39 replies to this topic

[FreibierFred]

Hello,


first of all: English is not my native langauge, please forgive my mistakes.


Ok, lets start.

Today I rejoined MWO after I played like 100 games 2 years ago. Back then I had huge RL **** to solve so I had to leave from one to the other day and did not come back till today.

When I installed the game and first opened it I was like "what the hell!!???"

My first impressions were:
- Very small letters, why? I got a 27" screen....and I did not find any option to make the interface bigger
- The tutorial is very short. Its really only about movement but thats by far not enough. What about the use of the R-key to switch targets? What about some more moves?
The tutorial itself is very boring, only written text and what you gotta do is stupid. Could have made that way more interesting in my eyes.


Then I played a bit and clicked some buttons. No tutorial how to equip your mech, damn!. If I would not have known from some youtube-videos that mechs are limited to some weapons with those hardpoints I might have wasted a lot of money by trying to mount some laser on a ballistic hardpoint.

I play the whole day now (like 12h) and I tried to sell my old Gauss Rifles: I did not find any button to do that. Maybe I am blind, maybe this button doesnt even exist. I tried rightclick, drew the Gauss over the "save" button even....no luck. Some tutorial (or at least a wiki!) could help a lot with such basic things

Then I wanted to try to Trial Mechs. I dislike Rockets so I did not want to play a rocket one. But to find out iof the mech has rockets or not I had to click it and press "loadout". Later I found out, that when I click the mech from the list I can see how many hardpoints it has for each kind of weapon. But that took me a while....again: letters way too small!

Like I said I played like 12h today. But when I enter a battle it takes ages to find a match. No difference between early hours and now at prime time in EU. Then before every match you have to wait another 70 seconds before the battlefield is loading. And then you "wake up" in some container, taking another 5-10 seconds to lift. Oh and then the worse: sometimes the container opens and I face the open water with my mech....I have to turn 180° first.
I really wonder if devs wanna troll me or if they are serious. And after a battle it takes up to 30 seconds to load my hangar

I know MWO is more a slow game and I started it because of that. But that doesnt mean you have to implement some silly delay nobody needs.


There is way more to write down. Maybe I can summarize it: The menu needs a better structure in my eyes, the loading times are too long.
The Mechlab leaves about 1/3 of the screen unused while the letters are so small.
The tutorial is just a joke, it tells you nothing about fighting.

All in all I must say this game is not very noob-friendly. If the devs want MWO to be played by more people I think this needs to be fixed asap.


And now you can flame me or say that I wrote donw 100% bullsh*t, I dont care. My impressions of the game are as stated.
I played WoT, WarThunder and tons more free to play things and MWO is the most noob-unfriendly.


(and yes, I watched lots of YT-videos about MWO if anybody wants to mention this)

[Mechteric]

You're absolutely right, more and better tutorials in-game are sorely needed. Hopefully they realize this and are working to get them out there before they go to Steam.


Tips for you:

• Try lowering the resolution on your 27" screen, I run mine at 1920x1080 instead of 2560x1440 for just this reason, the UI is too small to read without squinting at the higher res
  
• To sell equipment its in a weird place. On the Home tab, click on Inventory, that is where you sell stuff like equipment and mechs.
  
• I also hate having to wait between every match to search for a new match. I would absolutely love some kind of lobby where once matched with players you can choose to stick around and play with them again and not have to wait again

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 19 August 2015 - 10:38 AM.

[kapusta11]

Yep, UI is pretty bad.

[Tyler Valentine]

Don't think anyone will flame you on this one. You're 100% correct.

[Stelar 7]

Hey,

Not going to flame you. Tried teaching a friend abdominal this vane badly needs a fire disipline tutorial.

However that "container" is a dropship. You get to fly in get dumped out and then orient after the drop. It is cool as heck and makes for really good immersion which is nice since we have only a few game modes and little immersion out of combat. Next time look up and you can see the ship that dropped you fly off.

[Lyoto Machida]

Sounds about right. Though, I don't think new players (or Founders) are PGI's target demographic.

[Squirg]

Stelar 7, on 19 August 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

Next time look up and you can see the ship that dropped you fly off.

And then it gets stuck in the sky. top kek

[FreibierFred]

CapperDeluxe, on 19 August 2015 - 10:33 AM, said:

You're absolutely right, more and better tutorials in-game are sorely needed. Hopefully they realize this and are working to get them out there before they go to Steam.


Tips for you:

• Try lowering the resolution on your 27" screen, I run mine at 1920x1080 instead of 2560x1440 for just this reason, the UI is too small to read without squinting at the higher res
  
• To sell equipment its in a weird place. On the Home tab, click on Inventory, that is where you sell stuff like equipment and mechs.
  
• I also hate having to wait between every match to search for a new match. I would absolutely love some kind of lobby where once matched with players you can choose to stick around and play with them again and not have to wait again

Thank you for telling me, I finally could sell my Gauss and buy some AC10

Stelar 7, on 19 August 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

Hey,

Not going to flame you. Tried teaching a friend abdominal this vane badly needs a fire disipline tutorial.

However that "container" is a dropship. You get to fly in get dumped out and then orient after the drop. It is cool as heck and makes for really good immersion which is nice since we have only a few game modes and little immersion out of combat. Next time look up and you can see the ship that dropped you fly off.

I know why it is ingame and I also love it when there is something going on in the game. Buy seriously: why do I get dropped facing the open water? Sense?


