103 replies to this topic

[Zephyr Charge]

DisasterMedic, on 19 August 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

The problem is we don't know what form the tutorial is going to take. Seeing as No Payment No Podcast guys are involved, I'm afraid it's going to be a YouTube series instead of anything in-game. It's a band-aid, but not the solution we are going to ultimately need. However, due to the lack of any meaningful communication about things to come, this is pure speculation. It's almost like being kept in the dark prevents us from giving any feedback before things are put in place.

lol npnp

Id say they should make it so that trioals drop with trials until you buy a mech, then you get thrown to the sharks

[Chronojam]

Gwaihir, on 19 August 2013 - 09:29 PM, said:

That's a nice collection method, given that most everyone hits the launcher before hitting "play." I think the biggest current issue isn't ability to collect feedback, it's whether they think they even need it/whether the people that matter actually listen to it. (Or dismiss it as 'noise').

I'd totally be down for that. They could even use the adspace in-game once you get past the "play" portion to display the results of the last survey, maybe do them on a weekly basis. There is plenty of filler they could ask if they run out of serious questions for the community, just dig into BattleTech lore. For example, "Was Kerensky a war criminal?"

[Miekael]

Zephyr Charge, on 19 August 2013 - 09:52 PM, said:

lol npnp

Id say they should make it so that trioals drop with trials until you buy a mech, then you get thrown to the sharks

No matter what the tutorial is, we as a community need to evaluate it to see how well it does its job in teaching new players the ropes, and provide any feedback to help improve what PGI presents as a tutorial. I just hope that PGI makes the tutorial high priority and can get a basic implementation before launch.

[Zephyr Charge]

Chronojam, on 19 August 2013 - 09:52 PM, said:

I'd totally be down for that. They could even use the adspace in-game once you get past the "play" portion to display the results of the last survey, maybe do them on a weekly basis.

Yeah I sincerely doubt theyd publish the results though

Miekael, on 19 August 2013 - 10:04 PM, said:

No matter what the tutorial is, we as a community need to evaluate it to see how well it does its job in teaching new players the ropes, and provide any feedback to help improve what PGI presents as a tutorial. I just hope that PGI makes the tutorial high priority and can get a basic implementation before launch.

Ya; and not the reception I got earlier today.
everyone alpha-ed me and it didnt just look like it; they went from shooting my teammates to shooting at me lol

cause they were like "kill him first; teach him how harsh this game is!" "No! leg him!" "Shoot off all his bits so he can watch us kill the rest of his team!"

Cause new players will really want to see that on their first matches, where the other guys on the enemy team start aplha prioritizing the trial mechs

[Miekael]

Zephyr Charge, on 19 August 2013 - 10:07 PM, said:

Ya; and not the reception I got earlier today.
everyone alpha-ed me and it didnt just look like it; they went from shooting my teammates to shooting at me lol

cause they were like "kill him first; teach him how harsh this game is!" "No! leg him!" "Shoot off all his bits so he can watch us kill the rest of his team!"

Cause new players will really want to see that on their first matches, where the other guys on the enemy team start aplha prioritizing the trial mechs

You highlight a very good point here, in that trial mechs are inferior to custom load outs. They have exploitable weaknesses and this is where I see the trial mechs fail the most, the power gap difference between those builds and the custom ones. Mechanics like the heat scale, ECM, and general weapon balance help create that power gap. I would like to see the game in a state of balance where trial mechs would not be as outclassed as they are.

[Zephyr Charge]

Miekael, on 19 August 2013 - 11:00 PM, said:

You highlight a very good point here, in that trial mechs are inferior to custom load outs. They have exploitable weaknesses and this is where I see the trial mechs fail the most, the power gap difference between those builds and the custom ones. Mechanics like the heat scale, ECM, and general weapon balance help create that power gap. I would like to see the game in a state of balance where trial mechs would not be as outclassed as they are.

There are pretty much two ways you get this:
Trials only drop with trials
Remove the mechlab

As long as players are allowed to make the mechs that want they will make the most optimum mechs they can and that AINT thr trial mechs, by design.

[B0oN]

Any graspable outcome so far except being ignored by PGIGP ?

[Team Leader]

Maybe the name should be changed. "save" implies that the game is dead or dying or going downhill fast. This is a turn off to new players and bad press for PGI. I can see why they would ignore the requests made by the movement without a second thought. I propose #improveMWO be the new moniker. This is a more positive connotation and would be more likely to garner attention and response.

[Vassago Rain]

Team Leader, on 20 August 2013 - 01:06 AM, said:

Maybe the name should be changed. "save" implies that the game is dead or dying or going downhill fast. This is a turn off to new players and bad press for PGI. I can see why they would ignore the requests made by the movement without a second thought. I propose #improveMWO be the new moniker. This is a more positive connotation and would be more likely to garner attention and response.

