1 reply to this topic

[SilentScreamer]

Just a thought for PGI's business model minded folks: Neither the proposed Skill Tree System or the current skill system are friendly to New Players.

New Player signs up for an account and gets access to free Trial Champion Mechs. The Trial Champion mechs for New Players have a similar weapon loadout to veteran players, but lack the skill unlocks and consumables to be truly equal. This will be equally true under the proposed new system. - Bad.

New Player tries the Quick Play queue and is placed in a match with other Tier 5 players. However, there are some veteran Tier 5 players who never seem to progress to Tier 4 but have a lot of great matches blowing up New Players. - Par for online gaming.

New Player grinds enough to purchase their first mech. If they purchase the same model as a Trial, they might have enough XP for a few unlocks, but definately not enough for all XP or C-bills for all 75 nodes and any upgrades the Stock mech needs to be equal to the Trial they were just using. - Bad

If New Player makes a mistake skilling up their first mech, there is significant loss both in XP and C-bills which is difficult to recover for that New Player under the new system. This is time and energy they should spend enjoying the game, not grinding. - Bad

So for New Player gaming experience I have given 3 Bads and 1 Par. Not a great experience.

In order to change the New Player experience here are my suggestions:

1) Trial mechs should have a new unique feature to only Trial mechs - Skill boosts+Consumables. Since the Trial mechs are Champion mechs, the loadouts are locked. These Trial mechs should also come with useful Skill Unlocks under the new Skill Tree and useful consumables. Example, you take the new Panther Champion, it should come with PPC skill unlocks plus coolshot consumables and unlocks. Should these mechs have all 75 nodes unlocked? Maybe, but probably not. Maybe 50 nodes would be enough for New Players in Tier 4 and 5?

2) Currently GXP earnings are too slow to be useful to a New Player. Change the XP Reward system to grant equal parts XP and GXP. This will let new players: 1) have the choice to unlock skills on their existing mech at the same rate as now by using both Mech XP and GXP; 2) hoard the GXP and use to it branch out to a new mech later; 3) more padding, if they have 1-4 mechs and botch one build, they can grind their good builds while saving GXP and C-bills to fix the skill tree on their broken mech. I realize this may hurt some PGI sales for Mech XP to GXP conversions to veteran players, but it won't eliminate it entirely. Having several years of play I have been carrying excess of millions of c-bills and tens of thousands of GXP for quite a while.

I think these two changes would go a long way to helping New Players love MWO instead of hating the grind.

[Archer Magnus]

Two years ago I stopped playing, and uninstalled, after somehow losing a 3 million (I think was the amount.?) weapon mod. Grinding for that long, then losing it was too much hassle. I certainly wasted GXP and C-Bills. I just recently reinstalled the game.

I think you have excellent points SilentScreamer!