92 replies to this topic

[Dogstar]

Which is that most of the discussion takes place elsewhere (e.g. MWO Comp Discord server), this is compounded when I see people from that server on here treating the forums with disdain. Phrases like 'the brown sea' are used, apparently seriously, and I've recently seem some excessive hyperbole on the closed AC20 thread. It's also difficult to try and keep up with a discussion on multiple areas, and especially on Discord where the chat history disappears so quickly.

Could I ask the Cauldron people to please try to keep those of us who primarily use the MWO forums in touch with developments. I know that there are argumentative people on here who have a poor grasp of game mechanics, that there are some frankly silly ideas that crop up, and that there are some annoyingly stubborn individuals but please don't go down the same route that PGI did years ago of treating the forum as a problem to be dealt with rather than a source of useful feedback or a gauge of how well your ideas are doing. If you stick to it things will get better.

Lastly, please tone down the hyperbole too. It's the only thing that makes it difficult to believe in you.

Edited by Dogstar, 15 April 2021 - 04:35 AM.

[John Bronco]

There's a 28 page discussion right here on the forums.

What are you talking about?

[Dogstar]

John Bronco, on 15 April 2021 - 04:41 AM, said:

There's a 28 page discussion right here on the forums.

You kind of made my point - I haven't seen it because it's hiding away in some corner of the forum. Not everyone scours the forum to find these threads.

[John Bronco]

It's linked from the dev vlog which is currently the second item on the front page and linked in the pop-up in the game.

Nothing is hiding, nor requiring any scouring.

[x Deathstrike x]

Main discussion thread:
https://mwomercs.com...ril-dev-vlog-1/

[justcallme A S H]

Dogstar, on 15 April 2021 - 04:51 AM, said:

You kind of made my point - I haven't seen it because it's hiding away in some corner of the forum. Not everyone scours the forum to find these threads.

It was on the front page of the forum/announcements since the 23rd March. That isn't really a corner.
I just checked and it's still on the front page too. Can't ask for much more than that from PGI. They've been very good with communication so far.


We use the MWO Comp Discord as the go-between so we can keep discussions on topic (mostly) and we can float/gauge ideas quite quickly with a solid section if the community and get feedback in a matter of hours where it can take days on the forums.

That and the forums after often dragged down with as you said yourself - poor grasp and silly ideas.
We generally don't have that issue on discord and anything is quickly clarified. Not hung up with 20+ posts over 3 pages/4 days of the same point being put forward 6 different ways.

I have no doubt PGI will continue to post on the front page/announcements and any forum discussion should be kept there as it has been in all the threads since around Sept 2020.

[Dogstar]

x Deathstrike x, on 15 April 2021 - 04:58 AM, said:

Main discussion thread:
https://mwomercs.com...ril-dev-vlog-1/

justcallme A S H, on 15 April 2021 - 05:16 AM, said:

It was on the front page of the forum/announcements since the 23rd March. That isn't really a corner.
I just checked and it's still on the front page too. Can't ask for much more than that from PGI. They've been very good with communication so far.

We use the MWO Comp Discord as the go-between so we can keep discussions on topic (mostly) and we can float/gauge ideas quite quickly with a solid section if the community and get feedback in a matter of hours where it can take days on the forums.

That and the forums after often dragged down with as you said yourself - poor grasp and silly ideas.
We generally don't have that issue on discord and anything is quickly clarified. Not hung up with 20+ posts over 3 pages/4 days of the same point being put forward 6 different ways.

I have no doubt PGI will continue to post on the front page/announcements and any forum discussion should be kept there as it has been in all the threads since around Sept 2020.

Thank you both, I did find it after a while but couldn't connect that the discussion would be on the announcements thread - I usually just check an announcement post once and then forget about it

Edited by Dogstar, 15 April 2021 - 05:48 AM.

[Brauer]

Some of the guys from the Cauldron have been responding to a LOT of inquiries and feedback on the forum both in that thread and elsewhere.

[x Deathstrike x]

Brauer, on 15 April 2021 - 07:28 AM, said:

Some of the guys from the Cauldron have been responding to a LOT of inquiries and feedback on the forum both in that thread and elsewhere.

Krasnopesky is super diligent in the linked thread with responding to proposals/feedback

[Vlad Ward]

Keep in mind that the MWO Comp discord is open to everyone. Just because someone posts on it doesn't mean that they're part of the Cauldron.

Frankly, folks like Navid, Krasno, and Ash have oodles more patience than I'd expect.

I taught high school very early in my career and let me tell you: When teenagers act like children, at least there's a good reason for it. When grown men in their 40's, 50's, and 60's act like children, you just kinda want to slap them upside the head.

[Gagis]

I see your point but... using the forums is a lot to ask. This platform is just so incredibly bad for communication that it feels cruel to demand people use it. Any etiquette is minimal, environment toxic and forums are technically simply a bad kind of software. I wouldn't feel comfortable expecting people to use them unless they are paid to.

I salute those Cauldron contributors who have dared to venture here the past few months. Your selfless suffering is respected.

[Bobby Bang]

Attacking, insulting or talking-down-to a guy who apparently is concerned about attacks and being talked down to is toooooootally going to put people like him's concerns to rest.

