I For One Accept Our New Reddit Overlords.

I make no secret that I am an EVE player, and being such I have a past with Reddit. I like to go to Reddit pretty often for amusing pictures, awesome links, and other random things. However I have a history with Reddit USERS. The members of Test Alliance (The Reddit group in EVE) are second only to Goons in their reputation of tomfoolery. I have seen some good AMA's on Reddit, but I have also seen some BAD AMA's on Reddit. Given the current culture of the forums on MW:O beta I feared the latter. But I am surprised to say that a fair chunk of interesting things have come out of it. I will attempt to summarize here.

First off, for those who don't know, Reddit has a tradition called AMA's (Ask Me Anything) where someone gets on and answers as many questions from the public as they can stand in a period of time. In the past we have seen everything from porn stars, to prop handlers of famous movies, to the freaking President of the United States doing AMA's. So why is Paul doing an AMA, and why now? Doesn't he have other things to do?

In my opinion this AMA was brilliant, and well timed. There is a lot of controversy within the community at the moment, and this has been used as an excellent opportunity to address the doom and gloom directly, albeit vaguely. Secondly, while Goons has a presence in MW:O (as shown by the "Ask a Goon" thread and the many Squaking in game), so far the Reddit gaming community has not latched onto MW:O as much as I would expect. If you go to the MW:O subreddit you only will find a handful of posts, and not much chatter beyond the fact that the NDA has lifted. Right now, more then ever PGI needs to begin building strong groups of interest in their game, if they want a solid launch open beta next week. Starting up a stir in /r/iAMA is an excellent way to get Redditors attention.

So now that we have address why they did this, lets talk about what he has said. I will throw in my own commentary as I can.

Tutorials Next Week -
In my opinion this was the biggest news drop of the day. It shows that they have plans for next week that they haven't mentioned, even beyond the already large list they have planned. Not much has been said about what these tutorials are, however if I gathered it correctly, it will likely be a series of videos, as opposed to an actual interactive experience. Still something better then nothing.

Solution To Premium Time -
While no specifics have been mentioned, the issue was addressed. Paul pointed out that this is not a "game" decision but rather a "business" decision (I could have told you that much). The big wigs that can officially decide what to do about this are currently out, but Paul and his crew are hard at work fighting for us. As an aside I would like to point out that this is one of several examples in the last week that show that, at least Paul and crew, pay attention to the forums, and have a real concern about our happiness as users. I say it again: This. Is. Not. Monoclegate. Please stop using that comparison.

Lag is being addressed -

As a matter of fact just to display his awesome multitasking capability (or to prove how little of the grunt work he really does) a hotfix for the lag issue came out DURING the AMA. From my understanding this hasn't fixed all the problems, but it does show they are committed to fixing the problem. Although in my opinion that should have been obvious from the start. The fact that this hotfix seems to not have fixed all the problems, and possibly caused NEW issues, causes some concern. I truly hope they are not just rushing out fixes in a panic to sate the masses. Just tell us what is going on, and let us wait for a fix. Just don't go into open beta without at LEAST a few stable days under your belt.

Iterative changes to matchmaking coming -

While community warfare may be a bit on the horizon, it looks like at least some changes may be coming sooner, with at least some community support (this is a very good thing). They acknowledge that the current situation is not ideal, but state that separating pre-mades outright would be worse, which I tend to agree. However, they also say that they want the new system to be based on skill, which sounds like a ELO style system which I think would be a mistake. However, I concede that it would be a useful stop-gap until we can actually start sieging planets against each other.

DDR Gangnam style Match to unjam Ultra AC/5 -

This not being true is about the saddest thing from this AMA.

While that is not all of the information that has come out, it is the highlights so far. I will update this post with any interesting things pop up. The moral of the story is this sort of communication is a good thing. Personally I feel they should just expect to give an official announcement after every patch, just to clear up whatever happens to crop up.

He also brushed on Gauss cats and balance, but I think that is an issue for a longer post.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11bvw1/we_are_the_developers_of_mechwarrior_online_a/