199 replies to this topic

[Claive]

I find it very distressing that instead of finding a thread talking about what cool new features we hope to see the question is instead "How do we milk more money out of the audience?" If you want more money I want a LOT more than just a new engine...

Watch the GDC youtube about cursed game design. It sums up PGI's problem pretty well.

[An6ryMan69]

Generally successful titles are dead simple to understand and jump into, rewarding throughout the lifespan of the player, and have a monetary system that feels fair and offers a satisfying return on investment.

The BattleTech Universe is highly technical, detailed, unforgiving, lore fixated, and generally appeals to a niche of gaming fans.

Those two things do not mix well naturally.

However, I might seriously explore having two gaming modes, Classic (current MWO) and Casual (dead simple overall - i.e. - no heat, no ammo, no groups, increased sensor effectiveness, minimal skills, simplified lock-on weapons usage, simplified ECM, strict separation of players in a simplified Tier system, etc.)

Edited by An6ryMan69, 17 January 2023 - 10:12 AM.

[LordNothing]

Claive, on 17 January 2023 - 10:09 AM, said:

I find it very distressing that instead of finding a thread talking about what cool new features we hope to see the question is instead "How do we milk more money out of the audience?" If you want more money I want a LOT more than just a new engine...

Watch the GDC youtube about cursed game design. It sums up PGI's problem pretty well.

i mean its got to be financially viable to even happen. but looking at a lot of newer games, quality seems to be a globally diminishing factor, sort of like pop music and tv/movies. once an artform is industrialized it loses its charm.

stop thinking of it as mwo++ and start thinking of it as a new game. when i bought quake that doesn't mean i get quake 2 for free. how many times have i bought ms flight simulator, and i barely even played it.

[Lajur Kas]

The pessimistic optimist, on 15 November 2020 - 12:52 AM, said:

So they should forget the license and make there own stompy robot game.

You know and love them! Introducing Piranha Games: Sun Spider vs. Roughneck

[sycocys]

The greatest barrier is Russ and his inability to comprehend that he has the rights to a franchise IP and they go out of their way to separate all the releases from each other.

They could do MWO2 on the unreal engine with a phase-out of MWO. Sell the upgrade as a one time purchase - transfer your mechbay/patterns/items and just spend their energy creating their new class of "Legendary" heroes and battlepass system to encourage the same market they are looking to have purchase more while having a far better engine to build more engaging modes on top of, vastly more map and weapon variety, a way to actually balance out that stupid skill tree by making it cost crit slots - AND they could do all their games from one launcher with commonly installed assets instead of pushing a bunch of completely separated disconnected games.

--
End of the day though, I'm not spending any more money on this game unless they do a major overhaul of the modes so we have more than the same skirmish mode with slight differences. I would gladly buy MWO2 built on the MW5 core, and if they made the gameplay more interesting than skirmish warrior online would also probably toss a few extra bucks at them here and there to support the servers.

[Alex Morgaine]

Greatest barrier? How about multiple:
If they could show in a provable tech demo or demo the following:
1. Ammo swapping with at the very keast lb-x autocannons [bonus points if inferno missiles, true atm/mml Ammo or even select Standard autocannon Ammo like Armor piecing, caseless or flechette were shown]
2. A great bar that works more then 99% ride the rail. Plenty of threads in the past for that
3. Mixed forces ala tanks ground units aerospace and infantry/ power armor.
4. Wonky animation or not melee.
5. Some reason to Value a base mech but be able to customize at a cost. Like a supply chain that favors maintaining stock vs customized gunbags
6. Some method of maintaining mechs that allow damaged units to be fielded with repairs that would be more campaign like. Maybe more like eve online where mechs are replaceable but can be permanently destroyed with mech packs more like freebie vouchers or something I dunno this one I can't figure a good solution.

[Alex Morgaine]

Thorn Hallis, on 30 November 2020 - 12:33 PM, said:

Well, MWO2 could be set in the Star League era or some time before. That would open the gates for many new 'Mechs to sell.

And it should have another name.

mech Warrior: age of Ameris

[LordNothing]

wouldn't mind doing something in an unexplored part of the timeline.

Edited by LordNothing, 17 January 2023 - 07:36 PM.

