92 replies to this topic

[Dogstar]

justcallme A S H, on 20 April 2021 - 05:05 AM, said:

Sensationalist comments like "lower tiers will be burning" always make me laugh.

They always come with zero justification, proof or evidence.

Hmm I'm lower tier (I assume you mean tiers 4-5 by lower tier) and certainly the first few games in the new patch have been very hectic, lacking in even rudimentary teamplay as everyone goes off on solo hero mode to try out their new builds, and what seems like a massive increase in clan mech presence - feels like a third of all mechs are either RFLIICs or MCIIs

and a lot of stomping action, I feel like the Cauldron should look at increasing TTK next.

Edited by Dogstar, 21 April 2021 - 02:55 AM.

[0111101]

Dogstar, on 21 April 2021 - 02:54 AM, said:

I feel like the Cauldron should look at increasing TTK next.

Mechs are presently too sluggish to effectively use cover or torso twist to protect their components. Mobility changes are coming up next which will have a significant (beneficial) impact on TTK.

[Jade of Sudeten]

i kinda wondering how the cauldron has any right to speak for any of us who dont know or care who they are.

[Sjorpha]

Jade of Sudeten, on 22 November 2021 - 06:15 PM, said:

i kinda wondering how the cauldron has any right to speak for any of us who dont know or care who they are.

You are misunderstanding the situation.

It's not about the Cauldron speaking for you, it's about a group of players putting up a frankly enormous amount of work to analyse and propose balance changes, on top of previous work to organise and otherwise nourish the community, and a company lacking resources, competence and understanding of the balance in their game.

PGI finally recognised, and rightly so, that their balancing guys (first Paul and then Chris) were both at odds with what most people were expecting and lacked the understanding to improve balance. And they needed to do something to turn the game around, the Cauldron was the only initiative of it's kind and so they decided to take them on.

So you see it's not about speaking for someone that doesn't get themselves involved to help, it's not about democracy. No one owes you representation. This is about people building a reputation and putting in the work to get recognition and results.

And it's working, the Cauldrons work is largely appreciated within the community and good for the game. Players are coming back, more and more mechs and weapons are competitive. I respect it and so should you, and when done sulking over the fact that other people are doing voluntary work to turn a dying game around so you can keep playing a while longer, then maybe you could even add something useful to the conversation.

Edited by Sjorpha, 23 November 2021 - 07:10 AM.

[PocketYoda]

LordNothing, on 15 April 2021 - 01:35 PM, said:

i still prefer forums. discord is like pissing in the wind and hoping it sticks to something.

especially with discord getting bought up by ms.

I hate Discord myself i uninstalled it its terrible.

0111101, on 21 April 2021 - 10:49 AM, said:

Mechs are presently too sluggish to effectively use cover or torso twist to protect their components. Mobility changes are coming up next which will have a significant (beneficial) impact on TTK.

And a rescale is needed..

Edited by MechaGnome, 22 November 2021 - 07:43 PM.

[Ravni]

Jade of Sudeten, on 22 November 2021 - 06:15 PM, said:

i kinda wondering how the cauldron has any right to speak for any of us who dont know or care who they are.

Some may question their right to destroy a meta of billions of Nascars, but those who truly understand realize they had no right to let it live.

[LordNothing]

Ravni, on 22 November 2021 - 08:03 PM, said:

Some may question their right to destroy a meta of billions of Nascars, but those who truly understand realize they had no right to let it live.

the re-mapping killed more nascar than the cauldron did. that always was a map design issue.

[LordNothing]

Sjorpha, on 22 November 2021 - 06:53 PM, said:

You are misunderstanding the situation.

It's not about the Cauldron speaking for you, it's about a group of players putting up a frankly enormous amount of work to analyse and propose balance changes, on top of previous work to organise and otherwise nourish the community, and a company lacking resources, competence and understanding of the balance in their game.

PGI finally recognised, and rightly so, that their balancing guys (first Paul and then Chris) were both at odds with what most people were expecting and lacked the understanding to improve balance. And they needed to do something to turn the game around, the Cauldron was the only initiative of it's kind and so they decided to take them on.

So you see it's not about speaking for someone that doesn't get themselves involved to help, it's not about democracy. No one owes you representation. This is about people building a reputation and putting in the work to get recognition and results.

And it's working, the Cauldrons work is largely appreciated within the community and good for the game. Players are coming back, more and more mechs and weapons are competitive. I respect it and so should you, and when done sulking over the fact that other people is doing voluntary work to turn a dying game around so you can keep playing a while longer, then maybe you could even add something useful to the conversation.

out of curiosity is the cauldron membership an open thing?

