38 replies to this topic

[Kyle Polulak]

Greetings Focus Group!

Please let us know your focused feedback on this weekend's House Steiner sale and challenge!

1) What were your thoughts on the weekend themes? (Faction based, different each week)

2) What were your thoughts on the items selected for sale? (Steiner Cockpit Items, Mechs, Paints)

3) What were your thoughts on the personal challenge parameters? (Kill 20 enemies in a Lyran 'Mech)

4) What were your thoughts on the sale text? (Link here.)

5) What were your thoughts on the event text? (Link here.)

6) What were your thoughts on the event image? (Link here.)

[Wintersdark]

1) I liked 'em. They add some flavor to the different houses, rather than just being a pretty forum badge.

2) As above. It's just a little, but every little bit helps.

3) Annoyed. Why no hero mechs? I mastered, then sold most of the listed mechs because YAY! HERO MECHS! Why pilot the basic versions when my hero variants have +30% cbill bonuses and cost me real $?

4 - 5) Good enough, but the event text was confusing in a sense, trying to figure out the difference between the challenge and the sale. I understand that it's the same mechs in the challenge that are on sale, but that isn't necessarily clear.

In the future, re: 4 and 5, I'd recommend using completely different texts for the sale and event, or just one that's more clear.

[TOGSolid]

Wintersdark is pretty much spot on there. It's a fun event that is getting a lot of interesting variety on the battlefield though the increase in useless Assaults trying to farm with LRMs is annoying because LRM boat Assaults are teeerrrrible wastes of space.


Is there a way in the UI to put a little tag on all the event legal mechs so that we don't need to keep the list open? That would help a lot with the user friendliness of these faction specific events. Maybe just a big ole E you can stick in the corner of the box for each legal mech in the mechlab list.

Edited by TOGSolid, 09 August 2014 - 02:43 PM.

[StevieRayVaughan]

4. No Atlas? Lost all interest, disregarded everything else.

[IllCaesar]

1. They're fun, and this is the type of thing that I'd like to see more of. Events that get you to try new things. Maybe for a Davion challenge, you have to accumulate a large amount of damage over any number of matches only using autocannons. They do like their dakka

2. I did enjoy the sale. I got myself two Hunchbacks, and I'm going to try to grind away on Monday with the hopes of getting enough C-Bills to get an Awesome or Orion. C-Bill = excellent. Bought some Premium Time to help grind away for these mechs. If I had more money, I'd probably get some cockpit items. dat holofist

3. The parameters for this one is not having a positive effect on the game, though I've already explained myself in the "Win a Mechbay" thread that you can read up on it there. Goals are good, but they shouldn't be hurting teamwork, and when everybody is focused on getting that one final shot, it creates problems. I've been TK'd twice for a kill steal, and due to reckless fire, I've been stripped of a significant amount of armour a few times as well. More goals in the future, but better goals.

4 & 5. Fun take on it, though 4 did it better by not breaking the 4th wall.

6. Attach "C-Bill" sale to it. I read it and went "oh, well I'm saving my MC for a Summoner", and only noticed that it was a C-Bill sale due to accidentally pressing "Store" instead of searching for a match.

Edited by MarsAtlas, 09 August 2014 - 04:21 PM.

[Airic Gryphon]

1. Love the faction themed sales and events.

2. It's always nice to see things go on sale. Honestly tho, I don't even really look at the cockpit items much anymore since it's a big pain to switch them around/locate them.

3. I really like the idea of having to achieve goal in certain mechs but I didn't really like the kills part. As others have said everyone was swarming in trying to get that final shot and it hurt teamwork. That type of thing works ok in a fps with low ttk, but here not so much. Maybe in the future make it a smaller number of kills but require assists as well. Like 10 kills; 75 assists. Or allow so many assists to count as a kill, like 10 assists = 1 kill.

It might be cool to have a match score challenge. Something along the lines of get a combined match score of 3000 during the event. This would encourage teamwork and hopefully have players improve their skills. It may also stop people from swarming into heavies and assaults lowering queue times.

4-6. These were good. Thank you for making it a c-bill sale as well.

Edited by Airic Gryphon, 09 August 2014 - 04:58 PM.

[Zyllos]

1) What were your thoughts on the weekend themes? (Faction based, different each week)

Good I guess...a sale is a sale, so I guess a "faction" sale is a bit different.