I told you this before you even started.

[Nekki Basara]

SirDubDub, on 19 August 2013 - 08:24 PM, said:

Aw Hell with it.



Signed: A Loyal Dissident


[TLDR - I disagree with you guys, but let's not be {Richard Camerons} about it this time]

This was a great example of how to disagree without ******* people off. Welcome aboard.

[Lazy Eye]

Team Leader, on 20 August 2013 - 01:06 AM, said:

Maybe the name should be changed. "save" implies that the game is dead or dying or going downhill fast. This is a turn off to new players and bad press for PGI. I can see why they would ignore the requests made by the movement without a second thought. I propose #improveMWO be the new moniker. This is a more positive connotation and would be more likely to garner attention and response.

Perception is important, I agree, which is why I believe the name is appropriate at this point in time.

#saveMWO is an expression of the depth of the concern "we" currently have with respect to the future of the game. A point I would like to re-iterate is that the "leaders" within the #saveMWO community are all extremely experienced gamers.

Personally, I've been playing video games for over 25 years, about 20 of which have been on the PC. Now, this doesn't mean I know everything or that I'm always right but, it does mean that I have seen A LOT of games come and go. I've seen great games that never got the mass following/recognition/sales they deserve (System Shock 2), I've seen games come with HUGE amounts of hype and then fall flat on their faces when they are launched (Daikatana, anyone?).

All I and many of the other people involved in #saveMWO are doing, is drawing on our experience, both of MechWarrior games, many simulator/FPS titles and other online games we've played. We're then asking ourselves "How does MWO stack up?" and then "Based on that, how do we expect MWO to perform commercially after launch?".

Almost everyone involved in #saveMWO has very negative answers to both those questions and our conclusion is that MWO is in serious danger of going the way of games like Diakatana or the dozens of other online games that don't attract enough of a loyal, paying, player base in order to survive in the medium to long term.

This is a problem for us, because we all love BattleTech and MechWarrior. We've waited over a decade for this MW title and we don't want to have to wait another decade, because MWO was a commercial flop.

Now, on the issue of bad press... well, this is something you can't hide from. When the press get hold of the game, they will say what they will say. If MWO gets bad press and people don't play at all or people play and think the game stinks and stop playing, the net result will be the same: people not playing MWO.

Now, some people think that we're wrong and that MWO is great and doesn't need to change. As many have said before, that's great, come and participate! We both want and need people with considered opinions to challenge us and keep us honest (intellectually).

Finally, we are not planning some sort of "take over". This is the Internet, not turn-of-the-century Russia FFS! We're not going to be "storming the barricades" at PGI/IGP's offices and start "executing the oppressors for their crimes against the proletariat". We're not trying to dictate to PGI/IGP how to implement feature X or weapon Y, we're saying "this is what we think the problem is, this is our opinion on the best way to fix it" or "here are the options for fixing it that we think will work".

We will only, only ever have the power that PGI/IGP deem to grant us.

I hope, very much, that we will change to #improveMWO as quickly as possible, but right now, we're still in #saveMWO territory.

[StandingCow]

What Miekael said pretty much sums it up.

For me, personally, the biggest thing I want to see change is the communication that comes from PGI about decisions made and what is realistically expected in the future, like what Russ did with 3rd Person, that was fantastic. That is what we need more of.

PGI is asking for people to put money into the game, what we should be asking in return for is communication so we can decide if our money is going toward something we support or should we take it elsewhere?

[Viper69]

StandingCow, on 20 August 2013 - 05:33 AM, said:

What Miekael said pretty much sums it up.

For me, personally, the biggest thing I want to see change is the communication that comes from PGI about decisions made and what is realistically expected in the future, like what Russ did with 3rd Person, that was fantastic. That is what we need more of.

PGI is asking for people to put money into the game, what we should be asking in return for is communication so we can decide if our money is going toward something we support or should we take it elsewhere?

You and I both know they wouldn't have said a word to us if it weren't accidentally leaked on their web cast. So what Russ did is called damage control, not communicating.

I agree though that a successful game is a two way street in this type of marketing format they are going for.

I do like the idea of trial mech vs trial mechs only and people have been asking for that since open beta and probably before OB.

[fil5000]

Viper69, on 20 August 2013 - 06:01 AM, said:

You and I both know they wouldn't have said a word to us if it weren't accidentally leaked on their web cast. So what Russ did is called damage control, not communicating.

I agree though that a successful game is a two way street in this type of marketing format they are going for.

I do like the idea of trial mech vs trial mechs only and people have been asking for that since open beta and probably before OB.

