T Hawk, on 12 December 2024 - 12:23 PM, said:
Lazy? I don't know. They haven't done enough, though. It's obvious mistakes were made and instead of listening to the feedback of a very enduring and loyal fanbase...I just recently returned and was amazed at the lack of progress since around 2016. I think that was the last time I played.
Yeah that dude makes some good points, and makes a lot of dubious claims - like, "this is where the game is most fun, because I drew this graph," and criticizing 12v12 without going into the reasons it was implemented. Then he goes into his bait and switch footage of things he tried badly: like melting himself down with flamers trying to shut down an enemy 'mech (whilst talking about player agency, no less!); or distracting Assaults by shooting them and running into an open field, missing other enemies that were in clear view when he started; at
36:01. he over-commits through a pass without any intel on what's beyond it, and gets merked. He blames that on 12v12 -but the real issue is that he pushed through a blind corner! He lost the fight against the Piranha and Locust purely because he played poorly and didn't open the range: he got beat by a SMALL LASER build when he had ERLLs. The trend continues throughout. His example of "peeking and receiving punishment" looks a Medium or Heavy (couldn't tell) - that decided to go streaking in front of the entire enemy team, for instance. So I'm not very impressed with the video's criticisms overall. He's got some good points, but others are dubious and he views gameplay through a poor tactical lens. He doesn't know what NASCARING actually is, and thinks its an
affectionate term; he thinks that Domination plays exactly like Skirmish; he
has good points about match structure, but doesn't have realistic ideas about how to go about fixing what he thinks is wrong. He hates the original skill tree; and he's not alone - but while it
was cumbersome, no literate human should find it "incomprehensible."
If I had to encapsulate what's wrong with this video, it would be "Well, they have dropships modeled, so there's nothing preventing them from implementing an escape mechanic like Titanfall." This attitude - that development of desired features is easy to do, and thus not having those features means that nobody tried - is a fallacy. "We still don't have melee" is another statement of that stripe; the way the game is coded makes melee (unfortunately) infeasible - at least without development resources that PGI cannot justify spending on a game with our current active player base. The tacit assumption is that money is a magic box that is always available as long as revenue is coming in; the notion that a given feature might require up-front investments that cannot be justified by projected profits seems literally never to occur to some people.
Like BlueDevilspawn pointed out, this video is from just before the Cauldron changes started to hit. It was also the same period that I'd started up the game again, after several years of having simply drifted away from MWO. And what I found during the period immediately following this video's release was that the gameplay was more vibrant again. I could engage at medium ranges with more guns; I had more options to fill out builds, making 'mechs and 'mech builds viable on different chassis than before (a single missile hardpoint isn't necessarily a waste on my IS 'mechs, for example.) So if you want to convince me, you're going to need more than dubious thought from an outdated video from guy whose gameplay skills exceed his powers of analysis.
I'll say it again. PGI has certainly failed a number of times. A failed match format, two failed (three if you count general faction play) game modes - but it's not from a lack of fracking effort.
Edited by Void Angel, 13 December 2024 - 04:10 AM.