55 replies to this topic

[Excalabur50]

I'm still relatively new to the game and if not for one of my clanmates knowing the game intimately I wouldn't have had a chance in hell and I"ve just had a new player join but he left quickly as he said why wait 5mins in a queue just to die in 1 min then wait 5mins or so for the game to end just to rinse and repeat so that too can have an impact on retaining numbers but how to fully solve these issues is not an easy thing but as has been suggested maybe some of our more talented players could make some more indepth videos?
EG. Like X-Factors BF4 vid's called how to be a better noob but call it how to be a better Mech Warrior Noob and have the links stickied where any new player can find it and older players can post links to players asking questions in other parts of the forum here watch this vid it can help

[Johnny Reb]

Problem is, the devs are so slow in getting things in the game to make worth while tutorials, also they make the game but really arn't very good at it. Best way to learn the game is get on teamspeak and join a group or a drop with us non competitive corps. Most are happy to help out, come to our ts, creddit-mercs.teamspeak3.com, we are happy to let you join our group till CW and will try to help you and anwser your questions. Best days are Sunday,Tuesday, Thursday, but we are getting the band back again so any day is prolly good if in the evening est 7-12 pm.

edit: so most nights we start at 2-4 but get to 10-12.

Edited by Johnny Reb, 10 October 2014 - 11:18 PM.

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Made tryhards take a good look at themselves and how they were bleeding new players from the game back in 2013..... they laughed and went straight back to the meta along with PGI's old douche attitude supporting it.


Oh how times have changed.... LOL. What a difference money can make. It's almost like PGI were in the business of politics and not video games for fun and entertainment.

Edited by lockwoodx, 10 October 2014 - 11:21 PM.

[Johnny Reb]

lockwoodx, on 10 October 2014 - 11:19 PM, said:

Made tryhards take a good look at themselves and how they were bleeding new players from the game back in 2013..... they laughed and went straight back to the meta.


Oh how times have changed.... LOL

Expendables have never been a tryhard team. Well we did have two teams a comp and the reg expendables. Comp team disbaned months ago and are with the try hard teams, us others are the same.

Since I was never in the comp team hard to call us all tryhards or what our team is about. That said we still want to win and try hard to achieve that goal. However, we are by no means a meta comp team. I am a primary lrm boat, in a tryhard team I would be laughed out.

We still have good pilots and are looking forward to CW as IS, still don't know whoch faction!

Edited by Johnny Reb, 10 October 2014 - 11:27 PM.

[Excalabur50]

Bump

[Mudhutwarrior]

The number one thing in my mind to do first is add in game Voip. When a new player announces in chat I try to go out of my way to help them but more often than not I am trying to fight and cannot respond fast enough in chat.

That's the biggest frustration I have with the game right now. Past that if you want to put an end to synch Dropping in solo this would go a long way to doing that.

Don't tell me we have third party clients because the noob has no idea starting out and has quite enough on his plate to be worried in setting up such crap.

Bring them in and show them fellowship. That will bring retention up far more than any stupid tutorials.

[Elizander]

Dock Steward, on 10 October 2014 - 09:04 PM, said:

I've never seen that thread, do you think it's easy for new players to find it? I mean, yeah, it's right there in the new player forums, and clearly people are using it, but can it be advertised better or something?

Plus, on further investigation, it looks like that thread devolves into the same mess that most threads do. Complaining about things rather than asking questions and getting answers.

I recommended in a different thread that links to the new player forums be added in-game so newbies can post there. Big shiny button "NEED HELP? ASK THE COMMUNITY! CLICKY CLICKY"

[Lupin]

A Lot of new players do not even go on the forum.
So more links and covering the basics on main program needed.

A good example was how many players did not know how to change game mode, that little drop down menu does not CUT it.

[kailii]

New suggestion, helping not only new players:

1) Text based chat lobby within the game client (several channels), new players start in the "Freshman" channel automatically.
2) Multiplayer Training Grounds without scoring or restrictions. Respawning should be possible.
3) Vets can flag themselves as "Tutors" or "Teachers", and have access to the lobby even when in Multiplayer Training.

Some rules would have to be added, so for example meanies cannot mass murder innocent cadets.

Of course this goes someway against PGI's milking policy (private matches), but let's ignore this argument for now...

[Sadist Cain]

I think it's starting to become glaringly obvious that there needs to be a sense of community in-game.

Tutorials, commo rose, client based chat, voip and so on, there's quite a few folk including myself who have been starting topics (See Sig) about this.

