81 replies to this topic

[Xetelian]

Quick video about where Hawken went wrong and how it affected player counts with their changes.


Similarities to MWO.

1; Publisher died
2. Game balance constantly getting revamped making players leave
3. Arena shooter (though hawken also was a class based)
4. Detail customization for your ride locked to individual mechs and not universally unlocked. (like our camo).
5. Horrible match making system
7. Veteran players have advantage of better stats than non-veteran players.

Just a few off the top of my head I didn't view the video more than once and some of these parallels are thin.



Up until the new heat system I had played almost every day. I participated in every event and it was my main game. Now I play once a week with a couple guys and that's about it if I actually bother to show up. Most of the MWO guys i followed on Twitch are playing new games like Apex Legends and other things instead of MWO.

Feeling my passion die is regrettable and the last heat nerf really killed the game for me. I wonder how long until this Youtube channel does a death of a game on MWO.

[Ilfi]

PGI delivered a minimally viable product to a captive fanbase.
Hawken blew 28 million dollars on a live action series, card game, comic book, catastrophic mismanagement and three meta revamps (skill tree, vs. tuning points, vs. medic Mech).

The sad part is I honestly preferred Hawken and MW4 more than MWO, but the former two are long gone.

[kapusta11]

There are legitimate reasons to hate MWO like stupid PSR based match maker and lack of content (new maps or weapons, even a buff to unused ones will do) but the game barely changed after heat system "nerf", if anything it was a massive heat dissipation buff.

[Xetelian]

I had a lot of fun with Hawken when it first debuted and then it got gross. I tried it again when the APB guys took over and was like "This is atrocious" even if I found the game play to be a lot of fun.

Monetization killed it.

]I didn't buy MW5 pre-order even with double MC because I just don't see myself using that much MC any time soon and I wasn't interested in the pre-order mechs since I have over 140 mechs and I still have a few 100,000,000 cBills and 9 - 10 open mechbays and over 4000 MC for more mechbays.

Be nice if we could have pre-ordered MW5 on Steam and got the same bonuses because then I would have done it because I'm sitting on Steambucks that I got for Christmas that I am saving for the summer sale but I would have used it on MW5 since it wouldn't feel like such a waste.

Another problem is I don't trust investing that much money into a game without seeing reviews of it first. PGI just doesn't make me comfortable spending full retail price on anything.

Edited by Xetelian, 28 April 2019 - 12:47 PM.

[Mystere]

kapusta11, on 28 April 2019 - 12:41 PM, said:

There are legitimate reasons to hate MWO like stupid PSR based match maker ...

If people think the matchmaker is at the top of the list of MWO's problems, then there really is nothing else left to say. <shrugs>

Edited by Mystere, 28 April 2019 - 12:50 PM.

[Pariah Devalis]

Xetelian, on 28 April 2019 - 12:29 PM, said:

1; Publisher died
2. Game balance constantly getting revamped making players leave
3. Arena shooter (though hawken also was a class based)
4. Detail customization for your ride locked to individual mechs and not universally unlocked. (like our camo).
5. Horrible match making system
7. Veteran players have advantage of better stats than non-veteran players.

Great video, however I take issues with most of these similarities.

1. IGP might have died, but PGI managed to go fully independent while maintaining an effective flow of income. They also didn't seem to piss off their investors, so if PGI owed anyone money, it wasn't to the same extent as what happened with HAWKEN.

2. Game balance being revamped making players leave is part and parcel of any active game. LoL populations fluctuate, despite it being a mega hit, as periodically the devs radically rebalance how items and characters work. Yet it is still here and still strong. MWO's community suffered significantly more than the LoL community when it came to huge balance patches, but outside of temporary LRM changes I'm pretty sure a lack of quick iterative changes is what pushed more people away rather than the changes themselves.

3. Arena shooters can last, as well, such as the UT community, but I agree that if all it provides is an arena shooter, the replaybility suffers. I actually take more issue with the video here than the point of it being an arena shooter, though. HAWKEN was interesting precisely because it felt like a hybrid of Arena Shooter and Mech Game. It was a unique blend and fairly well executed in the gameplay in that sense.

