55 replies to this topic

[Bandilly]

25 matches is hardly a good sample size. Heck I've had losing streaks around 18 matches long and yet after 3300 matches I have a near 50/50 record.

[Zergling]

25 battles played, 14 wins, 11 losses.

Your friend needs to learn a thing called 'negativity bias'.

[Raubwurst]

Well, first thing I do, when introducing someone to MWO, is to get him to realize, that it is a damn hard game and you should expect to have a long and hard learning curve (thus making getting good in the game a challenge for him). Most people will be more motivated by this.
Next is to highlite his improvements again and again, to show that, even if the person still is a green-ranked MechWarrior, that he is climbing the learning curve one step at a time.

Most people coming from other and more casual/arcadic games need to learn, that the game is hard and you do should not get all of your enjoyment from winning/killing (if they do, they should have a lot of stubborness to get their way up the ladder into competitive play).

Seeing your friend's stats you should get him to realize, that he is doing quite well in this game!
Show him my stats and let him have a little laugh:


I'm playing since 2014 and have less KD and a bad Win/Loose, too.
Regardless of this I still enjoy playing the game, because I firstly see every round as a challenge to struggle with my team and enemies for the win AND I know, that all stats are highly influenced by your team's strength and the enemy's strength. Thus even if you play good you can get on the losing side.
He should experiment some more with the game and find out what he enjoys and concentrate on having fun this way, not by focusing on his stats.

And, of course, you should tell him, that the game, as a 12vs12 is highly influenced by coordination, thus being on the losing side may be, because you play versus better organized teams, as communication is the key in the game. If he is still motivated enough to give it another try, maybe both of you could try to improve this aspect by a little bit. I've seen many matches turn the favour, by a single guy who only says "Target Alpha, CT", when he sees a weakend component.
Nobody expects new players to be a dropleader or genius in MechCombat, but every one that helps the team not only by fighting, but by just letting the others know the enemy's weakpoint, is increasing the chance of winning by a good degree.
(And, as a side note: You both will be able to enjoy the games even more, when you see enemies exploding after you gave a call on them. Always a good feeling )

[Clanner Scum]

Tell them that despite losing so many games, they're actually better than the average player and that if they give the game a chance and reaches tier...3? They'll find alot of enjoyment out of the game.

[JediPanther]

You probably need to private lobby with him or get into a unit together that is casual. MWO is complex to learn at the start. Your friend needs to focus on small individual things to have a sense of accomplishment and improvement besides win/loss a match.Things like taking less damage on next round, a few points more damage on enemy, less team damage maybe, or just living a few seconds longer.

I did those things learning how to be a light mech pilot and when your mech dies in one-two alphas the game is very frustrating. your friend also needs to find his preferred play style. Everyone has one. One person like me loves going fast,out thinking an opponent and being able to support others so I play the light class or lrm fire support. I can't use an assault mech and get 300 damage in most tries with one so I avoid that type which other can do great in.

Once your friend finds his types of play and a mech to match it all he'll need next is a weapon configuration that works for him. If he likes support indirectly he may become one of the great lrm boaters raining down pain on mechs that are fighting his team. Maybe he loves big guns and goes king crab dual 20s.

It can take a long time to find out how to play and what mechs etc. I took all of closed beta as a catapult lrmer. With over 500 matches in the C1.

[SIN Maruzen]

I've been in your position with multiple games in the past. in the end, sounds like your friend either a) isn't really enjoying the game or won't enjoy any game for a long period of time.

I have a few friends who get hyped for release, we all jump on board and within a week or two, he's bored and starts telling everyone the game is bad and we basically should feel bad for playing it. Then he goes back for bf2142. You can't change his mind for the most part, but....

Are you guys playing together, or is he soloing? I've found you get full enjoyment running with friends or unit mates. This really is a teamwork centric game, and even losing matches, my group still finds them fun when we are talking to each other and assisting each other to bring down an opposing opponent.

[Cy Mitchell]

MECH Slayer, on 05 April 2017 - 09:28 AM, said:

I invited one of my friends to the MWO recently, and today he will quit, telling me he always on the losing side after first 25 matches. Then I have logged in with his account and got this.

How can I persuade him to stay in MWO world? Could you guys give me some advice? Thank you.

I wish my first 25 matches looked that good.

[Alistair Winter]

Zergling, on 05 April 2017 - 09:46 AM, said:

25 battles played, 14 wins, 11 losses.

Your friend needs to learn a thing called 'negativity bias'.

I think it's fairly common. I made a thread about this in 2014, I think. I was so sick of carrying my team, so I decided to actually start taking post-match screenshots of the results, to prove that I was consistently one of the top scores on my team, while consistently losing. As it turned out, I was indeed getting good scores. But I was actually winning more than I was losing. I didn't realize this until I went back and started compiling statistics.

I think that if you're very competitive, it's easy to remember the losses better than you remember the wins. And as a new player, you may win a match without actually contributing very much or feeling like you had a great performance. So you won't really remember the wins where you only got 150 damage and 0 kills. You'll only remember your great performances and you'll remember all the frustrating losses.

