The Rage of the Mechwarrior Online Community (2013)

http://www.gamefront.com/mechwarrior-online-forum-ragesplosion/1/

by flippyhead • 12 years ago

71 39 12 years ago

kmf• 12 years ago

I love these kind of articles because they literally could not exist a century ago. Outrage over a patch and its effects on a virtual community is a uniquely 21st century problem. For something similar, see this post[1] on a clan war in EVE Online, which reads almost identically to a real-life war report, except that it's, well, not real life.

[1] http://themittani.com/news/b-r5rb-biggest-battle-all-eve

ewood• 12 years ago

I think the 19th century story of The Strand Magazine almost being bankrupted by the 'death' of Sherlock Holmes and the subsequent outrage of their readers is a close approximation (http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/print_issue12.html). When people believe they have buy-in to an idea (even a virtual idea) they become very protective of that, which should be a good thing for a game developer but obviously it is a two edged sword.

lotharbot2• 12 years ago

My wife is the developer of a mod for a 20-year-old game [0], which she forked from another mod about a year ago.

The reason for the fork? The other mod made missiles follow slightly wider turning arcs, so they were harder to dodge by going around corners. It seems like a tiny difference, but high-level competitive players want their missiles exactly right because different missile tracking leads to different viable tactics. "That shot into that tunnel is a sure kill" turns into "that shot is unlikely to hit"; "I can dodge that" turns into "I have no option but to run". The primary developer of the other mod was not a high-level competitive player and did not see this as a problem. Merely suggesting the fix (which my wife originally coded as a patch to the other mod), with simulations, a mathematical proof of correctness, and uniformly positive feedback from many top-level pilots, was enough to touch off a flamewar that wasn't settled for weeks.

People can be fanatical about their video games.

[0] the game is Descent (1 and 2). Her mod can be found at https://github.com/CDarrow/DXX-Retro . The other mod is at http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/ . Current competitive 1v1 play is at http://descentchampions.org/ and group play is at http://descentrangers.com .

tdicola• 12 years ago

That's awesome, I'm glad to hear there are still folks playing Descent. Truly an underrated multiplayer game. I loved playing it on IPX over TCP with a modem way back in the day.

lotharbot2• 12 years ago

It's still just as fun. Come join us. Players of all skill levels welcome. http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php will get you started.

If you were active on Kali or Kahn and want to reconnect with old friends, also check out https://www.facebook.com/groups/kalikahn/ . We've recently had an influx of early online players (kiln, Scoundrl, Grax, Lioness, Dtile, Arch_Angel!, R2D2, Vlider, Moon, Merl, and the list goes on.)

The flip side of being fanatical about our game: we run into people we used to play with/against 20 years ago, and we're instantly friends.

kayoone• 12 years ago

Wow, didn't know people still played Descent. It was one of the first multiplayer games i ever played in the mid 90ies over null modem connection with a friend sitting next to me as LAN wasn't that common back then. Good times :)

lloeki• 12 years ago

It was one of the first multiplayer games i ever played

Not the first for me, but Doom 2 and Descent were the first one that have been successful in my circles. I remember having played Descent 1 and 2 for long hours, completing both solo and played Descent 2 coop with friends, then on a whim, tried to hop into Kali and tore basically everyone apart, as most people were clueless about 3D ambushes and dogfight mechanics.

The descent series were underrated, innovative gems. That D2 intro had some of the most memorable lines to me[0]. Still have the original (badly scratched) disc somewhere.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT5U4LMiF7M&feature=kp

Fuxy• 12 years ago

To be hones if this was a contract between the developer and the community he could have been sued for breach of contract.

Luckily it's just a promise but I still think that's a bit fucked up.

idle_processor• 12 years ago

Those interested in gaming communities turning toxic should look at Starbound's subreddit[0] and community forums[1]. The climate's been growing increasingly hostile over feature delays, players unsatisfied with the product, and variance in community management strategies employed by its developers.

There's a similar theme of broken promises there. However, Chucklefish has been updating pretty regularly and acting on a lot of constructive player feedback, so the overall negativity strikes me as somewhat confusing.

Another rather notorious and perhaps more justifiable example of community backlash can be found by looking at forums[2] for, and general controversy[3] surrounding, Infestation: Survivor Stories (formerly The War Z).

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/

[1] http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php

[2] http://steamcommunity.com/app/226700/discussions/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infestation:_Survivor_Stories#...

roghummal• 12 years ago

I think Chucklefish started to lose it around the time there was a slew of updates about employees relocating to the UK. The initial backlash was tame. They made a lot of promises about productivity gains and more frequent updates. People cooled off.

As time went on and they didn't deliver people got agitated again. Chucklefish's response: 'Communicating so much with the community has ruined morale and killed productivity.'

Community's response: 'Wait what? It's our fault you aren't getting anything done?'

Chucklefish: 'No no we're getting things done.'

The regular updates consist of art, 'what I ate for lunch today'-esque non sequiturs, and empty promises (feature lists any zealous 12 year old would make up). Those do nothing to quell the growing negativity.

