15 replies to this topic

[Hinge]

I’ve played since early July so I’ve got a fairly decent feel for the state of the game.

Without voice com, you will lose 9 out of 10 times. It doesn’t matter if its 8 man premade or 4. You simply will lose. And if you win it’s because some of your team does have voice com. I’ve played in well over 1000 matches since I joined closed beta. Using the free Teamspeak server you will win 9 out of 10 times, and dropping to just a 4 man premade made no difference to this ratio. I simply cannot see any in game mechanism (typing) that will overcome this. Voice is far too efficient. So get on Teamspeak or die.

The client in its current build is the worse to date. Crash to desktop, Yellow screen of death, map craps out, overheating bug, missiles going through mountains…hell I saw an atlas’ AMS kick off in the middle of the tunnel on the forest map the other day, and no one but the two of us were in the tunnel… The premade group I regularly play with repeatedly resets the client every hour to try to mitigate this and it’s still not enough.

Grouping is difficult at best. In a game that is completely built around grouping! If you aren’t on a Teamspeak server or in a clan that organizes with a similar tool you might as well not even try. The interface is like whack-a-mole, button pops up, button disappears, button pops up, button disappears, and the sad thing is…it’s been this way for months. And to group (this is the grouping mechanism in the game, not just launching) you first have to have them on your friends list…but without some form of intermediate communication, you won’t have any friends. Building up a friend’s list through in game chat can take months. My advice, get in a clan.

The current exploit of a player suicide just as the game begins so that they can farm c-bills is ridiculous. In an 8 vs. 8 match losing 1 player is tantamount to failure unless you are very good as a team. And it happens a lot. Combine that with all the client failures listed above and you have a consistently poor match experience. Frustration barely covers how you feel when you know you’re going to lose before you even start. I now as a player wait to see how many failures, disconnects and suicides there are at the start of the match to determine my strategy, if it’s chronic on my side, I just find a backward spot on the map and power down.

Light mechs are far too powerful for their intended use. I’ve talked about this in the past, but I’ll say it again for clarity, without knockdown they are far too easily exploited. Being able to simply run straight into a larger mech to avoid target lock and damage is incorrect. Until this is fixed, expect to see me in my streak cat!

I’m writing this because we are now (as founders and as of the last patch) spending our real money. For all intents and purposes the game is now Live (so curtail the "It’s Beta" responses please). The clock is running and in 59.39 days I’ll vote with my feet. If the developers continue to push out trivial content vs. bug fixes to what can only be considered CRITICAL issues (like making the client actually work), then I suspect I won’t be the only one who stops playing, free or not. When you spend more time working around all the problems the game has instead of playing the game, then you aren’t playing a game anymore.

-Hinge

[elbloom]

just had a 4 vs. 4 ... im not kidding you it REALLY was a 4 vs 4, 2 guys pulled a dukenukem - sksniper and saturnism, guess you know them already it´s not like i´m calling names you don´t already know....
and 6 guys were afk or dropped/dced - who knows what. I crippled and tked one of the afkbots but it was a trial -.- then joined the fight and won.
what a disgusting match. worst i´ve ever played in. this game is in the process of going down the drain and they didn´t fix this gamebreaking issue in over a month

[stjobe]

I've only been here since early August, so I defer to your seniority, but I simply cannot agree with most of your points.

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

Without voice com, you will lose 9 out of 10 times.

My 1.25 pure-PUG non-voice win-loss ratio disagrees with your hyperbole.

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

In an 8 vs. 8 match losing 1 player is tantamount to failure unless you are very good as a team.

Tell that to the team that were 5-2 up against us and lost 5-7 after I went on a killing spree in my Commando.

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

without knockdown [lights] are far too easily exploited.

Knockdowns will return, and believe it or not, this light pilot is looking forward to it.

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

If the developers continue to push out trivial content vs. bug fixes to what can only be considered CRITICAL issues

Luckily they have more than one developer, so they can push out "trivial content" while simultaneously working on bug fixes.

Edited by stjobe, 29 November 2012 - 04:33 AM.

