Slashdot Mirror
Mechwarrior Online Developer Redefines Community Warfare
New submitter MeatoBurrito writes "The latest iteration of Mechwarrior was crowdfunded (without Kickstarter) as a free-to-play first-person mech simulator. However, despite promises to the founders, the game has been shifted to a third-person arcade shooter and now the community is rioting. This followed a series of other unpopular decisions; the developers decided to sell an item for real money that had a significant impact on gameplay, crossing the line separating cosmetic/convenience items and 'pay-to-win.' Then they added a confusing game mechanic to limit its use, which had the unfortunate side effect of making some strategies completely useless. From the article: 'PGI’s community practices showcase a fundamental misunderstanding of both freemium development and community management. The developer has never had to deal with such a large player base before, and it has never had to deal with the strains of continuous development before. Rather, PGI seems to be handling Mechwarrior Online in much the same way they might a AAA game: by keeping quiet and only discussing its work in vague terms. ... Mechwarrior Online’s road to launch is a cautionary consumer tale, fraught with anger and betrayal. It shows how a company can take a fan base dedicated to an old IP and completely alienate it through lack of communication, unpopular features, and oathbreaking. It shows how players need to be cautious of supporting a project based solely on the IP backing it.'"
The fan base shouldn't be so whiny and picky. That goes for any fan base or gaming community.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
It's time for a grand experiment... an experiment unlike any the world has ever seen before! An ET doll will poke your bare asshole with its magic finger and inflict extreme amounts of tickle upon your ass. Why? To see what happens, of course! It's the greatest experiment! Additionally, you will be naked in a spotlight, and darkness will surround the light from the spotlight. An audience will watch your asshole get poked by the ET doll, and they'll gasp in awe at the results of the experiment!
I thought that firewalls handled that already.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
And I wonder what the heck the submitter / article author is smoking?
Yes, they've done some things a lot of folks (myself included) have been unhappy with - I could list several things if you guys want - but the stuff in the summary is largely not true. What item is this he claims they have sold for real money (implying you can't get it with in-game currency) that has crossed the line into pay-to-win? I know of no such item!
The biggest issue they've had recently is the addition of 3rd person view, which upset a lot of us - especially since they promised a separate 'hardcore' queue for those who didn't want to play with folks using 3PV, and then didn't follow through on that. They have made some other moves instead, though, which at least help: the real competition-level 12 vs 12 organized group games will not have 3PV available.
On the plus side, the gameplay is generally fun and they have also done an *amazing* job with the mech designs! Are there things still to be done? Yes - tons! Are there things I would have done differently - yes, but they can't please everyone! But are they completely shifting to an 'arcade shooter'? Heck no! :)
William George
When you "crowdfund" something you are giving money with really no basis for expecting anything in return. This is why I would rather just buy something instead of crowdfund it. I don't do investment, it is risky. I do do Kiva though for small amounts.
This is problem with kickstarter and the like. Managing expectations. It looks like you are buying a product when in fact you are giving money to someone to develop an idea. This illusion of buying a product is reinforced by the limitation on 'fund my life projects'.
In this case a game was produced. It sounds like due to financial constraints of running the game certain compromises had to made. This is standard. The initial concept is almost always unfeasible. Certain comprises have to be made during the engineering process. But the fact remains that apparently the money was used to develop a product that was, in general, like the product being advertised.
What the firm maybe should have done is said that the original product could not be developed, and, BTW, we have no contract to give you anything, so we will just take the work done and make this complete other product, which looks almost the same, but we promise isn't, and you can pay just like anyone else. Which really is what they did but they tried to sugarcoat a bit better than that.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It shows how players need to be cautious of supporting a project based solely on the IP backing it.'"
Or as those of us in the old guard of the geek community call it... "The Lucas Effect".
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
PGI has managed to snatch failure from the jaws of success, by ignoring, insulting, and lying to it's community.
Hah, how sensationalist. No, they just added a third person camera like all the old Mechwarrior offline games and a bunch of tryhards who seem to know better than the developers -- and these sort ALWAYS think they know better than the developers -- are upset about it.
