31 replies to this topic

[Sean Lang]

[Glaive-]

Thanks for the podcast!

Really sad to hear Francois left the dev team. He will certainly be missed.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Glaive-, on 12 August 2022 - 09:39 AM, said:

Really sad to hear Francois left the dev team. He will certainly be missed.

Yeah, that's too bad. He had some misses, but Emerald, Vitric, and the re-re-worked Caustic are excellent maps.

[Davegt27]

thanks PGI dev team and how your able to keep the plates up

[w0qj]

Looking foward to details for the 2022 Annual (Loyalty) Rewards, especially the reward mechs!

There's a (high) chance that I may already qualify for these!

Edited by w0qj, 12 August 2022 - 11:52 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Glaive-, on 12 August 2022 - 09:39 AM, said:

Thanks for the podcast!

Really sad to hear Francois left the dev team. He will certainly be missed.

Oh no. Mark did too so that leaves no devs for art, mechs, or maps by my count, unless they pull someone from another project. Back to maintenance mode we go.

[1453 R]

Have not had a chance to watch/digest because it's ninety-plus minutes of talking heads, but I will admit to being dismayed at the loss of Francois. With both him and Mark gone, it does rather seem like the wind is thoroughly out of the MWO Resurgence sales and we're back to largely maintenance mode with the occasional sale. Though I mean, hey - at least we got a desperately needed slew of balance changes over the last chunk of months from the Cauldron, some very nice new maps (I find myself quite the fan of Emerald Vale), and the game gets to leave off on the Crusader instead of the gorram Dervish. Little sad the Clans never got their Last 'Mech, but we definitely got the better end of the booster packs so I suppose it's not as bad.

Anyone have any other highlights? Even at 2x playback speed, dunno if I have time to listen to this in its entirety.

[Xeno Phalcon]

Lockheed_, on 12 August 2022 - 02:53 PM, said:

• They are hiring -> hand in a resume if you qualify

LOL.

Quote

• They think about removing incursion completely

Booo I dont actually mind incursion, conquest is obnoxious though.

Quote

• Don't hold your breath on MWO 2.0 <- quote Daeron

Saw that coming, they will milk MWO for as long as they can comfortably maintain the license then the IP will slip back into obscurity for another decade unless microsoft swings back around for another swing at it properly instead of just holding the lease/leash - which is possible they seem hell bent on grabbing as much as they can.

[Tarl Cabot]

Lockheed_, on 12 August 2022 - 02:53 PM, said:

• Mark left -> no new mechs until they hire a replacement
• François left -> no new maps until they hire a replacement
• They are hiring -> hand in a resume if you qualify
• Stone Rhino is one of the top contenders for the next mech when they get new people and resources
• François last map will be an overhauled terra therma classic
• Crusader Pack sold really well, one of the best selling packs
• They think about removing incursion completely
• Daeron is running event queue and monitoring how it's going when it's up

• Phil wants to reduce group size to 3, PGI thankfully not convinced

• They are still looking into MM, nothing concrete on the table, might be pushed to Q4
• Don't hold your breath on MWO 2.0 <- quote Daeron
• Thinking of adding a new game mode(s) to QP
snip

Sad day on group size. Though I would prefer if they restrict said groups to 1 mech/weight class and see how that rolls. But code-wise, it might have been easier to drop the group size from 4 to 3...

As for Incursion, beef up everything and add more turrets. This is what Assault should have been.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 12 August 2022 - 05:03 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Lockheed_, on 12 August 2022 - 02:53 PM, said:

• Don't hold your breath on MWO 2.0 <- quote Daeron

So basically that's the nail in the coffin for Mechwarrior until they lose the license for it. Though I do wonder if multiple people can license it similar to how W40K is.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 12 August 2022 - 08:26 PM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Lockheed_, on 12 August 2022 - 05:13 PM, said:

Well for more than a year they have been saying that MWO 2.0, even based on MW5, is not going to happen. It's been pretty much a known fact despite some folks still keep talking about it like this is gonna be the next big reveal.

True, but they're part of EG7 now. If the company wanted to, they could fund a 2.0. They know they'd need to do more than just port the game into the engine, they'd need to add features and game modes and content, but its something a larger wallet can undertake.

I realize they're not going to. They bought PGI to do other stuff with them. But I'll be here until the lights go out and someone else gets the license.

[BellatorMonk]

They should scrap the Pilot Rating System, make it based on Avg Match Score if not already. Reduce the match score earned for damage done and reward all the other game play mechanics higher in order to encourage team work instead of greed for damage and min maxxing.

They need to assure the playerbase that cheating is under control and make some examples of people publicly like they back in the old days.

