213 replies to this topic

[KursedVixen]

LordNothing, on 15 July 2025 - 12:40 PM, said:

legends.

explain?

Edited by KursedVixen, 15 July 2025 - 03:13 PM.

[LordNothing]

KursedVixen, on 15 July 2025 - 03:12 PM, said:

explain?

you asked for variants did you not?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Ilostmycactus, on 15 July 2025 - 02:08 PM, said:

As an aside, I think it would be an interesting exercise to determine why exactly there is such a skill disparity in a game that isn't a twitch shooter. Ironically, it may be because MWO is so far the other way on the spectrum of TTK that an "average" player can't be as effective as a very good player.

Most games have such a disparity, but with larger populations you don't see it as much because you're more likely to get grouped with "like" skilled people. That and "twitch" shooters have lost all meaning.

Ilostmycactus, on 15 July 2025 - 02:08 PM, said:

I don't think MWO will ever be lucrative again. Maybe charging for server hosting could supplement a bit.

It won't ever be more profitable than current state, and charging players a subscription is how you kill what's left in almost one fell swoop.

[1Exitar1]

D A T A, on 12 July 2025 - 12:54 AM, said:

buff light mechs even more, so even those 200-300 maniacs who still love this trash nascar brawl retardation over the old "thinking man" shooter can quit in peace and the game can close.

In the end, it was definitely worth to kill the game with *** game balance just to please those 5/10 players who are ****, can't aim, but want to feel "elite", so they went like "why don't we just remove over 600mt play from the game?"

Since we are here, you could also add some trans-pride oriented crap with bunny ears, slap a 50% quirk on that **** just because why not and charge 20 bucks just to get mechs with more quirks.

In the end
1) reward people for being ****, rather than reward for being good
2) kill diversity while claiming to enhance it.
3) force a gameplay that never belonged in any mechwarrior game and that nobody wanted (in fact, we all quit)
4) add pay to win trash

For sure it's gonna work dudes, way to go, hurray Cauldron, surely the low player count is due to age, it's not like even older stuff like age of empires 2 or minecraft thrive like never before just thanks to good game balance

Tell it like it is DATA!!

[Stonefalcon]

Davegt27, on 11 July 2025 - 06:53 PM, said:

any ideas to pump some life back into MWO

seems like everyday player numbers are lower

I think I recall someone once saying some wise words of wisdom, "Do you wanna buy another mech pack?"

[Saved By The Bell]

Ilostmycactus, on 15 July 2025 - 02:08 PM, said:

The only option to slow the bleeding, in my opinion, is to either completely open matchmaking and remove the tier system, or spend the last hurrah of engineering time to create a server browser that allows players to host matches. Both have problems. I'm not sure how many t5 and t4 people would leave if lumped with t1's.

Unable to find match=> turn off tier system

I am ok with it. When I was a dead noob, I got huge experience, watching better players, which were still alive in match.

[ingramli]

Controversial opinion from a past player.

MWO was released back in September 2013, it is like almost 12 years since then, it isn't that bad, "for a F2P game", which, IMHO, is the root cause of its inevitable eventual downfall. The devs do not get money from people simply playing the game, they needs to make money from various way, in-game credits, mech packs, cosmetic items... you name it.

Among those, in-game credits and mech packs are troublesome. To boost the sales, like many other F2P devs, PGI have meta builds shift regularly with the release of mech packs / new hero mechs, while they will be eventually available to free players, they are effectively charging money for a limited time overpowered meta (which is no longer OP when it is available in C-Bills), the game balance was not solely based on statistics or players feedback, but to make more sales.

Someone mentioned some games last longer than MWO, I would say, for a game to last decades, you need the game to be "of the players, by the players, for the players". You can't have a game that sustain by sales of mech packs to begin with. I know it is a tough pill to swallow, but IMO monthly subscription should be the way to go. Any in-game purchases should be strictly cosmetic. Players should have a say (vote) in what mechs to be brought to the game, what map to be added/removed, what weapon/mech are to be buffed/nerfed.. so far and so forth.

