Thursday, August 22, 2013

What Happened to Mechwarrior Online?

Heady Times for Robots

You should have been there, man.

Mechwarrior Online, published by Infinite Game Publishing (IGP), and developed by Piranha Games Interactive (PGI) was not a splashy AAA title with a huge marketing budget when it was announced in November 2011.  It was going to be free to play, and used a grassroots strategy of exposure to the press, targeted advertisements, and the strength of the battletech/mechwarrior brand to get the word out.  

I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but as a huge fan of giant stompy robots, particularly of the Battletech variety, I will never forget the moment when I first saw the banner ad, attached to the Penny Arcade Report article about modeling the mechs, and found out that I could be part of the closed beta.  The ecstasy was palpable.  Finally, a convincing, online multiplayer, beautifully and lovingly rendered modern Mechwarrior!  I had been waiting for this moment since my mid-teens, when AOL cancelled Multiplayer Battletch: Solaris.  I had prepared for this moment by reading the mostly god awful licensed novels, filled with the sort of  fetishistic descriptions of lasers melting armor that George R.R. Martin reserves only to describe comestibles.  I could not throw my $60 at "The Founders Program" fast enough.

An example of when you can, pretty much completely, judge a book by its cover.


I was not alone in my revelry.  Indeed, I was exceeded by the individuals who volunteered to make it rain to the tune $120 to become "Elite Founders" within the ranks of IGP's independent kickstarter-like funding program.  Indeed, they made 5 Million fucking dollars off of it.  The times were heady.  Mech Romney was not only president, he was a king.  The enthusiasm was grand.  Communities were popping up, with ridiculous vim and vigor, wanting to stomp around in robots, pretend they are the great houses depicted in the works of great literature mentioned above, and shoot mans in robots-erm, excuse me, Mechs.  The forums were frothing with joy.  People were loving it. I was screaming about how awesome the game was on the podcast.  To sum it up succinctly, I had never seen a more enthusiastic pre-launch community for a game.  Like I said, heady times.  

Off With Their Heads!

I'm telling you now:  This community is now in open rebellion against PGI.  Hostility is set to maximum.  Accusations of "LIES!", boasts of "Holding PGI Accountable" and outright jabs at the competence of the developer occupy the permanent and public banners that represent forum user signatures.


What caused everything to change?  Find out after the break.

So, for those of you who don't believe me, look at this shit.  It's a forum thread, containing an apology rambling quasi-apology, from PGI CEO Russ Bullock on the most recent issue of contention within the game, the addition of third person view.  The particulars of the firestorm are beside the point, I'm sure a new controversy will brew up any moment, and this one will seem like old hat.  It's certainly happened in the past.  I just want you to soak in the vitriol.  

Soak not only in the vitriol of the fired off text of one post, or even a series of posts; we've seen the "uninstall" threat a million times in a million different games, with a million different patch notes.  What you're not seeing, (unless you have a forum account), and what really stands out to me, are the people who have devoted signature space, normally reserved for self aggrandizement, unit advertisement, or a really funny joke, to openly criticizing PGI.  This, to me, represents a sort of permanence of hostility, notable not only for its boldness, but specifically for its target.  Indeed, we're not dealing with "Warlocks are OP, Blizzard Please Nerf."  We're dealing with "Blizzard, we hate you with the core of our soul."

Here's my favorite:
A bold statement to make in an official forum.

What has brought this about has not just been mistakes, which will happen for any and every developer, and the community, particularly one as enthusiastic as the MWO Community, will almost always forgive.  Instead, what has brought this to a head is what can only be described as a disingenuous method of dealing with the community by PGI.

