52 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

I will concede for a player who has never played a MW game before, there are some gross assumptions we veterans make that can and do most definitely vex new players... That said, this isn't rocket science either.

I've argued for years and to some extent has been supported by player migration to console games... That gamers are getting lazier and impatient.

Yes, I realize this makes me sound like some crusty grognard and PGI could most definitely do more to welcome new players... I'm not necessarily convinced we need a kindergarten sandbox...

[Capt Sternn]

A Bot game would help train people ( Kinda like LOL has) that or stick all the 25 Match or less people in their own que and the moment you hit 26 matches you go to general population.

[Willard Phule]

Working as intended.

Ever stop to think WHY new players are thrown into the deep end and left to just Derp around until they drown?

Because PGI needs fodder for it's "target Audience"....namely, the organized teams. They need to keep a PUG queue full of rookies and idiots for the League guys to practice on. That's us. Welcome to the "no elo" matchmaker.

My suggestion, if you're a new player, is to just stay in 3PV mode, zoom in and just wander around aimlessly. You're not going to beat the other team anyway, you might as well make them spend 10 minutes trying to find you. Once enough of the "target audience" complains to PGI about the lack of competetive gameplay, perhaps they'll be compelled to fix the problem.

[Haxburch]

I do not even understand what is hard on this game ? Its absolute easy . I bring also some friends in this game and the first i teach is dont play rambo dont play ligth mechs . Trail mechs are bad and weak , play secondline.


No one of my friends played 3d person and i explaind first the important keys and let them run in trainmode shooting dummies. After one day or couple of hours people begin to find there own way.
Let your friends start with ongly Skirmish mode !!!

Edited by Haxburch, 30 June 2014 - 07:17 AM.

[Chemie]

PGI's monetized model of "all of the above" is also not newbie friendly. After cadet bonus, when they see CB rate and do the math that a single clan mech will take 4 months of grind, they quit.

[CeeKay Boques]

Even though it takes away from what I like...

This game could really really use a nice single player campaign.

Where a guy could y'know, be a newb, fight some mechs, live a story, get to know the game, the BTU...

Reload when you die?

Play as much as you want... beat the AI to a pulp until you NEED a new challenge.

And then... there's CW waiting for you.

Just need PGI to hire more people and have more money. This is where Free to Play hurts. Single Player must be financed. If you charge for it, new players won't grab it off the shelf. If you don't charge for it, giant money hole.

All that said, my 9 and 11 year old picked up this game with some practice and encouragement from me. Surely your friends are as smart and you as encouraging!

[MeiSooHaityu]

I still think there should be a Cadet only que (solo drops only) for new players. Once they hit their 25 matches, they can recieve their cadet c-bill bonus and be introduced into the general populace matchmaker.

I think that would help quite a bit IMO. No point in overwhelming new players right from the start.

[BoomDog]

You think it's bad now, you should've seen this game at the beginning of open beta.... Newbmeggedon.

There was no training grounds. You had four trial mechs to choose from. You picked one and got dropped straight into combat. This was when 8 man premades were the norm, and LRMs were the A-Bomb of the MWO. So, you'd drop with 8 newbs in trials facing an 8 man premade with maxed out skills....and within one minute the LRMs started obliterating your team. No ECM, no AMS, and they flew through terrain. LRM boats were breaking 1500 damage per game.

The irony was that, in the forums, the 8 man players were flaming anyone who mentioned there was something wrong with balance.

[maniacos]

Zurakci, on 29 June 2014 - 03:05 PM, said:

So I have noticed that this game is not beginner friendly. Its actually "Have Skill or git rekt." and I personally have nothing against it since I have played Mechwarrior games before. But... I have tried to get over 10 people to play this. All with same results. Its either have Skill from before, or get wrecked, and to be honest, the tutorial is not really a good help, and the training grounds would be good if you could play with people. Having a person host instead of running on your (Oh so pricey) Servers could be a thing to train with a lance and such.

Its just... I see games building their way to make it all good for the new players so they can learn and like the game. Warframe is a perfect example of this. Their next update will feature more new player friendliness and more new player fun.
Planetside 2 is trying to go more and more for the new players. They are not good, cause their DEV team is a cluster in my opinion, but they are giving us a little by little.

I just wish to play with my friends in this game. I wish to give you guys more gamers, but I cant do that if the game cannot welcome the players with open arms.. Or with mechs that are ready to spread some serious Dakka.

All in all.. Moar new player friendliness. Please.

I have tried to get friends, that all like and play games frequently, have their steam accounts and stuff, to play MWO. None of them lasted more than 1h...

[KamikazeRat]

Capt Sternn, on 30 June 2014 - 06:42 AM, said:

A Bot game would help train people ( Kinda like LOL has) that or stick all the 25 Match or less people in their own que and the moment you hit 26 matches you go to general population.

All of this. Something that newbies can master and then they move from the kiddie pool to the shallow end for their 25, then off the deep end they go.

Also the bot arena would be a better way to test loads.Idk how many times I've thrown something together, training grounds, pew pew, ok looks good, get into real world and realize it runs like crap.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Capt Sternn, on 30 June 2014 - 06:42 AM, said:

A Bot game would help train people ( Kinda like LOL has) that or stick all the 25 Match or less people in their own que and the moment you hit 26 matches you go to general population.