Does this mean that, without crowdfunding, the game would simply not come into being? "Not quite," he says. "The product will be a lot better for players because of the crowdfunding.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The top tier Cool Shot is what the author is saying was pay-to-win. I never used one. I built my mechs to not overheat and thus take advantage of opponents who did.
I've been playing the game for 6 months. It's been fun, but I've just been finding it too repetitive lately. I'd still recommend it to anyone who likes the MechWarrior concept. Just be prepared to spend time on the forums learning how to play, as no tutorial is provided by the developer.
Mechwarrior online was NEVER any sort of 'free' or 'free to play' in any meaningful way. It was free to download. But if you want any FUN. You're paying.
They were selling all of the mechs people want to play with for cash. The entire stable of mechs. All for sale. Can you download and drop into an atlas and go killing? Hell no. You got a very very limited selection of what to do. And what you could do with it.
Every battle quickly shaped up to be paid players stomping the shit repeatedly out of free players.
Almost the entire point of the mechwarrior series was behind a credit card. Thats not any sort of free to play. That's flat out pay to play. BUT with the added bonus of all the scummy in game busted shit they will sell you a way around and constant transactions.
I've been a fan of mechwarrior games and lore since as long as it has existed. And these people ruined it. They should have just gone with plain ol paid monthly subscriptions so we could have a good game. And not scummy underhanded tactics designed to squeeze more money out of players at every turn. It's bullshit.
Its a motherfucking shame what they did to mechwarrior. Disgusting.
One-sided opinions does not a story make.
shame on us / for all we have done / and all we ever were / just zeroes and ones
How about the part where the guy doing the "Ask the Devs" thread regularly take on questions that he answers with something along the lines of I don't know.
Or that the Community Manager's only apparent contribution is getting big names in the "Let's Play" and Game reviewing to make videos of the game...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIn-im_tWEg Reference Video
Or that instead of a Valve style change log the updates instead focus almost exclusively on purchasable content, there wasn't even a foot note when all the weapon sound effects were changed.
Do I even need to bring up the cluster fuck that is ECM? Bringing in the Raven mech whose role as a dedicated ECM platform is somewhat undercut by the fact that only one of the three versions can mount ECM at all was a bad idea made worse by the fact that ECM was totally overpowered to the point of totally disrupting the team alliance indicators making it impossible to tell who you were shooting at.
Also to remind you the Hero Mech design are Cash money only variants different from any acquired with in game currency that also have a bonus to exp and in game currency.
Really though the main gist of the post is that PGI has failed to keep people happy or to even make enough empty promises to hold off full out rioting, Remember back a few months ago when PGI went ahead and deleted over half the official forums because it was getting unruly, Or we can look at the bottom half of this post http://mwomercs.com/news/2013/08/730-september-creative-developer-update where they admit things are getting so abusive that they are considering calling police on some commentors...
That is not a well managed community, not at all.
I play in a group and have seen several Gold Founders (people who paid $120 to get into the closed beta) walk away in disgust or boredom.
Things are going downhill.
1: Buy the rights and announce a multiplayer version of a dearly loved series of games, suggest some great ideas, receive lots of money and goodwill.
2: Drag your feet, procrastinate, dumb the game down, fail to implement features and watch it finally drift endlessly as yet another average, money grubbing F2P.
3: ???
4: Profit!
CAPTCHA : pitiable
I seem to remember there being a mechwarrior style game on kickstarter that looked really good in videos - now for the life of me I can't track it down. It was a mech style game, but not the mechwarrior brand.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
Sounds like the sad tale of Tribes.
Here's some background for those who are wondering WTF this is all about: about 13 years ago MW4 came out and a combination of factors, including the visibility 3rd person view afforded the pilot, turned it into a "sit behind a hill, jump and take potshots" type of game. Because of the stories they've heard from uninformed/biased sources, most people who didn't play MW4 think 3rd person view is the devil and any mention of it drives them into an incoherent, foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy.
