38 replies to this topic

[Lily from animove]

Alistair Winter, on 19 January 2015 - 01:40 PM, said:

Fandragon already covered most of it, I think.

• 100 matches in cadet queue.
  
• First 25 matches are 4 vs 4
  
• Next 75 matches are 8 vs 8
  
• In-game tutorials
  
• In-game lore about each faction and the year 3050
  
• George Ledoux voice-acting as training instructor for all the different factions. German accent for ze Zteiners, Chinese accent for House Riao and hilariøus æccent for Høuse Rasalhaguæ. Or maybe just a Clan one and an Inner Sphere one.

this is quite problematic, because when you mke 4v4 in a few first matches who are the other 7? also newbies? given there are those numbers of newbies available. because one standard player amongst 7 newbie sis ehavily imbalancing the matchup. a newbie is better in a 12vs12 where he can carefully stay behind starting as a supportwarrior.

However, if the game goes steam, such a 4v4 for newbies could be temporaily implemented since steam will stream in a lot new players at the beginning.

Edited by Lily from animove, 19 January 2015 - 02:28 PM.

[Felbombling]

Some great ideas already stated to help new recruits, and I'm all for anything that segregates the new players and keeps them away from little Johnny and his pimped out Timber Wolf. Throwing new players to the wolves is really bad game design, in my opinion. It is like begging your potential customers to leave.

I'd also like to see a few Mech Credits thrown their way... perhaps enough to buy their first colour or spare Mech Bay. From a marketing standpoint that is pure gold, because you've shown the players the value of Mech Credits and given them a free gift. But, more importantly, they've personalized something with their account, which promotes ownership and the desire for advancement. In the end, the New User experience needs to be about customer retention.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Lily from animove, on 19 January 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:

this is quite problematic, because when you mke 4v4 in a few first matches who are the other 7? also newbies? given there are those numbers of newbies available. because one standard player amongst 7 newbie sis ehavily imbalancing the matchup. a newbie is better in a 12vs12 where he can carefully stay behind starting as a supportwarrior.

However, if the game goes steam, such a 4v4 for newbies could be temporaily implemented since steam will stream in a lot new players at the beginning.

Lol, no, not 4v4+7 more, 4v4...as in 4 newbs vs 4 newbs...

[Latorque]

627, on 19 January 2015 - 01:48 PM, said:

you can't teach everything in a tutorial but this game is not rocket science and these things aren't that difficult. Everything else comes with playing the game. Maybe some ingame tips, voiced, can help here,too.

They seem pretty selfexplanatory once you're in the game; but i have honestly no idea how me and a few friends kept on through our cadet boni - back in the days when the trials weren't champions and ran SHS. After a while i started to remember some things and found smurfy's - which i think should be awarded a Nobel Prize; apart from the ingame-inability to buy a mech as long as you haven't visited the site .

But in comparison to most games nowadays? I'll sound like my own grandpa here; but this game is pretty darn complicated. Not in the match per se; but financing and building your own mech from scratch? Pheeew... the quirk system alone can be easily and completely overlooked unless you know it exists and where to look; and it should have some serious influence on your mech choice.

Edited by Latorque, 19 January 2015 - 02:54 PM.

[Rebas Kradd]

In one of the latter tutorials, after you've killed a drone mech without weapons, have an actual live enemy Hunchback suddenly break into the training area and go for the starport. And you have to kill him. Fun surprise.

[MoonUnitBeta]

Definately an "interactive" tutorial, much like the MW4 tutorial.

Edited by MoonUnitBeta, 19 January 2015 - 02:58 PM.

[Lily from animove]

LordKnightFandragon, on 19 January 2015 - 02:49 PM, said:

Lol, no, not 4v4+7 more, 4v4...as in 4 newbs vs 4 newbs...

but then this would require having enough newbies online at the same time all the time, which may be difficult to achieve.

Edited by Lily from animove, 19 January 2015 - 02:59 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

0. UI3.0 - A massively improved UI that is much easier to use.

1. New players elo needs to be lower. A separate queue is unlikely to ever have enough players.

2. Very thorough tutorials on the UI, but in stages so players don't get overwhelmed early. Leave mech customization until after they've purchased a mech.

3. Very thorough in game tutorials. Start with the basic of moving and shooting, but offer advanced tutorials on things like torso twisting, heat management, target priority and class roles.

4. Improved training grounds with your choice of basic bots (set any mech you own as a bot, including trials). Training grounds should also provide the user with feedback on accuracy, heat management, damage output etc.

5. In game SARNA links to all weapons and mechs. In game WIKI for lore. Lexicon reference for people new to Battletech.

6. Fix all of the bugs and optimize the game. Nothing turns people off a new game like constant crashes, weird bugs, and running at 20FPS on a decent PC.

Edited by Troutmonkey, 19 January 2015 - 03:29 PM.

[BourbonFaucet]

MeiSooHaityu, on 19 January 2015 - 08:47 AM, said:

That reminds me of the instructor voice in MechWarrior 2 lol. Basically him calling you a Sibko reject and mocking you. Fun times.

