167 replies to this topic

[Daggett]

Wardn, on 13 November 2012 - 12:14 PM, said:

5 million, barely enough to get it going? Jesus, that's a worse money-to-product ratio than the government.

Lets count some numbers:
Let's assume they have 20 devs working on the game which would be a quite small team for such a product.
Including office space, hardware, software licenses, free coffee and such each of them will cost between 40-150K/year, depending on position. So if we assume an average cost of only 60k/year per dev (which would be really low for canadian standards afaik), we have 1.2 million on personal cost for a really cheap and small team.

You can easily double that number if you increase salary and team size to a more realistic level.
So at least 1.2-2.4 millions are gone each year just for the devs. Now take the probably high cost for a mechwarrior license into account, licensing of engines like the cryengine 3, plus marketing, server costs, and many other operational costs i probably forgot to mention. When they are lucky, the 5 millions will last for two years, but no longer.

And now assume they would double up the team number to speed up development. The money would melt away faster than you can say 'doh'. 5 million is nothing in serious game development, GTA IV for example had a development cost of 100 million $...

[Nikohki]

Dagada, on 13 November 2012 - 12:40 PM, said:

i would rate cryptic as a worse developer.... not saying soe is good or has done well in any of their games.

I'll go one step further, almost anything PWE owned is a sarlacc pit for customer $$$. I mean, just how many lockboxes have they released??

Oh SOE has done well (financially) in the past, but that's because there wasn't anything else at the times of EQ and PS1.

[Alois Hammer]

Kymlaar, on 13 November 2012 - 11:16 AM, said:

I appreciate the info, but you guys should just come out and say that you have a bi-weekly patch schedule.

Well that, and let's talk about being proactive- surely they don't wait until the last minute to decide "No patch," so why not make the "No patch today" thread the day before and call it "No patch tomorrow?"

..or is there some perverse game going on where they take bets on how intense the forums will get in anticipation?

[dF0X]

Mongoose Trueborn, on 13 November 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

I call BS. Not to the fact that there isn't a patch today but to the fact that you lied when you said there was $5.2 million raised already from founder packages. The math does not add up. If everyone that bought a founders pack would have bought the most expensive one, didn't happen, then you would have needed 43,333 people to get to 5.2 million The active player counter was removed but I never saw more than 2-3k on at any one time. Is that why you removed it?

This game has under funded written all over it. Lack of development funds is killing it. There is no way 5.2 mil would equal the product we have. This game feels like there is one talented graphics artist with a small team of programmers...in Pakistan.

5.2mil would get at least one patch a week and definitely more than 10 mechs. I've managed projects bigger than this and know what that kind of result I would get with a fraction of that budget. The lack of thought in the design screams outsourced or just enough to satisfy the requirements.

I'm sorry but you can't fool us all. I'm not sure how long this post will stay up before you delete it but it needed to be said. Get your act together and stop lying to your customers.

I strongly suspect that the 5 million went to IGP instead of PGI.

[Taryys]

This would be my preference.

Alois Hammer, on 13 November 2012 - 12:50 PM, said:

Well that, and let's talk about being proactive- surely they don't wait until the last minute to decide "No patch," so why not make the "No patch today" thread the day before and call it "No patch tomorrow?"

The money wen to IGP to help fund this and another game I think it was.
I am not happy about this either. I paid to support MWO and not another of IGP's products, but that is the agreement that PGI I has which makes this game possible, so I suppose I should just shut-up and be glad I have a game to play.

Desrtfox, on 13 November 2012 - 12:50 PM, said:

I strongly suspect that the 5 million went to IGP instead of PGI.

[The Herrick]

Steinar Bergstol, on 13 November 2012 - 12:41 PM, said:

Really? _REALLY_? You're all complaining over the fact that they took the time to announce that there wouldn't be a patch today? A patch they never said would happen today in the first place? You're whining over the fact that Garth took the time to clear this up for those who might be under the impression that there would be one?

This you decide is worth whining over?

You know what? I've seen 4 year olds in the middle of throwing a tantrum, and they're still acting more mature than what I'm seeing here. Kindly learn to act your ages.

Actually most of us are complaining about the fact that PGI has no ability at all to meet their own deadlines. Patches are constantly late, features that we were promised to get months ago are still missing (DX 11, numerous options in the settings menu). Major, game breaking bugs are still not squashed and they can't even be bothered to tell us until the last second if a patch is coming or not. Making a thread is what, less than a minute of time? This isn't a case of beta either, since there are other companies that have more stable alphas. This is simply incompetence.

You know what I've seen 4 year olds with better reading comprehension.

[AllGamer]

I was hoping to see at least a quick fix for the MechLab hanging bug

[Rigiroth]

So what part of PGI's development is suppose to encourage me to spend money on the game? Delay, delay, delay, delay. I wonder if my post will come in this week or the next.

[Knightwyvern]

Steinar Bergstol, on 13 November 2012 - 12:41 PM, said:

Really? _REALLY_? You're all complaining over the fact that they took the time to announce that there wouldn't be a patch today? A patch they never said would happen today in the first place? You're whining over the fact that Garth took the time to clear this up for those who might be under the impression that there would be one?

This you decide is worth whining over?

You know what? I've seen 4 year olds in the middle of throwing a tantrum, and they're still acting more mature than what I'm seeing here. Kindly learn to act your ages.

