1380 replies to this topic

[Prototelis]

Okay, not defending anything or anyone.

But what company truly gives a **** about you and not just your money?

[DemonRaziel]

Prototelis, on 31 July 2019 - 04:30 AM, said:

Okay, not defending anything or anyone. But what company truly gives a **** about you and not just your money?

Quite possibly none.

But on the other hand, some provide superior products/services in the same field, and/or care about their goodwill enough not to do anti-consumer stuff or alienate their consumer base in some way.

[Kotzi]

Well i could sell my customers just any **** when they ask me for consultation and be done with it or i really take my time and listen and give them good advice. Because i want to be treated the same professionally and i know that my customer will remind himself of that good service and this will most likely benefit my company more than the measly bucks i got fast treating them like walking nuisances.

But hey, each to his own. If you cant meet my expectations you wont get my money, and i still dont know why there are people rushing forwards mocking that fact.

[Horseman]

xe N on, on 31 July 2019 - 03:41 AM, said:

Oh, that's something very new. And steam, origin, uplay and all other launcher came bug free from the scrap ... Did wou realize that steam is already released 2003?

Is Epic here to compete with Steam of 2003 or Steam of 2019?
They launched their platform in a state that was about a year away from being a viable beta and are already behind on development schedule. And this with a budget and market position much better than Steam had in 2003. There is no excuse.

Quote

That is a major security flaw, true. But since they fixed it, they seem to be learning.

They only moved to fix it after a major shitstorm, despite it being public knowledge for months.

Quote

Can you be more concrete? What are you missing? I, on the other hand, don't use any steam feature beside launcher and hate all this overloaded steam crap.

Lessee... user reviews, review filtering, integrated forums, integrated guide hosting, integrating modding platform would be the first ones.
Not to be condescending, but I approached it like you initially - but eventually the convenience won out.

[Ruediger Steiner]

Prototelis, on 31 July 2019 - 04:30 AM, said:

Okay, not defending anything or anyone.

But what company truly gives a **** about you and not just your money?

So it´s okay, cause everybody does it.

[Sigmar Sich]

IMO, this community's goodwill is no longer a valuable commodity for PGI. Because they gamble for a new audience, and were doing so at least since Solaris. They want kids.

Think about it. Of all the cool things they could have done with custom geometry (different heads for mechs, or other geometry differences like with Founder or Phoenix mechs) they chose to do cringy clownish crap, most of the times completely immersion-breaking for a serious Battletech fan.

Naturally, EGS becomes their primary target, being highly populated by PGI's desired audience..

And if they succeed there, who cares what old community thinks about them.

If these suspicions to be true, i have concerns for the MW5 as a game. Kids and adults like different things / have different capabilities.
I remember myself at 11ish year age, trying to play MechCommander. I LOVED the game, it completely took over my imagination. But i couldn't really play it, it was too complicated for my age, especially management between missions.

So, if you make your bet on younger audience, it would make sense to adjust your product for your target audience. Dumbing it down, and/or adding some infantile bullsht like Solaris strap-ons.
I wonder if delay for a few more months is the consequence of this idea.

Or even worse, the game just isn't good enough to satisfy old BT community, and so they redirect for a new audience, trying to do best with what they have.

I know these suspicions must seem paranoid, but with the lack of any marketing i can't help myself but wonder.
Guess i'll have to wait for some leaked beta footage to find myself an answer.

Sigh, it's always waiting, with PGI.

P.S. The other concern is modding. Kids don't mod, at least not well. So why bother including any tools for modding, like mesh converters or scenario editors.. I hope they'll come around at least for Steam release. If the year of exclusivity wasn't their opinion at the time.
Even if game itself is poor, if it is a good platform for deep modding, it can become a very long-living product.
Unless PGI really outdones themselves.

Edited by Sigmar Sich, 31 July 2019 - 07:38 AM.

[ThomasAH]

-Ramrod-, on 31 July 2019 - 02:48 AM, said:

I requested a refund 3 days ago and I haven't gotten a single peep. I sent in another request this morning. I better get my money back :/.

I got my refund today after requesting it on Saturday (4 days ago) after the second AMA.
There was no auto-responder like with support mails to mwomercs, so I was a bit worried if the mail got lost, but it just seems to be a long queue.

Details if someone is interested: I preordered the standard edition in January and upgraded in April, both payed via Paypal. Since the January transaction was too long ago they could only simply refund the April transaction, so they sent the money for the January transaction as a new Paypal payment for me. I lost 0.10€ due to currency conversion, but that's much less than I have seen in other situations. There are no Paypal fees I have to pay. I have yet to see if the money will be automatically transferred to my bank account or if it stays on Paypal until I request a transfer.