Regardless of the motivation, the result was a post that explained the change in direction nicely. I agree we need more of that sort of thing. In fact there's two sorts of communication we need more of - firstly, the "this is why" sort of posts like the one Russ made that set out the reason for a particular design choice that includes the personal feelings the devs had that made them go down that path. Not every single design choice is going to be made for reasons that have anything to do with data or logic, and that doesn't have to be a problem. It's only a problem if the entire community isn't aware of the reasoning behind it so it looks nonsensical. Plus it's a nice reminder that the devs are people and not logic engines.

Second, the "how did we" sort of posts, like the huge post we had on the networking issues a while back. Personally I had no idea what most of the post was about as I'm not a network engineer, but the transparency and level of detail gave me a huge amount of confidence that the guy making the post knew his onions and that future issues would be tracked down and dealt with in an efficient and exhaustive manner.

Compare this to a particular bugbear of mine, the heat penalty, where we got an explanation of what it does and a table with the weapons affected. No explanation of what it was supposed to accomplish, why this approach was better than anything else, what other stuff had been tried, or how this penalty helped shape the overall vision of the game. I suspect a lot of the (still ongoing) shouting could have been resolved with a post along the lines of "Hey, the game is HERE right now, we actually want it to be over THERE. We looked at all these solutions but this one made this thing happen, and that one made this other thing happen, neither of which really tied into the end goal we have in mind. This solution does because of these reasons - plus we think the game feels cooler played this way."

[Miekael]

Rad Hanzo, on 19 August 2013 - 11:54 PM, said:

Any graspable outcome so far except being ignored by PGIGP ?

Only thing I can recommend at this point is to wait and see.

[KingCobra]

Stalkerr, on 19 August 2013 - 12:59 PM, said:

For those who thought the thread was lacking good ideas:

• Improve the new player experience by providing a sandbox for new players that puts them into smaller 4v4 battles, where they have more chances to make mistakes and learn from them. Oh, and context-sensitive popup help tips. Lots of them. With BB voiceovers.
  
• Lobbies for teams to coordinate drops together.
  
• Rebalancing pass for all weapons and systems.
  
• Reevaluation of complex systems, such as Ghost Heat, which have a high level of technical debt associated with them.

I agree.

N0MAD, on 19 August 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

I believe a Tutorial is being worked on as we speak, thats great news, hoping a chat lobby is being built into UI2 (its really needed).
By far the one thing that i think will retain and bring back most players is a match making lobby. It will give the game longevity and the player base will itself recruit new players and help retain the new players that have difficulties being on their own, this was amply demonstrated in all the previous MW titles.
Balance is an ongoing thing so a direct line of communication (respectful) with the devs on a regular basis i think is a must for both Devs and players.

I agree many of us have been working on conveying these ideas for 2 years and slowly PGI is listening to a few suggestions from the forums. MWO is a FPS game of MechWarrior if you look at StarCraft2 you will see the type of new player tutorial MWO needs. A private matchmaking system and lobby chat system would make MWO more alive and vibrant as a community along with private leagues. I have made many topics and posts on this as well as thousands of other players only time will tell if MWO will become MechWarrior. Like I have said many times PGI would only benefit from the changes and be rewarded by more $USD per player over the life of the game.

[Viper69]

I personally would like to see a simulator function that lets you build a test mech and pilot it in the training area before buying it and the components. Spending Cbills for a new person especially on something you thought worked good on paper but in practice does not fit your play style can be a blow.

[Miekael]

Viper69, on 20 August 2013 - 06:42 AM, said:

I personally would like to see a simulator function that lets you build a test mech and pilot it in the training area before buying it and the components. Spending Cbills for a new person especially on something you thought worked good on paper but in practice does not fit your play style can be a blow.

Or perhaps, a way for the mechlab to drop a build in the training grounds before you finalize the purchase. Think a lot of players would like that.

Edited by Miekael, 20 August 2013 - 06:53 AM.

[Viper69]

Miekael, on 20 August 2013 - 06:51 AM, said:

Or perhaps, I way for the mechlab to drop a build in the training grounds before you finalize the purchase. Think a lot of players would like that.

Yeah thats more or less what I was getting at, a way to test something before you commit to it.

[KingCobra]

Miekael, on 20 August 2013 - 06:51 AM, said:

Or perhaps, I way for the mechlab to drop a build in the training grounds before you finalize the purchase. Think a lot of players would like that.

The old MechWarrior games had this function it was called instant action mode. You would go into mechlab and build the mech configurations you wanted then save them to a config file and name each one different like 2lbx20brawler.After you build and save a few configurations for each mech you owned you went to the menu into instant action mode. Then you could pick the mech you wanted to test the configuration you wanted to test then pick a map and AI opponent's then launch into a test mode.

Edited by KingCobra, 20 August 2013 - 07:01 AM.