Since first few hours of the game for new players can determine if one's gonna stay for a while longer or drop it all toegether I think PGI should focus on easing that experience and do something that would encourage newcomers not just to come, but what is as equally important : to stay.
Getting in touch with bigger game pages/advertising it and doing a "welcome new players" buff with gifts like C-Bills % gain bonuses, xp % gain bonuses, flat C-Bill injection to fresh accounts, and 1 or more mechs as a giveaway to give new comers something to play with.
Keep in mind that that kind of action, and a spotlight from the internet/raised awareness should also be met with proper preparations on server side.
But all that SHOULD NOT COME BEFORE things I'm gonna mention below :
- Prices on mech packs need to be toned down by a huge margin. Especially older mech packs.
- There should be a way to tweak around with trial mechs that you don't own, with equipement that you don't own and have limited supplies of. And you loose that on next day when Daily Rotation kicks in. Which leads us to ...
- Trial mechs daily rotation which should be heavily connected to what I've mentioned above. So one day you can duke it out in Timberwolf and on a next day you cannot but instead can run around in for example eboj jaguar.
There should be at least one of each type available to try out, and one from Clan and one from IS. Up to 8 mechs to choose from. From lights to assaults. With time exclusion to mechs that were introduced recently.
- This could also be tied to Sales, e.g. today we have Atlas as a trial mech, so theres obvious X% price reduction in both C-Bills/MC as well as in Package deals that you can buy for real money. It might not be as often as Daily rotation for mechs but should occur more often. Simple statistics show that doing a sale even tho' you are getting less per a product sold, in the end you are getting more money because more people bought it. More people play it, more people pay for it, more money to the company. Win win situation.
- Academy Rewards should be expanded with bigger number of matches played netting more rewards like mechbays, random cockpit items and few pre-set paint colours.
This whole progress should lead to a final reward of one mech award from a pool of mechs of a player choosing. So at the end player can choose one mech to be given to him with stock loadout to give a firm foothold in the game and be able to play both with mechbay and the game itself.
- Tutorial should be expanded and include different chassis trainings. With each respective chassis type having at its end a reward of one mech of your (or gamedeveloper) choosing from a limited set pool of mechs.
This is due to the fact that each chassis type (light, medium, heavy and assault) plays differently. This would help newcomers to understand the basic principles of how particular mechs work and what their role on the battlefield is.
- Game should include helpful popups that show up on mouse over literally anything and everything in mechbay with short yet very informative description on what is being looked on. With an option to disable those.
- This also leads to : in-game wiki with essential information like a newbie's hand book that recaps all that has been said in each tutorial/academy training session, and with all the necessary information, pictures and videos that would explain what is what.
Does this require ton of work? Hell yeah it does.
Would that bring back MWO from its current state to a better, shinier, bigger one?
Well there are examples of that around and since this game can defend itself quite well with its solid customization on mech bay side and interesting battles being the other we can all agree this is something worth showing to bigger audience.
Edited by lazytopaz, 15 July 2016 - 08:01 AM.