89 replies to this topic

[Knight Captain Morgan]

LordNothing, on 14 November 2019 - 03:45 PM, said:

the lack of hype from pgi is one thing, but the lack of hype from within the mwo community itself is very disturbing. its like nobody wants mw5. i feel like im in the minority for not canceling my preorder.

You might be in the minority. Of the people I know who preordered roughly 60% refunded so don’t put much stock in the “official” 20% number. It is undoubtedly being low balled to a mere fraction of the reality.

[Daggett]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 15 November 2019 - 07:07 AM, said:

You might be in the minority. Of the people I know who preordered roughly 60% refunded so don’t put much stock in the “official” 20% number. It is undoubtedly being low balled to a mere fraction of the reality.

Usually the "people i know" are not statistically relevant.

Edited by Daggett, 15 November 2019 - 07:28 AM.

[Prototelis]

I am excited about a mechwarrior game on a well understood and documented engine developed by a company with too little capital to lock down the game behind proprietary technology.


IE; No one is going to say **** about adding mo battlemechs or porting MWO assets.

I doubt the game is going to be a big seller; but I think it'll achieve a limited cult status that makes working with it and learning UE worth the effort.

[Nesutizale]

The (hopefully) existing modibility of MW5 might realy be what saves the game in the end. When it makes its round that there are good mods out there I can imagne people returning / buying the game just to play the mods.

I think it might be similar as with HBS Battletech that I only started to find interesting with the mods. The game itself... I couldn't get warm with it. Played through the campaign and a bit of skirmish and stopped there.
RogueTech (or what its called) made me reinstall the game.That and some streamers who where quite happy with it.

Edited by Nesutizale, 15 November 2019 - 08:20 AM.

[Sneaky Ohgoorchik]

I believe at the moment PGI is not a publisher for the game, well, at least not at the scale as we used to. Its on the Epic store now. The game is on the front page of the Epic store. Quite a lot of people are upset about this place.

[LordNothing]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 15 November 2019 - 07:07 AM, said:

You might be in the minority. Of the people I know who preordered roughly 60% refunded so don’t put much stock in the “official” 20% number. It is undoubtedly being low balled to a mere fraction of the reality.

also that number was what was posted on twitter less than a week after the announcement, before the emails were sent out. that likely set off another wave of refunds that we weren't told about. then there were some hold outs for more loot (which i was pushing for hard). had i known the exclusive period would get sliced in half, id have refunded at the last minute.

Edited by LordNothing, 15 November 2019 - 08:42 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

I think the game will ultimately do fairly well. I'd say at least HBS BattleTech level of sales, and with Epic insuring sales, PGI will be fine.

I know even my little contribution I was doing is pocket change and insignificant in the grand scheme of things (I just felt like venting a bit). Maybe if all the refunded players did the same and stopped socially promoting the game, it might make a dent. Still, Epic has compensated PGI for that, so I don't really think it will matter on the whole.

Plus there is a lot of people who like Epic *shutter*, whether it is due to their distaste of other platforms, or their beliefs that it benefits the industry, In any case, I don't see this going bad for PGI. It's divisive, and they have definitely lost support, but I think they are insulated enough from the backlash with Epic's help.

As for any future titles...that is a different thing all together.

[LordNothing]

Prototelis, on 15 November 2019 - 07:26 AM, said:

I am excited about a mechwarrior game on a well understood and documented engine developed by a company with too little capital to lock down the game behind proprietary technology.


IE; No one is going to say **** about adding mo battlemechs or porting MWO assets.

I doubt the game is going to be a big seller; but I think it'll achieve a limited cult status that makes working with it and learning UE worth the effort.

might be hard without source models before they got baked into whatever proprietary format cryengine uses. but i heard its possible to extract them for 3d printing, but thats far from having a uv mapped model with its data structures (things like bones, submodels, and reference points like gun positions) inintact. but maybe things are different now, i havent done any serious mod work in the last decade or so. but when i did dealing with the myriad of proprietary 3d formats was hell.

better to get models from 3rd party sources (say mwll) and spruce them up abit. maybe do some photogrammetry on the miniatures (you just need a camera, soft lighting, meshroom, and a few hours of high performance cpu time). original models are good too, and there are lots of excelent artists in the wider bt/mw community.

Edited by LordNothing, 15 November 2019 - 09:07 AM.

[Prototelis]

LordNothing, on 15 November 2019 - 09:01 AM, said:

might be hard without source models before they got baked into whatever proprietary format cryengine uses.

Not the case at all. Models are easily extracted.

[Storming Angel]

probs will be mediocore anyways.

not interested in epic their launcher nor their bloody engine.

Although putting it on steam would attract a bigger following and with more aggresive marketing they could get more people.

only knew about it when they begged for pre-orders (why would you pre-order something that you have no clue what the product will be?)

[LordNothing]

Prototelis, on 15 November 2019 - 09:57 AM, said:

Not the case at all. Models are easily extracted.

thats good to know.