[Curccu]

Alex Morgaine, on 17 January 2023 - 06:09 PM, said:

Greatest barrier? How about multiple:
If they could show in a provable tech demo or demo the following:
1. Ammo swapping with at the very keast lb-x autocannons [bonus points if inferno missiles, true atm/mml Ammo or even select Standard autocannon Ammo like Armor piecing, caseless or flechette were shown]
2. A great bar that works more then 99% ride the rail. Plenty of threads in the past for that
3. Mixed forces ala tanks ground units aerospace and infantry/ power armor.
4. Wonky animation or not melee.
5. Some reason to Value a base mech but be able to customize at a cost. Like a supply chain that favors maintaining stock vs customized gunbags
6. Some method of maintaining mechs that allow damaged units to be fielded with repairs that would be more campaign like. Maybe more like eve online where mechs are replaceable but can be permanently destroyed with mech packs more like freebie vouchers or something I dunno this one I can't figure a good solution.

I see zero great barriers in that list...

[pbiggz]

Money.

Money is the problem. It has always been the problem.

This game isn't that profitable. Its a niche game played by a very opinionated niche playerbase.
Players dont want to spend money rebuying the mechs they already bought.
PGI doesnt want to spend money building a new game only for players to not buy in.

This means the money needs to come from somewhere else, and it wont, because again, the game is niche, it wont turn a huge profit, so external investors wont be interested.

Without money, there is no reason to make a new live-service mechwarrior game, for anyone.

[sycocys]

pbiggz, on 18 January 2023 - 01:02 PM, said:

Money.

Money is the problem. It has always been the problem.

This game isn't that profitable. Its a niche game played by a very opinionated niche playerbase.
Players dont want to spend money rebuying the mechs they already bought.
PGI doesnt want to spend money building a new game only for players to not buy in.

This means the money needs to come from somewhere else, and it wont, because again, the game is niche, it wont turn a huge profit, so external investors wont be interested.

Without money, there is no reason to make a new live-service mechwarrior game, for anyone.

Seems to me like they'd probably make plenty of money selling us a new game that was more interesting to play so it brought back a fair portion of the people that just gave up on them ever developing this one (and rightly so) - they continuing to sell mech packs, heroes, and carry on with their legendary concept.

[MrMadguy]

Common problem: devs don't realize, that players usually pay, when game is fun. Why would players pay for game, they don't like, so they aren't sure, that they wouldn't stop playing very soon? Yeah, some players have addiction, so making game uncomfortable for them and asking them to pay to return comfort - model, that works in many cases, otherwise many F2P games wouldn't even exist. What we have in MWO now - is dead loop. Too few players -> matchmaking is bad -> game isn't fun -> I stop playing it -> even fewer players play it. And devs don't even try to break this dead loop.

[Dr Wubs]

That whole interview with Russ had him avoid key truths:

a) He funded MW5 with MWO.

b- The only reason that MWO is still operating is that it still partially pays for his MW5 development.

c) The success of MW5 was due to a player modding it for free to fix his mess.

d) Players don't generally want either a battletech solo game or a pvp game. They want both in a title.

e) Russ doesn't like this game or its playerbase beyond them being a way to make money. He wants to forget it, and was looking forward to it being shutdown by now.

A good MWO2 begins with it being de-Russified.

What you can do right now is stop playing MW5 and stop buying its DLC. Make him lose interest in this whole franchise.

He needs to surrender the license.

Then you get the next multiplayer MWO title.

Edited by Dr Wubs, 19 January 2023 - 03:28 AM.

[Nathan White]

Dr Wubs, on 19 January 2023 - 03:27 AM, said:

That whole interview with Russ had him avoid key truths:

a) He funded MW5 with MWO.

You missed something important - before MW5, Russ spent all the funds from the founders for Transverse. He is really hate BT franchise and community.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

gotta agree with the lot here:

biggest problem to mwo2 is Russ himself;

whenever people told him "this is what we want, this is a problem that needs to be fixed",
he comes up with "well, that doesn't concern me. here is something ENTIRELY different for you.
oh, and don't forget to finance the next big thing you really don't want".

that repeats itself countless times, people get salty and/or leave, and he STILL blames
it all on his customers rather than his ..policy.. of doing things.

as long as he's in charge, sorry: can't and won't give my money to somebody like that.

