29 replies to this topic

[Xeno Phalcon]

Felbombling, on 20 December 2018 - 05:00 PM, said:

See that branch tied to the Urbie's head... that's right out of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! LOL Takes me back to my childhood, watching Christmas cartoons with my older sister.

Dont forget the Corsair is the green one stealing ornaments (and armaments).

[Luminis]

Two things:

One, I recently started an alt account, too. From my perspective, it's beneficial to switch accounts. Create new account, get the cadet bonus, buy a few good Mechs, repeat. You'll lose your cosmetic stuff but if you don't care about that, switching accounts just makes things so much easier. Double dipping on events is damn neat, too. Sounds good, right? But it also highlights a pretty big issue with the game's progression if your best shot at getting a good collection of Mechs is to juggle accounts. I mean, not locking you into tiers and stuff to prevent that is a good thing, but it still warrants a revision, in my opinion.

Two, the comparison to Wargaming's stuff that's been made in this thread is understandable, but it's also pretty easy to make a F2P game look decent by comparing it to WoT / WoWS and so on. Now, I play Path of Exile, too, for example - and that comparison doesn't look as favourable. Just saying.

[Felbombling]

Wanted to address some great player comments...

Bud Crue, on 21 December 2018 - 04:22 AM, said:

While I think you have illustrated the real generosity that PGI has shown of late with the various events’ rewards and outright giveaways they do, I think your anecdote is not representative of the “grind” that the average new player will experience.

Just looking at your numbers, you fully leveled 13 mechs in 480 games. Put another way: you averaged 1971 XP per match. Other folks have run the numbers (Tarogato, et al.) and compared to the average performance of the player base that’s an amazingly good run for even an average player running premium time. That is incredibly unlikely for a truly new player.

We can all agree I think that PGI over the last year has made acquiring mechs and associated “content” fairly easy, perhaps even to to the point of excessive, but the XP and to a lesser extent the c-bill grind is still very real for most players. Averaging nearly 2K per match for 480 games is just not realistic for the vast majority of folks playing this game let alone the few new folks we manage to get every month.

Full disclosure, I have the gift of patience. I tell you, this comes from playing World of Tanks, War Thunder and World of Warships. Here in MW: O, I heavily leveraged Premium Time I could purchase with event rewards with new event play. Playing a chassis until I achieved the 2x victory and then immediately switching Mechs allowed me to generate higher XP rewards over just taking a Mech and playing it again and again over a weekend. In all honesty, I ran into a few situations where my awaiting XP had to sit there, while I generated the necessary C-Bills to unlock the skill points I wanted.

GXP doesn't sound like much, but when a stocking stuffer event awards you enough to throw on five skill points, say, that makes a dent. There was also the recent possibility to convert some spare XP into GXP at an inflated rate. Taking the XP off the Trial Mechs with awarded MC helped to some degree. My point is, use the free gifts PGI gives you to your best advantage, and the 'grind' is minimized. I think many players don't use all the tools available to them, then get frustrated by what they perceive as a horrific grind while playing their newest Mech fifty games in succession over a weekend.

RickySpanish, on 21 December 2018 - 05:21 AM, said:

I am an avid fan of the idea of giving players sidegrades instead of upgrades. Players should be able to unlock their first complete 91 point build upon purchase of the 'Mech, with more points being earned in the usual fashion. That way they get a build on par with their opponents immediately, and further play unlocks a greater variety of builds. Of course, I would rather eliminate skill node purchase entirely, and just allow the player to experiment to their heart's content. Zero grind certainly has the potential of being boring, but in my opinion that is a failure of something other than a lack of a skill grind. "Back in my day" single player games had the grind, but multiplayer games (for me it was Doom, Quake, C&C etc) were player for the excitement of fighting another human. I fear game design has moved on from there though, and just like with monetization (though not in MWO's case, to PGI's credit), developers/publishers have found a way to have their cake and eat it too; why have "just" the excitement of fighting your mates when you can have them grind for XP as well?

Two things pop out at me with this argument, Ricky. One, if you grant everyone their full 91 points upon Mech purchase, aren't you still running into people who have played their Mech for months and have an advantage over you in side point purchases? You've basically shifted the skill point problem with the side point accumulation. Two, you have run full steam into the Free to Play model, where you are allowed access to the game for the potential of monetary investment. How game developers induce that spending varies, but you have it pretty cheap here, compared to the good ol' days when you'd go to the store and plop down your $49.99 to take a game home. Looking at my alt account, now I'm in maintenance mode, with two new assault Mechs on the way after I play a game on the 27th of December, not to mention all the other benefits I'll get along the way in the form of the stocking stuffer clicks, 1250 MC and 6.5 million C-Bills. I have an open Mech Bay on Alex Deathson that I was going to fill with a new Fafnir on sale, but I am holding out for the two new assaults coming, as well as the new freebie Mech I could get with the current event going on. I'll need those C-Bills to flesh those three Mechs out, no doubt.