Put yourself in the devs' shoes for a second. There's a feature you want to implement but any mention of it sends the community into an incoherent rage. You know why and how this feature was abused in the past and have a plan to make it abuse-proof but if you even bring up that you want to put it in the game, you'll have a lot of people ragequitting the whole game before they even see if the feature's as bad as they feared. Do you tell them and risk losing a lot of players, or ninja it in and hope the community is intelligent and open-minded enough to see it's not nearly as bad as they thought?
I haven't played MWO in a while but I keep in touch with people who do and what I've heard is that 3rd person view isn't anything special and they still prefer 1st person when playing competitively. The OP is nothing but agenda-driven horseshit from a sore loser who hasn't gotten over his hate of the myth of 3pv enough to see that the addition of it has done exactly nothing to the game.
I thought the article said a person could toggle between first and third person. Wasn't that always the case in the Mech games? At least I think I recall that in MechWarrior Mercenaries.
Ah yes, the anti-PGI propaganda is spreading. The Dumb Ass Dominion (DAD) continues to shack their fist in the air about how they where "wronged" by a feature that is so horribly gimped, it might as well not be there. The bases for the outrage, PGI originally stated that they didn't have plans to include the feature because it wasn't part of their initial vision. Now PGI realized that the feature was essential to attracting and retaining new players. But the DAD has to rage because they don't want players who will play the game differently than they do.
Please google #SaveMWO for additional information on PGI's handling of this, I can assure you this is not a "one-sided" representation of what is currently going on in MWO.
I'm glad some people can still find enjoyment in this game, but in ignoring the most dedicated and competitive of their fans, PGI have forsaken the long-term health of their game for their short-term goals. The game has very real problems, and the developers refusal to communicate and listen to their fan-base have caused a great many of us to throw our hands up in disgust. It is especially disappointing considering the state of the game was generally quite good in closed-beta when they were listening and working with their community, but they've thrown that all away now that the game has gotten more publicity. I can only hope the bad press finally forces them to reconsider the direction they've chosen, but until that point I will not be playing or giving them another dime.
Geeze this sounds just like what happened with warhammer online (save for the crowdfunding aspect)
There was this Mechwarrior-type arcade game from Japan I saw in a Pizza restaurant. I can't remember the game's full name but I was dazzled by the game play effects. It had Mechwarriors movements as fast as the Flash of DC comic books. The player commit strikes that emit light flashes similar to lightning. The user can switch between two perspectives: fighting view from within the Mechwarrior or 3rd person view as in Mortal combat. I can only remember the name contained "Gundam". Do you know of this game? Is there any capture video on youtube of this arcade game?
Anybody not familiar with MWO should come try the game out instead of listening to this troll. The monetization system the same as LoL in that nothing you can buy is P2W. This so called riot is mostly coming from Goons and sock puppets. PGI communicates way more than Square Enix, EA, Ubi or most other major developers. I'm upset that CW and Clans got delayed too but hey they still update more often than Valve and I'd rather wait then make childlike demands to have it right away in some broken mutant state. 3rd Person View is no where near as bad as any of the whiners made it out to be. Unlike lots of F2P, They are even refunding people who preordered and got mad about a freaking camera. I love my stompy robots and so do alot of other people do come play with us. Inb4 white knight
Free-to-play is an awful model, thrust upon gamers because the publishers have decided it must be so. If it can't be online, then it can be pirated, and the notion that there's a nickel in a gamer's pocket that doesn't come to them violates the most dearly-held religious belief of the game companies.
Nobody really likes free-to-play. I don't know anyone for whom it is their first choice of gaming platform. When a gamer hears that some well-known property is coming out as free-to-play, there is a sinking feeling in their collective stomach.
