98 replies to this topic

[PurpleNinja]

Oncoshi, on 27 October 2015 - 03:42 AM, said:

This!
If you dont like the game because you cant compete with others why should you pay money or waste time?

Tell this to that horde playing smartphone games.

[Paigan]

Stefka Kerensky, on 27 October 2015 - 03:39 AM, said:

Ironically enough, what you wrote in brakets, is the real issue of MWO, but also is another topic.
[...]

I know what you mean:
Skills are maxed out in a matter of days.
If you're not the collector-drive driven guy, there's hardly anything worth spend money on after buying a few nice mechs.

Still and especially no reason to make what little progress-making MWO offers (non-stock-mechs) easier as well.

Actually it should be made a lot harder:
Certain mech sizes, weapons, variants, quirks only with a certain rank and skill level, or such.

[KuroNyra]

a new player, once the 25 match done should be able to buy at least 2 or three mech. That way he can diversify himself in multiple gameplay and continu playing. And of course having mech for CW.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Ill show you too! Your vague rules that you crafted that way so you can apply it to anything then add your report tool and your vague rules for that too. Your supposed hordes of gamers from Steam are just going to constipate your ticket queue lol

[TheArisen]

KuroNyra, on 27 October 2015 - 04:26 AM, said:

a new player, once the 25 match done should be able to buy at least 2 or three mech. That way he can diversify himself in multiple gameplay and continu playing. And of course having mech for CW.

This would be good. Or perhaps let a newbie straight up choose a freebie & have the money to buy one. That way they have at least 2 mechs that are there's.

Maybe there could be a list of mechs a newbie could get for free. They'd need to all be newbie friendly. Some mechs just aren't for newbies.

[NeoCodex]

There is no sense of progression. Grinding 50 matches to buy 1 mech is not fun. Skill tree is not fun. Grinding 150 matches for mastery is not fun either.


Players want small rewards for their playtime, in sense of actual progression towards something. It's the skinner box all over again - actually lack of it in MWO. I think it's meaningless, but in World of Tanks you at least get to upgrade stats of your tanks by little % on the way grinding it. It gives you at least something after every few games. Getting nothing is just not fun. There is absolutely no reason to login again next day to play. There's no login rewards, no progression rewards and achievements that would keep a new player hooked. F2P games need this.

[Raggedyman]

tzetzefly, on 27 October 2015 - 02:27 AM, said:

I hope that along with the mythical rebalance patch, you are really thinking something about what to do with the economy.
If not, Steam will be a complete failure.

Explain again how putting a game, that's been good enough to run for two years, on a platform with over 11 million active users can do the game harm?

Okay, so the current version of the game may not be able to take the most advantage of the situation, but how would it crush the game or do anything that detrimental?

The sky is not falling, no matter how much you want it to be.

[CDLord HHGD]

There's always the trial mechs.....

[PurpleNinja]

cdlord, on 27 October 2015 - 04:45 AM, said:

There's always the trial mechs.....

Yep, Heroes Of The Storm has a very similar model.
Lots of heroes, few maps, and players complaining about everything.

[sycocys]

El Bandito, on 27 October 2015 - 03:04 AM, said:

An IS Light mech without DHS and big engine is not a mech--its trash. And when you upgrade those IS Light mechs, they become no less expensive than Clan Lights.

An IS light for a low tier new player, neither are really needed to get started. People only tend to think of things in the context of how it works as and against other veteran players and nothing else.

[NextGame]

Regarding the new player experience:

Your first login should take you right to the tutorial. It should feed you through to the faction selection screen, and then pick a mech chassis relevant to that faction, after determining a good weight class to give you 3 variants of, for free.

If allowing the player to pick a chassis, there should be some fluff about the mech chassis history and what it's typical role is. Those mechs should have the locked flag that prevents them from being sold, so that you cannot tactically just go for 3 free (whatever mech is most expensive) so you can sell them right away.

There should then be a tutorial on customising your mech, and explaining the xp unlocks.

Users who skip all that, wouldnt get the free mechs, but the option would remain open to them to go back and complete the tutorial in order to get the reward.