Asym, on 21 December 2018 - 06:56 AM, said:

OP, your numbers aren't those of an average player.....sorry.

I left WoTs two weeks in because it was screwed from day one.

Wise decision! I actually have serious doubts about rampant hacking in WoT. People pull off some amazing things that make little to no sense in that game.

[color=#222222]

Asym, on 21 December 2018 - 06:56 AM, said:

[/color]
I recently joined WoWs in Jan of last year. There is no comparison between MWO and WoWs........in WoWs, you are provided combat ready vessels......here, it take weeks of average play just to skill node a new mech.......weeks !!! A single mech, weeks....

I have the entire Japanese ship line to Tier 10 (less carriers because I'm not a carrier player...) and several "gift or reward" premiums in give-a-ways or events........ I have what 6, 19 point Captains and play ranked all of the time it is available....

The differences are HUGE between these games and WoWs is so much easier to start and progress in. The Grind in MWO is terrible and make no sense at all??? Who would issue soldiers "export versions" for combat systems and then "charge you for upgrading it?" We aren't mercenaries??? We're part of the IS or Clans proper for heavens sake.....

OP. No. MWO is not the worst I've experienced: but, it is a terrible and counter-intuitive process......

I would agree with most of what you're saying here, Asym, but we both know that modules are a big part of the WoW grind. Hull B, Engine, Torpedo upgrades... you are playing ships that are behind other players you are facing for at least some part of your gaming experience. You are also transferring Captains from ship to ship, which costs real money or a period of time where your Captain is next to useless if you do the 200k retraining route. Your great benefit, I'd guess, is that you've chosen one national tech tree in Japan and worked it exclusively, making the grind seem easier. Even a challenged MechWarrior: Online player is only going to take something like 75 games to fully flesh out a 91 skill point MechWarrior in this game. How many games did it take you to get from your tier I starter boat to the Yamato, for example? How much money did you spend transferring that Captain from ship to ship along the way?

Xeno Phalcon, on 21 December 2018 - 07:03 AM, said:

Dont forget the Corsair is the green one stealing ornaments (and armaments).

Check out the little Left loader arm with the Christmas tree! Love the details.

Edited by Felbombling, 21 December 2018 - 08:09 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Felbombling, on 21 December 2018 - 07:55 AM, said:

Wanted to address some great player comments...

Full disclosure, I have the gift of patience. I tell you, this comes from playing World of Tanks, War Thunder and World of Warships. Here in MW: O, I heavily leveraged Premium Time I could purchase with event rewards with new event play. Playing a chassis until I achieved the 2x victory and then immediately switching Mechs allowed me to generate higher XP rewards over just taking a Mech and playing it again and again over a weekend. In all honesty, I ran into a few situations where my awaiting XP had to sit there, while I generated the necessary C-Bills to unlock the skill points I wanted.

GXP doesn't sound like much, but when a stocking stuffer event awards you enough to throw on five skill points, say, that makes a dent. There was also the recent possibility to convert some spare XP into GXP at an inflated rate. Taking the XP off the Trial Mechs with awarded MC helped to some degree. My point is, use the free gifts PGI gives you to your best advantage, and the 'grind' is minimized. I think many players don't use all the tools available to them, then get frustrated by what they perceive as a horrific grind while playing their newest Mech fifty games in succession over a weekend.

I agree that using the techniques you describe the grind can be made to feel much less burdensome, especially for a player illustrating an awareness and understanding of the reward systems that you are illustrating above. But how many of your theoretical average new players would even be aware of the various mechanisms you utilized above or understand how to take full advantage of them? Using awarded MC to take XP off of trial mechs for example is not something I suspect many people even knew possible. Hell, veteran players still occasionally ask how the various XP, SP, GXP rewards work or “what does that x2 indicator on all my mechs mean?” let alone showing the level of understanding you are illustrating above.

For me it comes down to how does the grind feel? And while some of our player base is all “well compared to X game MWO’s grind is fine” but to a lot of us the grind in MWO is just tedious and often pointless (in view of Chris’s never ending changes to mechanics and performance). Yes you have shown, in a very select circumstance dictated by your extensive understanding of the reward mechanics that the grind can be made manageable. I just think that for the average joe coming into MWO, what you have illustrated above is way outside the realm of a typical NPE experience.