Nothing more fun than killing Sgt. Hardass with the 2 Small Laser Firemoth.

[Johnny Z]

Rebas Kradd, on 19 January 2015 - 02:56 PM, said:

In one of the latter tutorials, after you've killed a drone mech without weapons, have an actual live enemy Hunchback suddenly break into the training area and go for the starport. And you have to kill him. Fun surprise.

This is great. I cant wait addition of a tutorial mission and NPC's. This game has no NPC's!!

[MattPaul]

Training bot Deathmatch would be great.

[Johnny Z]

I have heard two vague ideas around and thats either that the tutorial should be in a Solaris setting or a Star map Frontier setting. In all honesty I am not sure which is better.

Should a new player be looking forward to Solaris more or the Star map more etc. Having something not readily accessible for a new player to look forward to and train for and gear up for sounds enticing.

The flat arena floors of some of the possible Solaris maps with few obstacles sounds like an ideal place for a new pilot to get his footing as it were. They would have to have a map without the crowd noises etc for something like a tutorial though.

On the flip side, a frontier setting also could be a great starter mission.

Edited by Johnny Z, 20 January 2015 - 05:26 PM.

[Eider]

To be honest they need some pve if anything just for practice. Make it seem like a legit mission and ease them into tactics. Introduce overheating and what may happen etc. Otherwise the new user experiance is usually... *Runs ahead of team in 'awesome' mech thinking they will survive an awesome fight. Gets 1 shot by alpha, rages, quits*

[Flaming oblivion]

Why averaging ELO is bad and putting noobs in with pros.

Say both teams have for easiness sake 4 noobs 4 average and 4 elites.


If those noobs engage the better players before the other team intercepts your bads their going to get crippled at best dead at worst.

This creates problems as the first team to lose their bads Is almost certainly losing .

Why you cant afford to have such huge skill gaps in games

Because if the bads intercept the pros early the bads are dead and the steam roll commences.

[Impossible Wasabi]

1) Provide a proper and useful tutorial
2) Provide newbies with better Trial Mechs (honestly, what moron thought it was good to make the Jenner F with 3 small lasers and 3 medium pulses, as well as Single Heat Sinks an option?)
3) Scrap ELO and just randomize matchmaker focusing on weight, it would probably work better than what we have now for new players, bads playing with other bads doesn't teach any of them anything or help them to imrpove
4) Much, much, much, much more information about mechs and how to build viable ones in an easy to read format (at present a day 1 newb can get some cash and then be presented with pretty much 0 info on what mech is currently useful, popular or worth their C-Bills, in turn they often buy bad mechs and build bad variants, then get mad because logically they struggle using sub-par builds)

Edited by The True Space Pope, 20 January 2015 - 05:37 PM.

[Flaming oblivion]

Scrap ELO ? LMFAO no................................................

Improve ELO -yes

I for one don't want to see teams of 12 noobs going against 12 hardcores and the other nonsense matches this would produce

Matchmakers bad already lets not make it worse okay?

[MechWarrior3671771]

As a new player (still on first month) I advise 2 things to make newbie pugs more user friendly:

1) incentivize tutorials by giving set number of cbills and rewards for completion. It would be a one-time award that would encourage new players to learn the basics before they drop in public

2) Comms. I'm really surprised MWO doesn't have this. DDO has it, and its very user friendly - as soon as you join a group you are added to party comms in-game. No need to get TS3 and all the user has to do is figure out their push-to-talk button. I think it would cut down on the chaos and make the newbies experience (and those poor souls that are grouped with us) much more fun.

[Impossible Wasabi]

Flaming oblivion, on 20 January 2015 - 05:51 PM, said:

Scrap ELO ? LMFAO no................................................

Improve ELO -yes

I for one don't want to see teams of 12 noobs going against 12 hardcores and the other nonsense matches this would produce

Matchmakers bad already lets not make it worse okay?

Eh, at this point the Space Pope would rather take his chances with pure chance than deal with MM's occasional fits of failure, at least then you can accept it is as simply being bad luck.

Just make groups with say 8-12 players play against other similar groups. Go look at the number of terrible units who fail at pub stomping with said number of players to see the dangers of not challenging groups (however as the Space Pope has said before, there are a number of good, high ELO groups that are good enough to stay high up in the brackets, but there are still far too many groups trying to kill the pubbers with numbers alone).

Maybe the Space Pope is an exception, but he finds it boring to play against small groups with anything more than 3 other players on comms because it's just not difficult at all.

Edited by The True Space Pope, 20 January 2015 - 06:04 PM.

[Mycrus]

Johnny Z, on 19 January 2015 - 07:27 AM, said:

One of the guys making this game said they would be adding to the new player experience.

What should the new player experience include? What should it be like? No one else made a topic about it, so I will give it a try.

Please add any ideas or preferences because maybe there are some ideas or opinions/preferences that could positively influence their design and implementation of the "new player experience". Maybe something they havnt thought of possibly.

A single player campaign... that is why every AAA shooter includes it even if it is a short one.