Ideas for keeping people interested in MWLL after they play it for a while

[Werewolf486}12thVR{]

Ok so as the title says. Since my other thread keeps getting ideas more geared toward keeping players I give you this one.

My suggestion is that the devs focus on clean up at this stage for a few months.  Clean up the wiki, optimize the game more for stability and smooth game play, work on cleaning up and balancing the variants, work on the small details that would help the game be more stable. Then after thats over they can get back to the next mode, or mech, or what ever they want. As stated over and over some people are getting burned out with game mode, assets, etc.  I truly think though that once the game is optimized better you'd enjoy it more. 

[xInVicTuSx]

To my knowledge that isn't exactly how things work.

Different devs are designed different tasks, so they're all working on some sort of bugfix/clean up and/or a new feature/asset.

Can't speak for Leer or any of the other devs of course but I think that personnel availability is crucial in a all volunteer project.

Mr. 3d animator will work on his animations and asking him to clean up some flash problems makes no sense, the guy who works on the flash for the game will get around to cleaning it up when he can OR he is busy working on a new system that will completely replace the old flash set up and thus clean up is a waste of his time.

There are some guys that double dip and a few that do multiple things, but shifting focus from one thing to another as a whole team I don't see happening much.
Everyone is working on what they can...

Guess Leer would be the best guy to answer the question.


As for updating the wiki, that is a community run project, if you want it updated then help update it yourself. 

We're about to kick the rusty community planetary league into gear here soon.

[Deathbane]

What Invictus said.

[Werewolf486}12thVR{]

To my knowledge that isn't exactly how things work.

Different devs are designed different tasks, so they're all working on some sort of bugfix/clean up and/or a new feature/asset.

Can't speak for Leer or any of the other devs of course but I think that personnel availability is crucial in a all volunteer project.

Mr. 3d animator will work on his animations and asking him to clean up some flash problems makes no sense, the guy who works on the flash for the game will get around to cleaning it up when he can OR he is busy working on a new system that will completely replace the old flash set up and thus clean up is a waste of his time.

There are some guys that double dip and a few that do multiple things, but shifting focus from one thing to another as a whole team I don't see happening much.
Everyone is working on what they can...

Guess Leer would be the best guy to answer the question.


As for updating the wiki, that is a community run project, if you want it updated then help update it yourself. 

We're about to kick the rusty community planetary league into gear here soon.

I know you don't assign a modeler to do coder work, but maybe have them see if there's a little clean up they could do to help things get a little smoother, Thor Lag for instance. I've heard it talked about a lot, I don't use the Thor so I have no idea, I just hear it a lot. I just think that a little focus on minor issues like that could go a long way.

The Wiki needs someone that can accurately fix it, that's not me. I can play, but adding detailed info about variants or maps is for those who actually know the specs. I don't sit and study every detail of all the variants, I read about one a week just to see if it's something I'd like to try out.  If I could help with something I would love to, but I'm a mechanic, who does side work on computers. I'm not a coder, modeler, mapper, etc., I wish I could do those things. So I'm trying to come up with ways I can help, if I can figure out a viable way for me to attract new players, I'll try that.

[TAX_MAN!]

It takes literally no skill to update the wiki.  Just look at how other people have edited and follow that for the most part.  Just look up stuff you're not sure of and look over the wiki.  If you notice something that's out of date, wrong, or something you think should be added just jump right in and add to it. 

[benben10]

http://forum.mechlivinglegends.net/index.php/topic,14189.0.html

i dont know why this thread is not stickied but that will give you a general idea of actual number values of stuff. that is way more useful than the wiki. i just wish that logins for stuff could share the same database. i have to do more shit to be able to edit the wiki? too lazy to register, meh.

[Defender]

To my knowledge that isn't exactly how things work.

Different devs are designed different tasks, so they're all working on some sort of bugfix/clean up and/or a new feature/asset.

Can't speak for Leer or any of the other devs of course but I think that personnel availability is crucial in a all volunteer project.