[DrBunji]

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

I’m writing this because we are now (as founders and as of the last patch) spending our real money. For all intents and purposes the game is now Live (so curtail the "It’s Beta" responses please).

This isn't actually true you know. It is beta. When you bought the founders it was so that you could get access to closed beta. Now it is open beta, and no one is forcing you to sink money into the game. So no, you cant just wave the hand magically and say it isn't beta.

I have no quarrel with the rest of your post though, and those things are in dire need of a fix.

[Volkite]

"It's Beta"
Yeah. We know. But it's getting worse every patch. beta is when you're working toward a finished, polished product. THis... this is the opposite.
And that coupled with the toxic forum community, makes many a sad Panda.

[Pr8Dator]

I don't care if I win or lose... I play because I've always enjoyed blasting away in a mech since Battletech TT. Play for fun and you truly play, otherwise, its work away from work...

[CCODEZ]

DrBunji, on 29 November 2012 - 04:32 AM, said:

When you bought the founders it was so that you could get access to closed beta.

I should point out a lot of people brought founders to support the game, then closed beta became a perk of that. Finding this out I think the majority then brought into founders for the beta access and got p'od that the game is not complete and still has some fairly major bug issues.

I have to point out that I must be the lucky minority. I have about 1 crash in the mechlab every other week and drop out of the game due to crashes even less. Sure its still annoying and needs addressing but IMO hardly something thats considered game breaking. I've played far worse RELEASED games and paid upwards of £30 for the privilage.

Add to the fact that they sorted out the *activate* button for founders premium I know I can keep my founders mech bonus and wait for a more rounded game play variations to go *yup, think i'll start my premium now*. They could have just said sod you all but didn't. The devlopers and crew care more than people are giving them credit for and are working hard 24/7 to get these issues sorted. People seem to think they're entitled to the world sometimes.

If all these people think they can do better, than band together and get the funding and make a game yourselves.

I, for one, am thankful for those involved with PGI to make the effort on a potentially fantastic Stompy Mech pew pew game!

[Lupin]

I have been playing for since late July:

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

I’ve played since early July so I’ve got a fairly decent feel for the state of the game.

Without voice com, you will lose 9 out of 10 times. It doesn’t matter if its 8 man premade or 4. You simply will lose. And if you win it’s because some of your team does have voice com. I’ve played in well over 1000 matches since I joined closed beta. Using the free Teamspeak server you will win 9 out of 10 times, and dropping to just a 4 man premade made no difference to this ratio. I simply cannot see any in game mechanism (typing) that will overcome this. Voice is far too efficient. So get on Teamspeak or die.

You are doing something seriously wrong if you lose 9 out of 10 times. I often play in non-team matches.
Yes your chance of winning increased with team and/or Teamspeak (Or similar).

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

The client in its current build is the worse to date. Crash to desktop, Yellow screen of death, map craps out, overheating bug, missiles going through mountains…hell I saw an atlas’ AMS kick off in the middle of the tunnel on the forest map the other day, and no one but the two of us were in the tunnel… The premade group I regularly play with repeatedly resets the client every hour to try to mitigate this and it’s still not enough.

Windows XP seems to be the source of a lot of the problems. Having switched to Windows 7 64bit a lot of problems have just gone.
I begin to wonder would real minimum specs are for this game.

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

The current exploit of a player suicide just as the game begins so that they can farm c-bills is ridiculous. In an 8 vs. 8 match losing 1 player is tantamount to failure unless you are very good as a team. And it happens a lot. Combine that with all the client failures listed above and you have a consistently poor match experience. Frustration barely covers how you feel when you know you’re going to lose before you even start. I now as a player wait to see how many failures, disconnects and suicides there are at the start of the match to determine my strategy, if it’s chronic on my side, I just find a backward spot on the map and power down.

Sadly yes farming, robots and similar are a pain. DEVs really need to come down hard on them.
On the plus side players doing this show no skill, interest or experience in the game, god help them when they meet a real player.
I having a custom mech does not mean you know how to play.

