98 replies to this topic

[Lazor Sharp]

One thing PGI Should do to help new players, is to give them every incentive possible, to Join a Unit First Thing!!!, and play with 3+ vets that can teach them the ropes first thing, and carry them a bit till they get better, and get better equipment.. vs just turning them out into solo Que, or the 2-3 newbie friends Hell of the group Que with basic mechs with no moduels. Never / Ever let them have the solo / rambo / can Only play with my 1-2 pals EVER Mind set...... Give them the Team Play Mind set first thing out. We will have less damn stray cats dieing in 30sec / limit the groups threads on the forums, if nothing else....

I have had several new players tell me that playing with my casual unit, was way way easier to grind for new stuff than trying to play solo- because of what we showed them, and we carryed them a bit...... and now some of these guys are on regular, and are getting really good.....

Edited by Lazor Sharp, 27 October 2015 - 08:37 AM.

[Malagant]

El Bandito, on 27 October 2015 - 02:43 AM, said:

Best way to resolve this is to revamp the damn skill tree so we would not need to buy THREE effing mechs to elite the one we want. Suddenly, our C-Bill income would be 3x more effective--until Paul decides to meddle with it, again.

Also, newbies should start at the bottom of T5.

^^This. They should stay there at least until they have 3 mechs of the same type too, no matter how awesome they are.

[BARBAR0SSA]

Lazor Sharp, on 27 October 2015 - 08:35 AM, said:

One thing PGI Should do to help new players, is to give them every incentive possible, to Join a Unit First Thing!!!, and play with 3+ vets that can teach them the ropes first thing, and carry them a bit till they get better, and get better equipment.. vs just turning them out into solo Que, or the 2-3 newbie friends Hell of the group Que with basic mechs with no moduels. Never / Ever let them have the solo / rambo / can Only play with my 1-2 pals EVER Mind set...... Give them the Team Play Mind set first thing out. We will have less damn stray cats dieing in 30sec / limit the groups threads on the forums, if nothing else....

I have had several new players tell me that playing with my casual unit, was way way easier to grind for new stuff than trying to play solo- because of what we showed them, and we carryed them a bit...... and now some of these guys are on regular, and are getting really good.....

Heck even a buddy system that rewarded both players would be good, then have a Rating system at end so you don't get trolls destroying new players.

If they had a persistent world training grounds, that would be awesome, die and respawn, no worries and learn how things work

[Yosharian]

Buying Seismic when you only have 1 mech... nah I don't think so

[Apnu]

Dunno if anybody pointed this out yet but the ACH-C is 7,617,336 c-bills. A FS9-S is 3,231,842 c-bills.

For the price of one ACH, a player could get two Firestarters, making the mastery curve much easier.

Picking an expensive clan mech as the first mech is not a good move.

[DAYLEET]

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

So, I managed to buy ONLY ONE MECH and seismic module, playing 41 matches.
And this because I'm not a newbie and thanks to 5 million from tutorial.

If I want 2 ach more, to elited and master them, it would take 130-140 matches.
BUT THIS only because I'm not a newbie.

MOREOVER, suddlently in tier 3 in few matches, a newbie will be in teams with and against tier 1-2, so I think it would take around 200 matches for a real new player.

So, do you really really think that there will be players wanting this, hundreds and handreds of matches to have stuff?
Do you really really think new players will open thier wallets meanwhile being wrecked and not having fun at all?

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.
Dropping with trail and always the same mech for hundreds of matches is the most boring playing experience EVER.
Period.



Think about let players use every chassis, and try to find out a different way to get real money from playerbase.

Thanks for reading.

I agree if only because there is so many mech in the game now that we could easily double cbill rewards. Whether you like it or not, this game has become a "collect them all" game. For maximum enjoyment you need as much mech as possible because they all add something different. Doing so with only cash would make it extremely prohibitive and no amount of premium/hero can help you either. Battlemechs are only one part of the game you need to buy, modules and XL engine cost as much as a mech and together they often cost more.

[Yosharian]

Apnu, on 27 October 2015 - 08:47 AM, said:

Dunno if anybody pointed this out yet but the ACH-C is 7,617,336 c-bills. A FS9-S is 3,231,842 c-bills.

For the price of one ACH, a player could get two Firestarters, making the mastery curve much easier.

Picking an expensive clan mech as the first mech is not a good move.

Assume that the noob will buy either engines for both or the wrong engine and need to rebuy the correct one once he figures out the build; then the FS9 comes out just as expensive.

[FlipOver]

I don't agree.

People want more mechs and don't want to "waste" time to collect the c-bills:
Buy mastery packs.

Done.

If you are a freeloader and want to get more with no spending of time and cash, then MW:O isn't the game for you.
And I bet you at least 10% of the Steam people are not on that group (and 10% may be as many as 1k people or even more).

What about the other 90%? You may ask....
Well, those can go for other games and leave MW:O to be F2P.

[Apnu]

Yosharian, on 27 October 2015 - 08:52 AM, said:

Assume that the noob will buy either engines for both or the wrong engine and need to rebuy the correct one once he figures out the build; then the FS9 comes out just as expensive.

True that. XLs are expensive.

Also noobs should play in a noob pool for a while. A fresh account is T4 right? so it's probably gonna drop with T5 and T3 players, maybe even a few T2s. The T3s and T2s will smoke any noob, and they'll be running mastered, maxed, meta mechs.

[Uncl Munkeh]

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

Thanks for reading.

thanks for posting, this is extremely valid.

[C E Dwyer]

So basically O.P your saying that Steam players are selfish Meme's that also have zero patience ?