Mr. 3d animator will work on his animations and asking him to clean up some flash problems makes no sense, the guy who works on the flash for the game will get around to cleaning it up when he can OR he is busy working on a new system that will completely replace the old flash set up and thus clean up is a waste of his time.

There are some guys that double dip and a few that do multiple things, but shifting focus from one thing to another as a whole team I don't see happening much.
Everyone is working on what they can...

Guess Leer would be the best guy to answer the question.


As for updating the wiki, that is a community run project, if you want it updated then help update it yourself. 

We're about to kick the rusty community planetary league into gear here soon.

I know you don't assign a modeler to do coder work, but maybe have them see if there's a little clean up they could do to help things get a little smoother, Thor Lag for instance. I've heard it talked about a lot, I don't use the Thor so I have no idea, I just hear it a lot. I just think that a little focus on minor issues like that could go a long way.

We're already working on things like that.
Everyone has tasks but since it's a volunteer effort, it takes time.

[Werewolf486}12thVR{]

http://forum.mechlivinglegends.net/index.php/topic,14189.0.html

i dont know why this thread is not stickied but that will give you a general idea of actual number values of stuff. that is way more useful than the wiki. i just wish that logins for stuff could share the same database. i have to do more shit to be able to edit the wiki? too lazy to register, meh.

This should be stickied!

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

Well keeping more active people is hard, even vets go through a "lull" period between releases.  I'm in temporary hiatus playing (ie playing maybe 1 or 2 times a week) wise but still stay active on the forums.  The league match and tournaments snare others, but over all about a month or two after the last major release we always see a major drop off from the "release time" crowd.

[[A.C.E.S] IkatsuiKage]

Is it possible to put in unlock-able achievements?

Could have them for getting kills in certain mech's making so people would at lest try the other variants maybe. But after you get them all your back where you started till more come out. lol

[benben10]

achievements and things like that (called persistence) is the dirtiest trick of games these days. they work on this pseudo-reward addiction mechanism to get you to play more without actually improving the experience. I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT, AND I WANT NONE OF IT IN THE GAMES I PLAY. if i want to play for 30mins i can jump in a game and not have to worry or be jealous about things that other players have that i dont, even if its just a useless badge. good KDRs are bad enough.

[MerfMerf]

I WANT NONE OF IT IN THE GAMES I PLAY.

Caps aside, I agree with benben.
These mechanics play on addiction, without really contributing anything at all to the game. All it does is make people feel the need to play more. Interestingly enough there is also a burn out effect of this, with some people getting so into collecting achievements that they tire entirely of the game.

/Merf - Does not want such things in a game like MWLL

[xDeityx]

Yeah, achievements are a little too xbawks for my taste.  To me they represent everything that is wrong with game development today.

[~SJ~ Xarg Talasko]

I'd like to see that more frequent patching the dev team were talking about... yeah there's a bunch of cool stuff coming along, but version fatigue seems to be setting in more and more from my observations. If you disregard the seemingly unpopular SA and LMS modes, nothing major has changed since 040 (in terms of assets), and not many maps have been added (they were good maps though).

I'd like to see a monthly system of updates, or even 3weekly.. "Hrm it's been 3 weeks, and we have 2 fixed bugs, a half finished asset, and a 3/4 done map... wrap the bug fixes up and send it out."

I don't know how much work that would be, or how feasible, but it would restore a lot of faith in my eyes that the dev team, even if they don't have much to show for that 3-4 weeks, still cared enough to give us a couple of bug fixes to improve our gameplay (and cut down on the redundant bug reports in the forum and from the crash dlls about the problems).

[Defender]

If you want an update, I'll give you an art update.

We have two assets nearly ready for release which will update existing assets and fix performance, and another 5 almost ready, and another 5+ on that somewhere in the vicinity of being ready someday, and another 10++ that haven't even been started.

The problem is that we get an asset to 80% completion, then the one or two poor bastards we have that can actually texture have to work full-time jobs, and go to school, then get slammed with a crapton of models and can only do one at a time. A single asset has a 2-6 month cycle between Model/UV/Texture/Animation/Helpers/Code. If we had more texture artists you'd see more assets on a more regular basis.

TL;DR: Bottlenecks suck ass.