Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Leave of Absence


Some of you may have noticed I have not posted here for a little over a week. There is a combination of factors, but the short of it is I am no longer able to commit the time to this blog to keep it regular. For that, I am sorry, but I figured you should know.

Honestly, MW:O has a lot of potential, but most of that is not being realized at the moment. I could continue to talk about how statements about future patch notes are not reflective of what those patches contain over and over, but that doesn't seem much fun. On top of that I have accepted a much more active leadership position within my group on EVE Online, and so have had next to no time to dedicate to MW:O. Sorry folks, but it happens.

I hope you all enjoyed my posts.  I may come back and continue to contribute what I can. I may also start an EVE blog, who knows. Either way, see you on the battle field.

If you are interested in EVE Online, or play it and are interested in FW. Please feel free to contact me.

If you want quality MW:O blogs, I recommend my friends over at TheMittani.com. They seem to be doing a stellar job!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Under the Rug


New features and announcements are always great for games. Hype drives this industry more than most anything, and PGI knows it. Five million dollars was raised for MW:O through the founders program, many of whom bought in in order to join the closed beta. That means that a fair chunk of the five million dollars was raised by people who had no idea what they were actually buying, only that it was MechWarrior, it was going to be free 2 play, and there were Atlai. That is the power of a little hype.

However hype can be dangerous, while it is great to announce this grand new thing, sometimes things don’t work out quite like they supposed to. In that event a development team must come forward and inform people about the error, or never mention it at all, and hope for the best. Sadly, the later seems to be a fairly common strategy, even though in a day of fanatic bloggers with little to talk about such things rarely go unnoticed.

One thing is true about the transition to open beta, PGI has become far more focused on the here and now, and have all but lost sight on the future roadmap, at least publically. Many of the things that came out of the first open beta patch were simply to address the concerns of the moment, with disregard to long term objectives. This is compounded by the fact that we have gone from a roadmap that laid out content up to three months in the future, the majority of the discussion has shifted to a one to two week scope. Part of this is because the player base has become so impassioned about things, and so demanding on the one week cycle, the addressing concerns is taking up a fair chunk of the development cycle. Another cause is likely the flurry of stuff there is to talk about now, almost makes looking forward moot.

However, throughout this process it has been easy for PGI to allow things to slip away, and vanish into the aether. This gives them the ability to drop the feature, or take their time outside of the three month plan they originally established. In some of these cases the playerbase have lost sight of it in the midst of LRMs, Gauss, and DHS issues. With others however, a small sect of the player base have continued to meddle, and ask about things “best left alone” and PGI have responded with deafening silence. In the midst of AMA’s and Ask the Devs, one question continues to be asked, but never addressed, and I feel that this is a valid time to add my voice to the call for the answer to the question of Doctor Who? Direct X 11.

Little history lesson: At some point in late September it was asked on the forums “When are we getting DX 11?” This question was responded to by PGI with “October 2nd.” Now for those of you who can remember, October 2nd was the day that the monster patch was originally designed to release (the one that was latter to be referred to as “Patchmas”). Nearly a month went by before that patch finally was released, and with it the new CryEngine. However, no DX11 was anywhere to be seen.

So where did it go? Was the report that it was coming a mistake, confusing the new engine for DX11 support? Did something go wrong? Clearly PGIs understanding of the new engine has been incomplete (it takes them over two weeks to tweak bloom levels). Is DX11 coming or not? These are all fairly straight forward questions, especially for a feature that was matter-of-factly announced for a month ago. And yet, in spite of it being asked on several forum posts, and in nearly every Ask the Devs, no one at PGI has addressed it, or mentioned it, even once since that post stating it would be ready by the 2nd.

It isn’t about what is talked about; it’s about what is being avoided. Please PGI, release information about DX 11, your updated roadmap through the end of the year (at least the features already listed in the now outdated upcoming features/content threads), and demonstrate to us that your vision has not faltered, in spite of recent road blocks.  

Update: I often say that I am pessimistic so that way I am either correct, or presently surprised. Less than 24 hours after I posted this, PGI announced the following:

After integrating CryEngine 3.4 we noted a number of issues with the DX11 implementation that we didn’t feel were acceptable to push out to production. We have worked with our partners to address the key issues, these have now been resolved and we are enabling DX11 internally for testing. Once it passes QA it will be enabled on production, we appreciate the fans patience while we work to ensure the DX11 renderer is just as stable as the DX9 renderer.
This perfectly answers this question, Thanks! Now please continue to be communicative and work with the players who are trying just as hard as you to make your game great! :)

Monday, November 5, 2012

Heat Level Critical: Shutdown Imminent


Just a quickie – this was built as an extension of Signs and Portents 

The current notion of the community is that heat is generated too quickly, or dissipated to slowly. I explored this idea in Heat Levels Critical http://dbefored.blogspot.com/2012/10/heat-levels-critical.html. Simply stated, the heat dissipation system works on a ten second cycle, whereas most weapon systems work on a 2-4 second cycle (however, they generate in those cycles the same amount of heat that they should over a ten second cycle).