[Felbombling]

@BudCrew

Fair points, Bud. Let's assume that a player generates 800 XP per game, on average. That still amounts to ninety-one games played before the Mech is fully fleshed out with skill points. That's it... you are effectively done with that Mech, and you can enjoy future matches with it at full gaming potential. If playing ninety-one games is considered a hardship for a player enjoying a completely free to play game, as many players have suggested in the past, I don't know what to say.

I've got Captains in World of Warships and tank crews in World of Tanks that have hundreds of games under their belt, yet are still nowhere near the theoretical end of their 'career' development. I bend those game XP systems as well, to my benefit. That realization has probably made me more fond of the PGI model, considering the manipulation levers available to all players in this franchise. If anything, perhaps this ongoing discussion will inform newer players regarding their options.

[Bud Crue]

Felbombling, on 21 December 2018 - 09:57 AM, said:

@BudCrew

Fair points, Bud. Let's assume that a player generates 800 XP per game, on average. That still amounts to ninety-one games played before the Mech is fully fleshed out with skill points. That's it... you are effectively done with that Mech, and you can enjoy future matches with it at full gaming potential. If playing ninety-one games is considered a hardship for a player enjoying a completely free to play game, as many players have suggested in the past, I don't know what to say.

It’s all a matter of perspective. For you or I it may be 91 games. For a top player it may be more like 30. Maybe that’s a reasonable grind maybe it’s not.

I am just trying to look at it from the perspective of a truly new player. The new player who doesn’t understand the game, doesn’t know what nodes they should focus on, when or even why. Such a person comes in and perhaps buys a less than meta mech or maybe even a truly bad one, starts down one node path, only to decide that maybe a ballistics build or whatever is not for them, then goes down another path cuz they hear laser vomit was the way to go, only to have a series of nerfs to their weapons of choice and then changes in mechanics that make’s their mech hotter and weaker, so then they decide to try something different, etc. 91 matches quickly becomes 100 or 110 or 120 and so on.

There is no guidance in game to help the new player with any of this. New players are not going to have your understanding of what to do nor how to do it. Your example above makes clear that you took advantage of just about every mechanism possible with patience and andvance forthought in order to show that the grind may be made manageable. A typical new player of a game lacks both of those characteristics and even a basic understanding of how most of the mechanisms you mention even works, let alone how to manipulate those mechanisms and make use of them with maximum efficiency as you have.

Of course this is not a big deal at this point, since we get like 10 new player a month so who cares? I just think we’d have better retention of those few new players that we do get if the grind felt more meaningful, and was perhaps less of a chore -even if it isn’t “so bad” compared to other games.

[Felbombling]

Yuppers, I totally agree. I think this is the effect of the F2P business model. We could make a list of fifty ways that PGI makes things hard for newer players.

[Variant1]

I dont think alot of people realize that MWO is not as grindy as say War thunder or Word of tanks or world of x. Those games are grind beyond years, not only that they also have repair costs so that cuts earnings by a whole lot. MWO on the other hand is much much less grindy

If anyone complains about the grind here just point them to WOT or WT and theyll be back in no time

[LordNothing]

wouldnt mind the grind if this game had rpg elements, but it doesn't, its just an arena shooter and grind just doesn't belong.

[Chados]

Armored Warfare isn’t too bad grind wise. I left WoWs and WoT early on because the grind is worse than MWO, the toxic player base is worse than MWO, and both games are obvious pay-to-win. I do play War Thunder, but in WT the toxicity of the player base and likelihood of getting one shotted to death drastically increase in about a tier 4 vehicle, plus in tier 4 tanks you’re likely to spend a lot of time vs. higher tier vehicles as well, plus I have a blast running around in 1930s tanks in...the American desert...which means that when I play WT I never leave tier 1 or 2.

MWO is the only F2P I’ve ever put money into and I’m a total whale on my main account...and I’ve even put some money into my alt account too. It’s still fun even though the learning curve is brutal and the skill tree is awful to skill out a mech. I’ll be here til they turn out the lights, and yeah, I’m a total tater, I may be high tier 2 but I belong in low 4. And it’s still fun even though in most games I go down without killing anyone. I do, however, create a lot of opportunities for others to kill and as a result my global W/L ratio is substantially above my KDR. And there are some times I do good things that catch the notice of good players. I just don’t have the speed of judgment or hand to eye coordination to make it work, and I don’t play that much to boot.

Star Trek Online is just as bad but I only play STO vs the environment and I have a life subscription we bought back when the game first started, so I get free Zen every month.