Oh btw guys: I got something after a match. Some blue popup came and said I got now like 10 items with account injection. No idea what that is.....more and more example coming up why I think this game needs some more explanations

[Dimento Graven]

kapusta11, on 19 August 2015 - 10:35 AM, said:

Yep, UI is pretty bad.

BUT! It's finally starting to get better...

[Lugh]

Lyoto Machida, on 19 August 2015 - 11:02 AM, said:

Sounds about right. Though, I don't think new players (or Founders) are PGI's target demographic.

That kinda leaves most of the world NOT in their target Demographic. The founders are/were some of their biggest wallet warrior contributors. They SHOULD be the people PGI listens to, with the most understanding.

New players, are the ONLY way PGI can make EVEN MORE MONEY on a storied franchise, that clearly has some real loyalty built in..

[jss78]

FreibierFred, on 19 August 2015 - 11:05 AM, said:

Oh btw guys: I got something after a match. Some blue popup came and said I got now like 10 items with account injection. No idea what that is.....more and more example coming up why I think this game needs some more explanations

There's an ongoing tournament going on. Doing a specific number of each game mode matches on each server gives you prizes. For details:

http://mwomercs.com/tournaments

(You were right about ~everything you wrote. The new player experience is in dire need of work.)

[FreibierFred]

jss78, on 19 August 2015 - 11:13 AM, said:

There's an ongoing tournament going on. Doing a specific number of each game mode matches on each server gives you prizes. For details:

http://mwomercs.com/tournaments

(You were right about ~everything you wrote. The new player experience is in dire need of work.)

wow, thanks!
Thats good to know

[Viges]

I understand that UI has issues but really this game is not hard, you know. Like for realz. I'm afraid soon gamers will need flarking 'coaching' feature in tetris. It just becomes more and more ridiculous with every year.

Also if you are a new player - take time to learn the game. If you want to be NOOB forever - please continue to whine about learning and that you need to read something and that game has issues. And be proud of that.

Edited by Viges, 19 August 2015 - 12:02 PM.

[Ryoken]

FreibierFred, on 19 August 2015 - 10:28 AM, said:

Oh and then the worse: sometimes the container opens and I face the open water with my mech....I have to turn 180° first.
I really wonder if devs wanna troll me or if they are serious.

If turning your mech 180° is the worst - well you might need to work on your piloting skills...

And if you take a look at how the 4 mech bay doors are located at the Leopard Dropship, you will see that 2 doors are facing to each side and usually mechs will be mounted into the drop hangers to face the door with their front in case of a enemy presence at the drop zone. So figure yourself why you have to go trough that unbearable pain of turning your mech sometimes...

[Jack Shayu Walker]

Ryoken, on 19 August 2015 - 12:10 PM, said:

If turning your mech 180° is the worst - well you might need to work on your piloting skills...

And if you take a look at how the 4 mech bay doors are located at the Leopard Dropship, you will see that 2 doors are facing to each side and usually mechs will be mounted into the drop hangers to face the door with their front in case of a enemy presence at the drop zone. So figure yourself why you have to go trough that unbearable pain of turning your mech sometimes...

Kindaof an abrasive way to say it, but I agree that it does make sense. Dropships came from CW where this is something that can happen.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Not gonna flame you because I pretty much agree with you 100%.

I personally train all my friends in private matches before throwing them into piranha infested (I R funny?) waters just for this reason.

[Monkey Lover]

Pgi knows they need new player tutorial. It is my understanding they're going to be making a single person tutorial game for this reason.

[Trev Firestorm]

2 small points of interest:

1) They claim they are working on a new set of tutorials

2) You are facing the water because you are back to back with another mech and the container you are in is a dropship so it makes sense both immersively (all mechs outward facing ready to fire in case of hot-drop) and game-wise since there's always been a problem of people accidentally shooting teammates in the back on spawn or walk into the backs of the mechs in front of them.

Edited by Trev Firestorm, 19 August 2015 - 01:03 PM.

[Darkblood]

I´m a MWO veteran (playing since closed beta) and I second your complaints.

Tried already to introduce some friends to this game and what I have to do is basically tutor them for some days just to get the basics through. That means I need to spend hours on TeamSpeak trying to tell them where each little feature is hidden, explaining unexpected mechanics (Ghost Heat, anyone?), and pointing them to third party websites (this website hasn´t even kept up with the Mech releases, THIS is pitiful)

End result: of about 10 friends I tried to tutor-though (mind you, all hardcore gamers, we play everything from Dota, to Civilization, from Call of Duty and to World of Tanks), only 3 went past the Cadet Bonus, and only one actually mastered his first chasis (he is still playing). The other nine stuck with a very poor opinion of this game and now dedicate a fair amount of time calling us crazy for even trying.

At the very least PGI should seek to facilitate the lives of people doing the noob-training for them. I dunno, maybe make private lobbies possible (with full parameters unlocked) if everyone (but one guy, the trainer) is still in their cadet bonus period. That way you don´t need TWO PAYING customers doing your job for you. I could just open a lobby with 3 to 5 noobs and, without wasting my premium time, give them a supervised chance to fight people as bad as them at the game.

Edited by Darkblood, 19 August 2015 - 01:45 PM.

[KharnZor]

CapperDeluxe, on 19 August 2015 - 10:33 AM, said:

I would absolutely love some kind of lobby where once matched with players you can choose to stick around and play with them again and not have to wait again

I've been wanting this since closed beta