63 replies to this topic

[TheCaptainJZ]

Daeron,
I feel you need additional help to guide the conversations within each thread. It's unrealistic to expect one person to be able to facilitate all the discussion and because of the sheer volume of it all, I think you need help. We have plenty of voices and ideas and thoughts, but what we don't have is a specific directive or focus in any thread. We need to establish specific goals so the conversations can be focused and productive. PGI is the authority figure here so we need them/you to start laying out goals for each area so discussion can revolve around that.

[Gold13]

Daeron Katz, on 16 November 2020 - 11:37 PM, said:

PGI works months in advance, and some times a simple flick of a switch is more than it appears. But in terms of cadet starting tier, as I said I'm working on it.

Daeron, I think it would be appreciated if we could get a bit more info on exactly what goes into that kind of change. People get the impression that this kind of change is just "flicking a switch", (and that term has been specifically mentioned for certain features in some recent podcasts). But the implication is if it's so easy, it should be able to be done tomorrow. Without any official word on why it hasn't happened yet, I'm left to wonder which of the following is at play:

• Does PGI not feel confident that there is a community consensus around this issue?
  
• Is PGI trying to determine what unintended side effects may result from this change?
  
• Is there an internal review process this item needs to go through which is holding it up (management approval, quality assurance, etc)?
  
• Is there a pipeline of projects that this issue has been added to, and it just hasn't been gotten to yet due to other priorities (e.g. MW5 DLC/steam launch)?
  
• Does PGI want to wait until there are several updates that can all be released together, rather than just releasing this one change?
  
• Has this turned out to be a more complex change than previously thought, such that the term "flick of a switch" is no longer accurate?
  
• Does "flick of a switch" just mean something different to PGI than what most people think? (i.e. a normal project takes 6-8 months, so something that can be done in 6 weeks is considered a "flick of a switch")

I work with a software team on a daily basis which has to contend with all of the above issues. They're just part of the development process. But without clarity here, it's easy for people to just think "PGI is lazy and don't actually care about this because they can't make one simple change".

I also will just say I share the concern which has been mentioned before, that it would be very unfortunate if this particular change was not in place by the time MW5 launches on steam.

[Galahad2030]

to elaborate on Gold13's point. MW5 Steam is a golden opportunity to introduce players to MWO - if they find the game too harsh or unforgiving or unfriendly, the cross sell opportunity dies.

[Stonefalcon]

Lurm is right Daeron, with the steam release of MW5 comes potential publicity of MWO to a wider audience, they are gonna need a reason to stick around. If new players are being thrown into the T1 gauntlet or even worse FW, they will have no reason to stick around cause the game will just be not fun for them.

The first couple hours are where you will sell the product to a new customer or not.

[Gagis]

Galahad2030, on 17 November 2020 - 12:51 PM, said:

A town hall two or three weeks from now is an unnecessary delay to polling the data.

Please consider putting up voting polls on features suggestions and mechanics that are hotly debated in the Command Chair forums.

Starting the discussion of what the exact details are in three weeks will kill a lot of enthusiasm that current players are demonstrating for the upcoming updates.

Voting polls are a great way to get a pulse on the community on hot topics like price points (what we are willing to pay), new mech variants (once you've finalized the shortlists), and prioritization (unanimously we want Cadets to default to tier 4.5 for example).

There is a problem here. The majority of the playerbase has learned how bad these forums are and never come here. Any polls on the forums would be massively skewed towards forum warriors. And forums warriors are consistently wrong and harmful to the game.

Would need an in-game polling solution.

[Gold13]

Gagis, on 17 November 2020 - 04:27 PM, said:

There is a problem here. The majority of the playerbase has learned how bad these forums are and never come here. Any polls on the forums would be massively skewed towards forum warriors. And forums warriors are consistently wrong and harmful to the game.

Would need an in-game polling solution.

Agreed, but I think you can get most of the way there using the News popup that is there on login already. Just have an article with a thumbnail that says WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK that links to a post with some polls. Mainly the advantage here would be to see what items there is consensus on. More complicated items will need some discussion (weapon balance, group/solo queue sizes, etc), but some things are pretty cut and dry.

[Akillius]

XX Sulla XX, on 17 November 2020 - 12:40 AM, said:

I think the main thing is that most people are past the wait and trust they used to have So people are more along the lines of prove it to me in their thinking. With maybe just a tiny bit of hope left.

This is what I've been trying to say when I've mentioned loss of customer confidence in previous posts, well writ Sulla.

Gagis, on 17 November 2020 - 04:27 PM, said:

There is a problem here. The majority of the playerbase has learned how bad these forums are and never come here. Any polls on the forums would be massively skewed towards forum warriors. And forums warriors are consistently wrong and harmful to the game.

Would need an in-game polling solution.

I've been saying this as well, poll those who log in and play. Most players have jobs, kids, whatever going on and when they think MWO they think how much time do I have to play 40 minutes an hour or two? They do not think of looking at some boring forums. And its easy for inactive players to rant on forums, even easier for just 1 aging agenda holder to holler in a topic with dozens of posts trolling. Much harder to skew results if you must play say a dozen games in the last 30 days to vote in-game... could also be good way for getting more people playing??