Obviously it is impossible for MWO to have such a major change to its business model today, and IMHO the end of it is just matter of time, however, as someone who like the Mechwarrior franchise, I wish there would be a subscription based mech shooting game in the future, which players have more stakes in its development, being Mechwarrior or not.

[BlueDevilspawn]

A few points -

1. The last statement by Russ on the financial state of MWO specifically was that it was paying for itself, still in the black. Not by much, but profitable nonetheless. I don't know how or if that has changed, but I would hypothesize it's roughly the same, still profitable.

2. Russ has also said that the next game will not be f2p, it would be premium plus. This is indicative of the overall shift of the market away from f2p and it's not on a barely AA studio like PGI to "buck the trend" and take the financial risk to continue f2p. IF we ever get a MW Next (which would necessarily combine pve and pvp) you can bet you'd pay upfront and/or subscription.

I don't recognize ingramli but he's posting with a good dose of business sense considering MWO is likely a fully depreciated digital asset and has lived longer than a majority of games. Yes it means a lot to a number of us, but this isn't a charity (and PGI is already very generous with the free stuff).

[martian]

Stonefalcon, on 15 July 2025 - 09:25 PM, said:

I think I recall someone once saying some wise words of wisdom, "Do you wanna buy another mech pack?"

Here is a song for you:



Watch Russ Bullock's MWO business model in a nutshell ...

Edited by martian, 16 July 2025 - 09:18 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

ingramli, on 16 July 2025 - 06:54 AM, said:

Obviously it is impossible for MWO to have such a major change to its business model today, and IMHO the end of it is just matter of time, however, as someone who like the Mechwarrior franchise, I wish there would be a subscription based mech shooting game in the future, which players have more stakes in its development, being Mechwarrior or not.

I don't think PGI or any developer is going to get behind a subscription service especially if it means players get a say in development. Design/balance by committee, especially one that is pay to play sounds like a recipe for disaster especially knowing this community.

I'm struggling to think of a game that actually uses subscriptions, that's a pay model older than even F2P from the WoW and EQ era.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 16 July 2025 - 09:18 AM.

[ingramli]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 16 July 2025 - 09:17 AM, said:

I don't think PGI or any developer is going to get behind a subscription service especially if it means players get a say in development. Design/balance by committee, especially one that is pay to play sounds like a recipe for disaster especially knowing this community.

I'm struggling to think of a game that actually uses subscriptions, that's a pay model older than even F2P from the WoW and EQ era.

If subscription isn't a viable way to go today, back to square one, single player game + private server hosting / LAN party might be the best you can get, with the current F2P business models, most of the better established franchise can hope for, on average, 5-10 years of lifespan. MWO, as a nearly 12 years old F2P, title, IMHO, probably aged as well as it could be, I couldn't suggest better than accept and move on...

Edited by ingramli, 16 July 2025 - 11:20 AM.

[LordNothing]

i sure as hell aint paying a subscription after how much i spent in this game. im sure others feel that way. if the game goes subscription a lot of people will leave.

now if you want to do a subscription model where mechs are free and you get a certain number of bays you can put whatever you like in them and you dont have to pay for upgrades. however you need to keep paying your subscription to access those. but people who already own mechs can still play, thats fine.

i also like the idea of rollup packs, that give you all the standard variants available for cbills up to a certain date. so new players can quickly establish a large stable of mechs. were talking a mega pack with a hundred or so variants.

both these ideas are for new players that dont own anything. but you still have the problem that new players either tend to not stick around or only cover the players leaving.

you can also make mc grindable with premium time. perhaps at a rate 1/1000th of mc. that will get people in the game to grind out the last few mc mechs they dont own and people would buy premium time to do it. could also be a cockpit item you can buy with cash that gives you a slower grind rate. something to help all players rather than just new players and turn a small profit in the process in addition to the exclusive period for new legends and mechpacks (you might expand the exclusive period though).

Edited by LordNothing, 16 July 2025 - 12:29 PM.

[ingramli]

Controversial opinion (again), in my opinion, any pay-to-win or grind-to-win just won't make a decades lasting game, most of the newcomers will just leave for something else after a while when they don't want to pay or grind to have a level playing field with those who did (Myself is an example, I quited MWO for years but I still play some old RTS games like AOE2, mostly because I am not pressured to pay or grind to enjoy a fair game, I can always build and fight like those who spend much more time in it, those spent more time are better in games, but technically we are in a level playing field), you can try to keep players playing by grinding to progress, but only so many will continue to stay when the grinding process isn't exactly fun.....

