51 replies to this topic

[ScrapIron Prime]

Basically he says "niche" a lot. Which seems to be an excuse. They don't advertise at all, which is not what you do when you want to attract players.

All games are niche, right up until they're not.

[sycocys]

crazytimes, on 10 January 2023 - 11:07 PM, said:

The maps and modes are not all suited to 8 by 8 with no matchmaker of any sort other than "3 tier spread" balancing mechs. At least 12 increases the chances of at least one faster mech not piloted by a potato on large map conquests.


Absolutely any kind of variability in match conditions would be nice. The one thing they had- time of day change- was removed. Apparently start positions are nearly impossible to change even as fixed spots- match by match variability is never on the cards.

Most of the maps would be far better with 6v6 or 4v4. There's only 1 or 2 that would be more ideal for 8v8 and 12v12 really none with weapon ranges as they are and the more arcade mobility this game steered towards and that's just barely.

Have no idea why start positions would be hard to change, even if its coded into the map in some way it's just a location to target.

[Meep Meep]

ScrapIron Prime, on 11 January 2023 - 06:49 AM, said:

Basically he says "niche" a lot. Which seems to be an excuse. They don't advertise at all, which is not what you do when you want to attract players.

All games are niche, right up until they're not.

Yeah but advertising is expensive and there is no guarantee of a return on investment. The days of its peak popularity with a 100% revenue stream were the days to broaden the games reach. But they dumped all the money into a freaking 1v1 mode NO ONE WANTED and basically nearly bankrupted themselves. Mistakes were made and I'm sure they are well aware of it.

[Spheroid]

Lame, it was more like a wake than an interview.

Also Russ still hates PvP as a concept more than two decades into the 21st century.

[sycocys]

Meep Meep, on 11 January 2023 - 03:35 PM, said:

Yeah but advertising is expensive and there is no guarantee of a return on investment. The days of its peak popularity with a 100% revenue stream were the days to broaden the games reach. But they dumped all the money into a freaking 1v1 mode NO ONE WANTED and basically nearly bankrupted themselves. Mistakes were made and I'm sure they are well aware of it.

Advertising doesn't have to be expensive, but you can't only interact with one podcast and run sales you only announce through email and your own websites - and its probably about the worst idea to send Russ out promoting publicly. He's just not an overly likable personality, I would say better than years past if only more boring.

You search 'robot games' on google and Duck Hunting 3d shows up in the top 50, but neither of the the currently live MechWarrior games. Don't even have to spend a lot of money, but if you can't even find it without knowing it exists and searching directly for the term "mech" that's a massive marketing fail.

[Khalcruth]

Does anyone believe a word that guy says anymore?

[ScrapIron Prime]

Khalcruth, on 11 January 2023 - 08:40 PM, said:

Does anyone believe a word that guy says anymore?

Believe? Yes.
Disagree with? Certainly!

I love this game, and I like PGI for keeping it going these past 10+ years. But I can still be critical of them, and like many players, I want more.

sycocys, on 11 January 2023 - 07:03 PM, said:

Advertising doesn't have to be expensive, but you can't only interact with one podcast and run sales you only announce through email and your own websites - and its probably about the worst idea to send Russ out promoting publicly. He's just not an overly likable personality, I would say better than years past if only more boring.

You search 'robot games' on google and Duck Hunting 3d shows up in the top 50, but neither of the the currently live MechWarrior games. Don't even have to spend a lot of money, but if you can't even find it without knowing it exists and searching directly for the term "mech" that's a massive marketing fail.

‘This. To advertise on a budget you have to be savvy about it. How about just advertising on Steam? That would be effective and not too expensive.

[sycocys]

Khalcruth, on 11 January 2023 - 08:40 PM, said:

Does anyone believe a word that guy says anymore?

I would tend to believe he is correct about the numbers, its clear they slashed the development on this game but I would argue that it was done much earlier on that he would suggest.

Would agree with him that it's pretty amazing that a game with little to no actual development other than store assets and a few maps since beta has lasted 10 years, disagree with the notion that it would stay at or have its current low population if it was a game that had had actual development support/investment.

