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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.'"
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
Why shouldn't they be whiny? The online gaming hivemind decreed a long time ago that anything "pay to win" was something that they generally don't want. This was and still is the line for many people where monetizing a product stops being about making a reasonable profit and starts being about wringing consumers for every last penny.
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.
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.
The fan base shouldn't be so whiny and picky. That goes for any fan base or gaming community.
If you want a less whiny and picky fanbase don't, Just Don't base your game's appeal on a continuously-developed-since-1984 tabletop-wargamer-nerd cult hit. Especially not one with several successful-but-now-dated PC game interpretations already built by other developers.
If you have made that mistake, don't double down on the stupid by systematically alienating players and pushing the game toward the direction of being a generic action/arcade title (because that's not a crowded genre where better-funded franchises will crush you like a bug or anything...)
If you want to play the "This is my goddam gameworld, you don't have to like it, the door is that way!" strategy it's idiotic to base the game on a well-established franchise universe: it severely limits your creative options and ensures that you'll have a pack of fanboys with reference materials rules-lawyering you on every point. It's not as though there isn't a market for 3rd-person robot-blaster games, it just isn't called Battletech.
If you want a prefab fanatical player base, (which you can get by adopting an established franchise universe), be prepared to keep in mind that, so far as the gamers are concerned, it's your job to turn the universe they care about into a game that does it justice. You are just the means. If you can do that, you get the advantage of having the buzz done for you to some extent; but if you try to push against them, they'll quickly take the stance that you aren't doing your job.
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.
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.
They were selling all of the mechs people want to play with for cash. The entire stable of mechs. All for sale.
This is very wrong, so much so it must be an intentional lie. Out of 93 'mech variants, only 12 are cash-only. 81 are available for in-game currency.
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.
As a new player, you'll start out in a selection of trial 'mechs while you earn in-game currency to purchase your own 'mech (that you can then customize to your liking for more in-game currency). To facilitate this, you get a rather hefty in-game currency bonus for your first 25 games. At the end of those 25 matches, you'll have enough both to purchase and customize and Atlas, if that's what you want.
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
It's also not true. The Hero 'mechs (the cash-only 'mechs) aren't superior to the in-game currency ones, and there's generally not enough of them on a team to make a difference anyway. People generally play in regular, non-Hero 'mechs. What is happening though is that organized teams "stomp the shit" out of disorganized groups of non-team players. But hey, it's a team game.
these people ruined it.
While there's no love lost between me and PGI, they haven't actually ruined the game yet. They seem to do their damndest to get there, but they haven't quite managed yet. At its core, the game is a really great 'mech simulation; it's just all the other bits that suck.
Oh and the fact that it's getting less and less BattleTech with every patch. That sucks really bad as well.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
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.
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.