[DAEDALOS513]

InnerSphereNews, on 16 November 2020 - 06:48 PM, said:

We're looking to have a townhall-style livecast sometime in early December, where you will be able to address PGI directly with your questions and concerns regarding the final direction of this initiative. Stand by for more details on that, and more information on this entire process, as we continue further down this path towards MechWarrior Online in 2021 and beyond.

I thought that's what we've been doing for the last month and a half.. when we give suggestions to you it IS like we're talking directly to PGI.. YOU are PGI Daeron. Now another 3 or 4 week wait just to do more of the same? You're gonna lose any steam that's been built up if this drags on too long.. At least implement the easy changes that are no-brainers like adjusting lances according to speed.. adjusting spawn points.. adding KMD and Damage Taken on main score screen.. etc. The sooner you show us progress.. the sooner we'll open our wallets.. the sooner this thing can start snowballin..

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 17 November 2020 - 05:03 PM.

[Voice of Kerensky]

Daeron, thanks for keeping us updated on a regular basis.
I still wish you the best of luck. So far, I have hope (albeit weak) for a brighter future for MWO.
Unfortunately, I cannot actively participate in the discussion of the proposed innovations in the game due to the language barrier.
Therefore, I hope that, among other issues, an issue that I have raised repeatedly will be considered: the problem of imbalancing the selection of teams due to the combined solo and group queue in quick play.
I also forgot to say/ask all the time. Why does the in-game browser keep asking for authorization on the MWO forum? Is it possible to make sure that the authorization on the forum in the in-game browser occurs automatically? After all, I enter the game by entering my login and password.
Sometimes, during one game session, you have to log in several times in the in-game browser to see your progress in completing current events.

Edited by Voice of Kerensky, 17 November 2020 - 05:42 PM.

[Voice of Kerensky]

Gold13
Akillius
In general, I agree with you. However, I would like to note that there are a lot of Russian-speaking people in the game who do not speak English. I think I see about 30-40% of Russian speaking players on both teams during my playing time. There are really quite a lot of us in this game.
Therefore, if a survey is conducted within the game (for example, immediately after authorization), I would like to see the shortest and simplest formulations. I am afraid that people who do not speak English at best will simply ignore such a survey, and at worst, without paying attention, they will randomly give answers and thus distort the objective picture.

[Oldbob10025]

LordNothing, on 16 November 2020 - 07:19 PM, said:

here we go again.

sorry i expected another 2 hour podcast.

And you shall have it on Thursday Morning.. YOU ASKED FOR IT!!!

[NAMEUNKOWN]

i dont see any section on faction play thats where the most work is needed

[Zarrahtass]

I am quite disappointed by the communication and "progress" so far. Right now, there is no indication that the initiative will be of any success. It looks like you spend 3 h each week until now. Posting the starter an reacting to the first comments. The community is giving you so much feedback. Many of it should be things you know. But you are not acting on them.
What is going on with pgi? I was under the impression that you are a professional game developer and are carrying the torch of MECHWARRIOR, which is an incredible asset.
But in general, 3 motivated ppl in a garage could do better.

Serously, please wake up and use the chance!

[MonkehMaster]

honestly, i dont want to go through a bunch of separate threads to give input when it can be laid out all at once, not to mention much of what i mentioned doesnt have a relevant thread for it to be added.

btw, this is my first time commenting here, i usually only comment in the steam forum that goes ignored for some odd reason, i havent once seen a dev (or a mod for that matter), comment in it the whole time i have been in that forum, let alone any feedback/suggestion be acknowledged, think the steam forum needs more attention.

mind any double letters (double type) as my keyboard is acting up even though i cleaned it thoroughly, as well as any spelling errors i missed (dont see any type of spell checking on this forum?).
----------------------------

but here is what i think should be looked at first.

1) separate group and quick play, it horriblly unbalances the gameplay, i play/played 99% in quickplay only.

2) the game needs some serious advertisment, i used to stream the game myself and/or play matches with other mwo streamers, it brought a portion of the community together for fun, as well as gave the game some free advertising, but with low game polulation, little interest and zero advertising, we couldnt really bring in the numbers or interest, mostly due to not enough new people wanting to play, or because the game isnt well known, you need to advertise mwo in your mw5 game, maybe give some coupons for discounts on mech/ect.. and/or premium time through twitch drops, more sales to get more people buying stuff on the mwo store, in the past us mwo streamers were left to spend our own money to do giveaways for mechs/premium time, ect.., to not only bring in mwo players to help our viewer numbers, but trying to bring in more players to the game, so the game grew... but with little to no advertisment of the game it didnt help very much or at all.

3) tier (player experience) should have never been changed, i worked for and ran solo for 1680.1 hours through 2-3 years to get to tier 1, only to find myself dropped to tier 3 for no reason and with the changes they did with group mashed into quick play and the whole nascar thing, it ruining my enjoyment of the game, i now find it annoying to be bothered to "regrind" back up to tier 1 as it took a very long time to get there in the first place.