Personally I don't believe the NPE is nearly as bad as some people carry on about, I would suggest that retention has far more to do with the fact that this is an arena shooter with essentially 1 play mode and has been since the start. You are only going to attract and keep a small, very small player base of even fans of the franchise if you never develop some variation in the game they are playing.

As far as NPE and being complicated goes - most MMOs have players managing equipment/synergies with half a dozen or more stats per, upwards of 10 active skills or more with different damage types (aoe, dot, direct, cc and so on) and different cds and levels of agro while managing hp and energy, plus inventory management and replacement costs of consumables.

Realistically the hardest thing thing comparatively this game has going for it is tank walking and setting up weapon groups. And most people coming in that are "new" have likely played games like WoTs or something similar. And tank walking could be completely mitigated by locking the torso by default for new players.

The bigger problem is they don't have any way to be engaged with the game as they learn it. It's the same mode every time, and if you happen to not be good at death match skirmish right from the onset you simply aren't going to ever like the game because you have no other options for contributing to a match while you learn the systems or find mechs/weapons that suit you.

[LordNothing]

all serious development to the core game stopped when their lead developer left. since then its been nothing but paid mods and front end work. they were always able to cobble together something from the scraps but because that always came with massive workarounds and gross inefficiencies. its sort of like what modders can do with an old game that hasn't seen an update in years and has no source code or built in scripting engine to work with. some have even resorted to disassembly and asm level development, which i dont think pgi could afford.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 January 2023 - 07:57 AM.

[s0da72]

Khalcruth, on 11 January 2023 - 08:40 PM, said:

Does anyone believe a word that guy says anymore?

If the words of 'minimum viable product' are mentioned in a sentence I'm sure you can take it to the bank that its true.

[s0da72]

Quote

There is another MechWarrior game in the works. But it’s standalone, similar to MW5. Should be formally announced in 2023--could be in the fall.

As others have already mentioned this is probably the 'Clans' version they were talking about a year or two ago where they removed the youtube video on it after getting some negative feedback(or maybe it was a podcast I can't remember).

If this new 'standlone' version turns out to be a copy paste of MW5 with an updated MW6 logo along with a copy paste of MWO clan assets. I can't say that I would be all that excited to shell out $70.00. Given how bad the single player campaign was in MW5, I wouldn't hold any hope of MW6 being any better. So what will we be getting for this $70.00 release? I guess we will find out this Fall.

I was hoping they would continue improving the game play for MW5 and build back some trust with the community before starting a new standalone version. The upcoming MW5 DLC looks interesting.

[Meep Meep]

This is the only game like it that I know of. Can't think of a single big mech game with the depth of customization you get here or really any big mech games. So yeah the 'niche' comment is pretty spot on because the main reason most of the people I got to play the game left was the mech lab. They just wanted to hop into something and fight and didn't want to deal with weapon groups and heat and ammo management etc. Plus most are used to health pools and not getting one shot because they used an xl engine and someone cored out a rear side torso on a grazing shot.

[Meep Meep]

By Any Other Name, on 12 January 2023 - 03:47 PM, said:

Literally copy-paste a build off Grimmechs. Mechlab is not rocket science, even without that assist. Of all the things I have had to learn in MWO, Mechlab was one of the easier ones once I understood some basics. I do more in depth customization in scads of other games.

To you and me the mech lab is self explanatory. To others? A cryptic puzzle that is hard to solve. I don't want it changed just stating why this game doesn't cater to a broader audience. Trial mechs help with that but they are often unoptimal in the current meta especially with an inexperience player.

[Thorqemada]

About the population imo PGI managed to cut of a big part itself by several decisions that had good intent but turned out extremely hardcore instead of inspiring like the skilltree of old (the reformatted one is way easier to understand yet still not inspiring - a good Skilltree must give you a power projection fantasy that you want explore).

Or the infamous (was it 2017?) 2017 rebalance that drove away droves of players...

