67 replies to this topic

[Adrienne Vorton]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 20 January 2013 - 09:43 PM, said:

I thought ECM was "working as intended" as theyve been saying in all the interviews so far?

gosh, you are soooooooooooo out of date, a bit over week at least...

Edited by Adrienne Vorton, 21 January 2013 - 02:57 AM.

[xRaeder]

Felix, on 21 January 2013 - 01:14 AM, said:

My question is...

Why the **** do they have an internal QA team? We are supposedly BETA TESTERS, it is our job to TEST things isnt it? I am sure everyone would appreciate them tossing us things to actually test instead of deciding they want to test everything like ECM, MG, ect, internally first.

Hell they thought ECM worked as intended when they did their internal testing but when it gets to us? Naturally we find it is broke as ****, and when we try to point that out to them they just yell "NOPE IT WORKS AS INTENDED!" for MONTHS before they figure out. "Hey um...maybe those beta tester folks...kinda know what they are talking about?" Then they decide to wait months more before releasing any sort of Fixes for it. Though I have to say, I am atleast happy that they are finally working on it instead of ignoring the problem like they have been.

This is actually a common thing in development cycles. See the lead designer has an idea, the programmers make tools to make it work, the artists make it look pretty, the level designers place / script the items in the world, the QA team tests it... ANNND the players break it.

By break it I don't mean some esoteric bug (though that does indeed happen... cuz players do some crazy **** sometimes that devs can't account for). I mean players take some system that exists and then finds the most efficient way to take advantage of that system.

The most efficient light Mech build right now for example is a Raven 3L w/ 2 SSRM2s, 2 MLs, ECM, and an engine that allows it to go 140 kph.

The devs didn't say anything about netcode until Open Beta (despite my playing with Jenners and telling them it was going to be a problem once the wider playerbase got their hands on it). And they only said something about it because everyone and their mother complained (rightfully so!). But... here's the kicker here. In my opinion they knew their netcode was bad for months, even a year, before OB hit. You can tell because the game is only 8v8 despite the fact that most other FPSes can handle far more than that (remember Novalogic's Joint Operations? That had 150 players on a server) and they've said they won't be adding 12v12 until netcode is fixed.

ECM allows the Raven 3L player to effectively, and for very little cost, make him immune or much more difficult to target with lock on weapons, which combined with the lagshield (netcode), creates a very efficient path for the Raven pilot.

The problem that I think PGI has based on my past experience is that they have no experience dealing with Multiplayer players who are really good at min/maxing. So a lot of their design needs to be rebalanced constantly. More so than other games, and certainly more than single player games.

[Tie Ma]

Kaelus, on 20 January 2013 - 10:26 PM, said:

I like how everyone has given up on expecting DX11 and they dont talk about it anymore like it's a dead topic. DX9 4ever!

and this will happen to community warfare. and maybe even ECM balance.

like it had for sSRMs. the problem was never solved. it was just forgotten. the overall gaming experience is worse. people just don't know why. its an accumulation of these forgotten things over time.

Edited by Tie Ma, 21 January 2013 - 07:01 AM.

[Esplodin]

I keep getting the feeling that there is major engine issues, and all the furious work is directed at some core issues in the game engine rather than towards the user experience and balance. You know, can't even begin to fix some of the obvious problems until you address some deeply coded root issues.

I've had a few "Holy poop, the sales critter promised X and it doesn't even do X - X^n! Good thing the Veep got some cool swag to push it." in my day.

[Tie Ma]

xRaeder, on 21 January 2013 - 04:10 AM, said:

The problem that I think PGI has based on my past experience is that they have no experience dealing with Multiplayer players who are really good at min/maxing. So a lot of their design needs to be rebalanced constantly. More so than other games, and certainly more than single player games.

this. they don't seem to have a lot of experience in multiplaer games

PR is also very very important.

[Carrioncrows]

Huntsman, on 20 January 2013 - 10:48 PM, said:

I don't understand why machine guns keep getting tossed onto the back burner. Why is it so hard to change the weapon damage factors, even if it's not a permanent fix, just to make them somewhat viable in the short term, even if the ultimate changes they intend are more complx in the long term (such as crit adjustments). It takes no time at all for a developer to make a change like this. I used to do it myself without any programming experience at all inside a minute or two when my friends and I modded games to play via LAN years ago.

This isn't like LPLs where they're sub-optimal but still usable in rare cases. Machine gus are completely useless as is, and we now have two small mechs, a Spider, and Cicada, both with 4 ballistic hardpoints, clearly meant to boat machine guns, and they can't.

Just take a minute to kick in a placeholder improvement to the machine guns into the next patch that TRIPLES their damage. Trust me, they'll still be underpowered at that point but at least they'll be able to do something until a more permanent solution presents itself.

Because they want to fix it and be done with it, not have to continuously come back to things. They have more stuff planned and the more they have to continuously work on old stuff the less time they have to dedicate for the new stuff. I don't mind that they take a little extra time to "nail" it down as long as it's a good fix.

[Taizan]

I am also only expecting the Hero commando & possibly the end screen with some minor fixes. Not much indeed, but then again I did not expect to see any major patch this week.

Remember though that every patch also has some "silent" fixes. The last one (at least for me) basically removed all game breaking bugs to only the 4 FPS bug. Haven't had missing UI, black screen or yellow screen etc. since last Tuesday.

[Tasorin]

What you are really seeing is Bryan and Garth starting to be more open and honest about the limited internal capacity to churn and burn open action items that translate into content implementation and game mechanic fixes.

Part of the problem is people expecting AAA title capacity at a single A development house. PGI has limited finite resources, and those resources get focused by Garth and Krew. That is where PGI is on the hook for its actions on the issues they decide to address and in which order they address them.