93 replies to this topic

[aaykeem]

A tutorial would be great, but I think it should also cover the steps that come along with dropping on a planet: the contracts/loyalist system and what the penalty for leaving is; the drop deck composition, editing it, saving it, selecting the first dropped mech; the "respawn" system. And then going through a simulated match and getting explanations on the objectives is very important.

[MechWarrior3671771]

jaxjace, on 04 January 2016 - 05:37 PM, said:

You shouldn't be allowed in CW unless you are either tier 3 or have played over 1000 games. Trial mechs should be definitely off limits.

Agreed, but I would make Tier 1 and 10,000 games the cut off.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

Fen Tetsudo, on 12 January 2016 - 05:12 PM, said:

Agreed, but I would make Tier 1 and 10,000 games the cut off.

Oh, I see what you did there!

[Axel Sprocket]

I agree with the tutorial for CW to help the newbies and avoid being harassed by other players because they have no idea what they're doing.

[Dave Forsey]

Wouldn't a video be sufficient to explain all the details?

A tutorial would be much more complex to produce, verify (remember all the ways players can potentially "not-follow-orders", and maintain.

Something players have to watch before participating and click on for reference from the faction page?

[MechWarrior3671771]

Dave, its a moot point. A tutorial of any kind would have been useful, had it been employed before Steam.

Its too late now. The new playerbase is already playing CW. They are already here. And they are being run off by "competitive" teams that are deliberately avoiding each other to farm newbies for easy rewards. The "competitive" teams are attacking planets because they know the Call to Arms is click bait for newbies.

Result? New solo players getting matched up against 12-man comp teams who spawncamp their 3rd & 4th mechs for kicks while mocking them to "learn to play noob!". And so your steamers are getting farmed and quiting and not coming back. They aren't quiting because they are getting stomped - most I've talked to are veterans of other games so they know how it goes - they are quiting because they don't get to even play half the mechs in their drop deck. "This is stupid" is the most common remark I hear from them.

The "competitive" vets will give you all kinds of excuses justifying why they do it, everything from "quicker wait times" (for a zero quality match?) to "the devs made us do it!" (ie. we have no self-control). A new tutorial is a bandaid solution that will just waste your time and energy and not fix the problem.

And the problem is that too many of your "competitve" players here are brats with no understanding of sportsmanship or ethical play. Its the same reason they so readily find and abuse exploits in the game. As Russ recently said "you ask for complexity, we work our butts off to give it to you, you find exploits to shortcut that complexity".

So your solution is to stop the "competitive" teams from farming noobs. It cant be a punishment, they will just skirt it with the logic of a 12-year-old brat. You need to find a way to incentivize pre-made VS pre-made so that the pre-mades will learn that farming your new playerbase is a waste of their time. But expect a massive wailing on the forums if you take away their Easy Farm Mode.

Good luck. I came to MWO a year ago *solely* to play in a planetary league. I spent $3k on a new rig just so I had the latest hardware, and about another $1k in MCs (check my billing) - that's how invested I am in Community Warfare and its success. And I will likely be ditching it all and going back to Quickplay just for fun, because you have a significant number of players who are ruining the game for everyone else. Its accomplishment porn for them, they are zerg grinding at the expense of your new Steam player base.

I'm in a unit, and I'm on faction comms every night. I have about 30 mastered mechs in my CW drop deck. My solo pug VS solo pug matches are challenging and fun. My premade VS premade matches are challenging and fun. Its the solo pug VS premades that are a horrible gaming experience.

Edited by Fen Tetsudo, 13 January 2016 - 06:14 PM.

[Digital_Angel]

Dave Forsey, on 13 January 2016 - 05:02 PM, said:

Wouldn't a video be sufficient to explain all the details?

A tutorial would be much more complex to produce, verify (remember all the ways players can potentially "not-follow-orders", and maintain.

Something players have to watch before participating and click on for reference from the faction page?

Yes, it would help a lot, although as Fen said, it was really needed before the Steam launch.