I think that would be a far better way to introduce new players to the game than what we have at present. It's not as though MWO is hurting for digital inventory in terms of mechs.

Edited by NextGame, 27 October 2015 - 05:50 AM.

[Jack Dawes]

jss78, on 27 October 2015 - 03:52 AM, said:

The NPE has always been brutal. Yet all of us are here, despite that, so clearly there's hope. Also, arguably the NPE is now better than it's ever been (between the immensely helpful Training Academy and PSR keeping new pilots clear of the comp crowd).

While I agree with you, I am still here (sort of), I have 4 friends I attempted to get to play with me. Grouping with newbies is absolutely brutal. Loss after loss after loss - and one of them quit after a day's play in total frustration. I got smarter and the other 3 dropped solo. None of them made it a month. One was so enthused that he actually built himself a cockpit in anticipation - and he lasted about a week before quitting (bitterly, I might add).

The play is complex, which is OK. But everything from first drops (the tutorial is nice but insufficient preparation for a game as it merely shows you how to move and group weapons with no tactics or strategy involved) to C-Bill / XP rewards to skill trees to modules to...pretty much everything is too steep for most people to stick with it for any length of time. And, for the record, the people I introduced are geeks with an accumulated 4 decades+ of gaming. And all of them, to a person, quit in frustration.

That is not the way to grow your franchise.

[Nesutizale]

As someone who just recently restarted I was more then happy to have something from the last time I played.
Still just after 5 matches I did the math and nearly quite as I saw the numbers.

I imagne it wouldn't be much different for many people and if it wasn't for my "playing MWO for the good old times" mentality I would have quited.
There are a lot of other FTP titles out there that have figured out a system that gives you a good start and makes it harder to get the good stuff over time.
Ensureing that a new player gets "addicted" from haveing one good experiance after the other and when he hits the spot where he is good enough the difficulty ramps up. Thats the point where people start spending real money as the want to keep up the "speed" of rewards comming in.

MWO dosn't have any obviouse goals new players can use as a guide to glory.
Normaly you have levels you advance the unlook stuff or a talent tree or a pice of special equipment that I only get when I play long enough.
Whatever the way, its allways a straight line that opens up later on. MWO is more like "here is everything, find a goal for yourself and don't bother me".

Lets have new player have somekind of rewarding experiance they can understand easly.
Give them some of the Lore and join an army of the great houses. Let them advance in rank and unlock mechs and new equipment. With advances in rank they also get more and more costumizing options and when they have reached the highest rank they go into free play with all options, all equipment and so on. Also they could either pick on of the mechs they had "trained" with to keep or select a new one for free.

That way you get much more controle over the new players experiance of the game. You know what mechs they will have and what enemys they will face. That helps in the balance progress and players get to play a lot of different mechs to find their favourite weight class, weapons loadout and so on.

At this point people should be keen enough to spend money as the allready had successfull experiance and who wants to quite a successfull game?

[STEF_]

Raggedyman, on 27 October 2015 - 04:45 AM, said:

Explain again how putting a game, that's been good enough to run for two years, on a platform with over 11 million active users can do the game harm?

Okay, so the current version of the game may not be able to take the most advantage of the situation, but how would it crush the game or do anything that detrimental?

The sky is not falling, no matter how much you want it to be.

You do know that we are always the same bunch of players, BT or mw2-3-4 fans, and no more than that, right?

(You should also know that the playerbase is so tiny that MM doesn't work, and ...I don't know you but I'm meeting always the same faces in drops).

So, who was interested in BT/MW universe are already here.

That said, those Steam users should be interest to start as newbies, start the hellish grind, to receive 10 milions (+5 from tutorial), while seeing a lot of mechs that they will never have unless giving real money,.... meanwhile they are not having fun for the above written reasons?

So, even though the sky is not falling, we will remain the tiny playerbase of a niche game.

I think the thread is suggesting PGi how not to waste a big opportunity: steam users wallets

Because if things remain as they are, yes, pgi will throw it away.

