They are finishing the game... what in the world do you think they're doing right now? Sitting in the office twittling there thumbs? Playing World of warcraft? Literally anything else besides the obvious which is doing there job?
Seriously, Il never understand the mentality of someone who cannot comprehend that you just can't simply "finish" a AAA game with a snap of your fingers. It takes years to makes a game of that quality. Not days, not weeks, not months, years. And F2P games are usually never ending development until they get shut down.
Yet people here are filling "Not finished yet" as a complaint?
Are you guys being completely serious right now?
Wow...
Noone is saying they are not doing anything.
You miss the point of my OP. If you want to do a AAA title as F2P, thats fine. But launch when you are done. Instead, they launched early and I list what is missing and driving players away. On top of that, they launch early with no econommic return potential since no cash shop.
3. "Staggered" MC pricing with big hit for small purchases.
This tiered pricing and the cost of certain items (want a hero mech - doesn't come with a bay, lol. Premium time - can not just purchase it, convert to disney dollars first please) contribute to the 'cash grab' feeling of this game.
They are finishing the game... what in the world do you think they're doing right now? Sitting in the office twittling there thumbs? Playing World of warcraft? Literally anything else besides the obvious which is doing there job?
Seriously, Il never understand the mentality of someone who cannot comprehend that you just can't simply "finish" a AAA game with a snap of your fingers. It takes years to makes a game of that quality. Not days, not weeks, not months, years. And F2P games are usually never ending development until they get shut down.
Yet people here are filling "Not finished yet" as a complaint?
Are you guys being completely serious right now?
Wow...
.
Accepting payment for services or items before "OFFICIALLY" stating that the game is live or that MWO is a finished product was a mistake.. PERIOD.
.
They say it's beta, then accept credit card numbers.... The reality of the situation is that the public is saying "WHAT.??"
Open Beta probably had to happen for a variety of reasons, some of them mentioned in Russ Bullock's post on the subject. I suspect in part there was a mandated deadline based on a previously established marketing deadline. In the weeks prior to the first OB date, online marketing ads were being ratcheted up, similarly in the weeks prior to the final OB date.
The fundamental assumption the OP makes is that OB was a key deadline to get the game really working with polish in the key areas (new user experience, stability, monetization system in place, etc). We can see from practical experience this was not the case.
What we have now is a mid 90s style beta with basic aspects of the game still in development (think back to the first gen multiplayer games on GEnie and other private networks back in 1992 or so). What they have done is basically something along the lines of a soft-launch.
While some revenues may be coming in from new players, we can only hope that there are enough financial reserves to see this game through to full release; with major bug fixing and development of the overarching metagame codenamed CW. :-)
von Pilsner, on 16 November 2012 - 12:08 PM, said:
This tiered pricing and the cost of certain items (want a hero mech - doesn't come with a bay, .
Is this true? That the Hero mech didn't even come with a bay for it when you purchased it? I never looked at buying one, but I'd be pretty choked as a customer if I bought a mech and then found out I had no bay to use it in unless I coughed up another couple of bucks.
Can someone who bought one confirm this for me? Because if this is true it is beyond stupid. I hope to hear that this is wrong.
Between Atlases being rendered worthless with some of the changes to the systems, Catapults that are made to out-tank and out-DPS Atlases, and the Jenners Are King theme, pugging being a crappy experience to say the least and all the crashes and bugs (just today ran onto couple crashes and a bug where my HUD was permanently stuck in shutdown mode) I've decided to give it a rest.
I'm albeit sorry I shelled for a founder's pack, but my very expensive lesson has been learned well.
They are finishing the game... what in the world do you think they're doing right now? Sitting in the office twittling there thumbs? Playing World of warcraft? Literally anything else besides the obvious which is doing there job?
Seriously, Il never understand the mentality of someone who cannot comprehend that you just can't simply "finish" ..........
They are being distracted by the wrong things 3rd person, match maker, missiles as spam, weapon balance, all TRIVIA that gets covered during the second pass at the game. That second pass happens after the first pass completes at least a skeleton of the whole game. Getting distracted by thinking introducing 3rd person will attract or retain a single nubie player comapred to the many already here who are leaving because they have nothing to do is what I have trouble understanding.
Open Beta probably had to happen for a variety of reasons, some of them mentioned in Russ Bullock's post on the subject. I suspect in part there was a mandated deadline based on a previously established marketing deadline. In the weeks prior to the first OB date, online marketing ads were being ratcheted up, similarly in the weeks prior to the final OB date.
Yes, they're using the 1990's definition of open beta...in a new era where it means "mostly done, and this is a sales and marketing gimmick." They have every right to run this game as a TRADITIONAL open beta, but the industry will judge it as a sales gimmick.
The game has nothing really worth buying. People got YelloWang because they needed the CB boost. There is only one 'camo skin' available, and apparently you could have obtained that freely if you looked around the internet hard enough. There are two bobbleheads, both free.
There is nothing to spend money on, except the convenience to avoid grinding. Grinding is the only feature IN THE GAME, why would you pay to avoid it? Either you are in a group, and you are grinding fellow players (for no lasting benefit other than worthless CB and XP for chassis), or you are solo and you are GETTING GROUND for equally worthless CB and XP.
The fix is not a premium store, the fix is not matchmaking, or C3 integration, or true DHS, or denying 3rd person, or ANYTHING the forum goers are demanding. The fix is to get THE ACTUAL GAME FINISHED, and by that I mean Community Warfare. People aren't going to pay into a game (in any meaningful numbers) that is this incomplete. IF YelloWang sold as highly as they claim, the next hero mech won't. People have already realized that, while the CB boost is nice; it isn't world ending and the only thing TO DO is keep grinding.