MWO has a resilient fanbase and that fanbase has to be driven away to leave the game by two (three) things:
Gameplay hostile balance/design
Long standing non development
Real Live issues

Two of them can be solved as they are in control of the devs (that often tend to favour a certain playstyle that may not be favoured by the majority of their players as one is the inside out perspective and the other is the outside in perspective and the question what is fun, what is exciting, what is satisfactory and the narrowing down definition of that to a single small road instead of a broad alley network!).

A good game will sell and grow - MWO has good base combat and the Mechtinkering which is something that should be earned ingame instead of given out free (as that is a way not also to keep players have a goal to play for but also allows the game to ease in the new players with simpler mechs and simpler options so they can grow organically with the expanding options).

Imo there is absolutely a quite big niche for a game like this if done right and with a working growth concept instead of milking the niche dry.

Armored Core will come out quite soon and probably have good sales - lets see how hat goes and at some point it may open up paths that seem closed/undiscovered right now.

Edited by Thorqemada, 12 January 2023 - 04:50 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Yeah if big robot pewpew games make enough of a comeback in general then we will see at least a bit of bleed over from people looking for new experiences. This is why I wish they would do a cryedit rework of the 'very high' settings to take advantage of new hardware. That or add in an 'ultra' setting. Most of the aging look graphical issues are settings related as the core textures and models scale quite well even up to 4k provided you force the game to render them.

[sycocys]

Meep Meep, on 12 January 2023 - 03:50 PM, said:

To you and me the mech lab is self explanatory. To others? A cryptic puzzle that is hard to solve. I don't want it changed just stating why this game doesn't cater to a broader audience. Trial mechs help with that but they are often unoptimal in the current meta especially with an inexperience player.

The mechlab really isn't that difficult, even if this is your first mechwarrior experience.

[Thorqemada]

Let me say, if you have experience with these sort of games it may be easy to invest the patience and endurance to work yourself into the mechlab and through it.

But if you are a newcomer that comes from a game that has aside of the 1 weapon to chose only cosmetics to play with this mechlab is extremely challenging as nothing in you past experience has you prepared for such many options you have no clue of.

Then the Mechlab is strongly intimidating!

[Glymbol]

sycocys, on 11 January 2023 - 07:03 PM, said:

Advertising doesn't have to be expensive,

They could just start advertising MWO to MW5 players. I'm sure some of them would be interested, and the advertisement would be cheap.

[evil kerensky]

the idea that mechwarrior/battletech is small because it is niche is ridiculous. wh40k eternal crusade had the exact same lifecycle as this game, but on an accelerated timeframe. 40k isnt exactly niche. in both cases it was the development companies fault.

battletech had a huge playerbase outside the hardcore mechwarrior fanbase., and mwo cant even hold onto the entire ip's fanbase. it could have been way bigger than it was if pirahna had been more competent and less greedy. the moment they had a decent working base to the game they started selling gold mechs instead of continueing to make the game. all of russ's bs is just an excuse.

[Curccu]

evil kerensky, on 13 January 2023 - 04:28 AM, said:

the idea that mechwarrior/battletech is small because it is niche is ridiculous. wh40k eternal crusade had the exact same lifecycle as this game, but on an accelerated timeframe. 40k isnt exactly niche. in both cases it was the development companies fault.

battletech had a huge playerbase outside the hardcore mechwarrior fanbase., and mwo cant even hold onto the entire ip's fanbase. it could have been way bigger than it was if pirahna had been more competent and less greedy. the moment they had a decent working base to the game they started selling gold mechs instead of continueing to make the game. all of russ's bs is just an excuse.

Well I don't really see issue with gold mech because it's just a skin and didn't really take any time or money out of development, if someone want to support developer buying those, or stroke e-peen.... why not
Their incompetence with some stuff and stubbornness to not rollback some stuff when begged by about whole community (like long tom) fast enough before starting to lose players is another case but 260$ for extra mech with unique skin is whatever. And Legend says it was forced by IGP anyways...