And this physical reaction is very interesting. I've tried a few F2P games, and I find I get an actual nausea from them. One is actually a good game, Planetside 2, but the impossible-to-escape awareness that there's a guy there, tapping you on the shoulder to try to get you to buy something, or to just give him some money, permeates every moment of game-time. If Planetside 2 was a subscription model like Eve, or a dedicated server model, I'd gladly buy the game. But no matter how fun Planetside 2 is (and if you get a good group of people it's a LOT of fun), that nausea never leaves. Whenever you realize that spending another $12 will get you better weapons and armor, and a temporary boost to XP, you get that sick feeling.
Maybe this will change some day, but I see a future with a lot more of these Mechwarrior situations where a community of fans, who have happily PAID MONEY for the game in the past, just decide, "Fuck it" and look for something else to play.
I certainly don't see the me-too, uncreative, group-think that goes on in most game companies giving up on the F2P strategy. They're sold on it and it really doesn't matter what the gamers - the customers- want. It's the way of the world now. There's always another crop of 12 year-olds who will spend time on F2P games but they'll move on to the next one long before serious brand-loyalty comes into effect. If Mechwarrior had started out as F2P, I guarantee that it wouldn't have any "community" to be outraged.
You are welcome on my lawn.
These guys shipped Duke Nukem Forever.
You must have been playing a very different version than I've been playing. Your entire post is so off the mark!
They were selling all of the mechs people want to play with for cash. The entire stable of mechs. All for sale.
The entire stable of mechs are purchasable with real money, yes. However all but a few are only purchasable with real money, and those are only variants of mechs that are available with in game currencies. And the vast majority of those are considered to be sub-par. You can purchase every single chassis with in game currency you earn by playing the game.
Can you download and drop into an atlas and go killing? Hell no.
If an Atlas is one of the trial mechs, then hell yes. If not, then hell yes - after you earn the in game currency to buy one; and with the cadet bonus, that's 25 games.
Almost the entire point of the mechwarrior series was behind a credit card. Thats not any sort of free to play.
I've been playing the game sense closed beta, and I have no idea what the hell you are talking about there.
The entire point of the mechwarrior series?
Do you mean Community warfare? Because that isn't even out yet, so it can't be behind a credit card.
Stompy giant robots blasting each other? That's there and free to play.
Every battle quickly shaped up to be paid players stomping the shit repeatedly out of free players.
No, wrong, wrong, wrong! It wasn't paying players that were stomping free players, it was organized group players stomping PUG drops. Payment had nothing to do with it at all. You didn't need to pay to drop with other players, and paying didn't make you instantly have a group to drop with.
My karma is in a nose dive
I can tell you most players of MWO are having fun and believe that article is one sided propaganda. Here are some facts.
1. There is nothing in the game that is pay to win. :)
2. “Coolant Flush” has not unbalanced the game.
3. Removing “General Discussion” from the forum was annoying but thats about it.
4. There was a problem for a while with high-damage alphas jump snipers etc. These balance things happen in games. At the moment the changes made have made it a non-issue again. That is unless you are one of the players that thing you should only be able to fire one weopon at a time and it should take 10 minutes to kill a mech.
5. Ghost Heat has turned out to work well.
6. Project Phoenix is a big seller and I personally no of none of my friends that have returned it. I am sure some people have but my feeling is this article greatly overstates how many.
7. #SaveMWO acts like they speak for the entire community. In fact best I can tell they are a very very vocal mintority. As for their ideas they have both good and bad ideas just like the developers.
8. The comment that 12vs12 " received an average reception in the public game community, " is just complete BS. Most players had been wanting 12vs12 for a long time. People in the community had been griping because we did not have it yet. And this change has made the game have better tactics by and large and be more fun for most players. It is different than 8vs8 but not in a bad way.
9. Many players were very vocal about not wanting third-person view. But the truth is it made very very little difference in gameplay. There are several negatives to using third-person view. And it has been a part of Mechwarrior games for a very long time. It has by far been the most overblown thing people have complained about.
"At the end of this long history is one question: Does the Mechwarrior Online community have the right to be so angry?" Answer No
And by the way for those of you who have not players. Here is what you need to know. If you have not played Mechwarrior the learning curve is kinda steap right at first. But they are working on tutorials that will come out around the launch of the game. There is no pay to win you can do just fine without ever giving them a dime. And most importantly its fun to play.