Double heatsinks (DHS) were expected by the community to help alleviate the problem by providing heatsinks that took up two additional critical slots, but that dissipated twice the heat (hence “double heatsink”). However, when DHS were released to us, it seems that they did not improve the engine heatsinks, which was not intended. Let’s assume that the pilot managed to fit ten DHS into their mech (which is quite a few given the critical requirement, especially if you also demand three critical slots). That should provide him with effective heatsinks of forty; enough to run most of the current high heat builds. However, due to this bug; the pilot only had thirty effective heatsinks. Thankfully they are fixing this problem in the next patch. Or are they?

With the change to DHS to a 1.4 coefficient instead of a 2.0, the efficiency of each DHS changes dramatically. While the engine will gain additional efficiency, it will only be the equivalent of four additional heatsinks, not the ten as was expected. At the same time the ten heatsinks you have fit on the mech above also reduce in efficiency, dropping down fourteen, an equivalent, a loss of six. The addition of four heatsinks from the engine does not compensate for the six lost from the DHSs on the mech itself. It would appear that any mech that has more than seven DHSs will LOSE efficiency after this “fix” is put in. This is pretty sad, considering many players analysis has shown DHS to be a bad option in a vast amount of situations (including some of the most heat intensive builds).


EDIT: In case it isn't 100% clear, I think these changes are stupid. Flat out miss informed. If the balance of heat was SO far off in TT to require 3x heat gathering, and 1.4 heat dissipation, how was the TT considered "balanced"? However, I want to wait and see before making a deeper dive into this topic. I do want to go on the record saying: stupid.

Signs and Portents

Disclaimer: I am not a member of PGI staff, nor have I had any meaningful conversations with PGI about their theory and game design, I am reading the writing on the wall, based on my observations and knowledge of game development. Chances are, some is right, some is wrong, and some will come as great amusement to the PGI staff. In this post I am including information that has been stated by PGI, that information is as accurate as their word is ;-), everything else is my personal commentary.


PGI as a company has been very communicative to its players, almost to a fault. They have since early in closed beta shown the players timelines, plans, and ideas well in advance of their implementation in the game. This comes as a double edged sword. On the one hand, the player base gets excited and passionate about the game, allowing them to maintain interest where a fair bit of the features are still barely on the drawing board. On the other hand, development can be unpredictable, and things change. Timelines alter, things are cut as practice shines a harsh light on theory, and external pressures drive priority shifts in the company. It is very easy for the player base to feel cheated, or outright lied to, when their pet feature gets pushed back or lost into the void. Unfortunately, that has happened quite a bit recently.

This is compounded by the fact that PGI describes features, content, and balance changes that are supposedly going to be released, but is fairly tight-lipped about the theory behind those changes. This then puts it on the players, and analyzers such as yours truly, to attempt to read the tea leaves and dig beneath what is being said, to try to understand the decisions behind them. Spoiler alert: I both like and dislike what I see.

Tomorrow is a very important day for MW:O, it marks the first content patch since the beginning of open beta, there has been a couple of posts that discuss the nature of this patch, and some future plans and this is a really great place to begin our investigation.

  • New DHS values (1.4) applied to all heatsinks, including engines.

This change was foretold in this http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/66075-heat-and-double-heat-sinks-dhs/ post and this simple change tells us a lot about what PGI feels about heat. To put it bluntly PGI disagrees with the community that heat is imbalanced, or at least in the same way the community does.
I was going to go into this here, however it became far too long, so I broke it out into its own post. I am already fearful as to how long this post will be as it is.
  •  A fix for the glowing mechs and HDR blacking out screens.

The glowing problem is pretty new, only after the latest CryEngine upgrade came in did bloom become overdone, but even before they “fixed” that it didn’t darken your screen. It is obvious that they still are tinkering with their understanding of the new CryEngine, and that they are basically wasting development time trying to get it back to a state it was before the change.
  • A rollback of some netcode changes, hitbox detection improved, but still needs work on faster mechs.

Another example of two steps forward two steps back. A close examination of their recruitment site http://piranhagames.com/Careers_General.html shows that they are actively hiring net code developers. I guess all I can say is let’s hope they find them soon.