4. MWO, at its worst, was still way better than HAWKEN in the cosmetics regard. Yes, HAWKEN had semi-variable geometry, but each part was expensive for what it was, and paint and camo unlocks were not universal, nor was there even an option for that. Further, there were far too few in game opportunities to get the credits you needed to purchase these cosmetics in HAWKEN, whereas in MWO you can regularly get events that award 500+ MC. In addition, that MC goes into paints, that are universal and reusable and decals which are also universal and reusable. Now, if only the same was true regarding Bolt Ons.

5. It's bad. It isn't HAWKEN bad, but I am not gonna argue the current match making system in MWO. It's not... great. So this is one point I really can't fault anyone for pointing out.

6. Huh, there is no 6?

7. Veteran players have the advantage of more experience behind the screen, and probably more well skilled out skill trees. They certainly make things easier. However, that will happen regardless of any non-cosmetic progression system. Frankly, this shouldn't even be a problem if the match maker was better designed. Also, in HAWKEN, you could effectively bypass skill, time, and effort with money by directly unlocking upgrades or mechs with actual cash that would otherwise be gated with a pretty nasty unlock grind. In MWO, that isn't really the case. You can convert MXP to GXP or GXP to SP with the use of MC, a real world currency item, but you can also progress very far a given skill tree with just a few good matches - and you can also get that MC from those common weekly events.


Don't get me wrong. There are some parallels between HAWKEN and MWO, but I think there is more right than wrong with the game. For a F2P title, MWO actually has been fairly successful, especially as a mech game. The largest threats it has right now are its age and its own player base. There's only so long you can play a glorified arena shooter before things get repetitious. Being designed from the ground up as an arena shooter, I'm not sure how much can be viably added in the way of unique new content that makes things interesting.

As for its player base, it's one that wants several things, some of which are unreasonable expectations and many of which directly conflict with the desires of other members of the community. We are deeply divided in what we expect or want out of MWO.

If we don't even know what we want, we'll never be satisfied with what we have.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 28 April 2019 - 01:04 PM.

[Xetelian]

I did skip 6, because 7 ate 9.

MWO > Hawken in many ways thanks to the efforts after IGP left.

But the directionless CW
The directionless and unplayed Solo and 2v2 modes
The time it took to give free players a chance to lobby with each other
The fact that they don't test radical balance changes very often.


Its all either a lot of little issues or a few fairly big ones.

[Pariah Devalis]

Xetelian, on 28 April 2019 - 01:13 PM, said:

I did skip 6, because 7 ate 9.

MWO > Hawken in many ways thanks to the efforts after IGP left.

But the directionless CW
The directionless and unplayed Solo and 2v2 modes
The time it took to give free players a chance to lobby with each other
The fact that they don't test radical balance changes very often.


Its all either a lot of little issues or a few fairly big ones.

I mean, it could be worse. We could be Bioware post EA.

Now that is directionless development!

If Arenanet is an example of a good development team with great communication skills and Post-EA Bioware is the example of worst, I'd probably stick PGI somewhere in the upper middle. Not super fantastic, but they could be way, way worse.

(Yes, that was an Anthem burn. Yes, that game is so full of disappointment it is crazy.)

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 28 April 2019 - 01:20 PM.

[Pain G0D]

Never played hawken in my life and what has it to do with MWO ? Was it even a free to play game ?

Regardless of MWO,s perceived short comings , it is essentially a free to play game and a very good one at that .

[Xetelian]

Pain G0D, on 28 April 2019 - 01:26 PM, said:

Never played hawken in my life and what has it to do with MWO ? Was it even a free to play game ?

Regardless of MWO,s perceived short comings , it is essentially a free to play game and a very good one at that .

It was indeed free to play.

It was also in the mech genre of games.

It died on PC and has about 100 players on console.