Not a bad idea, although I am uncertain if anyone currently working at PGI has any AI experience. Still, if they could pull off some half competent bots, that would help out more than static parked mechs.

[Myke Pantera]

I agree with you OP, that it ain't easy to introduce new players into this game. Sure you can make a group, but that usually pushes the new player into even higher ELO ranges, than he would if he was playing alone.

It would definitely help if we could create private matches of any size without the need to have premium time active. Then you can play 1vs1 on the map of your choice to show your friend(s) around a little. And give some lessons about things you want to ... ähm ... give lessons about.

Being able to enter the training grounds as group would also help!

[Joseph Mallan]

So sell the game as a Dark Souls style game. Put up a Total Death count like they have. We don't need to be bigger than WoW in its hayday we just need to make the game profitable. If it attracts enough players that is good enough for me!

[Lostdragon]

I too have tried unsuccessfully to get several RL gamer friends to play MWO. These are all people who are avid gamers and play other PVP games at high levels. None of them played MWO through the cadet bonus. Very frustrating.

[Joseph Mallan]

My friends mostly don't play due to hardware limits... I have one who won't remove Linux.

[Ph30nix]

there are two sides to this

One alot of players today are frankly complete idiots who can't be bothered to research anything so even if PGI did write up some kind of instructions or notes or anything they wouldnt bothere to read any of it. They might read some info pop up or more info on loading screen but even that im sure they would eventually zone out.

So for PGI to teach these people they would have to spoon feed it to them BIG TIME which would need a tutorial which guess what alot of players just want to skip the tutorials and jump right into the action and "learn as they go"

which in a single player game THIS IS POSSIBLE some games turned it into an art form to teach players what to do and how to do it without giving any direct instruction (look at Metroid and Super metroid for great examples of how to teach your players without hand holding them)

But since MWO is an online PVP only game they would have to rely on txts or a forced tutorial which as i said above most people would skip.

The ones who would go thru the trouble to read and do a tutorial are the ones who would have already bothered to do their own research and learning so its damned if you do damned if you dont situation.


But as a few people have said its not really difficult to grasp the concept here and now that all trails are champ mechs with fairly optimized builds the only direction people SHOULD need to do decent at the game is
Weapon fire goes here (cross hairs)
weapons in arms go here (little circle)
Arm weapons have larger range of motion then non arm weapons
Torso and legs move independantly of eachother
you can walk in one direction while aiming in a completely differnt one
Red triangles are enemies
hit R to lock onto targets

if you give someone that information and they can't figure out the rest there probably is no hope of them ever being able to play the game anyways.

[Willard Phule]

KamikazeRat, on 30 June 2014 - 07:55 AM, said:

All of this. Something that newbies can master and then they move from the kiddie pool to the shallow end for their 25, then off the deep end they go.

Also the bot arena would be a better way to test loads.Idk how many times I've thrown something together, training grounds, pew pew, ok looks good, get into real world and realize it runs like crap.

They tried that, right before the launch of 2.0.

After the launch of 2.0, they tried to get 3/3/3/3 working with a "slimmed down version" of the Elo based matchmaker. It failed. They reinstated the "old" matchmaker but any separation by Elo in the public queue went away.

Right now, it doesn't matter how new or old you are. If you drop in the public queue, you will end up with every caliber of player...including multiple premade teams.

[Potato Farmer]

Willard Phule, on 30 June 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

They tried that, right before the launch of 2.0.

After the launch of 2.0, they tried to get 3/3/3/3 working with a "slimmed down version" of the Elo based matchmaker. It failed. They reinstated the "old" matchmaker but any separation by Elo in the public queue went away.

Right now, it doesn't matter how new or old you are. If you drop in the public queue, you will end up with every caliber of player...including multiple premade teams.

You end up with someone who TKs you if you shoot him by accident. Like this phule guy above. And people wonder why newbies mostly sink.

[zhajin]

There are a number of problems still with the new player experience, though It has actually gotten better over the years.

first is the elo system that slips them in just under average. this assumes new players have a good history with playing games like this and will be able to pick it up quickly. If no they will lose a lot until they hit the bottom of the elo bucket. I suspect the bottom of the elo bucket is just a bunch of mechs running into each other for 15 minutes...

second is the trial mechs. they are certainly better but many of them are still not friendly to new players. if your friends are just starting out make sure they are running newbie friendly trials, and not something that sounds cool.

third well the game in general is pretty much a meat grinder, you either like it or you dont. I would only classify maybe 10-20% of games as great games. and even in those many people are dead before the game really gets good.

[Willard Phule]

Bulbasaur ICHOOSEYOU, on 30 June 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

You end up with someone who TKs you if you shoot him by accident. Like this phule guy above. And people wonder why newbies mostly sink.

Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid. I'll be the first to admit it....I teamkill people for shooting me in spawn. I'm not the only one. There are LOTS of us that are tired of being drafted for diaper duty, having to deal with the mouthbreathers every single match.

All I can tell you is to be more careful who you "test fire" your weapons on. You may just end up shooting a teammate with not only the ability but the desire to remove you as a threat.