It's quite natural.

@OP: There's nothing you can tell your friend, really. He'll find a game he likes. If he's not comfortable with a WLR below 1.0, then he's going to have a bad time as a new MWO player.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

You could look into showing him some meta builds and teaching him how to properly use them. This will put him into builds that are effective on all maps, which is much less stressful than getting an LRM boat on crimson tunnel or a brawler on polar highlands. It'll also give him effective builds to use which will be superior to most builds new players make and reduce the stress of new players trying to figure out how to use the mechlab and make a decent build and prevents him from losing all his money experimenting early on before getting a good money maker mech.

With one of my friends who still plays I set him up with a Hellbringer with 6 ERML, runs relatively cold and hits pretty hard, has ecm so he won't be focused, and lets him learn how to peek well. He's swapped up builds from time to time to mimic mine in some 2 man drops we've done, but overall he has had a good time and gets scores almost as good as mine in the matches we play together.


I recommend group drops and good builds, people like winning, meta builds and grouping up increases the win rate.

[R Valentine]

The problem with MWO is that most wins and losses are total stomps. Competitive games are elusive. So when you do get on a losing streak you just feel like dirt because it's non-stop games of 12-0, 12-1, or 12-2. Well, I don't really blame people for wanting to quit after those kind of streaks. There's something wrong with the game if it goes so often to these kinds of land slides. If you aren't having fun, then you shouldn't be playing.

Edited by Kiran Yagami, 05 April 2017 - 12:35 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Learning curve is steep. If try to get him in some group queue drops but the cold hard reality is that he's going to have a long, brutal slog to get good and even then he's unlikely to be much over a 1 w/l unless he's droppong in a good team in FW.

That's the game. It's not like SP where you'll usually win if you show up and mash buttons.

[Coolant]

winning matches shouldn't be a reason to stay. it is possible to have fun and still lose matches.

[Ken Harkin]

He has lost roughly 2/3 of his matches with a 1.00 k/d rating after only 25 matches yet he said he is "always losing"...

Frankly I don't think there is anything you can say to him nor would I be inclined to try.

[Amsro]

Hard to say this, but the only way to get better in this game is to forget about winning (that is a 12 player thing) and worry about not getting killed early/quick.

Make sure you can take down at least one enemy mech. Then work your way up from there.

Having a losing record in your first 100 matches is nothing to be worried about.

Once you learn how to play on your own you will then become a benefit to your team and begin to secure wins. (also known as carry.)

Plus at 25 matches he doesn't have a mastered mech yet. Tell him to get 2 more of what ever chassis he has and then to level those. By then he should have enough experience to better understand the game a bit.

Edit; the fact that he has a 1-1 KDR is a good start. More deaths then losses also means he's a team player and not a stat padder, keep calm and carry on.

Edited by Amsro, 05 April 2017 - 01:27 PM.

[Droolcup Commando]

when i first started i barely did better than 100 damage in a Thunderbolt for quite some time. After some practice and experience with many of the mechs and weapons i have come to an okay point

Kills - Deaths - 3087/2842
wins - losses - 2052/2054
ratio - 1.09

Edited by Droolcup Commando, 05 April 2017 - 01:33 PM.

[DaZur]

OP your friend needs to "tough up buttercup".

If your friend is basing his experience solely upon somewhat arbitrary metrics of the game and not on the actual experience/enjoyment of "playing"... There is nothing you can do to persuade him to the contrary.

[Fobhopper]

I have been here since the MWO Beta. And while I am not a pro player, I am by no means wood division either.

Sometimes you get dropped into polar highlands in a brawler mech. sometimes the reverse happens and you get dropped into veridian bog with the same build. you will have some good games and some bad games, but if the overall gameplay is good, tell your friend to look past the stats, start configuring his own mechs and try out the game beyond the trial mechs.

Edited by Fobhopper, 05 April 2017 - 01:59 PM.

[Appogee]

Tell him P2W Clan Heroes will be available soon to give him the competitive edge he so clearly needs

Edited by Appogee, 05 April 2017 - 01:56 PM.

[Cyborne Elemental]

Ask him if it was fun during and up to the point where the screen said Defeat.

If he says, yeah it was fun, then say thats what its about. Its just how MWO goes.

[Jack Booted Thug]

You didn't say what kind of puter or gaming set up he was using.....

I started out playing on a laptop with sub 10 fps and it was bad.....not fun.... quit after two weeks

But I remembered how much fun I had playing the first and second Mechwarrior titles, and I could tell the mechanics were there to be a fun game.... so I bought a gaming rig and tried it again... was completely different experience.

This game isn't optimized and may not run smoothly for him? Did you ask him about his setup including keyboard and mouse settings (sensitivity etc.)?

For a new person who has never played any mechwarrior title or similar, the trial and error part of figuring out what works, things like difference between endo and ferro, ghost heat, artemis, what mechs are really solid etc... can be grueling trial and error.

Helped me greatly to have some very good players explain it to me early on, and still had to learn a lot on my own too. It's not kind to new players who are used to jumping into a game, mashing buttons, and going on a "killing spree".