What I think people don't realise is a LOT of steamrolls are simply down to a disorganised team. You simply cannot tell the difference between a lance going off together to get behind the enemy and get smashy and a cluster of random bads bouncing into the sunset together.
It's foolish to even discuss issues with weapon balancing, the matchmaker and so on when you have such wild variations in the quality of the playerbase.
As it stands, there are no leaders, no lances, no team... Just a cluster of solo players with some in teal and the rest being smurfs shooting the same direction (if you're lucky)
If you wanna work together, sign into this teamspeak or that teamspeak oh no we use vent, register on this website, their website etc. etc.
Third party groups are a good thing but they vaporize quickly. Thinking that anyone who wants to play as a team has to join someone elses unit is just plain daft.
You lose player turnover and lock down the new player experience further.
Is it any wonder why there were so many complaints about the voting system? Or the fact there's so many complaints about being left alone, no teamwork, 12 mans roll me yadda yadda yadda.

Any group that's under 12, including solos, need the facilities to work together when theyre playing.

Mudhutwarrior, on 12 October 2014 - 03:43 AM, said:

The number one thing in my mind to do first is add in game Voip. When a new player announces in chat I try to go out of my way to help them but more often than not I am trying to fight and cannot respond fast enough in chat.
...
Don't tell me we have third party clients because the noob has no idea starting out and has quite enough on his plate to be worried in setting up such crap.

Bring them in and show them fellowship. That will bring retention up far more than any stupid tutorials.

Bang on except I would say command wheel over voip, a lot more flexible that way.

Edited by Sadist Cain, 12 October 2014 - 07:56 AM.

[Dock Steward]

Mudhutwarrior, on 12 October 2014 - 03:43 AM, said:

The number one thing in my mind to do first is add in game Voip. When a new player announces in chat I try to go out of my way to help them but more often than not I am trying to fight and cannot respond fast enough in chat.

That's the biggest frustration I have with the game right now. Past that if you want to put an end to synch Dropping in solo this would go a long way to doing that.

Don't tell me we have third party clients because the noob has no idea starting out and has quite enough on his plate to be worried in setting up such crap.

Bring them in and show them fellowship. That will bring retention up far more than any stupid tutorials.

While I fully support ingame VOIP, it has the potential to hurt just as much as help. By that I mean, for every player who has a good experience and gains knowledge through that form of communication, there will be another player who gets completey turned off by the nonsense that will inevitably happen over VOIP. While I don't mean this as an argument against VOIP, I do think it points out why VOIP alone isn't the answer.

There is no substitute for tutorials.

[Vinhasa]

Give all new players 30 days of premium time. It helps them earn money and XP better, and would allow their veteran buddies to takes them to private matches. Don't underestimate the value of getting slowly walked through how the mechanics of the game work.

I spent my first fee weeks getting curb stomped. Fortunately I'm not all that worried about KDR w/l and all that, so I didn't get discouraged. However, I can tell you that being able to goof around with my RL bros in private matches early on would have been HUGELY helpful.

[Dock Steward]

Vinhasa, on 12 October 2014 - 08:31 AM, said:

Give all new players 30 days of premium time. It helps them earn money and XP better, and would allow their veteran buddies to takes them to private matches. Don't underestimate the value of getting slowly walked through how the mechanics of the game work.

I spent my first fee weeks getting curb stomped. Fortunately I'm not all that worried about KDR w/l and all that, so I didn't get discouraged. However, I can tell you that being able to goof around with my RL bros in private matches early on would have been HUGELY helpful.

Certainly something for the devs to consider, but I was aiming more to brainstorm things the player community could do to help new players. Unfortunately the players cannot control things like that...beyond making requests for them.

[Budor]

I still cannot fathom why there is no general and/or help chat in the mechlab. Theres tons of helpfull players but no easy way to communicate with them. This would help immensly with player retention and community building.

In my opinion its the biggest oversight in MWOs developement from the get go.

[Hoax415]

Well first off, Niko needs to do his job.

He needs to find and highlight the best video tutorials and helpful threads that exist and get them in front of the eyes of new players through the game launcher or any other means he has available.

Frankly he should have advocated long ago for monthly modest MC rewards to the most helpful video content creator and people who are looking out for new fish on the forums. Harness the community and reward the people who are evangelizing and making up for a major deficiency in the new player experience.

You know instead of monitoring 3rd party sites looking for ban targets.

***

That said on the stuff people here are suggesting, VOIP is not an answer for brand new players. If anything it will not be fun to have in-game VOIP as a brand new guy. Your build is gonna be criticized, your play will be criticized, etc.

The real in-game problem new players are facing, that isn't information related is that new players can't play with a mentor without being put into the shark tank of group queue which just is not fun at all. They need a special exemption for new players from being put into group queue.

