174 replies to this topic

[Mylar]

This game makes me sad.
I have always played games with friends.
My friends and I have played battletech since the beginning of the franchise. (the early tabletop, just just the video games)
Only two of us have accounts.
The other one is a founder, but does not play.

I REALLY like the game, but with it working the way it does, and my founder friend's description of the state of the game, I cannot pull any of them into the game right now.

Because I cannot get others to play I cannot believe that the game will have any lasting hold for me. Frankly I'm suprised how long I've managed to pug in it as it stands.

Because I cannot know that I will be here long term, I cannot justify spending money on the game.

Because I cannot justify spending money, I have to assume others came to the same conclusion, and with low income I cannot think the servers will remain up for long.

Because I cannot say with any confidence that the game will survive to live, it makes it even harder to convince others to join.

Loop.

[sokitumi]

So many of us begged PGI not to jump the gun. Those charts were completely predictable 2 months ago by anyone who looked at the game objectively and compared it to anything else calling ready for OB. PGI went with their whole 'minimum viable content' theory instead. And although the amount of maps and mech's and features were indeed minimum... foundational stuff like MM and netcode were/are totally not 'viable'.

[Mylar]

Planetside two goes live tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see how these charts look after this week.

[Bubba Wilkins]

Mylar, on 19 November 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

Planetside two goes live tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see how these charts look after this week.

We'll never know. They removed the Forum Account display number last week.

[Chemie]

Bubba Wilkins, on 19 November 2012 - 12:27 PM, said:

We'll never know. They removed the Forum Account display number last week.

really? cuz I see it at the bottom the the main forums page (402,000 right now)

[Bubba Wilkins]

Chemie, on 19 November 2012 - 02:32 PM, said:

really? cuz I see it at the bottom the the main forums page (402,000 right now)

Interesting. I stand corrected. I thought I saw multiple references over the weekend about it's removal though....

[Chuckie]

I blame a lot of the problems on the Nov 6 patch.. I think the game was going well for a beta up to that point.

Screwing up LRMs, and then nerfing them up again a few days later. Was one

The whole 4+4 group thing has been a absolute failure.

Edited by Chuckie, 20 November 2012 - 07:19 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

Bubba Wilkins, on 19 November 2012 - 02:37 PM, said:

Interesting. I stand corrected. I thought I saw multiple references over the weekend about it's removal though....

It was removed for quite some time.

[zmeul]

guys ... I give up, after missing the timing on recording the number of accounts a few days in a row, I realized my interest in MWO has gone way down

if anyone wanna continue it, please do

sorry

Edited by zmeul, 20 November 2012 - 07:37 AM.

[Windies]

zmeul, on 20 November 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

guys ... I give up, after missing the timing on recording the number of accounts a few days in a row, I realized my interest in MWO has gone way down

if anyone wanna continue it, please do

sorry

Don't feel alone, and thank you for what you have done so far. It's an interesting, albeit controversial look at the interest levels in the game right now.

Chemie, on 19 November 2012 - 02:32 PM, said:

really? cuz I see it at the bottom the the main forums page (402,000 right now)

Bubba Wilkins, on 19 November 2012 - 02:37 PM, said:

Interesting. I stand corrected. I thought I saw multiple references over the weekend about it's removal though....

They removed the display of online users, but not the display of subscribed members. It's back now though, it was removed over the weekend for some time.

Also you have to take into consideration the massive amount of spambot accounts that make accounts on forums and never post. Also duplicate accounts and such and accounts of people who played and stopped playing. It can lead to quite a large number easily.

[MrPenguin]

Bubba Wilkins, on 19 November 2012 - 11:44 AM, said:

If these things hit tomorrow and no new bugs pop up

Its a patch, of course new bugs will pop-up. This would be better worded if you said "Hopefully the patch won't break the game".

I'm not trying to rip on PGI, I'm being serious. You can't really predict what your changes will do once 300k people run your code simultaneously. You expect something to break. So your stuck hopping what breaks is relatively small and easy to fix/find. Your worst nightmare is if its rather glaring and becomes hard to fix/find. Wouldn't be fun if that skin mechanic you added broke the client versions permanently forcing a re-install and spending the next 2 months trying to find the little ****** which is the cause of it. Then having your "community" send threats at you stating you did this all on purpose to steal money from them and that you don't care about the game despite working long hours day after day trying to fix the problem...

Edit: Huh... I'm fairly sure what I said wasn't even a swear, but it got censored anyway. Strange.

Edited by MrPenguin, 20 November 2012 - 07:47 AM.

[Comguard]

Sorry to hear that zmeaul has lost his interest in MWO, but to be honest: I can understand him.