Absolutely remove 4 mans groups from QPlay. 4 mans running cheese builds coring people in the back within 30 secs of the match start is simply stupid. If the devs can't acknowledge that then they are not actually playing their own game.

Add more events for sure as QP is simply boring after about 12 drops of nascaring chads in a row gets old real fast.

Edited by BellatorMonk, 13 August 2022 - 10:39 AM.

[Heavy Money]

BellatorMonk, on 12 August 2022 - 11:11 PM, said:

They should scrap the Pilot Rating System, make it based on Avg Match Score if not already. Reduce the match score earned for damage done and reward all the other game play mechanics higher in order to encourage team work instead of greed for damage and min maxxing.

Reducing the impact of damage and upping other stuff would just cause lower performing players to more easily get lumped in with higher achieving players. There's lots of ways the MM could be better, but this is not a good idea.

[mytilus edulis]

If PGI is losing people like Mark and Francois they really need to work on whatever was causing that. A lack of staff retention combined with a lack of player retention is indicative of a company (management) cultural issue.

I was happy to splash out a lot of money in the last year because I thought PGI had turned a corner, but I guess management was playing the staff all along.

[ScrapIron Prime]

mytilus edulis, on 13 August 2022 - 03:00 AM, said:

If PGI is losing people like Mark and Francois they really need to work on whatever was causing that. A lack of staff retention combined with a lack of player retention is indicative of a company (management) cultural issue.

Not necessarily. Mark and Francois could have left for any number of different reasons. But good management WILL ask themselves that question to stay out in front of an issue. Particularly when Francois was here for a rather short time.

Anyway, if you look at PGI’s careers section, they’re doing more than replacing the two of them, ,so they’re gearing up for something. Probably not MWO, but something.

[BellatorMonk]

Heavy Money, on 12 August 2022 - 11:19 PM, said:

Reducing the impact of damage and upping other stuff would just cause lower performing players to more easily get lumped in with higher achieving players. There's lots of ways the MM could be better, but this is not a good idea.

The "higher achieving" players are "higher" because they are farming damage while ignoring the rest of the game play....obviously the current system is broken..

[Dogstar]

ScrapIron Prime, on 13 August 2022 - 06:18 AM, said:

Not necessarily. Mark and Francois could have left for any number of different reasons. But good management WILL ask themselves that question to stay out in front of an issue. Particularly when Francois was here for a rather short time.

Don't forget that it's both a seller's market and thatthere's a LOT of mobility in the developer employment at the moment, and a LOT of tech companies reassessing staffing and productivity, so no I'm not surprised that people have jumped ship this year, it's a very popular activity and almost the only way to get a pay rise or better conditions.

[Heavy Money]

BellatorMonk, on 13 August 2022 - 09:00 AM, said:

The "higher achieving" players are "higher" because they are farming damage while ignoring the rest of the game play....obviously the current system is broken..

If you take people who have avg 300 matchscore because they do a lot of damage and kills, and you put them against people who have avg 300 matchscore because they collect proximity, scouting, etc that don't relate to actually killing the enemy, you're going to have a really bad time.

The primary purpose of the matchmaker is to keep the top 10% of the playerbase in terms of actually killing mechs separate from the bottom 70-80%. The current system is trying to do this, it just isn't great at it. Artificially inflating the scores of currently lower ranked people for no reason undermines this goal. Almost all complaints about MM, groups in QP, etc are complaints about top % players ending up in lower ranked games.

[w0qj]

Guys, I'm always on the looking out for returning MWO players, talk with them, coach them if they wish, generally get them up to speed in this era of Cauldron MWO

Literally just today, I've witnessed:
~1 returning player who had recently purchased the Crusader Pack
~1 returning player who had purchased a fair number of New Player Packs

Things are looking up from what I personally see on the ground level

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

BellatorMonk, on 13 August 2022 - 09:00 AM, said:

The "higher achieving" players are "higher" because they are farming damage while ignoring the rest of the game play....obviously the current system is broken..

if you believe that, do some 1v1s in a private lobby against good players.
"some" as in 20.
prediction: you'll lose those 20.
most people up there don't pad their ms, they're just good (some through talent, a lot through training&practice).


nobody really "higher up" is farming matchscore. if anything, the lower tiers are via all those "useful" things that they do.
("I've been narcing the whole match, I should get sth out of that.." "I was spotting for you guys in my 1ML2MG-stock-locust" "lurmboat here, get me some locks" etc).
consequently, they get placed "too high" and our beloved matchmaker puts them against what it deems to be "similar qualified" people (only in many cases they've earned their MS) -> there's one of the many reasons for the next stomp.

if anything, matchscore should go even more to dmg, kills and kmdd, just to discourage behavior that in the end HURTS your side more, where a kill or 2 would benefit everybody.