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

Light mechs are far too powerful for their intended use. I’ve talked about this in the past, but I’ll say it again for clarity, without knockdown they are far too easily exploited. Being able to simply run straight into a larger mech to avoid target lock and damage is incorrect. Until this is fixed, expect to see me in my streak cat!

I am a light pilot and I think knockdown needs to be put back.

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

I’m writing this because we are now (as founders and as of the last patch) spending our real money. For all intents and purposes the game is now Live (so curtail the "It’s Beta" responses please). The clock is running and in 59.39 days I’ll vote with my feet. If the developers continue to push out trivial content vs. bug fixes to what can only be considered CRITICAL issues (like making the client actually work), then I suspect I won’t be the only one who stops playing, free or not. When you spend more time working around all the problems the game has instead of playing the game, then you aren’t playing a game anymore.

After all this and you've started your premium time. I will not start my premium time until a few bugs put right and at least stage 2 match making online.

[Frisk]

Can we talk about the intial grind? I've got 4-5 friends who started playing this game, but have since quit because they were grinding in closed beta (numerous account wipes)... and now they have no interest in doing that all over again. Personally if the persistant world isn't added in the near future... I can see myself getting bored with this game.

[Springbok]

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

The client in its current build is the worse to date. Crash to desktop, Yellow screen of death, map craps out, overheating bug, missiles going through mountains…hell I saw an atlas’ AMS kick off in the middle of the tunnel on the forest map the other day, and no one but the two of us were in the tunnel… The premade group I regularly play with repeatedly resets the client every hour to try to mitigate this and it’s still not enough.

The current exploit of a player suicide just as the game begins so that they can farm c-bills is ridiculous. In an 8 vs. 8 match losing 1 player is tantamount to failure unless you are very good as a team. And it happens a lot. Combine that with all the client failures listed above and you have a consistently poor match experience. Frustration barely covers how you feel when you know you’re going to lose before you even start. I now as a player wait to see how many failures, disconnects and suicides there are at the start of the match to determine my strategy, if it’s chronic on my side, I just find a backward spot on the map and power down.

This 2 paragraphs sums up exactly how I'm feeling - between the constant crashing, farmers and enforced group caps, I'm also slowly becoming frustrated.

And the Beta excuse in my eyes is not an excuse me anymore, as these problems have all been reported on and posted, discussed and debated on in these forums. We should have been testing other features of the game by now, not concentrating on issues that should have been sorted out in closed Beta already.

I sincerely hope it will be sorted out soon by PGI, but I have a sinking feeling that the developers are way behind their intended deadlines. Perhaps the real-time time frame for the game is now too ambitious and should be delayed by a full year to allow for comprehensive testing and to implement CW properly.

[Kain]

elbloom, on 29 November 2012 - 04:23 AM, said:

...2 guys pulled a dukenukem...

lol, we need to keep that expression

To the OP, when i read the topic title i knew it was a topic about a founder who is complaining and will stop playing if PGI won't fix netcode/matchmaking/lagshield/grind etc...

It is just a continuing development progress. If you read the developments blogs etc, you will know they are busy fixing the big issues (netcode / matchmaking), so just have patience, don't spend your MC's and just enjoy the game and the changes after a patch.

[MustrumRidcully]

CCODEZ, on 29 November 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

I should point out a lot of people brought founders to support the game, then closed beta became a perk of that. Finding this out I think the majority then brought into founders for the beta access and got p'od that the game is not complete and still has some fairly major bug issues.

No. I was only willing to shell out money for it because I wanted a Battletech game. It was like a kickstarter to me. The deal looked sweet.

PGI is feel to free the current state of the game, alpha, beta, zeta, gamma, episolon, omega, release or Aleph, I don't care. The game is available for everyone to play, all monetary investments we make are final. No more resets.

You may not call it the release of the game, PGI may not call it that (but they do, actually), but you will be measured against what is offered in other games, and if you are found lacking, that will hurt you bottom line. You can be as much of a fan of this game as you want to be, support PGI in whatever manner you want - but you can't change the public perception, and no one can make a first impression twice.