In case you're still reading, thanks for your efforts!

Numbers right now:

404,233 members

We had 400,000 on 15th November.

That means over the last week we had just 600 new users per day.

[Andrew Boden]

Interesting topic, I joined 2 weeks ago, spent the grind to get a mech I can tinker with. Can't ficure out how to do anything but join random battles with stangers, begining to tire of the lack of strategy or point to it all.

A shame as I have played every mech game that came out and was quite exited by the hype, but thats all it seems to be sadly.

I think I'll stick it out as I am going to fall into the "die hard" battletech core from 20 years ago, but doubt I'd spend real money until I can see some gain.


ps awful first post to have to make :-(

Edited by Andrew Boden, 25 November 2012 - 11:49 AM.

[Lyteros]

I'm not sure if PGI had the current situation in mind, when they went into so called "open beta" trying to monetize their MWO alpha.

The User counter ingame was hidden long ago, the thread about is is afaik deleted, but the user count in the forums shows clearly whats going on.

These things happen if you disregard all the feedback whats wrong here. Proper, analytical feedback from the community, which stated trough constructive criticism why this can't work and gave suggestions to improve this mess...

Edited by Lyteros, 25 November 2012 - 11:55 AM.

[Fastidious]

Nice detective work. I still believe the real hard launch will come when MWO hits Steam. Then you'll see the numbers jump significantly.

Edited by Fastidious, 25 November 2012 - 05:01 PM.

[Axeman1]

Fastidious, on 25 November 2012 - 05:01 PM, said:

Nice detective work. I still believe the real hard launch will come if MWO hits Steam. Then you'll see the numbers jump significantly.

Fixed.

[Dudeman3k]

Taram, on 06 November 2012 - 08:18 AM, said:

Yes because it's totally the fault of the folks who joined units and like to drop together that PGI has steadfastly refused to add a drop lobby or any other system that would let "premades" choose to drop against each other instead of random pugs. It's also totally our fault that PGI has failed to implement any method for pugs to organize themselves, instead relying on community provided free teamspeak servers, that any pug can join for free, so they can organize. Interestingly even though it's totally free to do it and those that do win nearly as often as 'premades' hardly any 'pugs' bother to go join them.

But hey, yeah, blame the people who enjoy the game so much that we play it the way it is intended to be played.

lol, then you and your "friends" can play it amongst yourselves when everyone else leaves, the servers are forced to be shut down, and MWO is just "remember when" story.... lol.

The way it SHOULD be played isn't the way F2P games should focus on sadly.... it's HOW they play and HOW to keep them playing...... The world doesn't revolve around you man, sorry.

[Aym]

Alex Wolfe, on 06 November 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

I'd say that's a big part of it, yes. "Hey guys I want to play this new game, is it fun?" "Kind of, but first you'll need to spend a few days grinding credits on an underpowered mech with terrible heat efficiency and no fighting chance vs. a custom config, while not receiving any XP and not being able to modify it in any way, or spend money on a completely run-of-the-mill mech you'd be able to buy a dozen of in your second week anyway". "Gee whiz this sure sounds like a game I'd like to play!" Blake-damn-it .

Actually if you use the trial mechs the way the inner-sphere used it's bad mechs against the early clan invasions... Well you'd need to not totally pug to do that anyway!

Edited by Aym, 25 November 2012 - 05:58 PM.

[Taizan]

Andrew Boden, on 25 November 2012 - 11:48 AM, said:

Interesting topic, I joined 2 weeks ago, spent the grind to get a mech I can tinker with. Can't ficure out how to do anything but join random battles with stangers, begining to tire of the lack of strategy or point to it all.

This.
The only way to improve the fun you have is go into the unofficial community TS servers and drop with others or join a fixed group, but you will still be dropping with 4 random team mates and even then there is no point to it all (except in general mastering a certain chassis type and getting massive cbills built up etc.).

The game is stuck at the moment because the bigger picture is not in yet.

[Bryan Ekman]

Just an FYI.. the forum numbers you see at the bottom, do not reflective the true number of registered users. The number seen reflects only players who have elected to visit the forums. It's a nuance of IP Board and the actual game database. The actual registered number of users is much higher.

If you had tracked those numbers since launch you would see spikes and lulls. We've seen many of these since announcing the game last year, Launch, GDC, FNF, CB 1, CB 2, E3, Pax, OB etc. Right now we're seeing levels return to normal non-PR driven levels. When a new announcement/marketing event happens, we spike right back up again.. nature of the beast.

What's cool is our daily average number of registrations has always continued to grow and our daily concurrent players has also grown consistently, although it looks like a saw tooth. Peak, then gradual fade, new higher peak, gradual fade..