4 replies to this topic

[Omar Ravenhurst]

I'm a developer and owner of a software company. I've also been an avid fan and consumer of the battletech universe since the mid 80s. I've played table top competitively. I've played just about all commercial mechwarrior titles. I'm not a founder of MWO simply because I was so busy I didn't even know the project had progressed that far until one of my developers told me about it (he's a founder). I've tried to make up for that by buying quite a bit of MC. At this point (2/7/13) I'm about appoaching 1.2 million xp, so I feel I have enough time in to form some good opinions. I've enjoyed the game, and, thus far, it is likely the best Mech Shooter that has yet been created.

Battletech is one of the deepest and most elaborate sci fi universes yet created, and any title that falls within that universe should leverage that established lore as much as possible. I know that much of the content of MWO is yet to come as of this post on 2/7/13, but I feel there is already some low hanging fruit that could enrich the experience for newcomers and old mechwarriors alike.

I will be posting some elaborate suggestions aimed at the developers and designers. These are made from my perspective: an avid supporter of the franchise that is also a long time software developer. I will update this post with links to those threads, and I will link back to this post from those subsequent posts, so I don't have to keep typing this. My hope is that my suggestions will help in some small way, and my goal is simply to have a great Mechwarrior game.

My premise at the start of these suggestions (again 2/7/13) is as follows:
1) The tactical aspect of the game is fairly well fleshed out. It needs to be smoothed, and there's a lot of debugging left to do, but it is fundamentally sound.
2) The mechs and weapons as employed are likewise pretty well balanced and fleshed out. We have all the bases covered and everything seems to be fairly complete.
3) From this point forward, the focus for additions (ie not fixes or completions) should be
a. dramatic increase in playing evironments (maps)
b. improved match making
c. content based on the battletech universe (community warefare is part of this, but there's much more to it than that)
4) the goal of all these things should be to engage the userbase rather than expand the userbase. Why? Expansion of the userbase, and, as this is a freemium game, the expansion of the purchases by the existing user base, is a function of marketing and user experience. Increased user engagement can only lead to improved user experience (otherwise they would not be engaged), and thus increased revenue. Marketing is asymetric to gameplay and I'm not in marketing, so I won't be covering any of that.

Thanks for making the game. I wish you great success.

I'll be posting links to various topical posts below this.
Weapons subtype and availability mechanic: http://mwomercs.com/...y-and-subtypes/
Claiming Matches: http://mwomercs.com/...aiming-matches/
Imbalanced misson rewards: http://mwomercs.com/...ission-rewards/
Not a suggestion, but I put together some good info on the CatA1 over here:
http://mwomercs.com/...-of-juicy-data/

Edited by KamikaziChaser, 16 February 2013 - 03:13 PM.

[sycocys]

I'm always curious to know what company people that tell us they are developers or owners of are working for or in charge of. PM me if you want to silently feed my curiosity or just post it up if your not worried about trollsome players.

[Omar Ravenhurst]

sycocys, on 07 February 2013 - 09:27 PM, said:

I'm always curious to know what company people that tell us they are developers or owners of are working for or in charge of. PM me if you want to silently feed my curiosity or just post it up if your not worried about trollsome players.

Rather not post that at large, so PM sent.

[Fats McClure]

Very Logical sir. I agree with you on all points. I think PGI will get these things done. However it seems it will take PGI nearly a year to do the things they seem to want to do. I wonder if people will stick around that long. I hope they do, i enjoy this game.

You know the guy who charges off into battle with his Atlas miles ahead of the team and then panics when he realizes he is alone and about to be torn apart? Sometimes i feel PGI did that with releasing this game so soon.

[Omar Ravenhurst]

That's the concern, right? Yes, this is still a beta product, but, if they exhaust all the good will of the playerbase, all the functional improvements and content additions won't help. The trick is to set the hook and keep people involved to the degree that they will not mind the lack of this or the broken that. One thing that always helps in this regard is openness. The developer should be open and honest with the users about problems faced or difficult decisions that must be made. The more you involve the users,the more the community builds, the more leeway you'll be granted, and the harder it will be for the users to abandon the product.

An example is DayZ. I've played DayZ since it's early days. It would be hard to find a more buggy, hacked, and unsypathetic game, but that doesn't matter. The fanbase was both loyal and supportive, and grew to well over a million. Why? It's a very hard game that has no reward, and there is absolutely no content, so why would people care? Certainly the fact that it is a great environment helps, but a good deal of the staying power of that game is simply that a small band of enthusiastic people put an enormous amount of time and effort into making something with no thought of reward. DayZ is free. That team makes no money off of it. They made an awesome thing because it needed to be made, and that buys a ton or respect.

What can PGI learn from this? Well, like DayZ, there is a built in, and loyal fan base (DayZ is built on the Arma platform which is essentially a military simulator). The only franchise out there than I can think of with more of a backstory than Battletech is Star Wars. There are books, games, user created content, and rabid user groups all adding to the environment. Hell, just go over to sarna.net. The amount of history and content available for anyone working in this universe is almost overwhelming. Use it.

It's more than HPG transmissions and hero mechs. It's the flavor of the universe that will stick in people's minds. A shooter will come and go, but a lifestyle lasts a bit longer. It's not that hard to incorporate users into the fabric of the universe. I'll be posting a couple suggesting (and linking to them above) that deal with exactly that. The best part is that you don't even need to do all of it. The users will provide just as much content as the developers. Look how many merc groups are lined up to be involved. Ask them to help! They'll do it for FREE!!!