288 replies to this topic

[Mikhalio]

As predicted, the patch was a dud.

- Lag and bad netcode has made Spider a dead on arrival mech
- No fixes to hit box detection
- No Phase 3: now 1 to 2 cycles behind schedule with no guidance on when we will get true MP play
- No fix to Conquest bugs
- No fix to leg glitching
- No fix to the anti-hack detection netcode
- No new maps yet or fixes to the current map lag generated from the new drop positions
- No fix to the new netcode lag bubbles.

In other news
As predicted, Goons are wearing their Brioni suits and still drinking Scotch while SQUAWKing.
A hero commando will be equally as useless as the current commando's given their poor utility in small-box multiplay and their inferior status to a good wolfpack of 3 ravens.


I'm still bullish on pub stomping, and continued cash grabs by PGI until their cash pile burns out around November (up from August). Which should conincide with roughly when they rush the Clans into freemium status, and only after a long pump and promote building into E3.

Edited by Mikhalio, 15 January 2013 - 03:52 PM.

[Tarman]

DV McKenna, on 15 January 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

Oh look ma..a troll!

When the forums are more fun than the game they are created for, there is a problem with the game, not the forums.

[Felix Dante]

I don't know nothin' about nothin...

But I prefer to think they have been investing in Clan design time.

Probably a big hit on their coding and fixing stuffin the end...and a neccessary part of the game for many players.

Give it a few weeks...delays like this are common... and I bet we get a hammer fall of Clan patch!

Just my humble opinon however.

[Rodder]

Vitus1978, on 15 January 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

I want this game to succeed as much as anyone else it I feel that PGI needs to get their priorities straight. Matchmaking (PUG vs Premade needs to be fixed, ECM and Netcode need to put on the front burners ASAP. Take the guys workin on new maps and mechs from what they are doing and make them help out with the big three. Once those 3 are dealt with, and the majority of people are happy again, then go back to making new mechs and maps.....

OMG ...

Is it so hard to understand that 3d-artist and coders have NOTHING in common beside being human?

You cant put an artist into the code department and expect any kind of productivity. They don`t have the needed skills, just like a netcode specialist hardly is a top notch 3d artist. Both needs time and dedication to learn and i doubt that there are more than 10 people on this earth who have both skills on a high level.

[Jason1138]

Lonestar1771, on 15 January 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

What's funny is other companies will look at PGI and say "That's how NOT to make a game".

well believe it or not the world of warplanes beta is worse than this so i guess it depends on who you're talking about. hard to imagine the thought process at PGI though, so many of their decisions make zero sense to me

[Elementel]

Jason1138, on 15 January 2013 - 04:18 PM, said:

well believe it or not the world of warplanes beta is worse than this so i guess it depends on who you're talking about. hard to imagine the thought process at PGI though, so many of their decisions make zero sense to me

Jason1138, on 15 January 2013 - 04:18 PM, said:

well believe it or not the world of warplanes beta is worse than this so i guess it depends on who you're talking about. hard to imagine the thought process at PGI though, so many of their decisions make zero sense to me

LOL I play WoWP and it is so much better than this imo. I also play World of Tanks and they have been adding new maps on a regular basis. For you to draw a comparison is mind boggling to me.

[OtherGamer]

Really disappointed, was awaiting the next stage of the matchmaker.
Well, played about 10 matches, only won 1 where an ennemy went full ****** and killed at least 4 of his allies before we reached the middle of the map. 1 round was quite fair. 1 won without real fight, just a base rush. The 7 other matches where just XP and C-bill farm for the opponent as they didn't lost any mech and rolled over us like a train.
I tried the spider, it's inferior in every point compared to a raven, played 3 rounds with it 0 kills, average of 20 damage per round.
I really regret having sold my little laser Jenner for it.

Also, wasn't it time again for the Trial mechs to get switched? I always feel sad when I see someone using the Stalker Overheat Station.

Edited by OtherGamer, 15 January 2013 - 04:36 PM.

[Mikhalio]

Rodder, on 15 January 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

OMG ...

Is it so hard to understand that 3d-artist and coders have NOTHING in common beside being human?

You cant put an artist into the code department and expect any kind of productivity. They don`t have the needed skills, just like a netcode specialist hardly is a top notch 3d artist. Both needs time and dedication to learn and i doubt that there are more than 10 people on this earth who have both skills on a high level.

Well, there is this thing called Capital Allocation
They could have a.) hired a coder (or maybe a tier-1 coder for the price of 2 map artists) or b.) hired another art monkey who built trivial gimmicks and new paint tiles.