Community Warfare: The Phantom Menace

The laundry list is long.  There are what would, under normal circumstances, be kind of run of the mill quibbles with a troubled video game.  The game was sold, in open beta, on the premise of a major game mode called "Community Warfare."  Essentially, this is what you dream of when you dream of a mechwarrior game.  Interstellar stakes. Factions fighting over a map of the galaxy, with robots and their pilots dealing the deciding blows with missiles and lasers.  A dream is an apt description of the actuality of Community Warfare, but a Mirage is a better one.  It is, according to PGI, always on the horizon, but as we keep getting to where the horizon was, we find that there is not only empty desert (filled with new mechs to buy! Sale! Sale! Sale!) but what does appear on the horizon is getting less defined all the time, and looking far less like an oasis filled with the sweet water of interstellar mech struggles, and more like some polluted dump with a sign that says "community warfare" sticking out of the sand, which, possibly, will have someone asking for money at the entrance.  Now, MWO is two weeks away from "launch," which, honestly, no one really knows what that means (except that it does not mean anything but a vague "Stage 1" of community warfare that represents nothing resembling interstellar mech combat).

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain! The Story of a Terrible Podcast

As damning as this is, this strategy of non-communication is preferable to the developers' methods of actually communicating attempting to communicate. It is much less about a dialogue, and much more about an "opportunity to market" disguised as a dialogue.

Once again, the laundry list is pretty long here, but I'll take two examples.  The first is the No Guts, No Galaxy Podcast.  I don't believe I have ever publicly bashed another podcast, but if there was ever a place to start, this is it.  Seemingly, NGNG started as a genuine battletech fan podcast.  The quality of the podcast is debatable (probably better than ours, though), but it was popular enough, and received a surge of popularity as Closed Beta for MWO moved into Open Beta and the community grew.  They clearly had an audience who was listening.  Soon, you started seeing advertisements for the podcast on the MWO website, and, somewhat remarkably, they would score employees of IGP and PGI as guests.  Indeed, eventually, the community manager from PGI became a weekly guest on the show.  Additionally, the hosts started popping up in all sorts of interesting places, tutorial videos, mech previews, and streaming promotional streams from the IGP official Twitch.tv account.

The problem is that during this very obvious co-opting of a more than willing PR arm in NGNG, both parties maintained that NGNG is independent, and represents the voice of the community, not PGI.  Indeed, since then, it has been revealed that IGP is contracted with the NGNG hosts, but, laughably, the party line is that IGP pays NGNG only for very specific content (twitch streaming), and that this relationship in no way affects the independence or content of the podcast.  Yet, week after week, important PGI guests would come on the show, and despite whatever firestorm was brewing on the forums, or whatever concerns would be present about the game (say, for example....where the fuck is community warfare?) the softballs would be tossed up and swatted at with various degrees of success.  Yes, I was wondering exactly what you loved most about this game.  That's hard hitting journalism.

Look, I'm not arguing with PGI/IGP's decision to use a podcast as a way to market to their fans.  Nor do I have much criticism for NGNG's decision to be shills get paid.  It is the theater that bothers not only myself, but the Community as a whole, and is so symptomatic of what PGI views as an acceptable relationship with their community.  It is so thoroughly disingenuous, and so incredibly transparent as to not only boggle one's mind, but just plain be insulting.  Also, damnit, the podcast is just really bad.   It's littered with commercials segments begging for money, as well as irrelevant self-referential segments, the hosts are prone to wildly irrelevant personal interjections, limited humor, and willfully dumb commentary, and all of this on top of being obvious shills.  When you combine this sort of plainly bad decision making (NGNG is a great podcast to get our message out there!) with the theater (the voice of the community!), backed up by the insistence of very transparent falsehoods (No, they just pay us for the twitch streaming, we're totally independent, we swear!), you get the PGI/IGP strategy.

Question Mark

Although this is the best example, this isn't the only one.  PGI makes a big deal about "Ask the Devs" on their forums, including weekly "Answers" and even a new voting system that allows the community to select the best and most important questions.  And of course, all of this sounds like a very lovely public dialogue between developer and community.  Except, of course, that it is also theater.  Approximately 5 questions are selected from the top 15.  In this way, PGI is able to get whatever marketing message they want across, while still under the pretense of dialogue, and ignore those they find distasteful.  