2) What were your thoughts on the items selected for sale? (Steiner Cockpit Items, Mechs, Paints)

Again, good I guess...it's a sale!

3) What were your thoughts on the personal challenge parameters? (Kill 20 enemies in a Lyran 'Mech)

The challenge is fine enough. But, I have a beef with the "Lyran Alliance" mech list. The obvious is no AS7-D or AS7-D-DC. These two are part of the Lyran Alliance for certain for the era.

Two, where did you guys happen to get the entire master list for this?

4) What were your thoughts on the sale text? (Link here.)
5) What were your thoughts on the event text? (Link here.)
6) What were your thoughts on the event image? (Link here.)

Seems ok to me.

[John1352]

1) I like the weekend themes/sales, but please do cbill sales as well as MC sales each time.

2) Mechs sales for C bills are awesome! I'm not too interested in the other stuff. I don't mind whether the sale mechs correlate with the mechs used by that house.

3) A kill based challenge leads to a more "blocking allied fire to get the kill" than usual. Savior kills or spotting assists would be a good alternative.

4 - 6) They were good, could we get the sale text earlier please? I bought a Jagermech-S a few hours before it went on sale.

Edited by John1352, 09 August 2014 - 05:11 PM.

[Sandpit]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 09 August 2014 - 01:24 PM, said:

Greetings Focus Group!

Please let us know your focused feedback on this weekend's House Steiner sale and challenge!

1) What were your thoughts on the weekend themes? (Faction based, different each week)

2) What were your thoughts on the items selected for sale? (Steiner Cockpit Items, Mechs, Paints)

3) What were your thoughts on the personal challenge parameters? (Kill 20 enemies in a Lyran 'Mech)

4) What were your thoughts on the sale text? (Link here.)

5) What were your thoughts on the event text? (Link here.)

6) What were your thoughts on the event image? (Link here.)

Event was a step in the right direction. It was nice actually having a challenge to do and something to focus on other than repetition.

1) Great idea! Players have been asking for stuff like this for a long time. I would suggest boning up on lore though and only including mechs that are actually faction specific along with "generic" mechs. Steiner event and Atlases aren't on sale? Come on now

2)This was good as well! I would expand on the colors though. Include more shades of the colors. Blue doesn't always = blue depending on the look your'e going for

3)Here's where I was kinda "meh". Instead of kills it would have been MUCH nicer if it had been wins. The only thing 25 kills accomplishes is make the solo queue go nuts with people trying everything they can to get a kill and giving very little if any concern to actually winning the match. Need to stop focusing events around solo actions and get more team events going

4)Looked very good. More importantly it looked professional

5)The format of this one could use a little work. The layout was a bit "busy". Maybe add in a table for some boundaries?

6) see #4

all in all it was great to see PGI actually running stuff like this. Keep it up and start getting deeper with this kind of stuff and I think it's one of the best decision in a very long time.

I'd also suggest move away from mechs and mech bays as the only rewards. Get creative. Add tiers.
25 wins =
50 wins =
75 wins =
the higher you go, the greater the reward. It also doesn't take very long to get 25 kills. 25 wins ensures your players are playing more. That improves queue times, your numbers, and players enjoying the game more. I think it took me about 2 hours game time in the solo queue (I wanted to see how bad it would be in the PUG queue for this event) altogether to get my 25 kills. So if it had been switched to victories it would have taken even longer which means I'd have been playing more games.

[Flying Fox 333]

1) Great idea and like that it's different every weekend.

2) Appropriate choices, probably consider adding a battlemech cockpit statue. Although, you would have to do these for each of the different factions. E.g. Steiner Atlas. There might not be enough statue variety to do this though.

3) Nice and concise, with a faction flavour, love it.

4) Description is great. Include a direct link to the challenges page so people can track their progress. A lot of new players may not be aware of this page. I was asked several times over the weekend by veteran players where this page was located.

https://mwomercs.com/profile/stats?type=challenges

Could you let who ever develops the challenge page, to elaborate on the condition needed to complete the challenge when it is under both the current and upcoming headings. I.e. x out of 20 kills in a Lyran mech. The word Lyran could be linked to your event item.

3 & 4) The RSS feed on the patcher displays this event poorly due to the story transmission header. Maybe redesign the way the patcher reads the associated post so that you can use a BBCode tag to include/exclude what should be seen on the feed.

5) Looks great, and is concise. Great to see the colours text are mentioned.