The outpouring of negativity in /r/starbound did not come quickly or easily and could still be reversed. Chucklefish just has to deliver.

pekk• 12 years ago

Did you ever finish a software project for someone impatient? I think it should be obvious that writing daily blog posts is a lot of work that isn't development. And that a camp of angry villagers telling you that you're incompetent and constantly telling you to change direction isn't going to help morale.

wiradikusuma• 12 years ago

slightly related to MechWarrior, anyone know any good recent (2 years back at most) MechWarrior-like single player games?

codezero2• 12 years ago

Most recently, Titanfall.

girvo2• 12 years ago

As someone who considers MechWarrior 2 to be one of the finest games ever made... Titanfall is amazing, and scratches the blow-things-up-in-an-OP-mech itch well enough!

shadeless• 12 years ago

Not a single player game, but still an awesome Mech game is Hawken. [1] Ever since I first tried it other FPS games seem pretty boring, I can't go back to playing Battlefield or Call of Duty after the spectacle of Mech fights.

If you decide to try it, my nickname is 'shadelesss' ;)

[1] https://www.playhawken.com/home

forrestthewoods3• 12 years ago

"To compound the problem, PGI has begun reversing its stances on a number of features, which include “no coolant flush” and “no third-person view,” in order to garner more players and make a higher profit."

By higher profit they probably mean any profit at all. Gamers have zero ability to read between the lines. This isn't a bunch of greedy devs driving Ferraris that want more money to buy a Lambo. This reeks of a desperate hail mary to save the studio and avoid shutting down. The game is probably a total failure and they are doing anything and everything they can to not lay the whole team off.

Gamers have a right to be angry I suppose. Go ahead. Be angry. If a company can't make payroll it doesn't matter of it's community is angry or happy.

tsunamifury• 12 years ago

This is a problem anywhere the customer is completely disconnect with the costs of the product they consume. To the a feature is a costless idea that simply can be implemented by saying the word. As we know in real life every feature has time, money and community costs -- many of which are hard to estimate.

It's why I can ever work in the videogame industry, a fickle and unsympathetic user base who often has no comprehension or respect for the scale of the product they are using.

DanBC• 12 years ago

To the a feature is a costless idea that simply can be implemented by saying the word. As we know in real life every feature has time, money and community costs -- many of which are hard to estimate.

Except this is an example of features being added that the community didnot want.

krfsm• 12 years ago

Actually, for a videogame community, the MWO community is pretty mature and helpful. But if people spend $100+ on a promise of a game concept and no progress towards that happens in a couple of years, they will get grumpy even if mild tempered.

I think PGI could have saved themselves a lot of grief by:

- Getting private matchmaking out much earlier than May this year. It's been requested since day one, and would have kept the hardcore folks busy until community warfare.

- Learn the art of tweaking game balance. They drop patches every two weeks. Instead of making huge, sometimes game wrecking, balance changes every three months they could have nudged the balance slightly each patch. "Missiles seem slightly too easy to avoid - making them 3% faster" doesn't make anyone blow a gasket. "Bumping missile speed 75%" will.

cambion• 12 years ago

Obviously I don't have any numbers for the game - none have been published. But I am a player, and I wouldn't say either of those items are make-or-break features.

There are quite a number of features or promised features that have elicited rage from the community and I think the way these have been handled continues to fuel that rage.

The game model is based on the wildly successful world of tanks, and the core fan base is older with deep pockets. Everyone I know who plays has put in at least $50-100, and some I know have spent as much as $700(!).

If the studio is on the brink of disaster, sure, I could see hail-mary moves being made. What doesn't seem to make sense is not making those moves be crowd pleasers.

It seems like the lead designer really is both disconnected with the fans and loves to troll parts of the community. And the community managers that have been put in place compound the problems.

If the game isn't making money it's a shame - but it's probably a mismanagement issue.

forrestthewoods3• 12 years ago

Making money on free to play games is hard. Damn hard. Dozens of games have followed the World of Tanks model and catastrophically failed.

A failing game is always a shitty situation. Shitty for the players. Shitty for the devs. Shitty for the studio stakeholders. No one wins. :(

anon4• 12 years ago

If they're not making money, I don't see how pissing off their current player base in favour of garnering an unknown number of a hypothetical different player base is a good move. Heck, they could have split the product into classic-league MWO (no coolant, no 3rd person view) and modern-league MWO and captured both markets. It really boggles the mind.

forrestthewoods3• 12 years ago

It's a shitty situation. Presumably the company is not sustainable on their current income. They may be able to shrink the company to survive on that income, but that sucks. So they probably need to increase income. They could increase income from the current player base, but that basically means milking which sucks. So they need to increase the player base.

It may be that the existing game is great as is, they just need to find players who want to spend money on that game but don't know it existing. User acquisition is a big deal these days. It's very difficult to do well. That assumes it can be done. If a game is too niche then the potential audience just may not be big enough.