Actually.. since they announced they were moving to a weekly patching schedule back in October, I'd say it makes quite a lot of sense that people should expect weekly patches. Then to come out and brush off the possibility of a patch today like it's not supposed to be happening in the first place is NOT good communication. It's fine if they want to move back to bi-weekly patches, but at least say so instead of just failing to meet deadlines repeatedly. I find it a bit annoying when we get a slightly patronizing announcement the day of the expected patch (lol you guys expected a patch after we said one was coming every week? Silly people,) as if we're just idiots for expecting follow through.

I'm rambling a bit, I apologize. Just a little frustrated at this point.

[Daggett]

Landsharkk, on 13 November 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

5 million is waaaaaaay more than they need to get started on such a simple game like this (yes simple, when compared to other free-2-play titles out there). Take a look at games like Star Citizen (currently on kickstarter), it only needed 2 million to get created and when they reached the higher $ goals they added TONS of more content per million funded. Waaaaaaaaayy more than MWO has right now.

Have you actually played Star Citizen and seen all the TONS of content? It is currently still in funding, so there is nothing to judge right now beside some videos. All that Content and Features currently exist only on paper. Only god knows which of those features will make it into the game...
And who knows which other financial sources Chris Roberts has? It would not be the first Kickstarter project with an publisher in the background.

Edited by Daggett, 13 November 2012 - 01:08 PM.

[Mongoose Trueborn]

Daggett, on 13 November 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

Lets count some numbers:
Let's assume they have 20 devs working on the game which would be a quite small team for such a product.
Including office space, hardware, software licenses, free coffee and such each of them will cost between 40-150K/year, depending on position. So if we assume an average cost of only 60k/year per dev (which would be really low for canadian standards afaik), we have 1.2 million on personal cost for a really cheap and small team.

You can easily double that number if you increase salary and team size to a more realistic level.
So at least 1.2-2.4 millions are gone each year just for the devs. Now take the probably high cost for a mechwarrior license into account, licensing of engines like the cryengine 3, plus marketing, server costs, and many other operational costs i probably forgot to mention. When they are lucky, the 5 millions will last for two years, but no longer.

And now assume they would double up the team number to speed up development. The money would melt away faster than you can say 'doh'. 5 million is nothing in serious game development, GTA IV for example had a development cost of 100 million $...

You think this game is the result of 20 developers? What kinda programmers do you hang out with?

[BFett]

I don't like delays either but being informed about what is being worked on does ease the process.

Please read the Dev blogs and what is posted in this topic to get a better understanding of what to expect in the far future and also the near future.

[Daggett]

Mongoose Trueborn, on 13 November 2012 - 01:09 PM, said:

You think this game is the result of 20 developers? What kinda programmers do you hang out with?

Developers != Programmers.
Developers = Game Designers, Programmers, Artists, Audio guys, Testers, Producers, Marketing Staff, Management/HR...

Okay, i admit that Management/HR and Marketing does not exactly count to the dev team. But they count to the team which need to be paid.

So even if you only have one of each of those needed guys, your teamcount is 9. Now take some more programmers, artists and designers, and you easily hit that 20 heads which want to see money each month ;-)

[The Herrick]

Daggett, on 13 November 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

Have you actually played Star Citizen and seen all the TONS of content? It is currently still in funding, so there is nothing to judge right now beside some videos. All that Content and Features currently exist only on paper. Only god knows which of those features will make it into the game...
And who knows which other financial sources Chris Roberts has? It would not be the first Kickstarter project with an publisher in the background.

Actually star citizen was already partially developed before it even entered funding. It exists in a lot more robust form than 'just paper'.

Then again Chris Roberts is also competent at his job.

[BlightFang]

Their development cycle and efficiency is much much much better than magic the gathering online's so luckily. Magic Online is a good case and point of how you can throw millions of dollars at a project and yet promised new feature still fail to get implemented after 6+ years of work...

[Daggett]

The Herrick, on 13 November 2012 - 01:18 PM, said:

Actually star citizen was already partially developed before it even entered funding. It exists in a lot more robust form than 'just paper'.

Then again Chris Roberts is also competent at his job.

Okay, but no one knows how far it is developed. So as long no one can play a feature, it does not exist.
So it is unfair to compare a game no one can judge to MWO by arguing with hypothetical/promised features and content.

[Daggett]

BlightFang, on 13 November 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

Their development cycle and efficiency is much much much better than magic the gathering online's so luckily. Magic Online is a good case and point of how you can throw millions of dollars at a project and yet promised new feature still fail to get implemented after 6+ years of work...

Thats a good example. Magic is a huge thing making lots of money, but wotc is not able to fix even the simplest bugs in their current client. I dont get it why they fail, but they absolutely don't abandon their product or dont have the money to invest in it.
I guess they simply concentrate on the new client which hopefully does not suck that hard when it is finished...

Compared to Magic Online, the development cycle of MWO is lightning fast...

Edited by Daggett, 13 November 2012 - 01:33 PM.

[pesco]

Just OOI, what happened? Last-minute show-stopper bug? Playtest failed? ...?

[Daggett]

pesco, on 13 November 2012 - 01:36 PM, said:

Just OOI, what happened? Last-minute show-stopper bug? Playtest failed? ...?

Don't know but probably the dreaded 'Last-minute bug so critical we can't release the build as promised".
No one is safe from those...

[Krivvan]

I think it would do PGI good to let go of the whole weekly patch thing that was stated ages ago and just officially announce a biweekly patch schedule. I'm pretty sure the weekly thing started off as just unofficial statements from devs in the teamspeak server anyways unless there was an official post somewhere.