I have repeatedly voted for something like this:
a player who is still playing with cadet bonus can group with either:
-another player who is on cadet bonus
or
-any player as long as that player uses a trial mech

And that group of 2 players will still be in the "solo" queue. That would let people introduce their friends to the game and play with them while still letting them play in the much closer and varied elo, much lower skill floor solo queue games.

Edited by Hoax415, 12 October 2014 - 10:05 AM.

[Sadist Cain]

Budor, on 12 October 2014 - 09:19 AM, said:

I still cannot fathom why there is no general and/or help chat in the mechlab. Theres tons of helpfull players but no easy way to communicate with them. This would help immensly with player retention and community building.

In my opinion its the biggest oversight in MWOs developement from the get go.

Amen brother!

It always happens with game developers, This is wrong, or that is wrong... adjust these values and change that decimal place.
It's in no fault of their own, throughout university this is how computer programming and coding are tought, even today game design is taught with the same short sightedness and only now are they very painfully slowly starting to realise you have to take your head away from the monitor to solve such issues.

The problem isn't one that you can solve by adjusting values and code. It's a psychological and sociological issue which needs out of the box thinking and skills not normally found in a development company.

Gotta have a sense of community before you can have community warfare.

Hoax415, on 12 October 2014 - 09:53 AM, said:

I have repeatedly voted for something like this:
a player who is still playing with cadet bonus can group with either:
-another player who is on cadet bonus
or
-any player as long as that player uses a trial mech

And that group of 2 players will still be in the "solo" queue. That would let people introduce their friends to the game and play with them while still letting them play in the much closer and varied elo, much lower skill floor solo queue games.

Right line of thinking there

Edited by Sadist Cain, 12 October 2014 - 10:06 AM.

[Vinhasa]

Weekly video tutorial contest - have the top reward be a mech bay AND the mech of your choice. Second place a nominal amount of MC, and third place be a mech bay (or cockpit item).

Then, pimp the videos on the startup screen. An official tutorial channel could categorize them all, etc. If course, this would require work...

[Alistair Winter]

I just have to echo what people have suggested already. The real solutions, the stuff that would really make an impact, requires some effort from PGI in terms of actually adding stuff to the UI and the game itself. Getting everyone to be more active on the forum is well and good, but... well, I've played a bunch of different online games and I rarely bother with the forums. If I don't like the game, I'll uninstall.

Stuff that would actually help:

• In-game lobby / public chat through the UI.
  
• PGI-made or sponsored tutorials. This needs to be good stuff, not just a bunch of videos someone at PGI HQ bookmarked on how to play the LRM Stalker.
  
• Some sort of in-game MWOpedia, as seen in many other games. Giving a more detailed and updated explanation on all the stuff you encounter in game. XL engines, STD engines, ECM, BAP, PPCs, TAG, a separate article for every mech, with a list of quirks and hardpoints. And for the love of God, put some lore in there as well.

I don't think we're getting multiplayer training grounds, because it means that the servers have to host a match for 2 people instead of 24. And PGI won't profit from it. And people could "abuse" it by doing 1 vs 1 duels in training grounds for fun.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 12 October 2014 - 12:43 PM.

[Dock Steward]

I think some sort of reward or what not for the most helpful/best player submitted videos is a FANTASTIC idea. The other ideas that people have suggested are also good, but that one idea is sooooo good.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Tutorial's need a SERIOUS revamp.

Mechwarrior 2 had a damned good tutorial system. As did Mechwarrior 4.

A voiced, step by step tutorial system that walked you through each objective, and really taught you all the basics of gameplay.

Now, there are a lot of people saying that customizing your mech needs a tutorial... and I find this somewhat an odd notion, especially in this day and age where customizeable gear in other games is so prevalent. There's no "Gear customization" tutorial in the Battlefield 3 or 4 games... or in CoD. It's a straightforward process.

now, I DO think that the mechlab needs MUCH better tooltips and a much better interface for new players. But I do not feel that customization needs a tutorial, especially when MWO's customization is pretty much just drag and drop. [with some minor exceptions.]

But we need a 100% breakdown of:
Armor/structure locations.
Aiming
Firing
Heat
Ammo
Internal ammo feed locations
Ammo Explosions
critical system
movement
targeting
consumeables
modules
optimum range
outside range.
minimum range
damage spreading.
Ghost Heat
Weapon Groups
Support Equipment [ECM, TAG, NARC, BAP]

And there's probably even more. MWO's tutorial is seriously lacking compared to MW4's system, or even MW2's. And I mean, MWO's not even nearly as advanced in some features as MW2. There's no inspecting of things, there's no worry's about targeting the right building, or firing at the right floor of something. But there is a LOT going on with MWO that new players just are not brought up to speed on fast enough.

Pilot Skills could probably use an update/tutorial too.