[JC Daxion]

Or maybe players could do something to help grow the game. It gets so tiring when every thread is nothing but complaining. Talking about how to improve things is great, but that's not what i see most of the time. someone posts Let this game die and it gets 100 responses saying YAY.. make a post about how to improve things and if it gets 3 responses that are not.. PGI sucks it's a miracle.

Last year i semi recruited 3-4 people, i say semi because i didn't go out of my way, but i made some new freinds on steam and played with them. a few put in about 100 hours or so, but a couple were over 300. Small games are about community, but when the main thing that comes across from it is I hope the game dies, that does not help anything.

This game reminds me a lot of Starwars Galaxies. Years later even after the game has it's own fan made servers that they coded the entire back end from scratch i still see people talking on random forums about how horrible of a game it was. I really like what they have done over the last few years, but to listen to the forums they act like they haven't done a thing since 2014 and that makes me sad I always see people talking about only if they advertised, but word of mouth beats any banner add hands down.

As far as what to do for monetization, i'm not sure, I do like the idea of buying the base game though verse just subs and that sort of thing.

Edited by JC Daxion, 19 January 2023 - 10:28 AM.

[LordNothing]

as far as russ is concerned, mwo is successful. it pays the bills, turns a profit, funds his side projects, etc. you don't start a business to make one product, break even and disband. you start one so you can invest the revenue back into the company to develop more products.

MrMadguy, on 18 January 2023 - 11:57 PM, said:

Common problem: devs don't realize, that players usually pay, when game is fun. Why would players pay for game, they don't like, so they aren't sure, that they wouldn't stop playing very soon? Yeah, some players have addiction, so making game uncomfortable for them and asking them to pay to return comfort - model, that works in many cases, otherwise many F2P games wouldn't even exist. What we have in MWO now - is dead loop. Too few players -> matchmaking is bad -> game isn't fun -> I stop playing it -> even fewer players play it. And devs don't even try to break this dead loop.

unfortunately the addicted are usually the whales. everyone else only seems addicted because they have to spend so much time on grind just to get anywhere.

Edited by LordNothing, 19 January 2023 - 01:06 PM.

[Novakaine]

Just sayin.....

[TheArisen]

Mal Nilsum, on 10 November 2020 - 11:57 AM, said:

The clan invasion as a narrative is pretty cool, I totally get that. It works in a PVM game were the clans are the enemies, or vice versa where the IS are the enemies. But in a PvP game where all things need to be equal, it just doesn't work. The only way would be to make all tech equal (different maybe, but equal), which then basically defeats the whole idea of the clans.

Maybe they should go far enough into the future of BT lore to where the tech is more equal and even shared like idk, during the Word of Blake

Nesutizale, on 10 November 2020 - 12:43 PM, said:

PvP games don't need to be equal on the basis "everything is the same". There are games where quite the oposite is the basic game mechanic. From "Rock, paper, scissor" to LoL who nearly perfected asymetrie for a while.
So no. Clans and IS don't have to be balanced around the same tech. Balance can also be had by haveing effective counters to a certain tactic, different team sizes... stuff like that.

Could just throw out the whole timeline idea and just introduce things to make the game better.

Edited by TheArisen, 20 January 2023 - 11:42 AM.

[TheArisen]

An6ryMan69, on 17 January 2023 - 10:11 AM, said:

Generally successful titles are dead simple to understand and jump into, rewarding throughout the lifespan of the player, and have a monetary system that feels fair and offers a satisfying return on investment.

The BattleTech Universe is highly technical, detailed, unforgiving, lore fixated, and generally appeals to a niche of gaming fans.

Those two things do not mix well naturally.

However, I might seriously explore having two gaming modes, Classic (current MWO) and Casual (dead simple overall - i.e. - no heat, no ammo, no groups, increased sensor effectiveness, minimal skills, simplified lock-on weapons usage, simplified ECM, strict separation of players in a simplified Tier system, etc.)

I have to admit, a casual mode could work really well and would be a good place for new players to "learn to swim"