I think the cauldron is great for trying to help the game become better and I think the OP Dogstar is great for trying to keep informed. See? this is why people love me, because I love you all... and because I'm kind of great.

So shake hands and hugs everyone and get back to blowing stuff up.

Edited by Bobby Bang, 15 April 2021 - 11:35 AM.

[LordNothing]

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.

[LordNothing]

Vlad Ward, on 15 April 2021 - 09:10 AM, said:

When grown men in their 40's, 50's, and 60's act like children, you just kinda want to slap them upside the head.

people in their 40s 50s and 60s should be resisting change. these new fangled smart telephones and discord servers and horseless carriages. get off my lawn.

[PocketYoda]

Brauer, on 15 April 2021 - 07:28 AM, said:

Some of the guys from the Cauldron have been responding to a LOT of inquiries and feedback on the forum both in that thread and elsewhere.

A lot of players don't even know who the Cauldron are, so were have no idea who is responding.

[LordNothing]

i think the cauldron has a pr problem. it took me awhile to get over my skepticism (it still remains but testing should still go on as planned). id like to see the reasoning behind the values that they have choses in great detail, how they came to that reasoning and why they went one way as opposed to another as well as the testing methodology they used.

[justcallme A S H]

LordNothing, on 15 April 2021 - 06:00 PM, said:

id like to see the reasoning behind the values that they have choses in great detail.

The DEV Log post contains over 4,500 words explaining the decisions, why are are changing them. In those 4,500 words I am not counting the actual value changes - that is purely the explaination of our decisions.

Do you feel that 4,500+ works, 20+ paragraphs is not enough explaination? If it is not - how much more should there be? At what point does it become 'too much' and people simply stop reading?

LordNothing, on 15 April 2021 - 06:00 PM, said:

testing methodology they used.

We use everything including but not limited to

• Prior in-game values during MWOs peak time (2015-2017).
  
• -- The above includes mobilty values prior to desync which reduced mobilty anywhere from 30-60%
  
• Using quirks prior to the 'de-quirkening' in 2017 when Skill Tree was implemented.
  
• Our knowledge of the game.
  
• Feedback from Forums, Discords, Facebook/Reddit & associated mediums.
  
• Detailed spreadsheet calculations that give values for everything from DPS, recycle time, DPS/ton, Jam downtime % etc etc. The spreadsheets are massive and there is a significant amount of data.
  
• In-game testing. You can create a .PAK file with the XML values and upload it into your game and go into testing grounds to test out the changes to see how the 'feel'. Do they feel fun or do they feel ****? Not everything that is mathematically driven is going to 'feel' fun.
  
• Map improvement ideas.
  
• What else can we help PGI with to speed-up the timeline for the benefit of everyone.

We all comment and work on the spreadsheets / documents relatin to all of those in various capacities and timelines.

We then have a weekly meeting, sometimes 3 times a week, to discuss the proposals in detail as they are an ever evolving beast and often quite fluid. PGI might give us a direction by saying "hey, can you guys tell us what you think about X by the end of the week" and we then scramble and go about our business. Lucky we are committed and span 24hrs across the group so there is always work being done.

The changes are heavily, heavily debated prior to the meetings, one single value might take 48hrs to agree upon (not even joking here). It is also rare for all the members to unanimously agree. We come at the topics from every angle that includes but is not limited to:

• Fun. Unique mechs (ie, quirks).
  
• Balance - Over vs Under performing weapons, quirks, mobilty et al.
  
• New Player Experience.
  
• Casual Player Experience.
  
• Comp Player Experience. (largely taking a back seat right now as Comp will just adapt anyway so we basically ignore it for now especially around balance).
  
• Player retention.
  
• Bringing back players.
  
• What mechs will sell better for PGI (ie: revenue. End of the day PGI is a business and we need to be mindful of that).

As the documents once finalised are made public below: https://www.mwocomp.com/patches.html


PGI, whatever changes they go with, obviously turn them into more palatable formats for the playerbase at large via their announcement posts. All users are openly encouraged to post on the PGI Dev feedback thread in question and/or join the discord to discuss. Anyone can contribue at any time and nothing is being hidden from anyone. It is all open and transparent.

Hopefully that explains the level of detail we are going to that suffices your desire to understand.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 15 April 2021 - 07:07 PM.

[Stonefalcon]

Guys, please open your eyes and actually read the posts before having a whinge. You're gonna give Ash a stroke, the poor bloke.

[Nightbird]

My expectations are that I will have a great time with the updates, along with 5-10% of the population. Most of the remainder won't care either way. And the rest will pop a gasket.

[LordNothing]

Lockheed_, on 15 April 2021 - 07:54 PM, said:

I think the PR problem is mostly due to some people just not liking 'comp players' just messing with the game and so they'd rather don't bother to actually read the posts that explain the decisions or only hear(read) what they want to hear to confirm their beliefs.

*[redacted]

regardless of what causes the problem (and thats definitely part of it), its something that should be dealt with before you have a bunch of seals with targets painted on their foreheads screaming "roll it back". because you know the salt must flow. or you can pull a pgi and dont deal with it until its too late.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 20 April 2021 - 05:45 AM.
quote cleanup