Not only are they able to do this, but they, indeed actively do.  A movement was started up within the MWO community, spearheaded by the Something Awful clan Word of Lowtax, but joined by a good cross section of the entire MWO Community, listing grievances and, most notably, providing suggestions and rallying support for the game, as a last ditch effort to avoid the downward spiral trajectory the whole mess seemed to be on.  The thread was pretty quickly archived, or moved to an unused subforum, and  a community question (voted third highest in popularity) was thoroughly ignored by the Devs.  Not only that, but the cone of silence extends beyond willful blindness to outright censorship. The below post, reasonably worded and posing a thoroughly legitimate question was removed within minutes:


  


This is just one example, but it underscores the point.  The decision making is so poor, the interplay is so theatrical, the dissent is so ignored, and the defense is so irrational, that the community's sense of bitterness is only matched by the absurdity of the entire state of affairs. 

When All Else Fails, Be a Dick

And yet, all of this does not fully encompass the problem.  Because, to exascerbate the entire situation, it seemed like being a dick was the thing to do.  The CEO of PGI, Russ Bullock, recipient of so much vitriol in the thread above, has done nothing but stoke the flames.  Whether it be a ridiculous post-implementation defense of the controversial universally and unanimously reviled third person view which is currently inflaming the community.  (To summarize, 3PV is a good idea because I originally didn't like the idea, so if I like it now, it has been thoroughly vetted, because I only have bad ideas when they are my old ideas.  The reasons I like it are because at e3, where people have very limited times to play an almost infinite sea of games, if they didn't understand how a mech moved, they left.  This is something that we should apply to our user base, who is not in a scenario anything like that. Also, because when I showed my 10 year old son who plays a lot of Wii, obviously a statistically significant representative of our core player base, and also the most important person in the universe, he struggled understanding the core movement mechanics of the game, but 3PV really helped him.  Ergo, 3PV is good. -RUSS OUT BITCHES!)  Or this masterpiece of public relations:


The arrogance, disingenuousness, and  ineptness has the feeling of a sideshow magician who is not only performing illusions that the audience figures out, but the jokes aren't landing either.  Each night, he's calling up the same girl out of the audience, a volunteer to saw in half , all the while pretending she's not his assistant, and now, he's feeling rather put upon that he has to pick old tomato out of his teeth.

Why Is This Important?

This seems like a lot of shitlords getting upset about their internets not going the way they want them to.  And, that's valid, to an extent.  There are certainly more pressing problems in the world.  But, part of the reason this is happening is because people care about Battletech and Mechwarrior.  The fans are passionate.  That's why they showed up in such great numbers and dumped 5 million dollars on PGI, sight unseen.  That's why they formed these communities.  That's why they are so upset.  Afterall, PGI is the only Mechwarrior game in town, so, to the people who feel ownership, to the people who feel passion, they have a duty, and they are disregarding it.

Also, you know what, they made a pretty fuckin fun game, right up until you realize you're on a hamster wheel fueled by buying more mechs, and different mech paint jobs, but never advancing the gameplay.  MWO could be great, and the community can't help but feel that PGI, through their ineptness, is standing in the way of that happening.

At a minimum, this is a model.  It's a model for exactly what not to do with an enthusiastic fan base, and with a great, proven concept.  It's a model that shows that games don't make themselves, people make games, for better or for worse.  It is a model that screams at you, listen to your community, they don't always know best, but they still need to be listened to, and their enthusiasm needs to be dealt with.

And that's what's remarkable about this.  PGI has consistently confused enthusiasm for an intellectual property that has existed for 30 years or so with enthusiasm for them.  They seem to be able to ignore the criticism; stick their fingers in there ear and say "lallalalalICANTHEARYOUlalalalala."  They seem to feel the most passionate fans of their game are the bad apples, to be gotten rid of, so the bunch doesn't get spoiled.  Strangely, they're running out of apples. In his most recent post, which may go down as an "all timer" and will surely be memorialized in many a forum signature, Bullock artfully  manages to overcome some astoundingly incomprehensible poor grammar, to deliver a message of  absolute tone-deaf clueslessness that transcends the shackles of the limited english language, to deliver a message of idiocy that we can all feel in our hearts:

In the end I think the community has shown amazing acceptance of our proposed direction of MWO if they feel it would be best for the future of MechWarrior Online and growing this great brand.

LIES!