This also makes me wonder what point they are rolling back to. Before the latest patch one had to lead quite a distance to have the hit be registered against a fast mover. I considered the current implantation better than that; however I agree it wasn’t awesome to watch Jenners using their teleport function as they rocketed past you. I will say that we will see on this one; however I do not expect anything promising until a while after that job posting goes down.
  • Centurion CN9-D.
  •  Artemis

I bundle these two together because they really are all about the same problem, the YLW. One of the effects of the YLW was the removal of the Centurion variant it was built off of. This reduced the number of free Cent variants down to two, which is not enough to unlock higher pilot skills in the current backwards advancement system. They stated that the CN9 would not be ready prior to the Artemis’ release, and that the Artimis was part of the ECM/ECCM package. The fact that this is now being released ahead of the ECM package is an indication to me that the YLW, and the outcry related to it, is the direct cause of this being released now. It is important to note however, later in the post indicates that ECM is working, however unbalanced, and so it has been delayed.

On a side note, from saran.net about the CN9-D:
The D variant of the Centurion is the first of many upgrades using Star Leaguetechnology. The chassis was re-engineered to use Endo Steel construction techniques. Next the power plant was changed from the standard engine to an extralight engine. In the process the maximum speed was increased to 97.2 km/h. Finally, the weapons were upgraded. The Autocannon/10 was upgraded to an LB-X Autocannon/10 and an Artemis IV fire control system was added to the LRM launcher. The two Medium Lasers were retained.

The Artemis itself appears to help missiles lock and hit as long as line of sight is maintained (not indirect fire). I have no idea how it will be changed, if any, for MW:O.

  •  Cockpit Damage FX
I am guessing this means that we will get cracks and such on our cockpit when we are damaged there. This is likely something they have been working on for a bit under “neat immersion features” that finally is ready to go. On a side note: has anyone seen the “cockpit lights dim when you take heavy hits” feature? I haven’t really noticed that.

  •  Missile Door Toggle/State Lights (Open, Closed, Destroyed)
This is a feature that has been asked for quite a bit by missile pilots, and I think will end up being more of a pain for them then they realize. What this seems to do is allow the pilot to keep their pods open, and thus reduce lag time for shooting weapons. However, when the pods are open, they take extra damage, so I expect to see streak kitties get their ears knocked off in record numbers after the patch.

  •  Trial Mechs act like purchased mechs and stay locked until match ends. Reduces suicide farming, AFK players.
They tried so hard to fix this problem without making this change, but it was inevitable. However, this post  seems to imply that there is a major fix coming for the new player experience. I find it interesting that this is not expanded upon yet. The post was made five days ago, but the changes are still not detailed. IMO the new player experience may be the single most important thing for MW:Os development right now.

  • Phase 1 Matchmaking. Max pre-made group size is now set to 4.
PGI I am not angry, just disappointed.

There are some other details teased at the bottom of the post. Of them, the camo sounds to be the likely to come out the soonest. According to the post, Bitchin Betty is already in, but has to be turned on by a cfg file I failed to find :/. However, I think it is hilarious that there is a feature in the game that is censored by the forum word filterJ.

Two modules are teased, but no details given so they make grilled cheese sandwiches, and French fried respectively until PGI says otherwise.

The only real thing I have to say about Conquest is that I predict it won’t be released until at least matchmaker phase 2, it just wouldn't make sense otherwise.

Over all, this patch appears to be a “placate the masses” patch. It appears as if they had learned their lessons from the patch prior to open beta, and did a better job separating out their features so they can release what is ready, and not hold off dueto features that are not fit for prime time. However, due to the high demand of a week patch cycle, and the pressure to keep up with it, has caused this patch to be largely a squeaky wheel fixer. I am fearful that valuable development time is being taken away from actual development, and reassigned to problem fixing, which is a dangerous thing to do in a beta (until of course you are near feature complete). What is also troubling me are the things not being discussed, however I will have to break that out into a post of its own.

UPDATE: Some updates have come from the latest Ask The Devs post. Amid the ice cream questions, some of it is even relevant.


  • Paint schemes and other vanity stuff is likely to come out 20th or 27th (This is apparently VERY important, he answered at least three questions about this!)
  • NARC is bad (officially now!) and is being worked on. No ETA.
  • The missile pod change will be as I described above.
  • ECM will likely do more then just jam or counter NARC/TAG 
  • Garth is a light mech pilot (no wonder they thought tripping was broken ;-))
  • Forest colony update TOMORROW (How was this missed in the original post?)
  • Weapon grouping is coming to Mech Lab
  • Trial Mechs should change every two patches (so we are due for a change tomorrow)