[Aidan Crenshaw]

LordNothing, on 22 November 2021 - 10:10 PM, said:

the re-mapping killed more nascar than the cauldron did. that always was a map design issue.

Guess what, Francois is working closely with the Cauldron, they give feedback on his designs.

[Thorqemada]

MechaGnome, on 22 November 2021 - 07:42 PM, said:

I hate Discord myself i uninstalled it its terrible.

I have no clue why discord is so popular - its most terrible.


Aside of that the "Cauldron" represents itself and as they are influencers other people follow their trail.

Those who dont like the trail have long left...

Edited by Thorqemada, 23 November 2021 - 01:10 AM.

[Curccu]

Jade of Sudeten, on 22 November 2021 - 06:15 PM, said:

i kinda wondering how the cauldron has any right to speak for any of us who dont know or care who they are.

They speak for themselves not you... talking about "any of us who don't know or care who they are" who are you and why should we care?

Thorqemada, on 23 November 2021 - 01:09 AM, said:

I have no clue why discord is so popular - its most terrible.

Well it's free and works pretty well.
It's pretty much IRC with easy'ish GUI and VOIP combined.

MechaGnome, on 22 November 2021 - 07:42 PM, said:

I hate Discord myself i uninstalled it its terrible.

Why? What part or function of it is worthy of your hate? is teamspeak or ventrilo or something other similar program way better?

[Brom96]

Since the game is on its last leg, they were given the free go of sorts to try to squeeze as much of money they can. They makes changes that suit them, they don't represent player base. See them as an interest group, nothing more.

I see their changes just as a mean to impede my play, so I take as a challenge to maintain tier rating. There is nothing more to this game. As for map, the frequency with which I see them chosen in rotation speak to itself. Less HPG, more Bog and Canyon, Polar is almost noon existent (thank you Lord)... The only issue I had with the changes is #$#%ton of assault snipers and laserboats. It is even more difficult to have good damage done at the end.

[Nesutizale]

Some people told me that the audio quality of Discord is terrible. Frankly I don't hear it beside all the gunfire and stuff happening ingame.

[knight-of-ni]

MechaGnome, on 22 November 2021 - 07:42 PM, said:

And a rescale is needed..

Did someone say rescale?
https://www.dropbox....lanced.pdf?dl=0

[pbiggz]

What purpose was there in reviving this months old and very salty thread from before most of the cauldron changes were even in? Really?

MechaGnome, on 22 November 2021 - 07:42 PM, said:

I hate Discord myself i uninstalled it its terrible.

Old man yells at cloud.

Edited by pbiggz, 23 November 2021 - 06:26 AM.

[Sjorpha]

LordNothing, on 22 November 2021 - 10:18 PM, said:

out of curiosity is the cauldron membership an open thing?

I'm not in the Cauldron, not sure how their recruiting process or formation etc. went. But I think you are asking the wrong question entirely.

My experience of working with other game communities is that getting involved in various community initiatives is gated only by a loosely defined meritocracy. People will invite you or take you seriously to whatever extent you put in work, display commitment and earn respect.

At this point the Cauldron are already working with PGI, and for practical reasons it's not always trivial to join or include more and more people into the team once a project is en route. But I don't know, I'm just a player who recognises that some awesome dudes are seemingly saving my game for me, so I'm just guessing here.

The Question you should ask yourself if you're serious about "joining the Cauldron" is what work have you done to find out how they work? What have you done to get involved? What previous community work have you done to show that getting you involved and up to speed wouldn't be a waste of time? Is your opinion and skills regarding the game widely respected?

You know that most people are talkers and not walkers right? Many people "join" projects like these only to drop off once they realise it requires doing actual unpaid work for hours upon hours every week, and when those people bail thats precious hours down the drain for anyone who trusted them with tasks and responsibility.

Story time:

A personal example is from the Dominions 3 community and a bit similar to the Cauldron. Dominon 3 was a fantastic game, only problem was that the developers were great at design but sucked at balance. Once day a talented modder silently started working to fix balance, he called it "Conceptual balance mod" where the design goal was to balance all the broken stuff in a way that didn't interfere with flavour. This modder used a combination of personal judgement, analysis of finished game archives, competitive play data and player feedback to identify and fine tune his solutions. Now over time this mod was increasingly normalised and became like an unofficial patch of the game. Everyone was using it. At the same time I gained recognition as a strong player, I won a dueling tournament and also wrote a number of strategy guides for my favourite nations. Also made some maps that were decently popular. At some point I found myself being asked increasingly often about balance on IRC and in other forums, and got involved in providing feedback for the development of CBM.