[Grayson Sortek]

Just a thought, but I'm pretty sure this is just a containment thread that they will scrub once the discussion has died down. Nothing productive will be gained from posting here... PGI will not respond and I doubt the decision makers will ever see anything. For those wanting a better experience that doesn't leave a bitter taste in your mouth then I highly recommend you join the rest of us at other locations like the MechWarrior Living Legends discord or the Critical Rocket discord/YouTube channel. Together we can find and enjoy great alternatives to the dumpster fire that is now PGI.

Sincerely,
Grayson Sortek aka Ostego.

[Dee Eight]

Paladin IIC, on 30 July 2019 - 11:17 PM, said:

No, it violates Canadian laws as well that are normally enforced by the Competition Bureau. The Competition Act and Consumer Package and Labeling Act both cover bait and switch selling. Even without a dime being sold on Steam, they still advertised for well over a year that Steam would be the platform of choice. Suddenly removing that from the webpage doesn't change the fact that it was something they displayed as a selling point for an extended period of time. The only thing preventing legal action on their part is the immediate issuing of refunds. This doesn't change the shady, ham handed decisions PGI has made regarding the entire affair. PGI makes EA look fantastic by comparison with the way they've handled their transparency regarding this entire ordeal. Telling us about the decision after the fact did nothing but further the distrust the community has in their judgement regarding the usage of the MechWarrior IP.

LOL... EA fantastic in comparison ? so you lie about the number of players of this game, and you lie about this now? You clearly don't play games at all. you just complain about them.

[Stridercal]

Prototelis, on 31 July 2019 - 04:30 AM, said:

Okay, not defending anything or anyone.

But what company truly gives a **** about you and not just your money?

This guy gets it. Pure capitalism doesn't give a **** about anything but ROI, and you're ******* delusional if you think otherwise. Which is why the modern Nordic Model is so successful, because it always free enterprise without losing sight of the human costs involved - but that's another discussion, isn't it?

However, most modern companies see how 'soft factors,' like customer loyalty and relationships, is (and always has been) part of the money equation, and thus, consider these things on their balance sheets. PGI, umm, isn't so sure about it.

[Dee Eight]

xe N on, on 31 July 2019 - 12:00 AM, said:

And, as the recent years clearly shows, most data protection problems show up in US-companies ...

Capital One a couple days ago...119 million americans and 6 million canadians personal data sold off by a single former employee. And people here are worried that tencent owns 40% of Epic's stock ? They're the biggest shareholder after Epic's founder, but he still has the controlling interest in the company. Need I remind folks that Xsolla was founded by russians, and that's the country whose hackers manipulated a recent major election. So russians having access to your personal data is now good... but chinese is bad ?! Racist much or what...

[Dee Eight]

Wishmast3r, on 31 July 2019 - 01:29 AM, said:

that´s what bothers me, they constantly attack people who tell the truth about how bad PGI and Russ really are, people who still try to change MWO for the better for all players. And by this defend and legitimate PGI and Russ bad behavior.

I don't play well with stupid people. And you have to be really stupid to have believed anything promised about MW5 for features or platforms delivered on, was ever going to be set in stone and actually delivered. This was from a company who regularly nerfed popular mech chassis in order to then sell the next mech pack that duplicated the capabilities of the previous one. At the first mechcon where they announced plans for MW5, they said it was going to be available as a stand alone game without need of a launcher like steam or anything to play it. You'd download it once and that's your copy of the game, put it on a flash drive, duplicate it across your computers, whatever. By the time they started accepting early-adoption pre-orders, that had changed to delivery through steam.

[DemonRaziel]

Horseman, on 31 July 2019 - 07:17 AM, said:

Lessee... user reviews, review filtering, integrated forums, integrated guide hosting, integrating modding platform would be the first ones.

+ cloud saves, shopping cart...

[Dee Eight]

Mechdocdie, on 31 July 2019 - 01:33 AM, said:

Just a few observations of my own.

The depth of anger and grief expressed in the last 1000+ posts is an extraordinary reflection of both the depth of feeling

Except its not 1000 people... its about 100 people posting multiple times each. Someone said it a few pages ago... people who like to complain will do so loudly and often and people who don't care that PGI lied again (largely because that's always been the M.O.) or that its moved to Epic store, or delayed again... aren't going to waste the energy with complaining about something that nothing can be done about. PGI gave people the option of a full refund and you could keep all the MWO bonuses that came with early adoption / pre-order perks. That was more than they needed to do. They could have just given the refunds but taken away the bonus items also.