P.S. Was a pleasant surprise to see you playing online last night (i'm from Australia.) We normally never see any PGI staff on at those times.

Edited by Flying Fox 333, 09 August 2014 - 09:26 PM.

[Pjwned]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 09 August 2014 - 01:24 PM, said:

1) What were your thoughts on the weekend themes? (Faction based, different each week)

Sort of neat I guess, largely indifferent though.

Quote

2) What were your thoughts on the items selected for sale? (Steiner Cockpit Items, Mechs, Paints)

I tend to not buy stuff with MC so I guess I don't have too many thoughts, could maybe use more colors for sale but I understand there's supposed to be a theme behind it.

Quote

3) What were your thoughts on the personal challenge parameters? (Kill 20 enemies in a Lyran 'Mech)

Absolute garbage, please consider using parameters that encourage actual teamwork for future challenges instead of rampant kill stealing (which is often extremely unhelpful to the rest of the team) and discouraging people from using mechs other than heavy/assault mechs with tons of frontloaded damage.

[Sky Hawk]

1) What were your thoughts on the weekend themes? (Faction based, different each week)

It's a very good idea. I think, it is a much better theme, than many of those in the past. I can't understand the themes some of those sales till today... This make least a solid sense.


2) What were your thoughts on the items selected for sale? (Steiner Cockpit Items, Mechs, Paints)

1. Till I don't know the lore enough, I don't know what Cockpit Items those pilots used originally.. Or which blue color they pefered, but: Even I, know:

Steiner = Atlas! So why not?

2. I can't judge from the faction-validity of the other Mechs, but it is not really clear for me, why one variant is on the sale and the other not, from the same chassis. (Only reason, I can think is some PGI-stupid-business-thing, but I could be wrong.)


3) What were your thoughts on the personal challenge parameters? (Kill 20 enemies in a Lyran 'Mech)

1. It's a fair challenge for the "Play for Kills" players, but...

2. What is with the other Playstyles? (Almos all my Mechs nowdays are LRM-firesupport Mechs, and I goes mostly for Assists not for Kills. I had to build new Builds and change fully my playstyle). So, I would preferd something like:
- 20 Kills, or
- 50 Assists, or
- 25 Spott, or
- 10.000 Gathered Resources, or
- 20 Base Cap

(In a war, but even here in MWO all of this things are almost equal usefull for a win.)

3. And for the used Mech is the same as the point above:

- Steiner = Atlas!

- Why can I use one variant, but not an other from the same chassis. (My GB has almost the same build as the trial KTO-18, but I can't use it in the challenge?)


4) What were your thoughts on the sale text?

I would prefer a bit bigger fontsize for the Mechs, and I would subsort them by weight-classes.. But, this time it looks like, someone read it between the typing and the put out.. So, without big silly mistakes, looks a sales-text much better.. A good one!

PS2. LOL, I didn't realised in the past 3 days, but the end-date 11:59... it is AM or PM? (Not really clear for me...) But the funniest thing is: NOBODY SAW this failure since 3 day either....

(But, UTC missing... like always...)


5) What were your thoughts on the event text?

1. Actually I don't like those many ====================== and ----------------------- things..

2. They really had an Internet in the IS? I ask because of the: @...


6) What were your thoughts on the event image?

This time, I am really happy to use an 16" Monitor, because on a larger screen, this Big-Blue-Boxing-Gloves-Thing could give me a really KO, and I had a Big-Blue-Eye, during the whole weekend..

No, this thing is really a way too big.. but, otherwise it is a nice, solid, informative one. Good work.



PS: Ye, I know, nobody asked it, but I say it again: It would be better put out first the Sales Newsletters, THAN changing the Mechstore and Profil-Challenge Sides...

I really don't understand ever, why couldn't you put those news out 24 hours BEFORE the start an Event/Sales... If you want sell something, HIDING IT make no senses for me anyway..

Edited by Sky Hawk, 10 August 2014 - 08:59 AM.

[POWR]

1) What were your thoughts on the weekend themes? (Faction based, different each week)
I think this is a nice flavourful way to handle events.

2) What were your thoughts on the items selected for sale? (Steiner Cockpit Items, Mechs, Paints)
It suits the flavour of the event, and as such is cool.