[Quicksilver Aberration]

ingramli, on 16 July 2025 - 11:12 AM, said:

If subscription isn't a viable way to go today, back to square one, single player game + private server hosting / LAN party might be the best you can get, with the current F2P business models, most of the better established franchise can hope for, on average, 5-10 years of lifespan. MWO, as a nearly 12 years old F2P, title, IMHO, probably aged as well as it could be, I couldn't suggest better than accept and move on...

The business model for MWO isn't changing, and that's fine, its lived a life. For a new game though, it will likely be what most other games have done. Charge up front for the initial game, and then microtransactions/DLC for content depending on circumstances (with anything gameplay impacting multiplayer stuff typically earnable by putting in enough time in the game). Maybe after a few years, you pull a Valve and go F2P after sales of the initial game dry up and go full into microtransactions.

Ideally they mainly sell cosmetics with maybe a shorter time period for earning new gameplay additions (6-8 months for new mechs is an insane timeline).

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 16 July 2025 - 03:15 PM.

[LordNothing]

i admit there is part of me who wants mwo to run its course and then make room for a new product, mw5 mods, fan games, etc and the best course of action is to do nothing different.

the thread title is two things pgi has never been good at. doing something and quick. anything that can be done, assuming they can do it, will take too long to matter. always too little too late. there is nothing that really can be done about that.

best we can hope for is a graceful hand off to the community. perhaps the last mech pack can fund that, but i think the owners will take their money and go and any effort to reverse engineer the back end will need to be handled by the remaining community. pgi i believe did give permission for users to port mwo content to mw5/clans, so its probibly going to be something of that nature rather than a preservation of mwo proper.

i dont think its a question of what pgi can do so much as a question of what we can do after the end.

Edited by LordNothing, 16 July 2025 - 04:59 PM.

[Saved By The Bell]

I dont buy mechs pack, because I don't need them yet. My hangar full of green mechs.

But I can support the game with month pay. An one server in Japan would be great.

[KursedVixen]

Saved By The Bell, on 17 July 2025 - 06:24 AM, said:

I dont buy mechs pack, because I don't need them yet. My hangar full of green mechs.

But I can support the game with month pay. An one server in Japan would be great.

Japan may prefer macross over battletech....

[1453 R]

D A T A, on 12 July 2025 - 12:54 AM, said:

...
Since we are here, you could also add some trans-pride oriented crap with bunny ears, slap a 50% quirk on that **** just because why not and charge 20 bucks just to get mechs with more quirks.
...
2.) kill diversity while claiming to enhance it
...

You are the reason I find a place to display the Trans and Progressive pride flags on every 'Mech I run, when I play MWO. You are the reason companies like Piranha giving us the ability to do things like display Pride flags on our 'Mechs is important. This sort of transmisiac nonsense is why we still have a month out of the year.

Trans rights. Whether certain controversial top compie players want them or not. Whether this is "the place" for them or not. if we don't have rights everywhere, we don't have them anywhere. Don't want us showing our colors in your robot violence game? Stop being the reason we wear them.

Edited by 1453 R, 17 July 2025 - 12:29 PM.

[BlueDevilspawn]

I would only add in that this is his take. "Top compies" don't uniformly reflect that. Indeed two of the recent gold champion teams had trans players and there are others amongst the top teams. Women players as well.

So, just to clarify.

Edited by BlueDevilspawn, 17 July 2025 - 12:43 PM.

[1453 R]

BlueDevilspawn, on 17 July 2025 - 12:27 PM, said:

I would only add in that this is his take. "Top compies" don't uniformly reflect that. Indeed one of the gold champion teams had a trans player and there are others amongst the top teams. Women players as well.

So, just to clarify.

Understood, and edited my own post to reflect a narrowing of that focus. Don't mean to throw unnecessary smoke, but I read that post by chance today and could not let it go unanswered. Thank you for checking me on the over-broadness however, BDS.