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Many people do not understand MechWarrior, and being a niche game it might need a little background to help new players overcome the learning curve.
1) First up is during installation. You can furnish the patch/download page with a little bit of lore, about what are the 6 Successor States and how they relate to Terra/Earth, who is in charge of Davion or Steiner or Liao and why are there borders. Once this is done, describe how Battlemechs fit into the picture, why did they come into existence, and what do they do, and then dedicated pages to what is a light mech, medium mech, heavy and assault, then a single page about aerofighters, dropships and tanks just to intro what they are. Last few pages would be about the politics and a little bit of lore, how Alexandre took SLDF out of the Inner Sphere to prevent its weapons be used by new rulers to oppress rather than to defend and making these techs out of reach of ambitious IS houses, then briefly describe the formation of the Clans and their purpose to return to Terra - (I don't think there is a need to describe warden/crusader factions at this time, just a bit about how the Clans fight each other too to improve their knowledge and skills but their main goal is Terra). Then explain once in the game the player can choose to play as IS, Clan or mercs. I believe this will help many new (Steam) players understand what is a MechWarrior about and will encourage people to try it out.
2) Next up, once they've loaded the game for the first time.
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i) They will have to run a cadet training (not the existing cadet reward system, will get into that in [ii] later).
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a) The cadet training will have them on a 3D in game view on the floor of a MechBay looking up at a medium mech, say Hunchback. The player can rotate the view but can't move (to minimize work involved for PGI) and all they can do is press a button on the platform that says "Mount Mech" or something. The platform then lifts up the player from the ground and turns the player to face the cockpit, where he automatically enters the cockpit of the Hunchback, on rails. The Mechbay then opens up its huge doors and the player listens to voice & text instruction on how to move the Hunchback using the arrow keys.
Let the pilot only be able to move the mech forward at this point. He moves the Hunchback out of the door and the instructor will tell the pilot that he can turn his mech left and right and reverse using the arrow keys. The pilot is tasked to move his mech forward and exit the Mechbay.c) At this point, the mech will have to turn left at this point and move mech forward, as there is a big fence in front of the mech and there is no other direction the mech can go towards, he will have to turn the mech left and move to a specified point.
d) If this maneuvre is successfully completed then the instructor will tell the player how to move only the torso using the mouse.. left and right and up and bottom and commend the player if he successfully moves the torso to specified directions.
e) Now the hard part, realign the torso to where the legs are facing and move the mech right, where he will face a channel with tall walls on the left and right so he can only go straight. He will have to navigate through to the end of this channel until he reaches an opening on the right with a short fence to keep the mech from moving in that direction but he can still see in that direction. The pilot is now tasked to keep moving forward but shoot a UAV down on the right while moving forward at a certain speed (say, 40kmh).
f) Once that target is down, the instructor describes heat management and heat issues if a weapon is fired too frequently (let there be no heat sinks in this Hunchback to make it simple, or alternatively let it be a really hot planet).. to test the player's understanding of heat management, let him kill a dummy Catapult target in the channel path without shutting down.. if the Hunchback shuts down then another Catapult will be dropped in front of him.
g) Once this is done, the next lesson is Weapons Group where the instructor will instruct how to choose different weapons for different targets. Have a fence in front of the mech with a target locust at 90m and a target jenner at 600m. The Hunchback is only equipped with 2-4 med lasers and 1 LRM15. He will have to destroy both mechs, and the instructor will tell the pilot which weapon he should use to destroy the two mechs.
h) Once that is complete, the fence gate will open and the pilot is asked to destroy a dummy Awesome in an open field (like the Training Grounds but only 1 mech). He will have to travel to find the Awesome (about 1000m away behind a hill) and might be able to detect the Awesome from between hills. A timer might be good here so that if there are any problems with the training (pilot got lost, torso not aligned to legs and mech is going in circles, etc) PGI could know and make appropriate adjustments.
i) Once the Awesome has been destroyed, the instructor will ask the pilot to return to the Mechbay and the Cadet Training completes and the player will have access to Mechlab UI-lite, without the Faction and Pilot Skills tab.
p/s The reason for choosing Hunchback is because it is a fair medium mech that is slow enough in movement for new players but also comes with decent hardpoints to mount lasers and lrms. Players would then later appreciate the speed offered by lighter mechs and be impressed with the arsenal mounted in heavier class mechs. Hunchback is also a founder's mech and exists before many of the current mechs.