[JediPanther]

Mods are the only thing people will have an interest in the game. Pgi ***** that up and then they maybe close shop.

[Thorqemada]

[Anomalocaris]

FRAGTAST1C, on 14 November 2019 - 07:09 PM, said:

Again, in the previous AMA (or the one before), it was said that ads would be in full swing about 7-10 days before release 'cause that's the budget they've allocated. Epic has given PGI enough money to not worry too much about the initial sales. As it stands, it entirely depends on PGI's ability to make MW5 really good so that even after a year, when it hits platforms like Steam, GoG, etc., people will buy it.

As for creating the hype-train... there aren't enough people to board it but there are a lot of people who have no faith in PGI who won't stand aside but instead will board the hype-train and ruin it. PGI is a small company and they can't afford for that to happen and hence, they're playing it safe. By all accounts, Epic and PGI would've come up with some figures and they seem happy with the way things are going.

Sincerely, there's really no need to create any hype around MW5. Just regular ads and the marketing stuff a few days before release is fine. They said that November will get a new trailer, December will get 2 new trailers and then there's still another AMA to go purely to talk about modding support. Just one or two gameplay videos along with that would suffice.

Personally, I think doing all of the above like they've planned is good enough. It all comes down to the game itself. A couple of gameplay videos will be good to go along with that.

I didn't say anything about ads. I said they should be posting regular screenshots, gameplay videos, etc. on social media. It's basically free. "Not worrying about initial sales"? Really. I'm sorry but that just sounds like white knighting to me.

Every additional person they convince to buy the game is more money in their pockets. Why wouldn't you want to generate as much interest as possible with free social media promotions? Flooding fb/twitter/ig with cool tidbits (others have suggested some great ideas in this thread) is a great way to generate discussion that can spread beyond the hardcore BT community. The only logical explanation at this point is that they don't have anything interesting to show.

I mean seriously, no beta, no promotion, not even cheap and easy social media tidbits. Has Russ already taken the Epic money and relocated to the Caribbean? I'm only kinda joking there.....

[FRAGTAST1C]

Anomalocaris, on 18 November 2019 - 01:46 AM, said:

"Not worrying about initial sales"? Really. I'm sorry but that just sounds like white knighting to me.

Every additional person they convince to buy the game is more money in their pockets. Why wouldn't you want to generate as much interest as possible with free social media promotions? Flooding fb/twitter/ig with cool tidbits (others have suggested some great ideas in this thread) is a great way to generate discussion that can spread beyond the hardcore BT community. The only logical explanation at this point is that they don't have anything interesting to show.

It's like the box office results. If a movie doesn't make money within the first 3 days of release, then it's called an unsuccessful movie. Here, since PGI has been paid already, they wouldn't need to worry about the initial sales. That's what I meant. I'm not making an excuse.

Like I said, they need to start throwing gameplay videos out there but they're saving it for later since there isn't the kind of pressure there is if PGI had put MW5 on other platforms like GoG, Steam, etc., and then hope the game would sell well right off the bat. Getting more people to buy the game is always good but that can happen later when the game releases on Steam, for e.g., Then again, that depends on how well the game's received. So, a quite, no-hype launch is a good way to go for a company whose fans... or customers, I should say, have a lot of bad faith against.

[C E Dwyer]

They expect us to ***** about it on Reddit, I guess

[VonBruinwald]

Thorqemada, on 18 November 2019 - 12:44 AM, said:

Was expecting new footage, now I'm disappointed.

@2:00 "Powerful families set up ruling Clans called Houses"
Oh hell no!

@6:00 "Preorders will have access to the Beta"
Pretty sure the Beta was cancelled before this video was posted...

[Nesutizale]

It was said that we will get news this week...also not what kind of news.

Anyway anyone wants to bet what and when? I am torn between the server maintainance and end of the week and I guess its screenshots.

[Nameless King]

Vellron2005, on 14 November 2019 - 12:52 AM, said:

With the release of MW5 demo just weeks away, I have to say I'm shocked at the lack of hype and info concertning MW5:Mercenaries.

Where are you guys marketing this game, North Korea?

I'm from Croatia. If I hadn't preordered during first preorder way back when, I would have no clue this game was even on the horizon, much less would feel any hype..

Where's your marketing department?

There's nothing new on the game's official site.

Nothing on MWO forums.

Nothing anywhere where someone who hasn't played original Mechwarrior could see something was up..

What, you thinking of doing it a week before release? This ain't no mech pack! This is the game people have been waiting for 12+ YEARS!

I am simply shocked at how poor the marketing hype train for this game is..

What you should do is post in-game videos, interviews, game models, brochures, mech features, lore, dev vlogs.. I mean COME ON, get creative for pete's sake!

Why does one have to know what specific thing to google to get any info about the biggest thing to hit the BT setting in decades?

Am I alone in this?

They have already been paid why waste money.

[Kotzi]

Any infos on the "item" coming this week? Can anyone on social media check please?

Edited by Kotzi, 18 November 2019 - 11:24 PM.