3 replies to this topic

[Alex Deathson]

Full disclosure... this new account is a re-roll from the perspective of a beta-era player, Felbombling.

Given the amazing deals going on over the holidays, I thought I'd give the new player experience a second go, to see what new players are seeing when they enter the world of MechWarrior: Online. I took down some notes for PGI, to tell them what they're doing right and where they could improve. Here is a quick breakdown of my first 25 game experience as Alex Deathson.

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Well, let's face it. No better time to start up as a new player than over the Holidays, when the December Holiday Giveaway Event was going to happen on the 27th. That, coupled with the seven days of premium time Holiday Gift 2017 and the cadet and tutorial bonuses... not to mention the stocking stuffer event, made this new experience quite rewarding.

Upon entering the game, the prompt to enter the tutorial area is front and center. I immediately jumped in and had some minor problems when my current key bindings were in conflict with the set tutorial key bindings. Beyond that, it was fairly straight forward and easy to understand. I would suggest that some kind of missile lock-on information would have been useful in the tutorial, as well as the importance of missile locks for team information sharing. I kept thinking I was in the wrong Mech for the tutorial... that it should have been a Mech armed with at least a single LRM and/or streak rack, to inform players of missile lock-on importance, LRM minimum ranges and Streak/SRM maximum ranges.

Out of the tutorial I had my 5 million C-Bills to play around with, along with one day of active Premium Time. This is the point where the second shortcoming came into play. There was no hint or pop-up regarding the Events tab. The stocking stuffer event was going on at the time, and a stylized 'E' doesn't exactly beg investigation by the player. It didn't even flash to draw attention to it. No prompt for the store or Mech Lab, either, but I guess that goes down to player investigation.

At any rate, after looking over the Trial Mechs, I decided to take advantage of the current sale and picked up an Assassin ASN-27, which I had just enough C-Bills for. Now, to be fair, I didn't make anything Meta out of it. My goal was to actively NOT seal-club, so high alpha builds were out of the question.

I slowly built upon the chassis with the help of all available rewards... Loot Bags, normal earnings and the cadet bonuses, to the point that I had it tricked out the way I wanted. It was a fun and rewarding process, and I have some extra weapons in inventory, a testament to some build experimentation. It is a nice feeling going into a game thinking, "OK, with a good result I'll be able to afford the armour upgrade."

Of special note during the first few games, and this is shortcoming #3 for PGI... no hint or mention of skill points once enough XP had been generated. I think PGI should fix this, with at least a flashing 'Skills' button in the Mech Lab. I know they have in-game prompts and tips, but it is easy to miss if out of rotation, just like the lack of Event button notification.

Back to my Assassin for day #2.

I activated my 7-day Premium Time code to continue the rewarding run. My goal with the ASN-27 was to tool around with Stealth Armour a bit, so my end build was an MRM 20 w/2 tons ammo, the stock Guardian ECM Suite, a Beagle Active Probe and 2x Medium Laser. Enough to be a nuisance, but not enough to insta-kill anything. Indeed, I had some very enjoyable, extended battles with enemy Light Mechs, such as Spiders, Arctic Cheetahs, Jenners, etc.

Next step was working on my camouflage situation, given that olive drab was not very stealthy on multiple maps. Loot bag picks enabled me to accumulate the 75 Mech Credits necessary for the Jungle one-shot camo purchase. A few games later I splurged on Basic Blue to break up the green a bit.

PGI, this is another spot where you could make life better for newer players. Having a drop-down menu for a purchase that is set to the default 'Unlockable' option, which is 10x more expensive than the one-shot option hidden within the collapsible menu, is pretty bad. You should make the purchase options more obvious to maintain a happy client base. Were I to spend 750 Mech Credits on something I could have spent 75 on, and later found out about it, I wouldn't be very happy.

I played a few games like that, slowly building up the Sensors and Auxiliary skill trees, when the real shot in the arm occurred. December 27th, the best damn free to play giveaway I have seen, having played various free to play games over a number of years. Thank you, PGI. Honestly, what a brilliant, easy to achieve gift. [Made damn sure to complete it on Felbombling, too.]

After completing the event, I was able to purchase two new colours, Camouflage Black and Camouflage Gray, to finalize my Black/Black/Gray Jungle camouflage pattern. I also invested in the colourable Carbon Symbol decal, so that I could hide my MRM 20 missile ports and break up the green cockpit, thus completing the stealth armour aides.

Game #25 in in the books, ending my Cadet bonus. My end tally is as follows...

305 Mech Credits
14,820,069 C-Bills
48,307 GXP
Krampus!
Various other cockpit do-dads.
39/91 skill points, spread over Operations, Sensors and Auxiliary.
1 Sweet looking Assassin, which still suffers horrible over-heat and ammo shortages, but is fun to play in a peak-and-poke annoyance playstyle.

To all the one-on-one and two-on-one duelists out there that met me on the battlefield, I salute you, and hope you had as much fun as I did during our extended, running fights. Run behind cover... stealth on!

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All in all, a very enjoyable 25 game experiment, made all the more fun by the good community interaction and the newer players that joined up over the holidays. There were a lot of them, by my estimation. I hope they stick around for the New Year and coming Solaris VII content.

[El Bandito]

Yep, my RL friends who have only passing interest in playing MWO had also gotten pretty good deal out of the event, thanks to my urging of them to play this game during the holidays. Hope they will stick.

[UnofficialOperator]

In your view, isn't the skill node building a slow, painful and expensive process?

I've run out of GSPs and rebuilding new mechs are a hassle.

[Alex Deathson]

UnofficialOperator, on 30 December 2017 - 05:19 PM, said:

In your view, isn't the skill node building a slow, painful and expensive process?

I've run out of GSPs and rebuilding new mechs are a hassle.

Very good point. If I could tell PGI anything, I'd suggest they break up the 48k GXP into sections along the way for the Cadet Bonus. It was indeed painful to have Stealth Armour, for example, and not enough skill points to improve it. Out of the gate, newer players have an uphill battle to climb. It shouldn't be that difficult, but it is what it currently is.