175 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

Icepick, on 25 March 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

Edit: Removed rational suggestion from irrational thread.

I sure hope you post it somewhere else...

[Nightcrept]

DeadlyNerd, on 25 March 2013 - 08:13 AM, said:

Lol, millions of players HAVE abandoned WoW for other titles but not cause of the lack of a tutorial but cause the game didn't suit their tastes.
Also, the situation is a lot different than it was when WoW came out. Then a lack of content wasn't that much of a problem since there weren't many MMO games to choose from. Now you've titles coming out left and right. You don't compete with that with just a tutorial.

Again, 25 games. That's it, you're now looking at the game's whole content.
Oh I get it, they've got to hold the hands of every new player, catering to their every need just so they can get to see the lack of content this game has and leave the moment after. Are you people daft?
Tutorial isn't going to keep this game alive, meta game IS.
You don't need new players when there aren't any old players to play against.

For the Nth time:

http://mwomercs.com/...raining-grounds

Sorry but learning2play doesn't get simpler than that. You don't even have to turn off that pesky tutorial check box in the options like in most games.

Oh and let's not forget that there's the big yellow button saying "Visit the training grounds" when you start up the client.



That's the problem of ECM, not a lack of tutorial.
Also, tell a new guy that this game contains a feature only certain mechs can have, that renders certain weapons obsolete against them and see how thrilled he'll be to play this game.
Now now, you showed him a tutorial about ECM. He should be ******* happy to play against a broken feature just cause you showed him a tutorial.

Your right and wrong.

They need to work on new content but they also need to work on a tutorial.
While new content keeps the fan base happy it does little to make the game enjoyable for new players. And regardless of how you feel about new players who need help this game does need them.

The simple fact of MMO's is that you have a natural attrition rate. Even for the most die hard fan base. Things happen in real life and players get tired of games.

So you need to bring in and keep at least enough players to counter your games natural attrition rate.

And from the vast majority of comments in this thread a in depth tutorial is one of the things lacking that would help new players.

[Deathswarrior]

Tutorial is an obvious solution to just starting out.
Playing until you stop getting the bonus before you buy a mech also helps (had my buddy play until his cadet bonus was up before he bought a mech, And I know people hate them but I told him to get used to the different trial mech classes to decide what he would like to spend his money buying and upgrading)

My main problem overall is the same 2 gametypes of cap one spot or cap 5 spots. Conquest is fine as it is but Assault is just stupid anymore. If you pick a fast mech just cap, slow mech fight to the death and hope they dont have some light cap with the accel cap while your fighting in the middle of the map. And yes I understand you should play defensively but whats wrong with having a real back and forth assault Cap this round Defend next
Playing almost Team Deathmatch until someone gets scared every game gets pretty boring pretty fast.

Tis only my opinion

[Fut]

Cascal, on 23 March 2013 - 03:20 AM, said:

Which answer do you think new players interested in MWO hears the most? Take a wild guess!

Excellent point. Seems like the Devs don't believe in "Word of Mouth" advertising.
If they kept the current playerbase happy, we'd probably be more inclined to tell people about how awesome MWO is.

Right now when people ask about the game, there's always a bit of a *sigh* before I get into the details of what's good, what's bad, and where the game seems to be heading.

[DeadlyNerd]

Nightcrept, on 25 March 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

Your right and wrong.

They need to work on new content but they also need to work on a tutorial.
While new content keeps the fan base happy it does little to make the game enjoyable for new players. And regardless of how you feel about new players who need help this game does need them.

The simple fact of MMO's is that you have a natural attrition rate. Even for the most die hard fan base. Things happen in real life and players get tired of games.

So you need to bring in and keep at least enough players to counter your games natural attrition rate.

And from the vast majority of comments in this thread a in depth tutorial is one of the things lacking that would help new players.

So you're saying that a tutorial will stop newbies from being torn apart by core players.
Good lord, do you even know how dumb that sounds?

What will keep those newbies in the game is a promise of golds and riches, in this case, knowledge that this game has content to play for.

No one will say "Hey look, this game has a good tutorial, I'll keep playing it even though the content is absolutely minimal and there are much more developed games."
There is no time to focus on making a tutorial. If they want players they'll have to speed it up with CW they promised would come with OB.

I'm not right and wrong, I'm 100% right.

[StalaggtIKE]

As I stated before I think the biggest impact to killing new player interest has to do with the trail mechs. A new player decides he wants to play MWO because he likes giant blasting robots or he's a fan of the old MW/BT lore. Well their experience is something liket this:

• constantly overheat after a few shots
  
• LRM made ineffective from ECM

Fact is trail mechs typically run too hot, never carry ECM or TAG and typically missing key armor points. Generally speaking trail mechs aren't as optimized as a premades.
What can be done?
Two words, game balance.

A trial mech is typically lacking any means to compete against ECM. This fact is further exasperated when faced by a new player. Sometimes they can target an enemy, sometimes they can't. Perhaps the game is just buggy? Single heatsinks are inferior to DHS by a long shot. The result is obvious, premades with DHS can produce far more DPS than the trail mechs.