That would be the smartest thing to do, but it is likely that there simply isn't enough of a player base to allow that. Not that breaking promises and going against the pillars of design that you used to collect five million dollars from founders won't further erode the player base anyway.
too much Game of Thrones.
I'd expect this sort of thing from House Liao, but from Piranha Games? Ha!
The summary for this is inaccurate, but the article is one of the best articles I have seen thus far explaining the issues. But even then, the article has a few mistakes (albeit minor ones). When ghost heat was first introduced, nobody knew what it was supposed to solve. It didn't affect the dominate meta at the time at all (2 PPC 1 gauss) and only screwed over gimmick builds, canon builds, and legit builds. It was only much later that we got confirmation that it was designed to "fix" boating, which was never even a problem. #savemwo was started around this time because the sniping meta had existed for over 6 months by this time. Everybody thought ghost heat was the attempted fix, so when it turned out to not do anything at all, many of the competitive groups started doing letter writing campaigns to the publisher. A group of players didn't think that writing the publisher would be effective, so #savemwo was started. By the way, PGI finally came up with a game plan to solve the sniping meta. It is called ghost delay and doesn't solve anything
The problem is that the developers have repeatedly promised that the game would be first person camera only, and that there would be a separate queue so that if people wished they could play first person only and not compete against others using the 3rd person camera. The gamefront article does a good job summing up the situation and detailing the several oaths PGI has broken and the abusive way it had treated its community.
Trademark?
Really? Cause when you drop, there's no one using it. This article is so full of crap it's not funny. Nice try #saveMWO but you're little crusade is failing.
PGI has been taking player's money for almost two years now but refuse to come out of beta testing or acknowledge they have a live product with paying customers. Players who continue to support them with funding deserve what they get.
Also, PGI was responsible for the majority of the finished Duke Nukem Forever. That should speak volumes about them.
There is no reason, in this day and age, that developers need to be making massive game destroying mistakes like this. There are many business models out there that skirt the "pay to win" boundary without crossing it that they could have copied (see LoL, Eve, PS2, etc). It's just incompetence on the part of the developers.
Actually there is not a single p2w item in the game. You can get all the consumables with in game currency as well, though it does take a while to grind the skills to have the cbill (ingame) versions just as good as the mc (pay-currency) versions.
Aside from that you can buy "hero" and "champion" mechs, which have a cbill or experience bonus respectivly. No in-match advantages though, just makes grinding faster, similiar to "premium time" which lets you gain cbills and experience faster.
The only item you definately need to buy if you play this game after a while are "mech-bays". You only have 4 of those at the start of the game, and assuming you want more than 4 mechs you need to buy more.
Apparently when a Dev says something will happen (no #pV) and 9 months later they Devs change their minds, it is now considered 'oath breaking'
This is the same logic that people use to say that when a politician says he is for something, then is presented evidence of that position being wrong and changes it, that said politician is wishy washy.
Changing your mind when presented with evidence is a GOOD thing.
They have been reading to many BattleTech novels (aka Game of Thrones IN SPACE).
I seen this coming months ago.
I actually feel sorry for the Founders. PGI promised a specific game which players funded with a 5+million Kickstarter, yet, it seems greed and money has taken over PGI.
Its the same story with most "beta F2P" games.
When the market isnt big enough, simply change the game, ignore your previous funding to reach the bigger market.
PGI has either become greedy, or, the current MWO player base is at its maximum limit and PGI has burnt their money.
"but they need to make money". Doesnt even come into it.
PGI knows how big the MechWarrior market is from the kickstarter. They just couldn't be bothered to make a game whilst sticking to that level of funding.
Now, they want more, even if it means slapping founders in the face.
I have no respect for PGI.
