5 replies to this topic

[TheStrider]

Just thought I'd throw out some observations from our weekend we just had.

We normally play between 5-6 games throughout one of our LAN weekends, but this time we loaded up MWO and ended up playing it ALOT. I should note this wasn't planned, but just about EVERYONE enjoyed the game enough that we just kept playing it. As far as I can tell every new player plans to continue playing.

We had 7 new players, 3 Founders and 1 Beta experienced player (won a beta invite about a month ago).

I had never compared my cbill income with other people before, and it was surprising. I hadn't thought about how much faster I pull cbills with my Founders account, but it really showed comparing to the new players. Our Beta player, who had earned I think 4 mechs prior to the reset got frustrated enough to buy a MC package enough to get the YenLo Wang to speed himself up.

When it came down to it, they were getting between 40k and 80k, going as high as 100k on an exceptional game. We probably won as much as we lost, with more losses in the evening (EST) as there was a higher chance of pulling an 8 mech clan to fight us.

This felt too slow to me. This is my opinion, take it or leave it. I'm not going to argue with anyone, I really don't know what is considered acceptable for a F2P model.

They scraped with the trial mechs, each finding something they could get into (typically the Raven or Awesome) and (I think) they all ended up with Jenners or Commando's by the 2/3 mark of our weekend. If I had to guess, I'd say we did around 80 matches on the weekend, with some doing more and some doing less.

Of course we encountered the issue that is prominent currently, where the game crashes back to the desktop. Some players got it more often than others, but pretty much everyone got hit at least once.

The Social tab needs work, but you probably know that already. Even with everyone in the same room it felt kludgy. Go use Steam for a month and come back to us - and Steam isn't even all that good.

We found ourselves having to restart the software often - when the game would "Failed to find Game" every time.

BUG - When inviting a player to a game, if their mech doesn't have enough heat sinks (he's weird, and new), it will allow him to join the match, but then gets immediately disconnected, resulting in the team being down one. So whatever code checks your mech for heat sinks isn't operating when attached to a group.

Please fix up the lingo of the READY / NOT READY button. Clicking the NOT READY button to become READY is backwards to everyone who was there. Also having to click ready again after failing to find a match is annoying at best.The inability to click NOT READY to become READY when in the mechlab is annoying as well.


I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'll followup if I remember.

Tip of the day - 7 computers on one circuit is probably too many!

[Hexenhammer]

In before "you're a boot licking founder fanboi." post.


Glad you guys had fun. I'm curious about something. How was your ping rate while doing the LAN party? I've been wondering about this for a while.

Edited by Hexenhammer, 04 November 2012 - 06:56 PM.

[Greers]

Thank you for the insight. I'm happy there's still newcomers enjoying the game from the start. I think the "I want to gain CB faster"-mechanism is about right. I have my 3 months premium, but I don't think I'll really need it after a month. If playing regularly (say 2 or 3 hours in a premade) you'll have enough CB to throw around after 1 month. And PGI has to make some money As a Solo-Player it will be worse though...

I'm sure you've seen that even using mostly Trials you'll have won often enough in a Premade. Just be fair and announce your premade status at the beginning of a match. Announcing at the end is bad style. Like being fearful you might loose and someone recognizing your Team. As i'm PUGing and Teaming about 50/50 I know both ends of that gun and if a Team announces itself their game might be more interesting (not pure farming).

The "Social" Menu really IS bad. Want to add someone to your team? Add him as friend first. Want to start your group? Click repeatedly on "Launch" cause that dropdown often closes itself. Want to chat to someone? You have to hope he sees the blinking of his "Social" Button (Most people even think you can't chat: just double click the persons name in your Friends-List!). If a Group-Leader drops to desktop you have to rebuild the group, cause you wont have anybody who can invite. Etc.etc.... Lots of Work for the Designers

[Grouchy]

I have over 100 people in my friends list. I notice that the pull downs close or change every time there is a status change on one of my friends. Which manifests as having to click on launch group four or five times, accidentally removing friends when trying to invite one to group, etc.

On the "failed to find group", if someone doesn't have a valid mech selected and readied, it will fail right away. If it can't find a match it will take about a minute and fail. The latter case we jokingly refer to as minimum assaults not reached.

[Rotaugen]

I'll be LAN testing an online small team in 12 days it will be interesting to see how it works out post-patch.

[TheStrider]

Ping rate was an actual interesting topic. I recently moved to Xplornet as I'm in the country and had little other options.

When I play alone, I average 75-100ms - so I was worried for the LAN party. However with 8-12 people going at it all weekend we still averaged 75-100ms. It really didn't change. My package includes 5MBPS down and .6 up, and was sufficient if not perfect for most games.

As for our win/loss, we were about 50% - losing more in the evenings when we pulled 8 player founder clans, winning more in the morning vs pugs. We had one game where everything came together and we decimated mech after mech. The one guy who wasn't from our LAN party shouted how great that game was.

We even pulled one team twice in a row. It was funny as it caused some individual rivalry, and the teams were very evenly matched skill wise.

But then we once pulled an official clan... Every one of them had the PC Gamer skin on. We got barrel rolled.


There was a lot of "Everyone out, rebuilding the group".