Lupin, on 29 November 2012 - 05:17 AM, said:

I have been playing for since late July:
Windows XP seems to be the source of a lot of the problems. Having switched to Windows 7 64bit a lot of problems have just gone.
I begin to wonder would real minimum specs are for this game.

I believe the problem is not Windows XP, but 32 Bit vs 64 Bit. AT least that's what I heard in various threads on this topic.

[Bloody Moon]

Hinge, on 29 November 2012 - 04:13 AM, said:

Without voice com, you will lose 9 out of 10 times. It doesn’t matter if its 8 man premade or 4. You simply will lose. And if you win it’s because some of your team does have voice com. I’ve played in well over 1000 matches since I joined closed beta. Using the free Teamspeak server you will win 9 out of 10 times, and dropping to just a 4 man premade made no difference to this ratio. I simply cannot see any in game mechanism (typing) that will overcome this. Voice is far too efficient. So get on Teamspeak or die.

Yeaaa, sure. I've been here since the beginning of the Founder program, after the Open Beta start i've played roughly 600 games (above 2000 if we count CB games aswell) all of my games in the Open Beta were solo, and i've never dropped below 50% win (not even when i was playing under heavy alcoholic influence ).

Edited by Bloody Moon, 29 November 2012 - 06:18 AM.

[Strider219]

Well, I've only been playing since the Open Beta, and I'll certainly concede the points made in previous posts. The game certainly needs some work, and I have decided that I'm not likely to invest any money in it until it's a bit closer to something resembling a finished product.

That being said, I will put this forward though. Having watched through the death cam at other players playing, I am starting to feel that a fair amount of what is passed off as a broken game being the reason for a win or loss is not actually the problem. Most of what the problem seems to stem from is this: There are many players who are just awful at this game.

Their gunnery is spastic and panicked, they don't lead targets, they fire at things inside the minimum range of the weapons, weapon grouping is non-existent, they don't lock and track targets, and heat management is something I'm not even sure some players are aware of.

The trial mechs are pretty bad, but if you want to play for free, you've got to grind the C-Bills out. This is by design as they point is to frustrate you just enough to want to open your wallet. Certainly can't fault them for that. Actually I found the practice with a handicapped trial mech to be good learning, because by the time I could afford something decent, I had gotten so tied down to dealing with poor heat management and making each shot count, that those habits served me well after I got a decent mech. I'm pretty sharp now and do my team proud in most games.

The comms thing, yes, it's helpful. It's difficult to win against someone who has it when you don't. However, my Win-Loss ratio when playing with PUGs still runs close to 50-50, so either a vast majority of people do not have comms, or it's not as crucial as everyone says. Either way, I'm not going to slash my wrists over it. In fact, the real reason I would recommend it is to put some social element back into the game since there is no lobby chat, and squeezing in a non-tactical conversation during a match is seldomly conducive to victory. Friends are easier to make when you actually have the time to get to know people. Hopefully they'll get around to remedying this soon...

As for the game crashes and the bugs, well, it's just going to take some time to work all that out I suppose. But they WILL get worked out eventually I would think. I know patience is probably a difficult thing to ask for, especially for you guys who have been playing since the beginning, but I'm pretty sure a few months from now we'll all be laughing at how rocky a start this game had and how proud we all were to have helped with testing and feedback of a new and long overdue Mechwarrior game.

Or we'll be off playing something else more entertaining? Either way, we win...

[Tykelau]

492 games in OB, all but 15 matches pugging, 1.73 KDR and a 48% win loss and I'd guess my damage per game to be around 300+.

OP may have used hyperbole, but the point is valid. Communication is vital and can make a difference in win/loss. Arguing against that point is foolish.

[Grokmoo]

For met at least, the client is now the least stable it has ever been. It crashes every 3 or 4 matches. From July through September I probably crashed a total of 2 or 3 times. There are also more game breaking bugs, such as bug where your screen only draws at about 1 frame per second, or the overheating getting stuck bug, or the yellow screen bug. All of these were introduced within the past month or so and haven't been fixed. I have seen them enough times and heard enough other people seeing them to know that they are common. These sorts of issues are really quite critical and it is a shame that PGI seems unable to fix them.