Fast forward to the development of Dominons 4, which was a huge thing for the community as the franchise had seemed abandoned but it turned out it was actually just in limbo due to a very bad contract with Shrapnel Games, and Illwinter was waiting for a way out of that before announcing the next sequel. At this point a number of people were involved with CBM either as co-developers or for testing and feedback, and Illwinter recognized that those were the people in the community they should take on board for testing and giving feedback on balance in Dom4. Most of the worst balance issues from Dom3 was fixed, and many of those fixes were similar to CBM.

At this point Dominions 5 is out, amazing game IMO, which as I understand it no longer requires a mandatory balance mod for competitive play. Some of those people are still involved, most have moved on, but their contributions all starting with that lone humble geek who took it upon himself to fix a broken game lives on to this day. Dominions is a small community just like ours and this is how things get done.

You know what else is similar? People complaining that "the CBM team doesn't speak for me!" , or "why am I not allowed in?" and so forth. Basically people who never did a mod or organised an event or did anything useful for the community at all thinking that it's somehow about them being represented, spoken for or being included or excluded from anything. They have this idea of being kept out or not listened to or whatever, but no one is keeping those people from getting involved, there is no conspiracy. They just didn't have what it takes or didn't want it enough, but since that's a hard pill to swallow they have to imagine it's about someone else oppressing them.

Edited by Sjorpha, 23 November 2021 - 08:17 AM.

[LordNothing]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 22 November 2021 - 10:44 PM, said:

Guess what, Francois is working closely with the Cauldron, they give feedback on his designs.

well thats good to know. so far i like what he has been doing. i really look forward to that hellbore map.

[YueFei]

Curccu, on 23 November 2021 - 02:55 AM, said:

Why? What part or function of it is worthy of your hate? is teamspeak or ventrilo or something other similar program way better?

Whilst I have also switched to Discord because it is indeed very convenient, Teamspeak does offer features that Discord doesn't. It's just that those features are largely only useful for other games like MMOs where you might have a battle involving hundreds of players in the same battlespace, and it's pretty useless for MWO where you're only talking to 12 other players at the most.

[LordNothing]

Sjorpha, on 23 November 2021 - 08:07 AM, said:

I'm not in the Cauldron, not sure how their recruiting process or formation etc. went. But I think you are asking the wrong question entirely.

My experience of working with other game communities is that getting involved in various community initiatives is gated only by a loosely defined meritocracy. People will invite you or take you seriously to whatever extent you put in work, display commitment and earn respect.

At this point the Cauldron are already working with PGI, and for practical reasons it's not always trivial to join or include more and more people into the team once a project is en route. But I don't know, I'm just a player who recognises that some awesome dudes are seemingly saving my game for me, so I'm just guessing here.

The Question you should ask yourself if you're serious about "joining the Cauldron" is what work have you done to find out how they work? What have you done to get involved? What previous community work have you done to show that getting you involved and up to speed wouldn't be a waste of time? Is your opinion and skills regarding the game widely respected?

You know that most people are talkers and not walkers right? Many people "join" projects like these only to drop off once they realise it requires doing actual unpaid work for hours upon hours every week, and when those people bail thats precious hours down the drain for anyone who trusted them with tasks and responsibility.

i just sort of assumed you were part of the cauldron based on your post. i think im only sure about who 3 or 4 of them are. they need badges or some kind of meet the cauldron video or something.

anyway the reason i ask is because a lot of people make these anti-cauldron remarks, and i did for awhile myself until i saw what they were able to pull off and am now generally pleased with the arrangement. anyway if someone went to the cauldron with a strong position about something and the data to back it up, proof of work and all. i don't think they would flat out ignore that person. however someone with a list of accusations or demands with no evidence that any of them would be a good idea will probibly not get more than a passing glance. i for one do not want to join, i recognize the work involved (from my past modding projects) and frankly i don't have the time for it. it was just a hypothetical.

[justcallme A S H]

There are about 15-20 in Cauldron and it rotates based on interest/subjects at the time etc.


Most of the anti-cauldron people are, by and large, from 3 camps.

1. Unable to see the bigger picture of overall game balance and it shows with their posts - a clear lack of basic understanding of the game.

They are Clan/IS apologists or they want grossly unbalanced scenarios back. EG: Streaks instantly-deleting light mechs in a single volley.

2. There are also some that just have obvious bias against Comp/High Skill or specific individuals and you can see it ooze out in their posts.

3. People have some grand idea about MWO, Lore, Tabletop et al. They are annoyed MWO isn't like this and just don't understand MWO is a FPS not a dice roll.


There are a select few that have a different view of balance and present arguments to suppose their case. Cauldron definitely take all things into consideration if they are presented in a clear manner that Cauldron can then take away and debate/investigate etc.

By and large across all mediums there has been an extremely high level of praise and support for Cauldron changes/work and that was reflected also in player numbers, that says it all really.