I played MWO for months a while back and all i seen in progress was new mechs which cost £20 a pop:
- There were no bug fixes for months (the broken/missing hud bug which required you to leave the game)
- Scripts.Pak showed me everything i needed to know about their lack of programming skills. More references to nano suits than mechs. (unencrypted, opens in zip)
- An apology post from a dev who cant even be bothered to use paragraphs, let alone acknowledge the fact they are slapping most founders in the face. Says it all really.
MWO really is a prime example of poor development with one goal, money. Theres no love, or, devotion from PGI anymore and it shows.
They dont care about the previous 5+million founder injection, or, the promises they made.
This really is why you shouldn't pump money into a idea/company with bad previous reputation. You'll only be disappointed, i was.
I have been playing Battletech since the early 1990s, and played all iterations of the Mechwarrior games. I also beta tested EA's Multi-Player Battletech: 3025 when it was in development over 10 years ago. When I heard about MWO, I had dreams of a modern enhanced version of MPBT:3025, with lessons learned over the past 10 years in MMOs (esp. games like WOT) leading the charge in refining mechanics.
They pitched it as following the table-top rules. I was invited into closed beta, and at first it was pretty good. I bought myself a top-level Founder's pack soon thereafter. Then the game started a sudden decline. They rushed to "Open Beta" with the announcement that no more resets would occur. The difference between "Open Beta' vs. "Live" then really is in semantics. However, all MWO is is a series of match-maker battles on random maps. Unlike the MPBT:3025 engine of 10 years ago, there is no Inner Sphere map with battles over control of planets/areas. Nope, none of that. Also, instead of implementing new game systems, the development team spent build after build tweaking weapon damage and heat values. Then when a new game system was added, the delicate balance that they had previous attempted to achieve would be thrown into utter disarray. Also, with the promise of no more resets of player data, they couldn't really adjust much, for fear of introducing a game-breaking exploit or imbalance that would allow early adopters a huge advantage.
I left, I got my refund of my founder's pack on my way out the door. I know of many others that walked at the same time. Some waited it out another month or two, hoping it would get better, and then were denied their refund, since "Open Beta" had started. I had been really excited for their Mechwarrior: Tactics game to give me a good computer version of the tabletop game. However, I now hold very little hope out for that game.
Playing mw2 in Dosbix and seem to be having more fun.....................
Isn't MWO a takedown notice waiting to happen?
CAPTCHA: owners
The reality is that the "Hater Community" got their panties in a twist when PGI didn't "kow tow" to their demands ... that "Haters" predicted the changes would kill the game, which they didn't, and now they are basically forced to double-down and spread even more negativity.
I play at the competitive level, and the game is in the best shape it has been in so far ... there is one big outstanding issue (HSR/Hit Detection) that once fixed will make MWO a solid platform ... There is still lots of stuff that needs to be done, but from a "how does the game play", it's in great shape.
As far as the haters issues? Blown way out of proportion. The "real money" item? called "cool shot" ... and can be purchased with "free money" ... can only be used once per match, and rarely, if ever, affects the outcome of a match. Cool Shot is Manufactured crisis 1. "Ghost Heat" is a mechanic that limits how many weapons of a certain type you can fire at once ... you can still equip them, you just have to be careful how you use them. It has virtually stopped the worst abuses as it was intended and made the actual game experience better then before. Ghost Heat is Manufactured crisis 2. "Third Person View" (3PV) was added to the game to help new players ... and it can do that. It's rarely used and generally only by n00b players and is NEVER seen in competitive 12v12 games. It's really a non-issue as far as the game is concerned. "3PV" is manufactured crisis 3.
In the end, the only people the haters are really hurting is their friends and the rest of the community. Nobody I knows spends any times at all in the official forums or in other places like reddit because of all the hate these twits are spewing. Right now, the best thing that can happen for the game is if the Haters would STFU and GTFO and go bother some other game ... that is the #1 thing that would help MWO right now.
Look the MWO trolls and goons made it to slashdot. Same small group spreading the same lies. Just from this you can tell how popular MWO is becoming, MWO has picked up a whole subsection of goons and trolls that seem intent on trying to kill this game.
