Posted 20 January 2013 - 10:35 PM
Not having arcade control schemes and custom views that make it more console friendly isn't the root of the problem. I've played a pretty large amount of vehicle combat games, starting at about 8 or 9 years old with Microprose's 'F-15 Strike Eagle' for the C-64, so I think I've got something to say about the subject lol. The only sim that made me frustrated enough to up and quit was Microsoft's 'Combat Flight Simulator', because there didn't seem to be a happy medium between the realistic flight experience that I was looking for, and the easier arcade controls that made it too easy for a challenge. It was either far too simple, or so unforgivably complicated and realistic that just getting into the air was a huge victory. I don't find a lot of games that have the problem of being to difficult to control. What I see as the problem with the MWO kids, is dropping 12 yr olds that haven't had much experience at all with a pure cockpit simulator experience. How long ago was it that MW4 or X-Wing Alliance or Heavy Gear was what everyone was playing? So you drop these kids, who were probably still watching Teletubbies when MW4 Mercs and Inner Sphere Wars was going full swing, into matches with founder type folks who have years, if not decades of experience with BattleTech or the MechWarrior universe, and they don't get any training in the basic fundamentals. It's not about piloting skills and arcading the controls down and a 3rd person view mode. Arcade control and the 3rd person view are something that console titles resort to because they aren't built for the PC, which has a whole keyboard, mouse, and sometimes joystick to give more control depth. Console games have to put every control you need onto that bitty controller, and eventually items have to be left out or streamlined to make it all fit, and I think everyone gets that. What I see a lot of not getting, is that there's a lot of strategy and tactics that belong solely to this game and can't be imported. I'm talking about things like heat management, prioritizing targets, focus firing, effective weapon ranges, special rules for specific weapons (Yes Virginia, a Gauss cannon blows up better than it's ammo does if you hit it right. CASE the gun, not the rounds!). Every day I watch other players from the spectator mode and see dumb mistakes, like ignoring heavily damaged lights and mediums and focusing everything on a pristine heavy or assault class who rolls up and says BOO. Or trying to snipe targets at 800 meters with medium lasers, or trying to blast targets with PPCs at point blank... things that an experienced MechWarrior or BattleTech table-topper has taken to heart ages ago. And I think that might be where the problem lies, everyone who's been involved with this from the start, or at least from the closed beta, were already familiar with everything. The reason we applied for the beta, or threw down the scratch for the founder's tag, was because we already knew this game, we love this game, and it just wouldn't have been right not being a part of it from the start. Now that it's in open beta, hordes of players who don't have any knowledge of the game system join up, and as soon as the patcher gets them up to date, they get to drop against sharks who know WTF and have known it for years. Thankfully the community isn't full of trolls who respond to questions with "L2P noob!", but there isn't a whole lot of time before a match gets heated up to go over the finer points. All in all, the lack of an interactive tutorial and a training sandbox is a real good way to tick off an entire demographic, and while they might not give up all together, they could just as easily become trolls who take out their frustrations on their own team as soon as the countdown is over, or once the brawl starts. I know I'm not just imagining the huge increase in players since open beta who just don't give a damn about friendly fire. It's F2P, so what do they have to loose?