A full tutorial would help a lot more for the new players, but that also takes a lot longer to make and I realize he the dev team only has so much time to go around.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

Darn. I am evil and really wanted a Seal Club Arena mini game. Oh, well, Fen caught me!

Okay, in all seriousness...

There already IS a video, Dave, out there. No one watched it, or at least, no one put what was in the video together with what they experienced their first time at the controls of a mech in CW.

I know what you mean, about the thing being pretty resource-intensive to produce. (I was one 3-hour 4th year course shy of a software engineering minor on my degree, after all. It's SOMETHING.) I'm not going to try to tell you how to do what you do on your end.

But it SEEMS like, as there are already some basic AIs in game in mechs with assorted loadouts, the CW maps are already out there, the turret AI has been in game since well before CW (why DID that go away from Assault mode, I wonder?). To someone NOT working on this thing for the last 4-ish years, it SEEMS like it should be, relative to fielding the whole CW thing or a new game mode or the academy itself, a fairly straightforward thing. Something that might have been more XML script than anything else in the OGR days. I'm sure it's FAR from that simple, though.

It's clear, though, that the seals haven't been watching the videos. But they DO need a weight room, so they can club us evildoers back once in a while. Something to put the theory (video, text, advice from helpful forum folk, etc.) together with WASD, before it's live and it counts.

What you're asking is, rather than have me go to a 4-month resident course and spend 9 hours a day learning, hands-on with instructors and great training aids, to just have me watch some videos and get to bending wrench on those $14,000,000.00 (now over $40mil, I'm sure) helicopters. Without the REAL WORLD consequences, sure, but same concept otherwise. "You saw the video. Go execute!" If that worked, we wouldn't have need of Testing Grounds, or the Academy's Shooting Gallery stuff (which was GREAT, by the way, and I use it regularly).

LadyDanams makes a point, though with a little more defeatism than I care for. It WOULD have been nice to have some formal intro to CW, if not an outright tutorial, PRIOR TO the Steam launch. Too late now to worry about coulda-woulda-shoulda. Going forward, though, I do hope it's something that will get some consideration. Not necessarily a full-on walkthrough, 30-minutes-to-kill-Omega thing, but SOME manner of hands-on opportunity to follow some instructions through a few scripted interactions to get from A to B to C, and eventually, complete a successful set of tasks in order, completing the task and earning ... well, something.

As always, I really appreciate that you get involved here directly, Dave. Thanks for the consideration.

I'm gonna go club a seal now. Maybe pour some crude oil into the Pacific. Might even pull the tag off of my mattress! I'm just EVIL like that!

[MechWarrior3671771]

TheRAbbi, on 13 January 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

Darn. I am evil and really wanted a Seal Club Arena mini game. Oh, well, Fen caught me!

"My Lady doth protest too much"

Quote

There already IS a video, Dave, out there. No one watched it, or at least, no one put what was in the video together with what they experienced their first time at the controls of a mech in CW. ...It's clear, though, that the seals haven't been watching the videos. But they DO need a weight room, so they can club us evildoers back once in a while. Something to put the theory (video, text, advice from helpful forum folk, etc.) together with WASD, before it's live and it counts.

The new players aren't watching the video already out there. And the new players are ignoring the "enter at your own risk" warning before the play CW. How is more of the same going to change any of that?

The new steam crowd, for whatever reason, think CW is the game (they call it Faction Wars) and think of Quickplay as the Training Ground. Consider yourself a new player trying out MWO, with CW as your first drop. Oh look your opponent is MS! And they are going to spawncamp your 2nd 3rd and 4th mechs. And call you names while they farm you for easy rewards. You just waited 10 mins for a game that the elite vets wouldn't even let you play out. Do you think you'll come back? Or will you uninstall and tell your steam friends "MWO is stupid don't bother".

We need to seperate the new players from premades, to keep them around longer until we can catch up with tutorial videos and in game training. Steam is the last batch of new players MWO is going to get, and we are blowing it.

Edited by Fen Tetsudo, 13 January 2016 - 10:25 PM.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

Fen Tetsudo, on 13 January 2016 - 10:12 PM, said:

"My Lady doth protest too much"




The new players aren't watching the video already out there. And the new players are ignoring the "enter at your own risk" warning before the play CW. How is more of the same going to change any of that?

