implement one within this system. If you go by Faction and Faction Play, people would just hop to the next faction with the best sales to get what they want, and then leave. If you have it based on popularity of the mech increasing or decreasing the cost, then we have issues where the more powerful "meta" mechs at the time become insane to purchase (and thus, insane to try and fight against to save for one) and leave newer/poorer players stuck with the bad "non-meta" mechs as their only real option for easy purchase and progression.

---

One thing I did like from another game I play (Warframe) is "mastery rank", which is determined based on how much game content you've played. It's a primarily PvE game, but the idea is basically for every weapon you rank to level 30 (for the first time) counts towards your MR. Imagine if for every mech you master (in skill points) would increase your rank. Question would be, what would this earn in game? (A good idea from this would be to have FP mastery ranked so you need to have played to mastery so many mechs/weapons...?)

This is the only way I can see a game like this having some form of "economy" right now, which would encourage players to cycle through different mechs and playstyles. We'd just need to have some reward for progressing through ranks...

Whilst I can see your point of view in relation to all of this; it would not be a forum if I didn't respond.

Also please note that I am not saying that these things can be sorted in the current MWO, I think the problem is baked in and you'd have to start afresh.

1. Hard points - whilst I point to MW4 I am not advocating an exact copy. You could adapt the current system simply by colouring the number of slots in a section that can take a laser. So rather than having one hard point in an arm you might have 2 yellow coloured slots that can take one large laser or 2 small lasers. You could have hard breaks in those sections so that you can't put a large laser where you only want a small laser (this might mean messing with the slot sizes of lasers). You would then have different variants of the mech with different slots of differing sizes. This is an additional means of variety. Yes it is more restrictive, but that is what makes the choices more entertaining.

2. drop in and drop out games work in other PvP games. This could be regulated by a points system, so each team starts with a set points total and each drop reduces the total. As has been shown you cannot achieve a perfectly balanced game even with matchmakers and drop decks. I'd add that I don't think weight should be the determining factor but I would use battle value of the entire mech.

3. Yes TT should be the starting place but each weapons system should have a clear niche and the game should not be afraid to just simply rewrite the tonnage, slots, heat etc if it works for the game. There is a bit too much of the Must follow TT rules.

4. I think we agree on heat.

5. we agree on cone of fire. If it was in from the start no one would comment on it as it is a standard in all FPS.

6. Again this is about the fundamentals of the game. Yes you might be the only one to see you pilot (although no end of chances to show it off like in the score board at the end) but do people really notice customization in any game? How long do people spend making a character in skyrim only to play in first person mode? The point of a pilot skill tree would be to make additional variations as Pilot A plus Mech B would be different to Pilot B plus Mech B.

7. I see this more as a base management aspect to the game rather than the R&R. So hiring of techs, managing overheads etc. You can run a stable of 100's of mech but you're going to have to play a lot. Or you can keep a handful and rotate them and have your go to mech for when you need that money.

8. There are a lot of loot based shooters out there and adding a bit of it into Mechwarrior I think would help. All you need to do is ensure that price fluctuation is in there. Availability could be removed as an issue. this would fit with 7. Again not with the current system.

I see why they made the decision they did. However, those decisions have crippled the game and limited it because it limits what the incentives for playing are and the options

[dwwolf]

Niche game.
New Player expectations arent managed.
First few mechs are a pain to acquire.
Takes too long for new players to skill up initial mechs ( and its goddamn costly ).
Abysmally bad explanation of game mechanics. ( ghost heat ,weapon stats like min range.) Etc etc

Edited by dwwolf, 13 February 2019 - 09:17 AM.

[BlueStrat]

Asym, on 13 February 2019 - 07:47 AM, said:

El, it's worse than that. This game is an extreme, mature, small niche market with IP that is so identifiable in the game market that it's value is.......well, priceless. We ran a strategy canvas competition two years ago on existing video games (combat themed, F2P's) and guess who was the winner by a large margin.............

What has been said above is spot on. And, that makes this game all but sure to finally stop..... There literally is no one left and little or no prospect of growing the new player base because of everything said above. This game's reputation among new players, the younger players is non existent. I know, because I demo'd the game several times to groups of them at school.....to measure their reactions..... But, the IP itself is soooooooooooo valuable.........in the right hands.....

Exactly right.

The core problem is that MS/et al sold the MW IP to a fourth-rate, no-name game company without a single major successful game under their belt which doesn't have the money, marketing, reputation, or development talent required to make a successful game with that IP, despite the IP having such great potential.

For these same reasons I have little hope that MW5 will save PGI/MWO. I expect that PGI will go belly-up within a year, give or take, post-MW5-release after not meeting sales goals for several quarters..

My only realistic hope is that one of the major game studios buys up the IP after PGI goes belly-up

[Bud Crue]

BlueStrat, on 13 February 2019 - 10:18 AM, said:

Exactly right.

The core problem is that MS/et al sold the MW IP to a fourth-rate, no-name game company without a single major successful game under their belt which doesn't have the money, marketing, reputation, or development talent required to make a successful game with that IP, despite the IP having such great potential.

For these same reasons I have little hope that MW5 will save PGI/MWO. I expect that PGI will go belly-up within a year, give or take, post-MW5-release after not meeting sales goals for several quarters..

My only realistic hope is that one of the major game studios buys up the IP after PGI goes belly-up

I really hate it when you people make me defend PGI.

Awright. First off MS didn’t sell PGI the IP. PGI paid for a license to the video game related aspects of the MW intellectual property owned by MS. That license expires in 2020. PGI is currently working on a renewal of that license. Second, there can be no debate that PGI made a successful game with MWO. It’s been up for for what...7 years now? and has made PGI enough money that they are now making another mech based game in the form of MW5. Could it be a bigger success? Could it have been made in such a way as to have wider appeal? Probably, but it’s still been a resounding success for PGI. Third, and finally, if PGI goes belly up due to MW5 being a failure, the idea of “a major game studio” buying up the IP is absolutely not realistic.