This game has always been a niche market. Contrary to what some would believe, battletech has NEVER been this amazing IP that everyone in the gaming community loved. When wizkids were riding the clix party train for their tabletop collectible miniatures game craze, and brought out mechwarrior as one of the other lines after Heroclix proved popular... I would meet dozens of people at gaming/comic stores during mechwarrior tournaments who had never played battetech or mechwarrior before (either the original tabletop game, or the various video games). They came to it only because they played HeroClix first. But the mechwarrior clix line eventually failed as customers lost interest in the game. I had thousands invested in Mechwarrior clix figures and while i've made some of it back selling the pieces on ebay... its largely money wasted as nobody wants to play the game anymore at any hobby/game/comic stores in this area. Which reminds me, I should stick up more of the nova cat and ghost bear figures on ebay.

[Dee Eight]

DemonRaziel, on 31 July 2019 - 05:20 AM, said:

Quite possibly none.

But on the other hand, some provide superior products/services in the same field, and/or care about their goodwill enough not to do anti-consumer stuff or alienate their consumer base in some way.

In the gamer world, CD Projeck Red is about the only one that comes to mind for AAA game titles with how they are handling Cyberpunk 2077. Early adopters gain zero benefits to their actual game from buying the standard or collector's edition... and being early doesn't get you anything better for the game play than buying it on release day. No extra skins, no weapons, no game currency, no gear. If you pre-ordered the collectors edition the day they announced it, or buy the standard edition the day after release... you're getting the same game with the same game content.

And PGI in a way is the same for MW5... doesn't matter what community edition level you pre-ordered, as far as MW5 itself goes... you're all getting the same game as someone who buys a week after it releases, you're just getting a roughly 30 day earlier play opportunity to test out some parts of the game by having been a pre-order purchaser. The different editions just rewarded different bonus content for a different game.

Edited by Dee Eight, 31 July 2019 - 11:02 AM.

[DemonRaziel]

Dee Eight, on 31 July 2019 - 10:47 AM, said:

In the gamer world, CD Projeck Red is about the only one that comes to mind for AAA game titles with how they are handling Cyberpunk 2077. Early adopters gain zero benefits to their actual game from buying the standard or collector's edition... and being early doesn't get you anything better for the game play than buying it on release day. No extra skins, no weapons, no game currency, no gear. If you pre-ordered the collectors edition the day they announced it, or buy the standard edition the day after release... you're getting the same game with the same game content. And PGI in a way is the same for MW5... doesn't matter what community edition level you pre-ordered, as far as MW5 itself goes... you're all getting the same game as someone who buys a week after it releases, you're just getting a roughly 30 day earlier play opportunity to test out some parts of the game by having been a pre-order purchaser. The different editions just rewarded different bonus content for a different game.

Yes, the difference is in the companies' respective goodwill.
People preorder CP77 because they have faith in the devs and want to show their support via preorders.
If the game proved to be a disaster, the next game would not fare this well, due to the ensuing damaged goodwill.

[LordNothing]

Prototelis, on 31 July 2019 - 03:10 AM, said:

View it as you will; they didn't close those threads or hide them.

You're free to view and participate in them.

moving them is hiding them. you have a pile of salt on the sand, pgi doesnt like the way it looks. if they blatantly get rid of it, more salt piles will be created and those too will need to be removed. pgi doesnt like to do work. but if you grab a stick and stir it, blending it with the sand, the incontrovertible evidence that a problem exists is now suddenly much less obvious. its still there and you can find it if you look, but they can pretend to go on in complete ignorance that a problem exists. still this is an act of blatant obfuscation.

Edited by LordNothing, 31 July 2019 - 12:26 PM.

[Fetladral]

Nightbird, on 25 July 2019 - 09:05 AM, said:

Not how it works, based on your math basically EPIC pays PGI 50 million $ for the exclusive deal. Basically, they don't need to sell 1 copy to profit big time

50 million? Probably nowhere near that. Phoenix Point was worth 2.25 million to Epic. I highly doubt MW5 is worth more than $3 million to Epic for the exclusivity.

Actually since I think Phoenix point got even more funding then MW 5 they may have gotten more money from Epic than MW 5 would have gotten.

Phoenix Point got roughly the same amount of money from Epic as they made from crowdfunding (which was over $2 million). MW 5 probably only got between 1 and 1.5 million.

Edited by Fetladral, 31 July 2019 - 12:46 PM.

[Eurystheus]

crazytimes, on 30 July 2019 - 11:54 PM, said:

Something about chinese government stealing your details and making love to your wife while you're at work is the main reason I believe.

I think you might be right about that. My theory is that Steam keys have some kind of collector value that Epic keys don't. Do people print them and put them into a safe deposit box while they age and increase in value?

[CrustyMech]

Soooo....

Everyone got their tickets to MechCon 2019?

Use your MW5 refund money!

…. run away, run away