
The Rage of the Mechwarrior Online Community (2013) - flippyhead
http://www.gamefront.com/mechwarrior-online-forum-ragesplosion/1/
======
lotharbot
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](https://github.com/CDarrow/DXX-Retro) .
The other mod is at [http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/](http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/)
. Current competitive 1v1 play is at
[http://descentchampions.org/](http://descentchampions.org/) and group play is
at [http://descentrangers.com](http://descentrangers.com) .

~~~
tdicola
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.

~~~
lotharbot
It's still just as fun. Come join us. Players of all skill levels welcome.
[http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php](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/](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.

------
forrestthewoods
"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
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.

~~~
krfsm
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.

------
idle_processor
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/](http://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/)

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

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

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

~~~
roghummal
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
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.

------
arielweisberg
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.

------
ianstallings
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.

------
kmf
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](http://themittani.com/news/b-r5rb-biggest-battle-all-eve)

~~~
ewood
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](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.

------
rurounijones
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.

~~~
klunk
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.

~~~
rurounijones
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.

------
Shivetya
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.

------
iamwil
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...](http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action)

"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
Felt betrayed... that _is_ betrayal, isn't it?

------
furyg3
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)?

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

~~~
codezero
Most recently, Titanfall.

~~~
girvo
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!

~~~
codezero
It didn't do it for me, but it did light a candle :)

~~~
girvo
It's missing the tactics that I loved from MW2 (and the world and lore), but I
also love fluid fast-paced first person shooters, so for me it's perfect. One
of the best multiplayer FPS's for myself since the original Unreal Tournament.

------
ende
What a bunch of whiney nerds.

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