They chose b.)

The product suffered.

Edited by Mikhalio, 15 January 2013 - 04:35 PM.

[Serapth]

Mikhalio, on 15 January 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

Well, there is this thing called Capital Allocation
They could have a.) hired a coder (or maybe a tier-1 coder for the price of 2 map artists) or b.) hired another art monkey who built trivial gimmicks and new paint tiles.

They chose b.)

The product suffered.

In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if they are struggling with CryEngine. I had a discussion with a friend whose shop switch from CryEngine ( it was a while ago, may have been 2 instead of 3 ) over to Unreal, and it was horror story after horror story. He said they got their tech demo up and running with amazing speed, and it was beautiful... then it all started falling apart.

One thing is for certain, had they gone with Unreal Engine, they could have recruited talent a hell of a lot easier. Especially with a few dev houses in the Vancouver area closing shop recently.


Total and complete speculation on my part, but it would go a long way towards explaining why the same jobs have been posted for so long, as well as why we say such fast initial progress, which seemingly hit a wall about the time of open beta.

Edited by Serapth, 15 January 2013 - 04:41 PM.

[themoob]

I'm mostly disappointed because it was such a long gap between patches and not alll that much really got added/fixed.

[Mikhalio]

Serapth, on 15 January 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:

In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if they are struggling with CryEngine. I had a discussion with a friend whose shop switch from CryEngine ( it was a while ago, may have been 2 instead of 3 ) over to Unreal, and it was horror story after horror story. He said they got their tech demo up and running with amazing speed, and it was beautiful... then it all started falling apart.

One thing is for certain, had they gone with Unreal Engine, they could have recruited talent a hell of a lot easier. Especially with a few dev houses in the Vancouver area closing shop recently.


Total and complete speculation on my part, but it would go a long way towards explaining why the same jobs have been posted for so long, as well as why we say such fast initial progress, which seemingly hit a wall about the time of open beta.

Yeah, Cryengine is very tough to work with. There is a clear reason why people elect to work in the UT environment these days. Their Q&A support also is very weak vs. ID and Epic field consultants.

They pretty much picked the worst engine (but has very generous licensing terms) inorder to optimize their per-box revenue margins. I suspect this was how they managed to secure financing to buy out Tinker's shell-company project in the first place.


Their management choices are also pretty weak, with focus on promotes and cash-store games vs. creditable (sic) execution. The fact they pumped the game so hard going into November, and then now have fallen off the radar gives strong suspicions they are in cash preservation mode. The pay holiday in December and limited work produced since November (2-months to make 1 mech and a new untested backend ? that's pretty questionable from a 30 man production team...) also gives this some serious support.

Would not be surprised if they pump the game going into Summer box sale season, then do a Clans rollout for E3, and fold the shop to EA in November when their game's 90 day Legendary memberships burn out, and they have to book the revenues and gross losses in 2H13 (their product "year end").

Edited by Mikhalio, 15 January 2013 - 04:49 PM.

[Thuzel]

Kurshuk, on 15 January 2013 - 02:43 PM, said:

Well that's a severe disappointment. PGI have such an issue communicating with their fans. I read every post on this thread and I honestly believe, despite some of the more strongly worded comments, that we all love mechwarrior. And that it is from our intense passion that the forums get so heated.

I think what's really churning the vitriol is the parallel that can be drawn between kickstarter games and a founder pack. In both you're trading current risk for potential future reward. Most people that back kickstarters like that intimate connection with the developer and if you're like me you were hoping this was similar. But unlike kickstarter these devs don't care about the players in their game. They've made it abundently clear the community does not matter. It's this business decision that I have such a hard time getting along with.

MWO is a niche product, but instead of being the best niche product, they're trying to grab market share already with OB. It's just too early for a good player experience. So you join the game and play in trial mechs that overheat easily and don't have the same kind of punch a well customized mech has. Probably against premade groups that know the ropes. In unfamiliar maps. With no meta game. I'd leave too, but I love the MW games and this one is seriously awesome when it gets it right. I'm willing to wade through a lot of crap for this game, but most people aren't.

But instead of trying to make the game awesome for the niche, they look at expanding to recapture lost playercount. Things like 3rd person despite overwhelming rejection on the forums. There was a poll that was well over 90% opposed, yet PGI cited 'huge demand' when they talked about adding it. If this was kickstarted I bet they'd listen a little closer to the forums. And I'm willing to bet a lot of you bought into founders hoping it would be like a kickstarter run internal to the company, I know I did. But I know now that I was wrong. And in case you haven't figured it out yet, you don't count.