So they went with the next option, change the game to try to increase the size of the potential audience. This has a high risk of alienating your current base, which is what happened here.

Like I said in another reply, it's a shitty situation all around. Shitty for players. Shitty for devs. Shitty for company owners.

Ntrails• 12 years ago

By higher profit they probably mean any profit at all

This comment just took me back to my time in The Matrix Online, and the perpetual anger the community had with Sony and their lack of development/interest/activity etc. Of course it turned out they had a few hundred subscribers that simply didn't cover costs of keeping the game online let alone improving it.

Mistakes were certainly made by Monolith and subsequently Sony, but that's not the point. It's hard when you're emotionally invested in a game to accept poor communication and seemingly inevitable wind down, especially when the game is purely online.

serf2• 12 years ago

Off topic, but I still have my 'Matrix Online' box-included world map hanging somewhere. Every time I glance at it I feel disappointed about its' eventual fate. That community , while apparently small, was one of the most dedicate and loud gaming communities that I have come across.

rurounijones2• 12 years ago

This is from 2013.

Not that the situation has improved much since (Helloooo $500 golden clan mech cash grab and general clan release screw-ups), but probably needs a (2013) in title.

The article doesn't quite touch on how hostile / trolling some of the PGI staff (Paul) have been to their community.

The community became so broken that the sub-reddits split (See /r/mwo for the haters and /r/outreachhpg for the believers)

The rage has mostly died down I think because most people but the true believers have given up and moved on to other games.

dang• 12 years ago

Thanks. We added 2013 to the title.

klunk• 12 years ago

Interesting note on the subreddit split, it happened because a group of folks from SomethingAwful who don't play the game were made moderators within /r/mwo and immediately used the new privileges to delete content and deface the sub. More than anything else it might be a cautionary example about game devs/publishers ignoring off-domain forums. Since then, PGI has become more active in the /r/outreachhpg community.

rurounijones2• 12 years ago

From that I remember that is a bit of an over-simplification of the situation somewhat but I cannot really find a good source of events.

ianstallings• 12 years ago

This is exactly why Eve Online has a "Council of Stellar Management", which is basically a group of users elected by others to represent their views to CCP, the developers of the game, and find a good common ground. It can lead to controversial* decisions and of course because you can't please everyone, but it at least offers something to their giant user-base to let their voices be heard.

* For instance the sovereignty system in Eve Online is quite controversial with some very large and powerful factions complaining and even trying to "break the game" until a change is made.

iamwil• 12 years ago

Sounds like the same sort of thing Makerbot did to its open source reprap community that supported it in the early days. People supported Makerbot because they said they support open source hardware and moving 3D printing forward. Then when they closed source their subsequent printers and sold to 3D systems, I think many previous supports felt betrayed.

People don't just buy into your product, but they buy into your values and your vision. If you change your underlying values without good communication and reason, your users will revolt in the worst way possible.

Reminds me of Simon Sinek's talk http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi...

"People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it"

To this day, many proponents of 3D printing really dislike Makerbot, and will discourage anyone from buying one.

slackware• 12 years ago

Felt betrayed... that is betrayal, isn't it?

Shivetya• 12 years ago

I used to follow this game, having many a friend who played it for a time last year. Know a few who dropped hundreds on this title.

Putting out "gold plated mechs" for five hundred bucks basically sealed the deal for a large portion of the player base. Also, they took up the trick of having sales for items to be delivered three to six months out. That lets them avoid the charge back period on credit cards, so if they are really late or never deliver there is no recourse.

Combine that with forever missing deadlines on key features; namely giving the game a long term point other than endless death matches; and its not a great place to be.

The even co-opted an early friendly site to where the postings by that sites presenters are routinely shouted down on reddit.

It gave fans of the genre very nice looking mechs but deliver a multi player version of MechWarrior 2 many wanted.

furyg3• 12 years ago

Preface: I know nothing about this game.

I feel like this is a preference setting. Either at match level or user-level (e.g. when two 'pro' players fight each other in the game coolant dump is disabled)?

ende• 12 years ago

What a bunch of whiney nerds.

serf2• 12 years ago

or 'outraged consumers', whichever way your particular sunglasses are tinted.

arielweisberg• 12 years ago

I wanted to try MWO. I couldn't cut and paste my password into the game client. I sent them an email asking them to add support for cutting and pasting passwords into the game client.

The response was that they didn't want to encourage people using password managers. I pointed out that what they were effectively encouraging was password reuse which is far worse. And of course no two-factor and the forum password (same as account password) is not transmitted over HTTPS according to one thread.

I moved on to try Hawken. Hawken had the exact same problem and my support post in the forum elicited no response.

Hard to get excited about whatever they have to offer with my massive backlog on Steam. Warframe was a lot of fun for the 20 or so hours I typically put into a game.

When it comes to large projects I tend to generalize. Lack of attention to detail at any level usually comes from the top down and is pervasive.

The Rage of the Mechwarrior Online Community (2013)

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