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Gather round children for a tale..
...many moons ago I started playing a game, in beta (well, alpha, actually), called Mount and Blade. I paid 5$ or something cheap for it at the time, cause it wasn't done. It was similar to this in that the game continually developed (although one might argue its successor Warband was what it should have been in the first place) over a long period of time,. all the while people played it and tested the new stuff that was released regularly. Devs were active on the forums and listened to (many of) player's concerns and ideas.
anyhow, it was pretty basic when I started playing but the fundamental game play was there and was great fun. A few years later, patch by patch, it finally became one of my favourite (and I think one of the best, seriously go try it if you like some good old fashioned medieval battling) games of all time.
I think of this game like that... it's pretty good fun now. But it's not finished, in fact it's just started. PGI has been very up front about this, and reasons for "releasing" (if you want to call it that) as it is now, and about their model of continual development. (I mean there's a forum section showing us what's coming, and when. You don't see that often.)
These days, with so many companies assembly lining games, so many games, just churned out which are "meh" at best, we should be so lucky to have a team that is listening to people's concerns, and actually is totally into the game they are making.
I will agree with some folk though, it is frustrating as a PUG player being stomped by an 8 mech posse. Other side of that coin, guess what's in the planned changes for next patch?
Point is, people are gonna nay-say. Many will quit, some will keep playing, and many new players will start as time goes on. But as the game gets better and better, I guarantee to some of you folks who are losing your **** over this may come back in 6 or 8 months to "give it a try" and find that ****, the game's still here, and this thing is fixed, and there's these new mechs, and levels and...
For non-paying players, complaining and bashing the devs is ridiculous, when you haven't spent a coin, and nobody is even asking you to (nor do you have to) to play this game. Constructive criticism is one thing, but rolling in like you just dropped $60 on a box at EBGames and got home to the most soul-destroying ****** experience of your life is the kinda thing that ******, spoiled, suburban teens love to do. And of course, you're not that, right ?
Don't like it? Shut up, don't pay, come check it out again in a year and see if you change your mind. Problem solved.And while I understand some Founder's concerns, cause they have forked over hard coinage, here's a few points:
- you played the closed beta, and enjoyed that enough, and had enough faith in the future of it to justify an investment
- big enough Mechwarrior fan to just drop beans on anything with a Mech on it
- paid your cash before even considering anything, in which case you're a gamblin (wo)man... then you understand, if you hate or love this game, you win some you lose some. Also, if you really though it sucked huge enough balls, PGI were offering refunds anyways. Which the casino, most certainly, don't.
Whichever one you fit into, you gotta understand, just like kickstarter, paying before hand is always a gamble in anything, and upon your shoulders is it to suffer the consequences (or reap the benefits!). Yes, PGI promised certain things for this game, but in no way have they shown any signs of not coming through with any of those promises. Hell, you all raised enough of a stink to get your premium time at your convenience, and guess what happened? Ya got it
So I know someone is gonna come in here with some "oh yea, another fanboy giving out BJ's to the dev team" or some other thing that people type when they really, have nothing left to say.
In fact, I'm not a PGI fanboy; NFS is cool but I'm not much of a racer (mario kart, and f-zero for me thanks
), Transformers is fairly cookie cutter movie-game, and there's a fishing game which I can only imagine you gotta love fishing to play (could be wrong on that one??) but I do love Mech games. Bottom line is PGI haven't advertised this game to be any more than it is. They have lots of work to do with this game. It's unpolished, and contains many bugs. Like I said, lots of work to do. But there's plenty of time, and my personal view is that it's just going to get better. Like most **** worth waiting for though, we gotta have some patience.
this one was a double! btw, whidbey island... nice place man!