Game tutorial and giving the player a means to communicate with veteran players does help significantly. However it means nothing if a player can't jump into the game and blast a couple of mechs. They will become frustrated and move on.

[DirePhoenix]

Honestly I think the thing that turns most people off to MWO is the fact that it's a sim, even though being a sim is kind of the whole point of the game and supposedly the point of all the MechWarrior games.

When most people see or even perceive a "sim", they see this:



That is to say, an overly complicated system that you have to know hundreds of pages of technical information to do basic tasks.

Now, that's actually the type of complexity and depth that *I* personally enjoy and look for, but for most people, they just want to hop into some giant robots and blast other giant robots. They don't have the time or patience to go over manuals or learn all the intricacies that these machines may have. They just want to sit back, point, shoot, and see explosions.

The challenge then, is how do you provide the sort of depth and complexity that people that are into a sim-like experience will enjoy, while not making it such an obstacle for new players to get into and at the same time, may entice these non-sim players to invest themselves into learning to appreciate the value of learning more complex systems?

Edited by DirePhoenix, 25 March 2013 - 01:54 PM.

[StalaggtIKE]

Up above I posted that lack of game balance was the most detrimental factor to new player retention. Fact is, new players are originally confined to trial mechs in which are inferior to premades. But why exactly?
After pondering further I concluded that a lot of this stem from MWO's heat mechanic. Through a simple observation of the trail mechs, one can see that they come with SHS. While most pilots instinctively upgrade all of their mechs to DHS. Proper heat dissipation translate to better dps. Thus the great imbalance I described earlier. A simple solution would be to change around how DHS currently function. The idea is to have internal engine heatsinks dissipate at a 1.7 level instead of 2.0 and all additional external heatsinks to dissipate at 2.0 level. It's a simple swapping around of the system we currently have in place. This circumvent the current "free" engine 2.0 DHS that most of us take for granted. Follow the link below for further details, which include some number crunching that yeilded some interesting results.

Link: DHS VS SHS: A POSSIBLE FIX [SUGGESTION]

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 26 March 2013 - 12:34 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Staggering grind

Once they figure out how much they need to grind to get a mech after the cadet bonus (especially since they need 3 of them to get a module).

[Angus McBeef]

MustrumRidcully, on 23 March 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

I don't know, i have much more positive experiences.

A game like Startrek Online has a General Chat where everyone can talk and ask his "stupid" beginner question. Sure, there are asshats around that might insult you for asking a question or whatever, but hell, there is always someone that will try to help you.

Totally depends on where you are. Things seem to be far more civil on the KDF side where I play. I've seen plenty of abuse at SFA/Spacedock/DS9/Drozana though. The internet brings out the worst in people, sad fact of life there.

[Nightcrept]

DeadlyNerd, on 25 March 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

So you're saying that a tutorial will stop newbies from being torn apart by core players.
Good lord, do you even know how dumb that sounds?

What will keep those newbies in the game is a promise of golds and riches, in this case, knowledge that this game has content to play for.

No one will say "Hey look, this game has a good tutorial, I'll keep playing it even though the content is absolutely minimal and there are much more developed games."
There is no time to focus on making a tutorial. If they want players they'll have to speed it up with CW they promised would come with OB.

I'm not right and wrong, I'm 100% right.

Your not right.

New Players aren't sticking around long enough for content to even enter into their thoughts.

They get frustrated because they have no clue what anything does in game.

[StalaggtIKE]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 25 March 2013 - 08:22 PM, said:

Staggering grind

Once they figure out how much they need to grind to get a mech after the cadet bonus (especially since they need 3 of them to get a module).

It boils down to false expectations. Are you suggestion the cadet bonus be removed?

[Fate 6]

Moving arms and torso is STILL annoying for me. The new arm lock doesn't fix that issue either, as turning becomes something that requires me to move my mouse across my mouse pad multiple times to rotate from left to right, although I suspect this is an issue with the implementation and not with my mouse. I pretty much just stick to my Cent-A (which I love, so I'm not too choked up about that), because trying to use things like my Yen-Lo and Dragons is just too hard. (Ballistics hit register is also an issue, but that's not why I hate arm+torso aiming).

Edited by Fate 6, 26 March 2013 - 12:48 PM.

[Funkadelic Mayhem]

The elo.
the 8-0 win/loose every other match.
the same maps back to back to back to back oh a new map back to back to back to back oh a new map back to back to back to back to back to back to back oh a new map.
one shotting a mech at 100% armor
every match on every map is the same battle, everyone goes the same route fights at the same place everyone else fights at every time (e6 alpine anyone?). And if you dont go the same route you dont have skillz. Because it takes a lot of skill to do the SAME FRACKING thing every match right?
The lack of imagination from PGI and most of all the player base. Its no wonder the TT/BT fans (all over 30 for the most part) dont want change. Just like most old people dont want socialism yet want their social security benefits.

Edited by Funkadelic Mayhem, 26 March 2013 - 01:35 PM.