Edited by Bud Crue, 13 February 2019 - 10:32 AM.

[DaZur]

BlueStrat, on 13 February 2019 - 10:18 AM, said:

The core problem is that MS/et al sold the MW IP to a fourth-rate, no-name game company without a single major successful game under their belt which doesn't have the money, marketing, reputation, or development talent required to make a successful game with that IP, despite the IP having such great potential.

To be fair... I think there is room to argue whether MWO was a success.

Any game that that can remain solvent and actionable as many years as MWO has been could by definition be "successful". That said... There is a lot of room to argue whether PGI squandered the IP and failed to deliver anything close to what they proposed and IMHO stole good faith money from a lot of people under those pretenses.

[Bombast]

DaZur, on 13 February 2019 - 10:32 AM, said:

To be fair... I think there is room to argue whether MWO was a success.

There's no room to argue. MWO is a success.

But so is getting VD, from a certain point of view.

Edited by Bombast, 13 February 2019 - 11:07 AM.

[InspectorG]

El Bandito, on 13 February 2019 - 06:06 AM, said:

All good points, OP. It is a shame how much potential this game had and how much of that PGI has squandered.

I used to think that, but now i think its a bit harsh.

Like the player base, PGI is just average and they took on a task that required well beyond average abilities to implement.

I think PGI punches at their weight, which is a so-so company that bit off something big that they didnt understand, and when things went awry, we got average corporate answers, and average solutions.

Some things they do well, Art Direction and Customer Service. Others, not so much.

Proof is in the pudding if they learned anything and will apply it to MW5. Semi-customization seems to be one of those lessons.

[Tesunie]

DaZur, on 13 February 2019 - 10:32 AM, said:

That said... There is a lot of room to argue whether PGI squandered the IP and failed to deliver anything close to what they proposed and IMHO stole good faith money from a lot of people under those pretenses.

Are we going to consider IGP's involvement in the start of this game's life? I mean, look how well IGP did with MW: Tactics... Up and dropped the game on the backers without a single notice, with false "patches" running through doing nothing until the servers were abruptly turned off on players (once again, without notice).

Do recall that IGP helped form the starting of this game's foundation (and I suspect is the contributor to why it's on Cryengine). Once they laid down that foundation (they had a lot of say on what PGI was suppose to do, after all they did sign PGI's checks for some time), it's hard to want to knock over the whole building to make a better foundation.

I think what we are seeing here is in part IGP's remaining influence. The game had a rough start (in part because of PGI's inexperience with this type of game, as well as IGP's influence on development), and I think that once PGI bought MW:O completely away from IGP that they saw the writing on the wall, "It's to late to change the foundation", so they have been slowing making what improvements they can as they can.

As already mentioned "they have been solving the problems slowly".

I might also want to raise another point to support my theory, Gold Mechs. According to PGI (take it as you wish), IGP was the one's who pushed for the Clans introduction to the game (despite PGI saying it would be a balancing nightmare), as well as also came up with the wonderful idea of "Gold Mechs". PGI has stated that they never intend to do Gold Mech deals ever again, and apparently never wanted to do it in the first place. (I might also mention how many sales, give-a-ways and actual meaningful improvements we've seen since IGP was removed from the development picture.)

[DaZur]

Tesunie, on 13 February 2019 - 11:11 AM, said:

MWO did most definitely improve after IGPs departure. No doubt about that...

That said, There are a host of things PGI could have done to right the ship post IGP but the ship was left to list helplessly to the left into the half-baked Solaris eSport'esk drudgery instead of correcting course back to the original underpinnings that so many Founders bought into.

[TripleEhBeef]

TBH, people have been proclaiming the death of MWO since Hawken's first gameplay trailer. MWO might be a zombie, but it's a resilient zombie lol!

More seriously, we're playing an FPS based on a board game that used power creep to keep selling miniatures. I'd hate to be the guy who has to shove that into an FPS somehow.

Outside of chopping up all of the mechs into War Thunder/WOT style tiers and progression trees so the MM is throwing relatively comparable mechs into the same match, balance is going to be difficult. And even that would go to hell in a handbasket with the mechlab and especially omnipod hardpoint changes.

Ironically, there's too many mechs!

Edited by TripleEhBeef, 13 February 2019 - 11:35 AM.

[Tesunie]

DaZur, on 13 February 2019 - 11:26 AM, said:

MWO did most definitely improve after IGPs departure. No doubt about that...

That said, There are a host of things PGI could have done to right the ship post IGP but the ship was left to list helplessly to the left into the half-baked Solaris eSport'esk drudgery instead of correcting course back to the original underpinnings that so many Founders bought into.

As stated, the foundation may have been too far set to have changed it then (not sure). However, I do know that IGP was talking about a solaris styled mode before PGI ousted them. They may have already had most/some of the work done by that stage, and just decided to go ahead with it's release anyway (after some time of sitting on it/refining it on a back burner) as it was just sitting there?

I don't speak for PGI nor am I involved in their inner workings, so I'm only theorizing here. All I know is, if I had a half done project that could just be added into a larger project, I'd finish it up and add it in even if it's not the exact direction. I'd see it as "what's the harm in adding this in too?" kind of situation.

I would have loved to have seen many other things in the game. I'm not in disagreence with you there. Sometimes though, it's a matter of how to get there and how to do it that becomes the problem. (For example, I know the basic inner workings of a car engine. Fixing a broken cylinder is outside my realm of experience, even if I understand how it works. I know, probably a poor example...)