3) What were your thoughts on the personal challenge parameters? (Kill 20 enemies in a Lyran 'Mech)
Far too difficult. In the open queue this could potentially take me the entire weekend to get as I primarily play mediums. My stats tell me that I have .077 kills pr match.
I would consider myself an averagely skilled player. Previously you have held events where 5 wins, with no special conditions, would result in a free mech, including mechbay. As such, you should probably have put a lot more items at the end, like a mech or some cockpit items, premium time, even a little MC, maybe cbills, GXP? Many options, but the single mechbay is a little light compared to your previous events.

Or have multiple win conditions. Like 20 wins, 60 assists, 10 basecaps etc..

4) What were your thoughts on the sale text? (Link here.)
It's fairly well done, keeps to the flavour of things.

5) What were your thoughts on the event text? (Link here.)
Same as above. Flavourful, clear and succinct.

6) What were your thoughts on the event image? (Link here.)
Decent enough, puts all the relevant information on display.

Edited by POWR, 10 August 2014 - 01:56 AM.

[POWR]

double.

Edited by POWR, 10 August 2014 - 01:52 AM.

[Training Instructor]

1) Didn't care
2) Cool, doesn't matter too much. I've spent a lot of money on this game on my real account, and I know that most of the colors are completely overpriced.
3) The kill-count just encouraged people to load up with either massive short-range alphas and try to crowd in front of a mech to block shots from teammates, or the reverse, which was usually a minimum of 4 mechs boating LRMs on each team. Teamwork in the solo queue was almost non-existent, leading to pretty poor play experiences for anyone trying to enjoy some normal matches this weekend. Also, in general a lot of players were waiting for their teammates to engage first, and only moving in to support when the enemy mech was missing most of it's frontal armor. Trash matches abounded. I had a match in my Cataphract 3D where I got 4 kills, totally lost the match, and considered it a big win, because who cares about my teammates, right?
4) I'm in marketing, and I've rarely been impressed with any of your sales text. Unless you're selling a mech that works with whatever the current game meta is, most players in the know won't react to your sale. When you put trash chassis on sale, you're just doing a disservice to newer players, who will inevitably feel cheated when their game knowledge increases and they realize they wasted hard-earned cbills or mc on a chassis that simply isn't as good as others.
5) The event text was a wall of blue I skimmed to find the relevant information. In the future you could highlight These are the relevant mechs and they're also on sale
6) I don't care about house Steiner, so this image didn't move me either direction.

Edited by Training Instructor, 10 August 2014 - 04:11 AM.

[Alistair Winter]

1) I think it's great to have a new weekend challenge every week. Really fantastic, it does a lot to keep the game alive and breathing! And when it's connected to lore and factions, it's even better. Can't say enough about how good this is.

2) No use to me personally, but I like the general idea.

3) I don't like this, at all. I would much rather see a challenge that requires that players to something difficult in the course of a single match, rather than grind x amount of kills or victories throughout the weekend. Something like 5 kills in a match, or 2 headshot kills in one match, or 10 savior kills, or 5 bases capped, or match score of 100 and above.

Grinding achievements are a chore, and give no sense of satisfaction when you accomplish them. It's just a matter of time. Skill-based achievements really make you feel like you earned it. It's a challenge.

4) Good.

5) Good, but it was not evident on the frontpage what the challenge was, or what the reward was. On the front page, it just looks like another faction-based sale, like the Kurita "event". If I didn't spend so much time on the forums, I would perhaps never have known there was a challenge going on, unless someone mentioned it in-game.

A challenge like this needs more publicity, to make people excited.

6) Alright. I imagine you have limited resources to spend on weekly events, so the image is not a big deal. You could always photoshop some mechs with Steiner decals, but... the important bit is the challenge itself.

I started a thread yesterday to explain my views in greater detail, if you're interested
http://mwomercs.com/...almost-perfect/

Edited by Alistair Winter, 10 August 2014 - 04:23 AM.

[Mathies Jaeger]

1) I really like the faction-themed sales and events. It may not be a big thing, but any little push towards immersion helps. Eagerly awaiting Ghost Bear week, though I imagine I might be waiting awhile given the general unavailability of Clan mechs at the moment.

2) Looks good. Here's keeping fingers crossed for Hellblau when FRR or Ghost Bears rolls around. Or as someone above suggested, maybe a wider palatte range of colors for each faction-color.