The new steam crowd, for whatever reason, think CW is the game (they call it Faction Wars) and think of Quickplay as the Training Ground. Consider yourself a new player trying out MWO, with CW as your first drop. Oh look your opponent is MS! And they are going to spawncamp your 2nd 3rd and 4th mechs. And call you names while they farm you for easy rewards. You just waited 10 mins for a game that the elite vets wouldn't even let you play out. Do you think you'll come back? Or will you uninstall and tell your steam friends "MWO is stupid don't bother".

We need to seperate the new players from premades, to keep them around longer until we can catch up with tutorial videos and in game training. Steam is the last batch of new players MWO is going to get, and we are blowing it.

AGREED. There needs to be separation, and a gate to go into the gloves-off CW.

I'm suggesting the tutorial for two reasons.

1.) One more resource for players to LEARN CW, rather than just drop in and start shooting at gates (NOT gate generators, but the GATES themselves, which is pretty common first-day stuff).

2.) One more Boolean value that can be applied to a gate mechanic in the future. "No CW without completing the tutorial, gaining the achievement, taking the Prom Queen home, etc." Y'know.

Some people are throwing out there, that we should gate CW by PSR tier. And there are already some EXCELLENT CW players out there in good units, who are Tier 5. Why? They never play enough solo/group queue to climb the PSR ladder.

Some are suggesting gating it on ownership of four (4) mechs. Nice. Ever heard of a PYRAMID SCHEME? Similar concept. Buy a package, say Invasion Wave 3 or Resistance 2, and your CASH bought you entry through the pearly gates of CW, where everyone else had to grind it up. I can hear the cries of P2W from here.

Some suggest gating it on XP, which isn't an AWFUL idea. The standard would be quite subjective, of course, and there'd ALWAYS be someone who thinks that an oversimplified statistical "analysis" on their part is far superior to the opinions/expertise of the PGI dev staff. Don't worry. I don't respect that guy's opinion, either. That MIGHT actually work.

But this all still leaves a problem. If we simply gate off ALL CW from new players, then when they DO step through into the enlightened planetary conquest match, they're STILL no more informed of what's up in CW than are the first-day Steamers. They just have more mechs, XP, or PSR e-peen. Whatever.

Look, LONG GONE are the days of shipping a game on a disk (5.25, 3.5", CD-ROM, or DVD-ROM) in a box with an instruction manual. Probably streamlined the game development process CONSIDERABLY, having that watered down to FAQs and a web forum, with the latter being a great way to pass off the task of instructing new players onto the experienced players. Folks like Fen Tetsudo are doing their very best to herd these cats and get our new players up-to-speed on how to play and succeed, and that can be frustrating work. 20 years ago, all I had to learn a game's ins and outs by, was a thick manual that came in the box with the disk(s). In some ways, though, that was better.

Today, we have none of that. And that steepens the learning curve considerably. LOTS of games have tutorials. Some are more robust than others. Some skip the crawl and go straight to walk, but do it really well (think Borderlands The Pre-Sequel), but that's more often successful in single-player PvE, which does NOT exist in MWO at this time.

We would be helped a LOT by a tutorial, is what I'm doing a poor job of communicating here. It might only really benefit 1-2% of the players, maybe 10% of NEW players at most. But that's 10% less I have to hear what a jerk I am, and that would make me 10% happier.

In the meantime, sure, separate the newest players and even experienced pure solos from the groups, and let us have no more of this incessant pestering about who is clubbing seals and who needs to 'git gud lol'. It probably WOULD help.

But eventually, I'd like to be able to chat at that new player shooting at the gate, and point him/her to the PGI-MADE-THIS-FOR-YOU tutorial that explains (far more politely than I could likely muster) what to do in this situation, what the win conditions are, where to go to find the next step in the process, etc. And the videos I've seen just fail to communicate that very well to someone who isn't simultaneously WASD-ing through the map.

[StUffz]

Maybe it would help if you add a hint for CW:
Don't play Superman. Your opponents shoot with Kryptonite.

