93 replies to this topic

[VeeOt Dragon]

you know as far as a FPS goes MWO actually has a rather good weapon selection. what do games like CoD have maybe 5 weapon types and most of the the rest is just differing skins with very slight differences. could there be more yes of course but it has to be balance.

as for going further away from TT that would be a bad idea, many of the fan base got theirs start with TT and its the deep lore of the setting that keeps them coming back to the franchise. thats why you get people calling for certain chassis over the years that aren't exactly the best meta wise but are just loved by fans.

[LordNothing]

Meep Meep, on 19 January 2023 - 03:46 PM, said:

Cryengine wasn't exactly a new engine when the game was developed and it wasn't really even meant for what it doing here in this game. The original long gone devs who did the actual core coding had to do some fairly ingenious workarounds and shoehorns to get the engine to do what they wanted it to do. That this means is that the code base is a massive snakes nest of potential traps for anyone trying to modify it into something else because its very difficult to predict what happens due to all the custom code workarounds.

Let me show it visually.

This would be representative of the typical purpose built engine for a given game type it was designed for.

Nice and orderly and easy to modify or diagnose isssues.

-snip-

This would be the code for this game engine after years of wrangling it into doing what you want it to do even though it wasn't really meant to do it.

-snip-

Now imagine you are a coder they hired fresh to work on this game? Think its going to be easy?

i remeber when the freespace source code was released, the community coders got ahold of it, and the horrors of what they found there is still seared into my memory:

"its full of gotos"

still, within months, they were implementing features deemed impossible by the entire modding community and some of the original developers. the engine was even easy enough to code on that my dumb *** even implemented a few features.

Edited by LordNothing, 20 January 2023 - 09:32 AM.

[TheArisen]

Announcing MWO2 and that it'll use Unreal 5 would be a good start but tbh I'd probably just prefer to do some kind of founder's program for it

[Doran55]

Their income problem stems from them making everything expensive. The price points are out of reach for the vast majority of the players. In other words...the majority of their player base aren't accessing the money items......They need to flip that....they want the majority of players participating in the money exchange....to do that they need to lower the price on everything across the board. ....if more things were within reach financially....players would spend more over the course of time, on a continual basis ( the willingness to feed the addiction is easier when the drug is easier to access).

When you have single packs the same prices people pay for entire games elswhere...that's a sign you are way outside of the realm of reality.

[TheArisen]

Doran55, on 20 January 2023 - 11:34 AM, said:

Their income problem stems from them making everything expensive. The price points are out of reach for the vast majority of the players. In other words...the majority of their player base aren't accessing the money items......They need to flip that....they want the majority of players participating in the money exchange....to do that they need to lower the price on everything across the board. ....if more things were within reach financially....players would spend more over the course of time, on a continual basis ( the willingness to feed the addiction is easier when the drug is easier to access).

When you have single packs the same prices people pay for entire games elswhere...that's a sign you are way outside of the realm of reality.

To be fair, MWO came to life in the wake of WoT which does charge that much for new tanks. But you're right, they need to adapt.

[DovisKhan]

An6ryMan69, on 12 January 2023 - 08:20 AM, said:

The problem is the game needs a wider audience, not trying to squeeze the same players for more.

I actually suspect that the per-player money spent on this game is quite high.

Personally, and I cringe to say it, I know I have put $400 or more into it in the two years I've been playing.

I've NEVER spent more than about $80 on any other game, ever, and I have games with 600+ hours on them that I paid $40 for and thoroughly enjoy.

I've mentioned it in other posts, but I'll say it again, IMO the problem is how unforgiving the game is on new and casual players. From the very steep learning curve overall, to Lore related frustrations like the heat management system, to MWO only things like ghost heat, specific mech scaling and agility issues, Ace of Spades level players jumping on Cadets and eating them alive, pre-made groups destroying randoms single players....all of these things make MWO just kind of....hard and frustrating to those who aren't very quickly addicted to it.

There are lots of other multiplayer games out there for people to put money into, and most of them are much more forgiving. There are also other "giant fighting robot" games, and I've never seen one that wasn't decidedly simpler and easier to play than MWO.

Don't get me wrong, I spend way too much time playing, and paying in MWO. But I hadn't been hooked on Battletech since way back when the original MechWarrior was released like 35 years ago, I probably would have passed on this game after my first dozen quickplay drops lead to me getting completely demolished every time...

Having clocked in more hours in this game than my entire steam library, there is something about it, it's still the best Mech game out there.

Problem is, very, very few people actually like mechs, be they digital or tabletop.

Well CGL had amazing success with their kickstarter for battletech board games, so there is an audience, they sold like 10 million plastic little mechs, that said, maybe some cross-advertising would be possible

[Blood Rose]

Im going to come back again and remind people that in the same space of time that MWO has added 7 new maps and failed to fix basic terrain hitbox issues, WT has added i dont know how many new maps as well as going from an autistically detailed ww2 dogfight simulator to an autistically detailed interwar to early 21st century vehicle simulator with 3 different game modes, each with their own mechanics, and 3 different 'levels' for each of these modes.
If PGI wants money they need to put the effort and development in. Not much has changed since Beta, and thats not a good sign.

[JediPanther]

I'd spend money on mwo again for my Jenners put back to their original size but until that happens mwo gets nothing.

[Strelok7]

Short term.
I don't know - some gimmicks - they work.

Long term.
--------------------------------------------
you - need - a - Hollywood plug
--------------------------------------------
aka an advertisement
aka a movie with a deep story
this could easily do as good, or better then Star wars

My connections in LA are not on that level yet :-). Hope in the future. I'll keep MW in mind ;-)
game world is over saturated, and will be even more over saturated as time goes by

we already have a following
we are one step ahead

*just don't forget to license for like 100 years before getting involved in anything

[ScrapIron Prime]

Blood Rose, on 21 January 2023 - 03:59 PM, said:

Im going to come back again and remind people that in the same space of time that MWO has added 7 new maps and failed to fix basic terrain hitbox issues,

You’re going to like this month’s patch notes, then.

[LordNothing]

ScrapIron Prime, on 22 January 2023 - 12:38 PM, said:

You’re going to like this month’s patch notes, then.

ancient map bugs finally getting a far too delayed fix. yay? im not sure if thats worthy of praise. i am happy that their new map designer can dig into some of those, but those should have been fixed no later than one patch cycle after those maps were originally released.

[Meep Meep]

LordNothing, on 22 January 2023 - 12:50 PM, said:

ancient map bugs finally getting a far too delayed fix. yay? im not sure if thats worthy of praise. i am happy that their new map designer can dig into some of those, but those should have been fixed no later than one patch cycle after those maps were originally released.

While I agree with this is it really doing anyone any favors at this point to keep dredging up old gripes when many of the people who made those decisions are long gone? The maps are getting a QA pass they needed for years so thats a positive yes? I mean the devs at least ~seem~ to be trying to overhaul the game under the new ownership? Give em a chance maybe?

[sycocys]

Russ is the guy that approved all those decisions. The guys on MWO are just on MWO because they have little to do elsewhere. MW5/the new one you only need to curate maps for a set story campaign, same with the mech/art assets and weapons.

As soon as Russ decides/gets approval/gets told its time to make DLC for the second MW5 game their efforts will be placed elsewhere again - they could be doing everything for one central game and having their whole team functioning in the same ecosystem and reduce a pile of the duplicity of coding and other development.

[Meep Meep]

Yes but Russ was also influenced by many people who are no longer there. My point still stands in that dredging up old gripes isn't productive at all.