59 comments:

  1. Followin' dis blog now. Well done.

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    1. We has a podcast too, as well. =) We're not MWO specific, but we touch on all sorts of stuff. Glad you enjoyed.

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  2. Excellent post... though you should clean up or rearrange the paragraph " He's calling up the same girl out of the audience to saw in half every night, and pretending she's not his assistant, and now, he's feeling rather put upon that he has to pick old tomato out of his teeth."

    I had to read it like 4 times to understand what was being said.

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    1. Thanks. That one was tricky and went through several edits, and you're right, it still isn't right.

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  3. SOE is trying, frantically, in Planetside 2 to avoid both this and a sinking of their flagship game via the mountains of bugs and optimization deficiencies.

    At least Smedley was graceful and let the fans of the game know that the team is getting serious about it.

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    1. SOE has been worlds better with advancing Planetside 2 than PGI has with Mechwarrior Online.

      Mechwarrior online started out as COD with mechs and is now COD with more mechs.

      Planetside 2 started out with 3 continents using a hex capture system. Now Planetside 2 has 3 continent with some using the lattice system and is building toward continent locking.

      I am one of those founders with Mecharrior online that ponied up $120 and I have regretted it ever since I realised that PGI decided to follow the COD match formula. I don't know why PGI doesn't seem to get the fact that most of the mechwarrior base wants a deep strategic game and don't want COD where the outcome of a match only matters for cash to buy more mechs. Maybe they think the huge COD crowd will be drawn in by their current system, but that crowd doesn't care about mechwarrior and there are other mech COD match type games other there that meet that play style batter than Mechwarrior does.

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    2. "SOE has been worlds better with advancing Planetside 2 than PGI has with Mechwarrior Online."

      Ironic since SOE invented the way PGI is acting during their SWG days. The Bullock quote at the end of the article sounds a whole lot like Smeddley telling an interviewer how much people love the NGE while the forum was shut down because they couldn't delete the rage fast enough. They were twice as bad as PGI. So bad that they're banned from my game library for life on principal, even if they eventually become the pinnacle of integrity.

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  4. Absolutely spot-on article. Only error in it is you give any sort of credit to the Goons (SA/'Word of Lowtax') when not even six months ago they would intentionally derail threads on the official forums with these sorts of complaints, and have done far more harm to the game than good. Their recent attempts to 'save the game', the townhall meetings this article references, are the biggest joke of community organization I have ever witnessed.

    Other than that, perfect articulation of the game's core problems (PGI/IGP).

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Im going to have to ask you to retract that statement, as a member of the #saveMWO town hall meeting. #saveMWO would not be possible without Goon support, logistics and organization. Its not just Goons either, their are hundreds of member groups representing over 5,000 mechwarriors, which is a good chunk of the active 10,000 player base. These efforts are not a joke, they were an attempt to save this game from the devs themselves and put it on the right path. Sadly the developers are more inept and misguided than we could have ever imagined. Perhaps we should found a new group #destroyMWO, crash whats left of this burnt out husk into the ground and hope another developer resurrects it from the ash.

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    3. Agree with Chris here. Lowtax/Goons, as far as I've observed have been a wholly positive force on the game. There's no point in going into a huge diatribe but I've observed the following characteristics, generally (no group is monolithic) 1) Thought leaders on competitive/good play 2) Balancing that with plenty of activities (many public invited) that are expressly for the purpose of "for fun" gaming, e.g. slosh ops, 3) Rejecting much of the vitriolic and reactionary dialogue on the main forums (as they term it, the "Brown Sea." 4) Actively trying to create a more constructive dialogue, e.g. #SaveMWO 5) Trolling jerks (obviously the most controversial of their activities)

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    4. Oh hey, someone linked me to this article again.

      Let me reiterate, to be perfectly clear: until recently, the goons ACTIVELY FOUGHT other people's attempts to make the same appeals to PGI. Many of the "jerks" they 'trolled' were simply people with far greater foresight than they, who understood far sooner the direction the game was headed.

      As far as the townhall meetings go, you must not have been there. All they consist of is people going up and voicing complaints in utterly random fashion. There's not a single mote of organization to be found. The "introductions" to the first meeting went on for almost (or was it over?) THREE HOURS, and mostly consisted of people dickwaving obviously fabricated player counts for their groups.