[Darwins Dog]

Here's my 2 cent idea. Hide CW from new players until they pass a certain threshold. No faction play button, or reinforcement popups (especially the popups, I think they are responsible for most of the decks of trial mechs that we see). If players are in a group, then they can join and play CW with no problem. I'm fine with trial mechs (I've used them myself when my unit first went clan).

Also include a comprehensive video (or series of videos) explaining the various aspects of the mode. You could possibly hold a community competition where the winner gets 10,000 MC or something like that. There are a LOT of talented video makers out there, who could make some great stuff for you.

Whatever you do, please don't completely ban players from CW. The Golden Foxes take a lot of new players (some with trial mechs even) into CW and we win a lot. It takes coordination and a plan to win at CW, not so much skill and owning the best mechs (though they certainly help).

I get prickly when people start throwing out restrictions for entry into CW. Most of the time because they would prevent me from playing. I've been here since closed beta, and played lots of CW (pretty good at it too), but apparently I'm not good enough to play the mode.

[Lolo van Trollinger]

with only 3 locusts, i still love my Trial 100tonner so i can do CW. I do agree on the part of there should be some preparation for new Players. what i saw from recent steamies that dropped in there unprepared, it was a feedfest.
the IS ones are bad, but they mostly have useful configs and at least have learned to follow commands mostly. the clan ones, on the other hand... i cant even enjoy their squeals when i locust them to death in their timbers or crows. it is too surreal and the language, wow... that language hurts.

oh, and never, ever, underestimate the power of a locust when it is not expected some even last for more then one drop.

that trail KGC is only needed because of the stupid "no light rush" minimum weight. i can haz a 100t ballast stone plz ? won`t use it either, promise <3

[Adaram1090]

Agreed a tutorial would be good for CW but so would one teaching basic team strategy. I'm more for playing games solo so I don't have that much experience against anything but AI. So maybe that's just me.

[m2wester]

A Mandatory tutorial would be good; shouldn't be too long though (one walkthrough has to be enough). Videos are mostly useless, noone would watch them.

That being said, I don't think it would change the state of cw much. I'd think 12 players without prepared stategy, appointed shotcaller/leader and with limited participation to ingame voip & chat will always have a hard time when playing against a coordinated unit, even if they all have 4 good mechs and know the basics. I'd agree with Fen that unit warfare should be seperated from soloplayer drops.

Btw, I'd think a huge reason that most steamers play cw are the rewards, in particular the free mechbays. It's the reason why keep playing it every once in a while despite being mostly useless. I certainly won't play it anymore without a unit as soon as I got all the first IS Mechbays, at the very latest.

Edited by m2wester, 23 January 2016 - 01:11 PM.

[Tanil Kane]

Fen Tetsudo, on 13 January 2016 - 10:12 PM, said:

"My Lady doth protest too much"




The new players aren't watching the video already out there. And the new players are ignoring the "enter at your own risk" warning before the play CW. How is more of the same going to change any of that?

The new steam crowd, for whatever reason, think CW is the game (they call it Faction Wars) and think of Quickplay as the Training Ground. Consider yourself a new player trying out MWO, with CW as your first drop. Oh look your opponent is MS! And they are going to spawncamp your 2nd 3rd and 4th mechs. And call you names while they farm you for easy rewards. You just waited 10 mins for a game that the elite vets wouldn't even let you play out. Do you think you'll come back? Or will you uninstall and tell your steam friends "MWO is stupid don't bother".

We need to seperate the new players from premades, to keep them around longer until we can catch up with tutorial videos and in game training. Steam is the last batch of new players MWO is going to get, and we are blowing it.

Most other games with battleground type matches, which is what CW effectively is, have a matchmaking system that tries to put pug vs pug and premade vs premade.

Is that not in place here? I watched a twitch stream a few days back that had full unit vs pug and it didn't look particularly fun for either side.

Seems like a need for a two pronged approach. Create a matchmaking system, and create a detailed game guide that explains how to do CW from start to finish.

I did some CW when I first started, and it was confusing at each step.