Title says it all. The author seems to say he speaks for the community. Yet the game keeps growing and growing. Third person view is OPTIONAL and removable with 1 keystroke. The community has been asking for this option. The game is free to play. Free to Win as well. They are offering options, is all. You can earn them in game, or quicker through micro-transactions. just like every other free to play game. PGI seems to be a good company, as well as a socially conscious company. They just completed a charity campaign where the players were able to puchase a specially designed and skinned mech for $10 US. Every single penny of that ten bucks was given to the Canadian Cancer Society in the name of one of the player's daughter, Sarah, who passed away from cancer. the child used to play with her father. They designed the skin with some cute things just for her. And 15k players, including myself, bought one. Over 150k US donated. That's saying a lot. The author is smoking crack. Must be, because he's sprouting nonsense.
In any event, there has never been even a hint of a reason to believe that PGI has any interest in learning from the successes and failures of anyone else, that they have any interest in listening to or heeding the demands of the community - without whom there is no reason for their game to exist, and so this should be their highest priority - or has any desire to do anything but milk the Mechwarrior property - that they muscled a large team of devoted volunteer developers out of making a free game in because they were intimidated by their ability to produce high-quality work for free - of all the money they can.
As for Garnaralf's diatribe above:
The fact that it's selling means nothing. It's the first commercial Mechwarrior game - a series with hundreds of novels to its credit and a fan base spanning 30 years - since the atrocity that was MechAssault (aka MechAssFault or MechsAsFail) so it was unquestionably going to attract a large number of downloads (which means nothing. I presume they count my player account towards their playerbase, and I've never actually done anything more than register my user name) and user registrations. Making a game free to play also means nothing, and has no reflection on the goodness of the company making it: it's a viable business model, nothing more.
The LONGSTANDING Mechwarrior community (almost 30 years old now) has by and large shown nothing but hate and derision for 3rd Person Views, at the very least since Mechwarrior IV, where it was well known to be a game ruiner: the MWLL team patently refused to consider it; 90% of MWO's players, by PGI's own polls, said they did not want a 3rd Person View, and made it clear that if there was to be such a mode, they did not want to play in the same match as other people using it due to the fact that it breaks immersion, changes the tactical mechanic, and provides an unfair advantage to those using it over those who don't. So what did PGI do? Ignore them, implement it anyway, then lied about separating 1st/3rd person players into different matches, repeatedly: that's not the sign of a "good company". I'm not sure what else you're basing your assessment on besides the fact that they make a game of which you are clearly a player, but if anyone needs to put down the crack pipe and do a more thorough investigation of reality, it's probably you.
Where was PGI's social consciousness BEFORE a player's daughter passed from cancer that obviously resulted in a social media campaign that they elected to pile on to to improve their image? You *do* realize that they get a HUGE tax break for that, right? The amount of money a game earns for a charity by pulling on players heartstrings and offering them up something that took almost no effort or time on their part (did I mention I'm a texture artist with significant CryEngine experience as well as friends and professional contacts at CryTek? There is, maybe 20 minutes of texture work, *tops*, on that Jenner, and 5 minutes of XML to edit the weapons config, plus 10 minutes to commit it to the build) in return for that charity donation is also not an indicator of a company's goodness: how much of their own profits did they donate? How much did the owner and executive officers pony up out of their own pockets? How much is the company going to be donating - regardless of charities - to cancer prevention every year from now on?
No, without going into excessive detail or listing my qualifications (I know I have them, I was there, I was involved),
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
PGI? Horrible? Naaahh.. can't be.
Hello, everybody, the good shoping place, the new season approaching, click in. ( http://www.sheptrade.com/ ) (Discount Air jordan shoes) $36, (Air Max shoes) $35, (Nike shox shoes) $36, (Handbags) $39, (Sunglasses) $16, (wallet) $18, (Belt) $17, (T-shirts) $20, (Jeans) $37, (NFL/MLB/NBA)Jerseys $25, ( http://www.sheptrade.com/ )