#MWO 2013 State Of The Inner Sphere (Russ Bullock Speaks)

He's mentioned on his Twitter and Reddit that's he currently on vacation. I imagine he's probably got quite a bit saved up over the course of the year. Same thing's happening at my office.

 

What's this about a soundtrack? Seriously, who gives a flying fuck? Some games just shouldn't have one. Now they want to play canned music in my cockpit while I am starting up? What? I don't need elevator music in my mech.

What's next? Mood music when you're powered down?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0I6mhZ5wMw

 

Barry White should be reserved for when two friendly 'Mechs are trying to gently ram each-other into oblivion.

 

A voice in the wilderness here...(I have not, until MWO, been an online gamer of any sort. But loving the MW Universe since the days of MW2 I was drawn to try out this F2P offering)

I am rather pleased and have great anticipation for what PGI is and has been delivering. It could be argued that since I don't have previous online F2P experience that my expectations are low right now. Well, that's to my benefit I suppose. I am happy to keep grinding C-Bills and playing within the constraints of what the game gives me "now". Since my initiation game in MWO just over a year ago, I've formed some general opinions on the game and I'll offer them to show my point of view:

Balance - the game is well-balanced in terms of mech class capabilities and weapons, their operation, heat, electronic warfare, movement. The developers have shown good attention to details on these points, imo. No "uber-cannon" exists. The Gauss nerf is unfortunate but understandable, and JJ shake. I recall the MW4 days of poptart matches and am glad those days are gone. Oh, and I could care less about Hero Mechs and Champions. I understand the point, but it's not a draw for me.

F2P - For the first six months I didn't spend a nickel on the game. But then I plopped down $45 to get some skins, colors, and mechbays. I figured I owed them as much.

Marketing - I am sorely appalled at the Clan Packages and Clan Gold Mechs. Insulting! My strategy would be to offer the packages at 1/3 the cost and add the gold skin for, say, $1 and also widely advertise "donations" to the developer would be accepted graciously. So many more gamers would pony-up the $$. And provide customers more than just virtual stuff...send them something tangible.

Game Modes - needs more variety. Obvious. I am glad they mixed up the spawn points, tho.

Game stability - pretty decent! Aside from occasional low FPS on Frozen City [Day] which is the only map that happens and only when thermal optics are engaged. ???

Visuals, artwork, sound effects and the like - obvious to me this is another area of emphasis by PGI. I'm wondering about a soundtrack but I can play my own MW2: Mercs soundtrack in the background.

Patches and New Content: pretty stable delivery schedule, but slow in frequency for the significant content. I also wonder what the end-game is going to be like. Right now I miss the grand-scale of strategic warfare. ("Why am I capping this resource outpost?") There are no match consequences beyond determining how many C-Bills or XP are earned.

This is all highly subjective. I think I'll stick around and play some more and expect/hope this game continues to grow in the year to come. Just please-oh-please don't screw-up the Clan tech!!!!!!!!

 

I've only been at this a couple of weeks so I haven't been able to build up a backlog of rage appropriate to forum posting I'm afraid.

Speaking as a new player, I honestly haven't encountered any serious balance issues or particularly terrible bugs. I've had the client hang maybe 3 or 4 times (recovered twice by alt-tabbing to desktop then back into client), and my Mechs occasionally get hung up on invisible terrain. Can't really comment on hit registration as I don't have the experience to do so but nothing really stood out as egregious. A few small blips of lag now and again but nothing compared to some other online games which are frequently unplayable due to lag. Oh, and the UI is awfully clunky yes but manageable.

More distracting from my standpoint is the high frequency of complete A**holes in comms, seriously we could use a "mute" or even better "do not group" button.

I'm not sure I'm going to pre-order any of the Clan packages without having seen any concrete specs on what I'm going to get out of them, but I also don't rule it out given the fun I'm having with the game. All this grief about the gold mechs is stupid though, sure I initially thought WTF? Then I considered some of the stupid crap I've bought in the past... Okay there are MANY objectively better ways to spend that much money than on a tanker of virtual gold spraypaint for your virtual giant robot... but ultimately it's their money and it's going to fund a game that seems to stir a good bit of passion from what I'm seeing (okay, it's mosty rage but that's still passion)

I get that many of you more experienced folks have been waiting for CW and UI2.0 for quite some time and are pissed, but I'm hoping they've been holding off so they can release something that works rather than unleashing a ragenado with a /more/ broken product. (*cough* New Vegas *cough*).

The whole OP seemed pretty promising to me, clearly laid out a plan and even mentioned extending their licensing deal. (there are large businesses involved there, chances are an extension wouldn't get approved for a company that was circling the drain). I'm happy that they seem to be chipping away with little tweaks and fixes on a regular patch schedule.

Just thought I'd throw my hat in the ring and up my post count

Enjoy your HumpDay!

 

So... let me get this straight... CW is coming out after the Clans invade.

 

the Launch Module is the introduction to CW. Please see details here:

http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/143849-community-warfare-launch-module/

 

Ehhh, I'm on the fence on that one. There's no doubt that the team is indeed poorly managed, since features announced when the game was still in closed beta are not even designed.

Yet it feels like the guys at PGI means well, but are so off in how to approach it that we get some unnecessary gimmicks and mechanics (lolghostheat) to fix "problems" that are not as pressing as, say, missile hit detection.

Never been a PGI fanboy nor a hater, but I'm hopeful that we'll see some progress in 2014.

 

This is the thing I noticed. Everyone is giving pgi hell saying they are poorly managed but my theory is that this was all planned.

They knew they only had the contract until 2015 unless they could make enough money to impress microsoft. Knowing this they made a game that was fun to play (Although extremely limited) and then started pumping out money making things like hero mechs and Phoenix packs. It was either get microsoft to like them, or make as much money as possible until the contract expires.

It's a pretty shitty move, but the bright side is, now that they got what they want, I imagine they production will start picking up. I mean they are already hiring new people and they have finally given people a date on a lot of the features that where just promises and pipe dreams.

 

I can only hope that this is true. But still, they could have done so while maintaining a better relationship with the community at large.

And from how they so it with the clan mech, I am not seeing that. Granted, the recent patch does address some of my needs, and I do enjoy things like TDM (good for cbills too) and new maps.

 

WAY too much conjecture in the recent posts above.

 

Russ,
We can Hold, Trade, And Sell Magic cards.
Your Mechs are not made of real gold. We will never actually collect them. They are even limited artificially.