[Digital_Angel]

Tanil Kane, on 26 January 2016 - 12:06 PM, said:

Most other games with battleground type matches, which is what CW effectively is, have a matchmaking system that tries to put pug vs pug and premade vs premade.

Is that not in place here? I watched a twitch stream a few days back that had full unit vs pug and it didn't look particularly fun for either side.

Seems like a need for a two pronged approach. Create a matchmaking system, and create a detailed game guide that explains how to do CW from start to finish.

I did some CW when I first started, and it was confusing at each step.

Several things
1) CW is far from finished and Phase 3 is supposed to roll out some time in the next few months. Russ talked some about what to expect from that (and that there will be more phases after that down the road) at the Steam Launch Party. I know some of the people there as well as the MWO official YouTube channel have video of a lot of that if you haven't already seen it.

2) Separating group in CW has come up before, and PGI has said that (at least at that time) there was not a large enough population in game to support separating queues in CW. This is already the reason why all CW happens on the North American servers instead of being split up the way Quick Play is.

3) A difference between Mercenaries, Freelancers, and Loyalists is supposed to be part of CW Phase 3, as well as career tracking to some extent. Depending on how some of that is implemented could fix some of the issues. For example, if a matchmaker was introduced for Mercs so that contracts simply say that you accept a contract for X amount of time to a faction either to defend their worlds or to attack faction X on their behalf. Then, when you started a CW match, a matchmaking system selected what planet you went to automatically based on the terms of your contract instead of having to select a planet and either wait until a match fills up or you give up and go to another planet/back to Quick Play could go a long way to fixing issues with CW wait times. It would also allow the match making systems for Merc/Freelancer/Loyalist to (possibly) be implemented differently as even further definition between the rolls. There hasn't been enough detail released at this point to make many educated guesses on if the coming changes will help or hurt matchmaking in CW.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

CW matchmaking (specifically, the lack thereof) and the pros/cons thereof, might be just a LITTLE BIT off-topic, but not FAR.

To Tanil Kane's point, though, it ISN'T particularly fun, for either side. One side is getting pretty ruthlessly slaughtered. The other side is going through a not-at-all-challenging match for their troubles.

It's always fun when you DO get a good matchup, and it DOES come down to the last few/several mechs. And that happens, believe it or not.

But PART of what some of us feel MAY help mitigate the 48-6 stomps, is getting new players a tutorial and making sure they complete it BEFORE entering their first CW match. That is, getting it STRAIGHT FROM THE GAME'S DEVELOPERS (who have a very direct financial interest in making sure that this game is understood and enjoyed by its players), how that game mode is to be played, what the objectives are, what the various peculiar map icons represent, and so on.

It's likely to be a bit of a technical challenge, and there's no solid indication that it will ever be implemented, but I'm personally convinced that a solid tutorial (with a gate mechanic to REQUIRE its completion before competing in a single CW match) would significantly and measurably improve the experience for a lot of players, and reduce the QQ attrition.

[Fryepod]

In all honesty I dont think new players should be allowed into CW. Make them at least finish their 20 cadet bonus and reach teir 4 in match making before being promoted to join community warfare. There's simply way too many people who have no idea how the planet phasing works, how the modes work and dropping in 4 trial mechs is detrimental to a team and to the player himself who will most likley be seal clubbed.

I dont think this would be unfair in anyway. Players should have some basic knowledge, experience, Cbills and a curve for the game mechanics be for they jump into CW.

And when prompted, a tutorial should indefinitely be given. Thumbs up.

[WANTED]

Agreed. CW was a shocking experience even after I had been playing for quite some time. It's just a whole different ballgame in there. I can't imagine what those poor Steam players thought. A 1-3(short attention timespans these days minute video showing off the objectives and how to destroy them should be a mandatory viewing in some form when you click Faction Warfare. This video is unlocked once you complete a certain number of Quickplay games. You can enter FW after completing the video and yay number of QuickPlay games. We need a stop gap soon to allow new players to be at least 10 percent prepared for Faction Warfare. Once FW gets a good population, then many of these issues will not be as prevalent.