4) maps need a redesign that will get rid of nascar gameplay (this is mainly the only thing that puts me off the game), it has actually has ruined my enjoyment of the game (this "was" my favorite game).

5) not sure what causes the fps drops and stutters (might be shadows?), but something needs to be done about it, maybe extra settings for w/e it is, so we can lower it? (i run a very high end machine and shouldnt see those kind of performance issues), one example would be solaris city, that map is known for and causes horrible fps drops/stutters, not including its way to compact, causing pathing issues and people either running into or through eachother, or shooting eachother.

-being dropped from the dropship causes fps drops and stutter as well.

- then you have (off topic on the fps issues) other maps with cliffs causing players to run around looking for ways up while their teams already fighting (which is because there isnt enough ramps or quite a few mechs cant even use jumpjets), or some maps being way to open without much or any cover at all, leading to people being melted by missles (which isnt fun at all when it happens match after match).

6) game optimization, maybe even a game engine upgrade or something, add UI scaling for resolutions past 1080p, if you play in 4k the text becomes unreadable.

7) the changes they made to heat management are kind of harsh, way to much overheating or just plain being to hot to begin with, which makes the games a little less fun to play and you end up either running around/hiding or w/e till your heat comes down, not including that jumpjets cause way to much heat or dont allow heat to go down while in-use, not sure why they went down that road to begin with.

8) night time in my opinion sucks, cant see any mechs and the nightvision doesnt do much in the way of helping that issue, nor does heat vision mode (w/e its called).

9) rework on the less played modes, as it stands (in my opinon) skirmish (most fun), domination (is fun), conquest (is ok but not great), assault (is fun) are the only modes i find to be fun at all, mainly skirmish as the simple mech team vs mech team to me is more entertaining and fun, the rest not listed have serious flaws, bad mechanics, some dont work well with the current maps, ect.. ect..

10) more new maps, there currently isnt a good amount of maps.

11) somehow need to change the way maps are selected, some maps i dont like playing at all and some get choosen way to much, same goes for modes, some i dont like at all and some get chosen way to much, in general both maps and modes tend to get picked over and over continuously, leading to said maps/modes getting stale and ruining the fun.

12) more new mechs, more new clan omni mechs, those are (in my opinion) the best and most versatile mechs in the game, giving you many different weapon load outs and allowing you better customization, personally i only buy and use clan omnimechs.

13) more new weapons, im not well versed on the whole battletech scene/lore or w/e, but we could use some more weapon choices as the current ones are becoming stale.

14) possibly allow changing of your weapon loadout and mech color after maps have been chosen, nothing is worse when you pick a mech and find it isnt going to be fun to use on a certain map that gets chosen, because you either stick out like a sore thumb or your weapon load out wont work on said map.

thats all i can think of atm... may add more later.

Edited by MonkehMaster, 18 November 2020 - 04:40 AM.

[Ekson Valdez]

NAMEUNKOWN, on 17 November 2020 - 10:49 PM, said:

i dont see any section on faction play thats where the most work is needed

MODES

[LordNothing]

Ekson Valdez, on 18 November 2020 - 04:25 AM, said:

MODES

honestly these damn categories are a mess. people are cross posting and they are pretty vague. like i got moderated for asking for blueshield in the features thread, was told i should have put it in mechs instead. im really confused now.

[Ekson Valdez]

Every topic states in its OP what points should be discussed in there.
For a general overview, see Daeron's 2nd Monday Post

[AnAnachronismAlive]

LordNothing, on 18 November 2020 - 05:02 AM, said:

honestly these damn categories are a mess. people are cross posting and they are pretty vague. like i got moderated for asking for blueshield in the features thread, was told i should have put it in mechs instead. im really confused now.

We gotta understand these threads as general categories. While creating an even more detailed forum-structure for discussion might have been helpful, it is still better than the clutter-threads we had before. Furthermore some folks are havin' issues or simply ignore marking their contributions with thematic tags / limiting their contribution to certain points that would allow for easier (re)placement into the designated thread.

The initial postings of Daeron could or should have announced some of these general contribution basics to limit confusion. It still is kinda messy, but be that as it may: the voluntary moderators are trying their best to keep/move the posts into the right place. Mistakes can happen, don't be disappointed if some of your content gets moved into another thread (mistakenly), but help em by keepin your post "on point" as much as possible.

Still would love to see 2nd and 3rd post of these threads being blocked for concluding updates. Any forum specialist around able to adress that?

Edited by AnAnachronismAlive, 18 November 2020 - 05:37 AM.

[Z Paradox]

Ekson Valdez, on 18 November 2020 - 05:24 AM, said:

Every topic states in its OP what points should be discussed in there.
For a general overview, see Daeron's 2nd Monday Post

Ok, since my english sucks and I didnt post in right place you just delite post? ok I wont give any sugestions in future, ty bro

[blackbullitt]

well another week of leaving it uninstalled.... while you play games..ok i am starting to think you are as dumb as you act.