      Other groups have done the same thing but far better and far sooner, and they all experienced one of two things: a barrage of goons and golds on the forums so strong that their threads would be sent to a special section of the forums the devs would never see, or PGI would simply not listen. They now are having their own experience with the later.

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    5. Chris I participated as a unit representative in that #saveMWO meeting.

      It was a complete waste of time and the vast majority of people in the meeting were clueless baddies.

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    6. You see, we specifically waited until Kong had made all the relevant points and we had thoroughly trolled them, then, and only then, we could try to claim credit for the movement that Kong so valiantly failed to get going so that we could oppose our secret takeover of Palindrome and pretend to be trolling ourselves, thus successfully ruining the Mechwarrior franchise for another ten years, and basking in infinite pubbie tears.

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    7. I'm not sure if Glodrhun is just a tripbro from 4chan /v/ or what, but he seems to be pretty upset that people from Something Awful started the only multi-clan organization to bring the concerns of MWO players to PGI's attention. What he should be doing is thanking them for making the best shot the community ever had at saving the game, and for putting effort into inviting everyone, including the Kong players from 4chan, to come join the movement.
      If you want to be upset, then be upset that PGI ignored their own community. Be upset that PGI took the money of players and then didn't deliver the product. Be upset that PGI's Community Manager has the maturity of a suburban high school kid certain that all the world is out to get them. Save the fighting for in-game, where it's fun, instead of forgetting the fact that MWO never became the game we paid for.

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  5. The twitter thread that announced the Command Chair post that didn't-apologize for the feature-rape ( https://twitter.com/russ_bullock/status/370390257486659584 ) used to have 30-40 responses on it in addition to the two butlicks and 'thank yous' that're currently on it. It got censorwashed. I was the post immediately after those, and the first one to have been deleted. Here's what I said with that now-deleted post: https://twitter.com/KoburaCape/status/370394616186421248

    I didn't think that was offensive or vulgar, but apparently it's badfeelies, so whatever.

    I staunchly supported this game for months, brought new people into it, defended it against criticism, and consistently used the 'it'll get better' line. I'm pretty confident that all I was, was an emotional pawn of theirs now.

    I've uninstalled the game as a Legendary founder and will not be coming back until there's an unbelievable change of either heart or developer-licensing in the Mechwarrior franchise.

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  6. Great job, I have seen something like this firestorm coming for awhile, but I couldn't have fathomed something this incredibly stupid. For anyone concerned you can get a refund on your Project Phoenix if your leaving the game, and if you want, you can get a founders refund, but they perma ban you from the game. Just thought I would put that out there. Incredible story, and thanks for telling it as you see it and not the PGI BS NGNG tries to pass off as the "Community"

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    1. Ive been trying for a total refund, how did you get yours? currently PGI is refusing to refund anything but the phoenix pack. Despite the fact that they are in clear violation of Canadian commerce law.

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    2. I am also trying to get a full refund, as I feel decieved about the direction the game would be taking by PGI.

      My request also got rejected (just today). If anyone has any suggestion on how to go about it, that would be very appreciated.

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    3. (This is Kraven Kor from forums and Josh Thompson IRL - I can't get this site to show me as anything other than "unknown.")

      I have opened a grievance through BBB and CPBC.

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  7. So, when do we find out PGI embezzled a portion of the Sarah's Mech fund?

    ...and get a non-apology from Russ about that?

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    1. Never, because all of that money went directly to the charity. PGI never had any access to it.

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    2. It was a sarcastic rhetorical question on how untrustworthy PGI is with our money, but you'd be amazed how easily shady companies can exploit PayPal accounts.

      And it should bare mentioning that PGI completely shits on the community THE VERY DAY the fundraiser ended. They completely UNITE the community with an incredible cause with incredible goodwill...

      ...and just like that POOF. Game over. Literally.

      12,221 Jenners all dressed up, with nowhere to go. I was so ready to give mine a spin with the others this weekend. 12v12 JR7-D(S) matches...