They've got to get CW done. And the sad thing is they're probably moving as fast as they can. The terrorist-cell system of modern programming means that every division is probably working at max load on their respective jobs. Netcode is getting as much attention as it can, and it still is plodding along. Models are the same.
The only hope I see for MWO is that CW is so amazing that it converts all the burned out peopel who quit before it was ready. But, knowing how negative people can be (look around the forum) and magnifying THAT by the level of frustration necessary to just quit without a word...well I really doubt CW can save things at this point.
I think most agree they went open beta way to early. I absolutley love this game, and I am starting to feel a bit burnt out. There simply is not enough content to keep players sticking around and investing in it. I realize they are a small team of developers, but in my opinion they need to figure out how to step up content delivery....
Maps, Mechs and Gamemodes...pretty much in that order. Part of me hopes they are about to turn a corner, finishing engine optimization and bug stomping, then moving on to deliver content at a furious pace.
Last night my team and I launched into Caustic Valley 8 or 9 times in a row, Man I tell you I am ready for combat on a low gravity, crater filled moon, a huge sandy desert.....Anything is possible!
Is this true? That the Hero mech didn't even come with a bay for it when you purchased it? I never looked at buying one, but I'd be pretty choked as a customer if I bought a mech and then found out I had no bay to use it in unless I coughed up another couple of bucks.
Can someone who bought one confirm this for me? Because if this is true it is beyond stupid. I hope to hear that this is wrong.
It doesn't.
I bought one to grind out c-bills with because I was tired of making 60-90k a match and it does not include a mechbay, it takes up 1 out of my 4 free mechbays.
Though, with the stupid tiered pricing, you AT LEAST have enough MC left over to buy a mechbay, since the way the Wang is priced, you need to either get the 30$ MC bundle or the 6.95 one and the 14.95 one together.
I'm saving the 500 MC I have left over for camo, though, barring some sort of ridiculous MC pricage.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
PGI's committed a few glaring errors in development of MWO, and through their incompetence (realy, this is all I can think of to call it, at this point), have quadrupled the amount of work that will be required to save face and propel this game forth as a commercial success.
First - the decision to roll with an F2P model, as it's tied in with many of the issues the game currently faces. In the past couple years, "AAA" F2P releases have gone horribly, and, disturbingly, seem to be becoming an indicator of a failed game, as subscription-model MMO releases are increasingly turning toward F2P models after the game flops in an attempt to squeeze some profit out of the title. This, however, has little to do with MWO.
But - monetization of an F2P title without providing an imbalance of power to those that have paid up is increasingly difficult, and for the most part, games running on F2P models never find this balance. The removal of a particularly-beloved Centurion variant for the inception of the Yen-Lo Wang should be concerning here - a mech similar to the hero mech introduced was removed altogether from the game. Now, if players want their action on the Centurion, they're left with no choice but to cough up the MC for the YLW for the mech's "best" variant. An action such as this doesn't seem to indicate that PGI has any interest in making sure that the game does not become "pay2win," and failure to do so will bring about the game's demise.
Another issue of the F2P model is that when the game goes into its "open beta" phase, it is, for all intents and purposes, fully released. Games that hit their open beta phase with a minimal viable product are, for the most part, doomed to fail, as new players will come in, see that the game has extraordinarily little to offer, and decide that they want nothing to do with the product. Even if the game is "completed" later on, they will be extremely difficult to win over, due to their extremely poor experience with the game as it was when they played it.
Second, PGI develops content at a pace that can only be described as "too little, too late." I don't mean to nitpick here, as it is incredibly easy to do, but, during the closed beta phase, it was not uncommon to go for weeks without a patch. Even now, after the game has released, we have seen patches delayed, and we are now well past the point that PGI can afford to do so.
Because they launched the game in a "minimal viable product" state, they have screwed themselves over collossally. Given that community warfare, the game's focal point, is still some weeks (or months) away from actually being implemented, it is very possible that all interest in the game will have evaporated by the time that the bulk of its content has finally been introduced. Another game in recent memory launched as a minimal viable product, with an incredibly small amount of content to actually be played - and we all know how that went.
Given that a MAJOR game-changing component is completely absent from the game as of now, PGI will have to work doubly hard to make sure everything is fully functional - a release of community warfare in a buggy, broken state will be further damaging to the game's already sullied reputation, and will cause further diaspora from MWO.
I will leave balancing issues aside, as it seems that, finally, the thumbs have been removed from Pirahna's collective anuses, and they are finally getting to work - and for that, I thank them - I just worry that it's far too little coming far too late to save the game.
All of this is doubly ridiculous when coupled with the fact that IGP came up with the Founders scheme, was able to raise funds off the game from that (how many payments of $120 alone did they receive? What about the rest of the Founders?), and yet, has not managed to hasten their pace of development. What money could have gone toward purchasing more programming slave has apparently disappeared, and business as usual is what we are left with.
It's about the money, Lebowski. We were promised that our support of the game would help propel it toward success, and thus far, that could not be farther from the truth.
There's a problem here, be it with developer or publisher, it threatens to bury the game whole.
I guess we'll have a re-launch with the 'release,' that's due 'soon,' along with community warfare.
There's no way to convey how disappointed I am in this whole thing.
This game is done. Launching without any retention features, horrible promotion of a beta that was bound to lose all new players anyway, overpriced "micro"transactions. There are too many good games out there to play horrible unfinished versions of games that we would like to be good but never will.
But then what do you expect from a developer who made Transformers and fishing console games. Bad decisions, bad planning, and they don't care
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MrPenguin, on 16 November 2012 - 04:45 AM, said:
