68 replies to this topic

[Rogue Jedi]

GotShotALot, on 22 January 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

This brings up the issue of being told multiple times that I really ought to have Radar Deprivation on my mechs. (A LOT of my overall damage taken was from LRMs on certain maps.)

A single Radar Deprivation module costs 6 million C-bills, and 15,000 GXP. That is almost as much as a fully-outfitted IS Medium Mech, and takes virtually all of my GXP, in one shot. For ONE module. Frankly that's insane.

Modules are intended to give that extra few percent performance boost for players with a generous stable of Mechs, I would never recommend a player invest in modules before eliting a few chassis because they are too expensive for minimal gain.

Sure breaking a missile lock 3 seconds faster can be helpful if you cannot make hard cover, as can seeing if there are enemy Mechs moving on the other side of a wall, but is hardly essential.
At your stage I would recommend getting more Mechs unless you think you are ready for competitive play, in which case go for the modules.

[Morggo]

GotShotALot, on 22 January 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

This brings up the issue of being told multiple times that I really ought to have Radar Deprivation on my mechs. (A LOT of my overall damage taken was from LRMs on certain maps.)

A single Radar Deprivation module costs 6 million C-bills, and 15,000 GXP. That is almost as much as a fully-outfitted IS Medium Mech, and takes virtually all of my GXP, in one shot. For ONE module. Frankly that's insane.

Once you build up some cbills, you'll want to at least consider radar dep.
Once I started running it, I got addicted... it is soooooooo helpful being able to break that lock instantly when Betty warns of incoming. I totally get the price thing, it IS overpriced in my opinion however once you try a radar dep module.. you'll never go back.

[Rhavin]

Eventually they will run a module sale, 30% off, that's the best time to buy and when they do happen I drain my bank buying Derp modules. They don't come often enough though. Derp isn't as important if you have speed and work cover well. Though it still helps and is worth the investment if you are playing competition or faction warfare.

[GotShotALot]

I definitely plan to get more mechs before modules, the question is just how many. A sale sounds good, although when I searched for them I only found mention of 1 module sale, ever (Lock and Load). Which is basically just choosing to have all MWO's new players at an even greater disadvantage against longterm players for months of C-Bill grinding.

Maybe they think that encourages people to spend money. (Personally I think MWO might be better off convincing them it's a fun and reasonable game to play first, but that's just me.)

Anyways, on to our final topic (for this thread): STATISTICS! Turns out to be a boring topic, because I already decided that weapon/mech stats from the Cadet battles were irrelevant. As it happens, the only thing I tracked that was interesting is TIME stats.

An average battle cycle looked like this:

................MatchMaking..Map Vote..Loading Map..Team Ready..Cockpit..Battle Time..Connecting
Seconds..........20.................20.................41..................39...............10...........486...............10

Which works out to 140 seconds (2:20) average wait time for a battle of 486 seconds (8:06), or roughly 20% of all active gaming time spend waiting for battle to occur.

This is time of the entire battle, not just time til I died (I spectated all battles til the end). This also includes times from my first 10 Crab battles, after which I stopped noting times. If a player exits battle after dying, the proportionate time waiting goes up.

I can't locate it now but I seem to recall seeing a stats post that showed the average mech lasting under 4 minutes in a battle. If that is the case, then roughly 1/3 of a players game time would be spent in a waiting-for-battle screen of some sort.

2 minutes 20 seconds of wait time (average) per battle certainly encourages me to have a book handy, or tab out and read a webcomic or a forum or something. Or check my email. Which may explain some of those AFKs we see in battle.

Well, that's all the info for my cadet run, folks, hope you found it useful! If there is anything I should add but didn't, feel free to suggest. Thanks for reading, see you on the field of battle!

(PS: I feel now I named this thread poorly, as most new players will have no clue from the title what it is about. I may start a more descriptively named thread just to summarize the results and maybe add some new thoughts.)

Edited by GotShotALot, 23 January 2016 - 10:20 AM.

[IraqiWalker]

GotShotALot, on 23 January 2016 - 10:17 AM, said:

I definitely plan to get more mechs before modules, the question is just how many. A sale sounds good, although when I searched for them I only found mention of 1 module sale, ever (Lock and Load). Which is basically just choosing to have all MWO's new players at an even greater disadvantage against longterm players for months of C-Bill grinding.

Maybe they think that encourages people to spend money. (Personally I think MWO might be better off convincing them it's a fun and reasonable game to play first, but that's just me.)

Anyways, on to our final topic (for this thread): STATISTICS! Turns out to be a boring topic, because I already decided that weapon/mech stats from the Cadet battles were irrelevant. As it happens, the only thing I tracked that was interesting is TIME stats.

An average battle cycle looked like this:

................MatchMaking..Map Vote..Loading Map..Team Ready..Cockpit..Battle Time..Connecting
Seconds..........20.................20.................41..................39...............10...........486...............10

Which works out to 140 seconds (2:20) average wait time for a battle of 486 seconds (8:06), or roughly 20% of all active gaming time spend waiting for battle to occur.

This is time of the entire battle, not just time til I died (I spectated all battles til the end). This also includes times from my first 10 Crab battles, after which I stopped noting times. If a player exits battle after dying, the proportionate time waiting goes up.

I can't locate it now but I seem to recall seeing a stats post that showed the average mech lasting under 4 minutes in a battle. If that is the case, then roughly 1/3 of a players game time would be spent in a waiting-for-battle screen of some sort.

2 minutes 20 seconds of wait time (average) per battle certainly encourages me to have a book handy, or tab out and read a webcomic or a forum or something. Or check my email. Which may explain some of those AFKs we see in battle.

Well, that's all the info for my cadet run, folks, hope you found it useful! If there is anything I should add but didn't, feel free to suggest. Thanks for reading, see you on the field of battle!

(PS: I feel now I named this thread poorly, as most new players will have no clue from the title what it is about. I may start a more descriptively named thread just to summarize the results and maybe add some new thoughts.)

You can't spend real money on modules, other than MC consumables, you only buy them with C-Bills.

However, modules are very late game material. Other than cap accelerator. which my BXO nudged me into getting (and the lack of a mech more exciting than my COM-2D), I didn't bother with getting a second module until somewhere around my 23rd mech. Now I have about a dozen or so modules, including 2 Radar Deps (I misplaced one of them, and am looking for it, XP)

[Morggo]

Thanks much for the most descriptive intro-to-game I've read since starting!
Are you planning any more progression reports or even getting into the YouTube channel arena at some point?
You've got a good knack for narration.

Oh, also, you can edit the thread name if you poke round the original post, I fixed a typo in one of mine once.

As for modules, I have a relatively small stable - not as into pokemech as others, maybe someday (basically two chassis with three variants each in each weight class was enough for me to focus on). At that point I started by outfitting a drop deck with modules (which I finally have).... 4 Radar derp, 4 Seismic, 1 Cap Accel, and the weapon modules I use to either improve each mech's main weapon system OR in several cases used modules to level out two different systems to have very similar or same cooldown and/or ranges. BUT, mileage may vary.


Cheers and see you on the field!

Edited by Morggo, 27 January 2016 - 06:19 AM.

[GotShotALot]

Thank you Morggo, turns out I just needed to click the 'Use Full Editor' button to be able to change thread title (new title up).

I would also reply to Iraqiwalker and agree that most modules can wait for end-game. However, I think Radar Deprivation in particular should be considered an 'as soon as possible' module.

Reasons:
-Newer players rarely have the piloting skills, speed tweaks, high-engined mechs, and map knowledge that allows them to 'dodge and cover' against LRMs.
-Newer players are less likely to have 360 degree awareness of where they may be getting spotted from and be able to break LOS.
-Newer/lower tier players (Tiers 5/4/3) are, by all reports, the most likely to use LRMs abundantly. (Even stock and trial builds have plenty of them.) I can state from personal experience that, while not swarming with LRMs, early play has maybe 1 out of every 3-4 matches with more LRMs than you can shake a 'mech at.
-Newer players are unlikely to be able to 'rely on their team' to stop spotter lights, use AMS, provide ECM cover, etc.
-For a newer player, there are very few things less entertaining than having a light get behind you and light you up while salvo after salvo of LRMs rain down on you, slowing you, screen shaking, blind with explosions, rattled by noise. Somehow the entertainment value just isn't there.

For those reasons, I think having the Radar Deprivation module be both 15,000 GXP and 6 million Cbills is a very poor choice. 10,000 GXP and 2 or 3 mill would be far more reasonable.

I made this thread for two purposes: to sort of give new players some extra 'vicarious experience' to help them choose mechs and battle tactics with a little more confidence, and secondly to give some sort of stats/record of what exactly a 'new player experience' feels like to the new player.

I feel good about achieving the first part, less good about the second. Mostly because a combination of events, year end rewards, and the month I spent playing MW4 before starting MWO probably combined to give a better-than-average set of battle results and rewards.

So, actual new players, just take all those battle reviews, add more mud, more blood, and less beer. Now you've got it! (Bonus points to anyone who gets the musical reference)

I have my first 3 mechs pretty much elited (the Crabs), also got my first 3 heavies in, and am trying to earn mech bays to buy an assault, so I may start a new thread reviewing that process.

Thanks again for reading, see ya on the battlefield!

Edited by GotShotALot, 30 January 2016 - 07:15 AM.

[Dan Nashe]

Just remember that with modules, a key is that you often only buy one - it's much like engines when you have a large stable--you don't have to buy 15 300 XLs.

So you buy 1 radar deprivation module and you just swap it into whichever mech you are playing.

I have like 9 mechs that share 295 and 300 XL engines.
and like 50 mechs that share my modules - I never buy more than one.

Granted, I am very lazy and like variety . . . so I sometimes don't bother to swap. It is a bit tedious. But think about it this way --- the 6 million you spend on that radar deprivation module is an upgrade to every mech you own now and every mech you will ever buy - as long as you take the effort to swap it around.

Obviously you have to use your own judgment - for example, I would never do this with weapons, far too tedious. But I think I did a little bit when I started. I distinctly recall stripping mechs I wasn't using so I didn't have to buy a ton of gauss rifles. (Just remember you can't do this with DHS/Endo/Artemis/Ferro -- you pay every time you change these four things).

Also, this is a dirty trick - but on night maps, go into video and turn your gamma up to maximum. It looks like daylight. (PGI is working on nightvision/thermal for this reason). Then you don't have to deal with the maximum range of night vision (I still use thermal in blizzards and sandstorms).

[Cy Mitchell]

What an enjoyable read. I experienced much of the same stuff you did but had not nearly as much success. Maybe that is because I had not played a MW game for about five year. The last one was MWLL and I was actually better in the tanks than I was in the mechs.



I also agree with your evaluation of some of the modules. I understand why they are priced the way they are. They give the veteran players more opportunities to customize their mechs. However, like you mentioned, it is the new players that really need them more. I would imagine there are quite a few of the Steam players who have already left the game out of frustration after being obliterated by LRMs there fist few matches.



Nice write up and hopefully I will see you on the battlefield sometime soon.