[VATER]

...as if PGI ever listened to the die-hard playerbase they have...Hwen I look at my purchases I have dropped a couple of 100$ into their pockets already. The only reason I stick with MWO is because it is Mechwarrior and has big stompy robots, that are serious business and there is no other MW game out there.

If I would come inot the game as a complete newbie, I would discard it after 1-2 days. Period.

As many stated before me, the NPE is horrible. Many decisions from PGI just do not make any sense at all. (Ghost Heat, Gauss Rifle, Tier System and many more.)

The inability of PGI to come up with a working and enjoyable/challenging endgame does alienate new players. Not to mention the stupidity of throwing new players into a Tier 4 shark tank. (Oh, did I mention, that the current Tier System is completely borked???)

We as total Mechheads will remain as long as possible, but a new player will not be that forgiving. Throwing in new mechs everytime the crowd starts to grab the pitchforks and torches will not cut it for newbies.

I remember, when PGI decided to declare the game as released and out of BETA...everyone warned them, everyone told them to not do it, they did anyways and the critics were devastating.

[GRiPSViGiL]

I don't see PGI being able to capitalize on a steam launch one bit. They have proven over and over, time and time again how to over promise and under deliver. Just going by their track record over the last 3 years or more cannot be ignored. I went from white knight to staunch hater in that time.

[AlphaToaster]

PGI can learn from War Thunder. MWO's learning curve is about as steep as WT's.

The models are similiar so it is a good comparison.

PGI needs to make a TRIAL MECH ONLY QUEUE. Period.

Players who drop in trial mechs get put into their own queue and play against each other.

In WT, the starter planes are called Reserve planes, and the ranking of the match you join depends on the average level of the planes you bring. Bringing all Reserve planes you end up facing all the same ranking starter planes. If you start to add Rank 1 or Rank 2 planes that you own, you start getting into matches with players who own Rank 1 and 2 planes.

Put trial mechs in their own queue for solo. Make a Tuk style CW training world so all trial mechs end up fighting over the same node, outside of actual CW.

What happens with most steam players is they'll spend about $30 to give it a chance. There will probably be some kind of Steam Starter Pack PGI offers and the players will stick around until their premium time runs out at least.

[BARBAR0SSA]

PurpleNinja, on 27 October 2015 - 02:34 AM, said:

I may be wrong, but the point of free to play model is to make people buy stuff.

Yeah except I can buy any MW game prior to this and get all the mechs for $50

this current model you can buy premium time and it still takes hundreds if not thousands of hours to get enough cbills to buy all/majority of mechs.

Heck League of Legends for $35 I can buy about 1/4 of thier champions and then unlock a good majority of them after playing 4-10 matches.

Oh and the mechbay for Cbills only thing is brutal as well. If it was a 1 Mech model with multiple customization options then ok it would be somewhat acceptable.

Edited by shad0w4life, 27 October 2015 - 07:39 AM.

[STEF_]

I want to add something else.....

We, I and 3 friends, are waiting currently 30 minutes and still NO DROP.

SO, yes, maybe the sky is already fallen...... going to play something else.

Yes, PGI, wait for the steam realese further. Maybe in 2 years it will be ready.

edit: match!!!!! FINALLY, AFTER 34 MINUTES!

Edited by Stefka Kerensky, 27 October 2015 - 07:43 AM.

[El Bandito]

PurpleNinja, on 27 October 2015 - 04:56 AM, said:

Yep, Heroes Of The Storm has a very similar model.
Lots of heroes, few maps, and players complaining about everything.

Except in HotS the free heroes come with every spells unlocked--unlike the gimped trial mechs PGI want the newbies to pilot, with no chance of advancing the skill tree.

NeoCodex, on 27 October 2015 - 04:37 AM, said:

There is no sense of progression. Grinding 50 matches to buy 1 mech is not fun. Skill tree is not fun. Grinding 150 matches for mastery is not fun either.

I agree. Except for the fact that unless one runs Premium Time and buys the cheapest mech without upgrades, 50 matches are nowhere near enough for a mech that is half decent.

Edited by El Bandito, 27 October 2015 - 08:11 AM.