I did it the hard way or bought packs and hero's without the help of the cadet bonus. I own every mech in the game, all are fully mastered, but 20 the others would be to, but P.G.I, but P.S.R and screwing over the group queue for the meme's already in game caused me to lose interest.

Edited by Cathy, 27 October 2015 - 09:04 AM.

[3xnihilo]

What if xp was linked to you, the pilot, not specific mechs. Expand the skill tree by a lot with certain skills only being able to be unlocked by using certain classes/styles of mechs. It would give you something to work towards without the "rinse/repeat" pattern of buying a new chassis working through the same skills (some of which do nothing or almost nothing). It would still incentives buying more mechs and still provide a "grind" that real cash could shorten, but you would feel like you were progressing not starting over every time you started wih a new chassis. And cbill earnings where they are now would not be terrible if you didn't need 3 variants of every mech.

[Lightfoot]

You are not supposed to play for free. You can but piloting that tin can for 100 matches is supposed to make you spend $10-$20 so more MWO gets made. I think MWO is an easy game to level in for a free MMO. I go for months spending no money having fun with a couple of mechs, then I buy something new that looks good.

What will kill MWO is the bending of the Battle Tech game into a short range brawler with robots. Brawling is great, I love it, but doing almost nothing, but that, is 10X more boring than having just one mech. Make all the weapons work as described and let the whiners whine. It means they are being challenged and will be back.

[STEF_]

Yosharian, on 27 October 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

Buying Seismic when you only have 1 mech... nah I don't think so

Apnu, on 27 October 2015 - 08:47 AM, said:

Dunno if anybody pointed this out yet but the ACH-C is 7,617,336 c-bills. A FS9-S is 3,231,842 c-bills.

For the price of one ACH, a player could get two Firestarters, making the mastery curve much easier.

Picking an expensive clan mech as the first mech is not a good move.

OMG.

You don't like to read that much right?

WHO the hell cares about what I wanted to buy. That is pointless.
The fact is that after 41 matches I earned 10 milions. <------- THE POINT OF THE THREAD.
Because I'm not a noob, so a real noob will take around 60 matches for 10 milions. Which is sh1t.
Gotcha now? easier?

Edited by Stefka Kerensky, 27 October 2015 - 09:28 AM.

[Hotthedd]

So all of the players that started the game with REALLY bad trial mechs, Repair and re-arm costs, no cadet bonuses, no training academy bonuses (or tutorial of any kind), all ragequit the game after 100 matches or so? Why am I still here?

PGI doesn't need to chase the FoTM kiddies that won't ever spend a dime anyway. They just need to hook some of them.

[Karamarka]

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.

100 purchases at $10 is better than 5 at $100

More people will buy stuff if it's acceptable imo and they are happy (prices are gouged already on MC) and grind is pretty bad non-premium/hero

[jss78]

Jack Dawes, on 27 October 2015 - 06:16 AM, said:

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.

Yeah, I cannot really argue against your experience. I've only been able to attract one real-life friend into MWO, but then he's an old-timer who's played all the previous MW titles.

The issue of NPE has come up in the last one or two townhall sessions, and I get the feeling that PGI (or Russ specifically) is kinda throwing up their arms with the issue, saying that it's an inherently complicated game, and only so much can be done. While that's true, and I'm happy that they'll rather keep MWO a complicated game than dilute it into a generic FPS, I still feel like more could be done for NPE.

Stuff like single-player battles against even rudimentary AI would immensely ease the NPE, without cheapening the core gameplay. But I'll acknowledge that even a simple AI is a big programming task. And stuff like the complete lack of official guides (such as mech building basics, basic in-game tactics), after years of development, kinda puzzles me. I know it's a small developer, but even a single person working part-time could've achieved so much over that time.

I just get the feeling that it hasn't been that high on the agenda, and it's strange because that's really shooting yourself in the foot.

Edited by jss78, 27 October 2015 - 09:35 AM.

[Lazor Sharp]

Having PvE , with 4 man coop, would help the NPE so much it's not funny... lets newbies learn the game and lore and get invested, before playing PvP and getting stomped...... would be a good place to train that new friend, so that they will be ready for PvP....

also gives a venue for the utlra casual's to play with their back yard friends, and not have the 12 boogeyman problem........

i am hopeful for this, because Russ said in the last town hall that he wanted to hire a AI programmer to take over the matanice of the AI we have now, and the AI ppl keep working on what ever it was they are on... PvE missions/campaign/maps packs to sell......????

Edited by Lazor Sharp, 27 October 2015 - 10:01 AM.

[KodiakGW]

Not understanding why you only have one mech in your stable if you are not a newbie. Did you spend your cadet bonuses on mechs and sold them off? Brand new Steam players will have about 30 million from tutorial and cadet bonuses to buy mechs. Also, they consider modules "end game", so those will come later.

I'm all for bumping the CBill income based on performance. Take for instance a loss from yesterday. Over 400 damage, but unable to secure any kills because mechs I cored ran behind fresh ones and made me retreat. End game screen showing the majority of the team with sub 100 Match Score/sub 150 damage. Reason why I was always running into fresh mechs.

My reward? 76k CBills and the hollow satisfaction that my PSR did not drop. Yay! I get to buy a medium laser! Oh, wait...4k short. Rats!!!

Give top four Match Score or damage a bonus. Top damage and top match score an additional bonus.

I'm also all for stopping the practice of having to buy three of the same chassis to fully level one.

[Raggedyman]

Stefka Kerensky, on 27 October 2015 - 06:57 AM, said:

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.

Again: "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?"

Edited by Raggedyman, 27 October 2015 - 01:30 PM.