TruePoindexter, on 14 November 2012 - 05:12 PM, said:
I'm going to have to nitpick here about the "semi-working" comment. How is the game semi-working? There are bugs and things that need to be changed yes but it is most definitely working. It's enjoyable and quite a lot of fun and free. I find it interesting that this free experience which is in the almost the same state that MW3 and MW4 were in is somehow "broken" yet I see the same bugs in other AAA first person games that are $60 each and no one complains.
It's semi-working because there are a lot of things that need to be fixed and/or shouldn't have been broken to begin with and, given lack of progress in that area, it seems that PGI resources are spread too thin already.
Exhibit A : Mechlab. It a fairly simple "shopping cart" database frontend, yet it has been plagued by all sorts of issues (crashes, disappearing stuff, not updating properly, no proper item descriptions, etc.) since the start of CBT.
Exhibit B : Weapon balance. While some things like laser bean durations or missile spreads do indeed need to tweaked multiple times before they are "just right", the basic relationships between weapons can be figured out with just a calculator. Especially when you use an existing system as your starting point. Again, has been broken since the start of CBT and the only "progress" we see is swings between "insanely powerful" and "utterly useless".
Exhibit C : Black list / ignore list. This has been asked for since last winter (way before CBT even started). It's a fairly standard and absolutely necessary feature in virtually all multiplayer games. Still hasn't been implemented.
Exhibit D : Lobby / out-of-match chat. Same deal as exhibit C - has been asked for since last winter, standard feature virtually everywhere, hasn't been implemented.
Exhinit E : Matchmaker. The ability to drop against a designated team has been asked for since the start of CBT. Matching by some sort of BV has been asked for since the start of CBT. Instead of fixing the temporary version that only matched by weight class (initially it didn't even match by that), we got a 4-man team limit with phase 2 only making it better if your unit has 7-8 people online (dropping 6v8 with no weight/BV limits vs. another organized team is practically a guaranteed loss), still no ability to do any tournaments, and potentially huge problems with phase 3 (ELO matching) and Community Warfare.
Exhibit F : Unit designations. A small thing really - people have been asking for an ability to add some sort of unit "acronym" to their callsign in game, so that everybody could see who is who and how they are grouped. Still waiting for that to happen.
Exhibit G : Weapon convergence. A convergence system that doesn't tell the pilot where the convergence point currently is and on top of that converges guns on every rock (for no apparent reason btw - why would you ever want your weapons converge on terrain?) is broken by design. We've been asking for a fix since the start of CBT - still waiting for anything to happen.
Plus it would be nice to have more mechs, more maps, more game modes, Community Warfare, etc., but that certainly takes time and qualifies more as enhancements than fixes.
So, with all that on their plate, PGI spends quality time "thinking about 3rd person view", knowing full well that the community passionately hates the idea...really?