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[ExplodedZombie]

Pointless post: Okay, so i'm not a new player. My friend installed, patched, and started playing at my house last Saturday. He had never played a Mechwarrior game and the closest type of game was World of Tanks. Generally he is good at FPS so he wasn't a total noob. All right here are some of the discussions we had, paraphrased a bit.

Friend: "So...I have to play as a trial mech? I can't get my own"
Me: "No, you have to earn up some flyff then buy a new mech"
Friend: "Can I change their loadout?"
Me: "No, you're stuck with whatever trash they have."
Friend: "Weak"

Verdict: Meh, Trial mechs are a good way to have people try all the weight classes. Neutral feeling. First-time user experience is pretty solid, here, aside from some of the mechs being a little difficult for him to use.

Combat:

Friend: "The combat is pretty badass. It's really hard. I'm great at WoT, but suck at this. It makes me want to train even harder so I can master it"
Me: "Easy to learn, hard to master or whatever"
Friend: "I'm doing like 50 damage a match. This is pathetic"
Me: "Yeah, it is."

Verdict: So the combat is great. He liked the overall feel of the mech, though didn't care for how unresponsive the SHD was (on my account). Good job PGI! He's addicted!

And now we get to the store.

Friend: "Holy ass what is this? Is this the store?"
Me: "Yeah, it's their new UI2.0. I don't think it's finished."
Friend: "So I can't filter the store by weight? Can I see what gear they have?"
Me: "No. Actually I'm not sure. I've never figured out how."
Friend: "But they want me to spend money?"
Me: "Yeah...that's the plan I think."
Friend: "Ahahahahhaaha! This is the worst thing I've ever seen! Wait, it's a F2P game and they are relying on you to purchase stuff in this store, but they make it nearly impossible?"
Me: "Like I said, they are working on it"
Friend: "Look, I'm no UX expert, but this is probably the most important feature for monetization aside from hooking them with the core gameplay. It's really frustrating."

Verdict: Terrible store UI. Really terrible. He was frozen with the choice of what mech to buy first. He was afraid to waste his money. And the lack of filter was damaging to his morale as well as mine. I was sad just trying to help him. Luckily I remember what just about every mech is good at or he'd have been screwed.

One last amazing bug:

Friend: "So I bought my mech. Now I have to spend 2.5m just to make it usable (DHS, etc). Shouldn't that be messaged up front?"
Me: "No, shut up. It's fine."
Friend: "Ok but why can't i use this mech. It has DHS and SHS in the same torso. I don't think it should. Also, there are more weapons in this mech than it can handle. 3 SRM6 + 1 LRM15 but only 3 missile slots. 2 ML + 2 MPL in the center torso. I think this game is broken. I just broke MWO."
Me: "I've never seen that bug but holy crap that's horrible."

His Cent-C9A had all of its original loadout + the loadout he had changed. Amazing.


Final Verdict: Despite the extreme failings of the Store UI, he really liked the game. He is new so unaware of the meta, but regular pug matches were good for him. After 5 or 6 matches, he finally got his first kill and was really excited. I think that LRMs and splash-based weapons are better for really new players since they are still trying to learn how to maneuver as well as shoot.