3) So as others have said above, I would prefer different parameters than just kills. I found myself performing actions and taking risks I would never do otherwise just to get my kills. It got to the point where getting at least one kill in the match was more important than winning said match. Shame on me, but if I was doing it, I'm sure others were as well. This does not encourage teamwork. What if assists could be counted as well, perhaps for half as much? So you need to get 20 kills, 40 assists, or more likely some combination of the two (10 kills and 20 assists). Another possibility might be XP-related goals, since this would help encourage use of light and mediums who by default are going to be disadvantaged in a kill-based event.
As for the last questions, the event image looked nice. A better way of presenting the mechs one could use for the challenge would have been nice, especially if it can be marked in the UI. I had to keep referring to my laptop when figuring out what mech to play next to make sure it was a listed chassis which felt quite clumsy. Maybe a new Mechbay tab for "Event Mechs" with associated info on the event. While you're at it, you can also add in the ability to filter Champion mechs out of my mechlist (not event-related, I know, but it is highly annoying to have my list cluttered up with mechs I don't own, will never buy, and will never play).

Cheers!

[Reno Blade]

Sandpit, on 09 August 2014 - 06:25 PM, said:

Event was a step in the right direction. It was nice actually having a challenge to do and something to focus on other than repetition.

1) Great idea! Players have been asking for stuff like this for a long time. I would suggest boning up on lore though and only including mechs that are actually faction specific along with "generic" mechs. Steiner event and Atlases aren't on sale? Come on now

2)This was good as well! I would expand on the colors though. Include more shades of the colors. Blue doesn't always = blue depending on the look your'e going for

3)Here's where I was kinda "meh". Instead of kills it would have been MUCH nicer if it had been wins. The only thing 25 kills accomplishes is make the solo queue go nuts with people trying everything they can to get a kill and giving very little if any concern to actually winning the match. Need to stop focusing events around solo actions and get more team events going

4)Looked very good. More importantly it looked professional

5)The format of this one could use a little work. The layout was a bit "busy". Maybe add in a table for some boundaries?

6) see #4

all in all it was great to see PGI actually running stuff like this. Keep it up and start getting deeper with this kind of stuff and I think it's one of the best decision in a very long time.

I'd also suggest move away from mechs and mech bays as the only rewards. Get creative. Add tiers.
25 wins =
50 wins =
75 wins =
the higher you go, the greater the reward. It also doesn't take very long to get 25 kills. 25 wins ensures your players are playing more. That improves queue times, your numbers, and players enjoying the game more. I think it took me about 2 hours game time in the solo queue (I wanted to see how bad it would be in the PUG queue for this event) altogether to get my 25 kills. So if it had been switched to victories it would have taken even longer which means I'd have been playing more games.

Let me "steal" a bit here

I will only expand on 3.) and the general note on the bottom and agree on all other points.

Where some people are good and lucky enough to get al 20 kills in 2h, others try to get their kills over all 3 days and take a lot of games to get them. (my best game was 5 kills in a LLaser Awesome, still need 8 more kills today)

For the average solo player the 25 wins could be equally difficult to get.
Kills are not always depending on your own, but wins would give a better gameplay for teamwork.
The games this weekend (and on most of the other challenges) are usually very chaotic and poeple are playing like berserkers without much teamplay.
Good thing this is not a solo-only challenge.
BUT you will still have a very hard time trying to get kills (or wins) in a hunchback, commando, or Kintaro fighting teams full of Timberwolves and Atlas who don't need the Steiner-Challenge kills.

[Sandpit]

I hope they take this feedback seriously. Every single event has always centered around kills, yet every single time they ask for feedback like this the players ask for something OTHER than kills as the objective.
every
time

[IllCaesar]

Training Instructor, on 10 August 2014 - 04:07 AM, said:

4) I'm in marketing, and I've rarely been impressed with any of your sales text. Unless you're selling a mech that works with whatever the current game meta is, most players in the know won't react to your sale. When you put trash chassis on sale, you're just doing a disservice to newer players, who will inevitably feel cheated when their game knowledge increases and they realize they wasted hard-earned cbills or mc on a chassis that simply isn't as good as others.

<- Totally bought the 4X Raven, 3C Cicada, C4 Catapult, and 8T Awesome, and completely agrees with this point. Only one of those is actually competitive within its family, the C4 Catapult. The Raven and Cicada are beaten out by the variants with the ECM, and the 8R Awesome can do whatever the 8T can do, but better.

Edited by MarsAtlas, 10 August 2014 - 12:06 PM.