      Nope.

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  8. All I want is the game they sold me last year.

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  9. Great read Kevin, and thanks for bringing my question back from the PGI Mods graveyard! and thanks to Harabec for kindly posting it when I was unable to.

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  10. lol and if you dont agree or are particularly negative, you get put on "moderator approval" where a mod has to review everything you TRY to poast and wont be posted till they do.
    The funny bit? They then ignore everything you post

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    1. I have over 4,000 posts without a single instance of moderation.

      Believe me, they are not censoring negative feedback, they are censoring those who cannot express that feedback in a reasonable and non-combative fashion.

      In other words, Don't Be A Dick.

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    2. Unknown, I'm not sure that's 100% true. I'm sure there's some level of moderation of people being dicks going on. The MWO Forums have never exactly been a place of rational discussion. That being said, the instance I point to above with Harabec's post doesn't really fit into that rubric, and it's not the only post like that. Criticism of the game is fine (in fact, even valuable) for PGI. Criticism of PGI, or the implication there of, is likely different. That being said, I don't have a comprehensive database of all posts and what has happened with them.

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    3. That's okay. If you post positive feedback and point out negative nancy's blatant lies and point out that the sig linked above is in clear violation of the CoC, you get perma banned instead, so enjoy the "moderator approval".

      The mods are one of the main reason the community is in flames, because they have no clue how to do their jobs, which has led to constant "restructuring" of the forums to try and make it harder to see the filth.

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  11. Honestlt; they CANT be this inept. Im thinking this isnt truly a game development but a social experiment being run to see how much bullshit fans of an IP will take before they give up and stop playing/caring.

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  12. If you think the forum banners are brave, I posted this article in the "MWO in the news forums" and it is miraculously still there lol. Is a real hit too. Good job Loaded Dice, you articulated the thoughts of an entire community very well.

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    1. Andrew, Thanks for posting it. The feedback there has been very positive, and I think it is important that PGI not only sees the article, but sees the reaction to it. They can do what they want with it, and I'd imagine that there are places where they disagree, but putting things in writing can only help.

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  13. Great summary of the MW:O tragedy!

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  14. Actually, there is talk from some members of the community who claim to have "sources" (whether you believe them or not is of course up to you) that the lion's share of bad decisions originate not within PGI, but their IGP money overlords who, according to said rumors, even decreed that PGI was getting "too buddy-buddy" with the fanbase back when they would regularly pop in on the unofficial teamspeak servers and hang out. If this is true then this is another example of a clueless focus-group driven publisher ruining a game in the hunt for short term profit and a developer too timid and afraid of the people holding the pursestrings to put their foot down.

    Might be true, might not, but it wouldn't surprise me given what we all know about the effect of big money publishers on the games industry as a whole.

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    1. This wouldn't surprise me one bit, actually. Some decisions, such as the infamous 3rd person view absolutely reek of publisher interference. If that's the case, I can almost feel PGI guys dying inside every moment they even think about the forums.

      There's another side to the story, however, and that's the basic game design. The flow of game in MWO is great, atmosphere is nice and 'mechs smacking each other in the face is just martial art in motion. However, the underlying design and game balance are weak and the latest maneuvers by the designer (Paul Inouye?) indicate beyond any doubt that they are not blind to the symptoms but have no clue whatsoever about the true disease or how to treat it. The ghost heat fix is such a pure example of band-aid balance by desperation that PGI themselves must realize they're in trouble.

      Amateurish efforts in PR and game design don't make PGI folks bad people. I don't know if they've intentionally lied at any point or if they're just so out of it (as if splitting the playerbase to 1st and 3rd person queues for example was ever a realistic idea), but until I know otherwise I'm going to assume that they are decent folk with good intentions in bad trouble. And that's not a nice place to be, at all.

      I've let my frustration show in my own communications from time to time so who am I to say, but let's keep things somewhat civil, right? If they are indeed refunding purchases that's at least a good thing, right? If and when you're unhappy, ask for your money back, but for the love of Kerensky, try to be civil with the people. They're actual human beings, too, and few of us have all the facts.