At least, that's the perception PGI chooses to create. I fear than unless they want to change that perception MWO may never even see launch.

I hope that I'm wrong,
Kurshuk

Very well said!!!

I really want to love this game and I really want PGI to do well with it, but its just not possible right now.

Any sort of time, emotional, or capital investment I make to this game just gets the worst kind of treatment, all the way around. This game has wonderful potential, and a fan base that would walk on broken glass to keep this thing going. Unfortunately, though, it feels like we've been taking that walk for a while now and we're getting fed up with it.

If this thing lasts another 6 months, then maybe it'll be in a good place. Until then, I've given up hope. PGI simply must start communicating better, and God help them if they don't start paying attention to what the players want. And just in case they can't handle subtle, it's not more hood ornaments and 10 dollar skins.

Just my 2 cents.

[Alymbic]

I cant really contribute much to the thread, but the heat efficency looks like a good start.



EDIT - The mechlab constant has been changed, but the ingame value still seems to be 1.4

Edited by Alymbic, 28 January 2013 - 01:11 AM.

[Mackman]

The devs did this to themselves. "We don't want to talk about what we're planning, we're putting all our efforts into the big patch coming up."

All well and good, devs, that's fine... except this was by no means a "big patch." Out of the three things they said would come by mid-January (Spider, Better end-of-match summary screen, and Phase 3 Matchmaking), we got one and the other two haven't even been mentioned yet.

We're not upset because of any one thing missing from the patch notes. We're upset because you refuse to tell us what's going on, which leaves us to form our own expectations based on the roadmaps that you put out for us. If you know that you won't meet the deadline, why the hell won't you tell us?

[RedDragon]

Well the game is stable and there were no new glitches/bugs/problems (at least that I know of/did encounter myself), which is quite a good thing looking at the last patches (I know it's kind of sad that this has to be mentioned at all...). We got a new mech, some minor fixes and some gimmicks. So I'd say it's an "ok" patch.
But in light of the announcement of a "big" patch and the big problems we still have that need fixing (JJs, ECM, balancing etc.), I'm a little disappointed.
We got some smaller things, but since this is the biggest patch since some weeks, I really expected more.

I really hope that the next patch will include all the things they marked for "mid January" (which is today...) and they just took another week to finalize and test those things like matchmaking, end of match summary etc.

[miscreant]

Still only 4 maps.

It'll be 2014 by the time we have 6 maps.

I'm SO sick of the same old maps. Losing interest QUICKLY.

[TheGunBunny]

The people that are fine with the patch are playing, the people not fine with the patch are here complaining. This is just like every game and the developers know it. Hence why they DON'T listen to people on the forums, consider that you might not be their target customer...

[Mikhalio]

Alymbic, on 15 January 2013 - 04:51 PM, said:

I cant really contribute much to the thread, but upping double heatsinks to ~ 1.56 (unsure of exact figure) was a nice touch

If you drop, it's marginal. I wonder how many employees were paid $80,000 over December to modify the value in the netcode from 1.4 to 1.56.....
How much would it cost to fire both of them and buy the senior netcode guy from any Ubisoft house in Montreal....

[Rodder]

Mikhalio, on 15 January 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

Well, there is this thing called Capital Allocation
They could have a.) hired a coder (or maybe a tier-1 coder for the price of 2 map artists) or b.) hired another art monkey who built trivial gimmicks and new paint tiles.

They chose b.)

The product suffered.

Yep, but that`s another pair of shoes. I am just getting sick of this constant "put the artists to the coders" demands from people who don`t even understand that this are different skillsets.

They are trying to hire a lead network programmer right now. But those guys are rare and wanted.

http://piranhagames.com/Careers.html

They`re looking for Lead and Senior UI-coders too. They know the UI is cra* and try to change it.

I am always up for a bit of PGI-bashing they made some wrong decisions for sure, but in this special case they are trying as hard as possible.

The problem is, those specialists they are looking for are that rare that it is not a matter of money alone. Those guys can chose the company to work in, and take things like where they have to work into account.

Now ask yourself, where do you want to live? Vancouver ... hm ok Vancouver .... California / Silicon Valley sounds better, doesn`t it? Endless summer and a well paid job ... Vancouver is no match to that ( just an example, i don`t want to bash Vancouver so please don`t rip my head off )

[dF0X]

I'd like the "not exciting enough to log back in" option please.

I guess "meh" will have to do.

Edited by Desrtfox, 15 January 2013 - 05:00 PM.