[LordNothing]

a very good f2p is still a bad game in my opinion. its not a business model i will tolerate in the future. im only here because living legends died.

Edited by LordNothing, 28 April 2019 - 01:33 PM.

[VonBruinwald]

LordNothing, on 28 April 2019 - 01:32 PM, said:

a very good f2p is still a bad game in my opinion. its not a business model i will tolerate in the future. im only here because living legends died.

Wasn't LL f2p....

[VitriolicViolet]

Yeah i played Hawken for a bit but MWO is a far better game in my opinion.

far more weapon variety, enormously more mech variety and the mechanics seem to be better.

Plus Hawken had less of a difference in size and mobility between the biggest and smallest mechs.

I did like some of the mechs but overall i felt it was a lot more 'arcadey' than MWO. they also tried a lot harder on the micro transaction front from what i remember.

I only played it for a few months vs 5+ years for MWO

Edited by VitriolicViolet, 28 April 2019 - 02:27 PM.

[Chiasson Brinker]

Xetelian, on 28 April 2019 - 12:29 PM, said:

7. Veteran players have advantage of better stats than non-veteran players.

Because how dare longtime players be better at it..

[LordNothing]

VonBruinwald, on 28 April 2019 - 02:14 PM, said:

Wasn't LL f2p....

it was just free. initially you needed a copy of crysis to run it. but by the time i was playing it copies of crysis could be found in bargain bins everywhere for practically nothing. they upgraded to crysis wars (which i got with warhead). later on they just bundled the demo version of crysis wars. which makes it significantly easier to install and doesnt require anything else to run. you could play it now if you can find other players.

Edited by LordNothing, 28 April 2019 - 02:42 PM.

[Khobai]

Hawken failed for completely different reasons than why MWO is failing

[RickySpanish]

It's almost as if Piranha have managed their game, affairs and fanbase better than the poor souls that made Hawken. But sweet ******** Jesus, we certainly couldn't admit to that on the message board / HPGutterOutreach. No sirree! MWO is failingggg!

[LordNothing]

id argue that mwo did not fail. they funded mechwarrior 5 didn't they? that was the game they wanted to make. that's what the teaser they made was hinting at. mwo is just a means to an end. if this was the plan all along, did it fail? of course you might reserve judgement till you actually get to play mw5.

of course that doesnt mean mwo will not go the route of game death in the not too distant future.

Edited by LordNothing, 28 April 2019 - 02:48 PM.

[RickySpanish]

Pariah Devalis, on 28 April 2019 - 01:20 PM, said:

I mean, it could be worse. We could be Bioware post EA.

Now that is directionless development!

If Arenanet is an example of a good development team with great communication skills and Post-EA Bioware is the example of worst, I'd probably stick PGI somewhere in the upper middle. Not super fantastic, but they could be way, way worse.

(Yes, that was an Anthem burn. Yes, that game is so full of disappointment it is crazy.)

Yup really love GW2, shame about the layoffs though. Apparently the guy who invented Super Adventure Box was among the casualties. I suppose we'll never get World 3 now

LordNothing, on 28 April 2019 - 02:45 PM, said:

id argue that mwo did not fail. they funded mechwarrior 5 didn't they? that was the game they wanted to make. that's what the teaser they made was hinting at. mwo is just a means to an end. if this was the plan all along, did it fail? of course you might reserve judgement till you actually get to play mw5.

Yes way back in the day, Piranha wanted to make MW5 but nobody would publish it / take a risk on a PC/XBox exclusive (IIRC, because MS had the rights). Years down the line Piranha finally have the means to make their dream game. Say what you will about MWO, but that there is a hell of a dedication to a dream. Not to mention standing up to HG, these folks have balls. Plus, who these days ses out to make their game frigging moddable? I think Piranha deserve a bit more credit than they are given on the boards

Edited by RickySpanish, 28 April 2019 - 02:51 PM.

[Novakaine]

If MWO is dying these have been the longest death throes in human history.
Alright that said......................
Where da perdition is my Crusader.