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ii] Existing Cadet Program
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a) Make a separate match queue for cadets. Most of them will run only Trial Mechs anyhow. Let cadets queue up with only other cadets.
Preferably cadet level 1 only play against other cadet level 1's. c) I'd even venture to propose let them play with a Trial Hunchback for their first 2 cadet levels and unlock others (implies the cadet matchmaker removes the class chassis restrictions of 3/3/3/3).
d) Let the matchmaker only run for 1 min, first match them with their own cadet level, then after 5 seconds expand to +/- 1 of their cadet level, then +/- 2 of their cadet level and so on. Let the matchmaker populate both sides of the queue (team blue and red) and if after 1 min only 14 players are found then let them play 7v7 instead of forcing 12v12, and if so let them play on a smaller map like Mining Collective or Frozen City until they are Cadet Level 10 or so.
e) Once they have completed their cadet training, I recommend PGI asks the player to choose a faction at this time as Clan, IS, or merc, and they will have full access to MWO MechLab UI.
f) Have some cbill/MC reward once they have configured their first 'mech in the Mechlab to run different weapons or different engine and probably even make this their final task in their Cadet Program - (eg, a mission to instruct the cadet to remove the 2-3 medium lasers and replace it with 1 large laser, therefore dropping the engine or other weapons or armour, with heat efficiency of 1.3 or above).
g) Optional : Let Cadets only play InnerSphere trial mechs or mechs they own for the entire Cadet program. Once they have this completed, they would appreciate the different cockpit and weaponry of the Clan mechs.
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iii] User Interface
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a) There are so many things I want to say about the current User Interface.
But lets have a big wide open chat window so that the cadet player can type questions other players can answer, a big open lobby but have it easy for a veteran player to reply to (like click on his name in the Chatbox will open his Cadet profile and/or send a specific message to that new player.c) Have a notification sound or the chat box popup when he receives a private message or personal reply.. (note that many people, including people who have been in my IS unit for 2 months, still unaware I have sent them a private message for entire the 3 hours they have been online).
d) Let the social window all be on one side of the screen including the BACK button, the friends online, the chatbox.. either left side, or right side, or drop down from the top of the screen filling up half the screen with a different background overlay colour. The current one with friends list on the right side, chat window on the bottom left, and then back button in the top left, is really-really confusing! Hunting for the close/back button all over the screen is not fun!
e) In-match chat: Let the Enter button be the button a player can press to open up a Chat window instead of the letter T. I know T,Y,U has been used throughout all Mechwarrior games but many newer games use the Enter button, let the user be able to configure the Chat button from Enter to T in the Keyboard Shortcut Config, or better let both Enter and T be the button to open the chat window and the player can turn off Enter button if they wish so from the Keyboard Shortcuts screen.
My apologies this is not well presented and sorted. I wrote this based on helping my wife to learn the game (she could not even find out how to launch the match, didn't know how to select a mech, etc without my having to sit behind her and describe things for her - this tells me a lot more players out there could be having the same problem but with no instructor behind them), and numerous real life friends who has downloaded the game but did not know how to pilot a mech and gave up with the learning curve. Those that told me the problems they were having a few of them did eventually learn after it has been carefully described and have enjoyed the game and and some have spent money on MC. I imagine if PGI wants to be successful with this game (as a founder it is also in my interest for PGI to be successful) then I think this is the approach PGI needs to spend some time investing into to encourage and retain new players in this game especially if PGI wants to encourage the flood of players from Steam to try the game and keep playing this game.
Advantages of this proposal:
1) Makes MWO accessible to people who are new to this genre
2) De-niche MWO to the world of gamers
3) Helps with the learning curve
4) Gets assistance to people who need assistance (new player/global chat window)
5) Helps retain new players, encourage spending to help fund PGI (topic for another day)
Disadvantages of this proposal:
1) Veteran players starting a new account will have to go through the whole Cadet training thing which they won't like
2) Less self-discovery (not sure if that is a real disadvantage)
3) Time and money resources required of PGI to make a new map (small map with the channel/tunnel described in part [2 (i)].
4) Time and money resources required of PGI to simulate the 3D environment inside view of the Mechlab for the first time player to climb into a mech for the first time. (I think this is nice to have for first impressions of immersiveness, that 'mechs are giants..)
If PGi wants, let it be a standalone downloadable module that uses some existing resources in our MWO directory for this new player experience and players can provide feedbacks if they so wish.
I'm sorry about the wall of text. Thank you for your kind consideration.