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  15. lol I got banned from their facebook for posting a link to this there

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  16. IGP fanning the flames:
    http://www.reddit.com/r/mwo/comments/1kxesp/so_apparently_igp_is_to_blame_for_this/

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  17. Remember, IGP is PGI spelt backwards :P

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  18. I left MWO about the time consumables were introduced, although PGI clearly stated they won't introduce coolant flush .. they did

    in case U'r wondering, I'm the dude who made this: http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/69189-mwo-obt-failure-to-launch/page__fromsearch__1

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    1. Yeah that's when I permanently left also. I mostly quit soon after ECM, when I figured out how broken it was. But the consumables were the final straw.

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  19. Great summary of the situation here.

    Wish IGP/PGI sink, and the game be sold to more independant and capable developpers...

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  20. You need to do another post for what they have done so far this week, they are currently pissing on us and calling it champange in this thread
    http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/133546-poll-limit-12-v-12-pre-made-group-matches-to-1pv-only/
    Carfuly read the op. then read the responses

    also those forum sigs we were so boldly using, Niko Snow, has been going to our profiles and deleting them today, to read up on PGI censorship read this thread that has now been moved to a forum you need an account to read
    http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/133573-censored/page__p__2703002

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  21. Still a great update. Regularly pointing people to it. Thanks for your efforts.

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  22. I'd been away from the game for a while, and came back to my clan's page to get up to speed on trials and such, and saw a lnk to this article. I'm glad I read it, as I was about to put a few bucks down and buy some custom paint and patterns to go along with my clanmates, but now I don't think I will. This crap is the same reason I left WoW...

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  23. I just want the complete game, that was supposed to be here and thinking about moving on from right about now at this point in time.

    Like I thought we'd be time jumping by now. Well we are, just backwards is all.

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  24. This is an awesome post mate, thanks for spreading the Battletech fans words! We really appreciate it.

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  25. What makes this all funny is this shit happened in EvE Online not two years ago. Actually, it was right about this time. Same shit, same actions. They eventually fired the community managers for the forums for not being able to sweep this under the rug and blamed the players for that (because we cot them MONEY or some shit). And Blizzard is teetering on the verge of the same issues.

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  28. I spent over 1k on this game before it was launched, founders packs as gifts to friends. Extremely disgusted with the way the developer has taken the game and treated the founders, but oh well, money talks and shit walks and shit happens. If only MW:LL crew had the business acumen to run a kickstarter for MWLL, that would of been the MW I would have dreamt for, not Mw4 MP repackaged as WoT robot deathmatch. Star Citizen looks like the rufuge place for disappointed mw fans. At least now it's launched and the reviewers have shone a light on all the misgivings of this game, and no more "it's beta" bs.

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  29. i was a MW fan since it the early days, now i play WOT and i always thought our developers were bad, but looks like yours sucks more...

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  30. Great post. I'll never spend £80 on a game again. I feel stupid. I don't normally make bad decisions but investing in this game was the worst one I have made in a long time. Self-employed web developers with two kids. I don't have a lot of play-time. A drop-in drop-out game in mechs was going to be ideal for during my breaks. However it was persistent territory control that sealed it for me.

    This is the last time I put money into a game before release which is a shame because I'm watching Space Citizen and it looks great. 36 million pledged and I want to add to it. But after the lies that sucked me into MWO. I won't pledge and risk being the fool again. I don't mind of some features are held back but the whole territory control thing in MWO was just a lie. A total hyped up cash grab and they should be done for it.

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    Replies
    1. You like us all had faith in PGI, but they have ruined any faith we have in them now, and later. Your not alone...

      Down w/PGI o/

      Delete
  31. Thanks for Posting ! first time I have found a genuine post related to Best deals online

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  32. IM done with giving PGI a chance, time to take action.

    started a petition to have MicroSoft rethink it's next extension to PGI.

    https://www.change.org/petitions/microsoft-corp-remove-the-mechwarrior-franchise-rights-from-piranha-games-inc

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  33. PGI makes a big deal about "Ask the Devs" on their forums, including weekly "Answers" and even a new voting system that allows the community to select the best and most important questions. truck driving games

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