50 replies to this topic

[Eatit]

When I first started to play this game way back in open beta the NPE was horrible. I would venture to say that it's much better today. Hell, there was no in-game voice comms back then. It was a mess but most toughed it out.

Why is the current NPE causing them to leave?

Grind?
Toxic environment?
Dated graphics?
Small player base?
They never really showed up?

What can we as players do to encourage them to stay?

I think a good start is for people to stop creating alt accounts to prey on them in Tier 5.
Predator and ********* are almost interchangeable titles. Don't be that guy.

What other things can we as players do to encourage new players to join the game and stay around?

[Kodyn]

Not being a new player I can only guess, but I feel like it's probably a combination of a lot of what was listed, plus-

No long-term security or stability, insecure about MWO's future.

Little to no Dev communication anymore outside of Matt for events.

Unfinished state of a game that's been in development this long, lack of things to do in game outside of QP these days.

As for what the rest of us can do- I'd say it's not much. We can try to make newer players we encounter feel more welcome by not being bittervets around them I suppose, but are we supposed to lie about how PGI does things, have done things in the past, and seem set to continue doing things? I for one have a lot of patience, but many people don't, and a lot of people won't want to wait around to see if MWO/PGI ever change course.

It's also a niche IP and title and that's not going to change. Only so many people will ever be into this particular type of game with this specific IP. Then within that group there's varying levels of interest/patience with MWO as a game and PGI as a developer. There are exceptions like myself, who were attracted by the gameplay and not as much the IP, but the gameplay has kinda plateaued and doesn't seem to be changing or improving any time in the foreseeable future. PGI would need to really polish the mechanics and use a new engine if they wanted to ever appeal to a broader audience, I feel.

[JC Daxion]

Most folks are nice...

Its a pvp game, you are going to get schooled, just like every other pvp game.


Forum community, and game are totally different..

[RickySpanish]

I played an alt recently and did the cadet games to see what it was like starting from scratch. I think that while the players themselves have a good attitude overall, there is a massive overabundance of choice for new players. There are too many 'Mechs available, with no clear path to follow for anything close to a workable build. The cadet bonus is only useful if you have a good idea of what constitutes an effective chassis and build, and even that won't help with the skill point grind.

Skill points are especially bad because once again, not only is there is no clear path to an effective build, the skill trees, skill point allocation mechanic, and the function of each node are more or less entirely incomprehensible to a new player. It's like a whole new layer of poo on the existing poo cake. Experimentation is difficult because of the vast cost of purchasing nodes and farming xp, players are likely to plow vast amounts of time and money into skills with little success, likely using a chassis that was never good in the first place. Thus the effect of skills becomes a complete hit or miss mystery affair. Aaand this is all on top of equipment costs for new players.

In conclusion I think the community really is fine, but the greatest problem is that the game by its very nature is not new player friendly, and the skill system is an unmitigated disaster by adding a completely new layer of complexity atop an already complex system that is there from the get-go.

The interplay of skills, quirks, equipment, 'Mech geometry and base 'Mech stats is actually rather hideous. One of these things almost certainly needs to be removed foe the game to make any sense whatsoever to new players. Of course, during all this time, a new player is being driven relentlessly to tier 1 by the PSR.

Edited by RickySpanish, 06 February 2020 - 09:18 AM.

[-Winter]

This game has a worse New Player Experience than Warframe when it was in Beta. The community is full of bad advice to new players with bad builds, bad strats, that develop bad habits. This community is more toxic then LoL. The game gives you no help to figure out skill trees, sync etc. The game starts placement for Tiers while you're a cadet which means a brand new players are going to T5 to dig a hole. Group Queue is dead which tbh for a FPS is beyond laughable. I mean the list can go on and on.

Also playing on an alt as a cadet isn't the same as a new player never touching the game prior let's be honest here. Don't sugar coat it. NPE in this game sucks.

[Sniper09121986]

RickySpanish, on 06 February 2020 - 09:10 AM, said:

I played an alt recently and did the cadet games to see what it was like starting from scratch. I think that while the players themselves have a good attitude overall, there is a massive overabundance of choice for new players. There are too many 'Mechs available, with no clear path to follow for anything close to a workable build. The cadet bonus is only useful if you have a good idea of what constitutes an effective chassis and build, and even that won't help with the skill point grind.

This. The game is simply too unique for new players to have an idea what to do. It can only be loosely compared to Crossout or Robocraft. The idea itself is not that different from WoT or War Thunder, it is just that the players have to build their own machine, and until they figure out what works and how... you know what happens. Battletech or even MW5 are easier in that regard because the stock load-outs are more or less fine, but MWO is a very different matter.

[JediPanther]

npe is so bad there are few games out there that bad to compare it to. I once helped a friend make an account and even got them a hero light mech. A few matches later that friend gave up and said if he wanted cod with robot skins he'd go play that. I've not bothered to get any one else I know to play this game. The few times I have they said hell no after watching a few videos on yt.

[Prototelis]

NPE experience because the game doesn't explain anything useful.

"Cod with robot skins" ******* cracks me up tho.

This game is nothing like COD, like someone clearly hasn't been playing those games if they make that comparison.

Edited by Prototelis, 06 February 2020 - 05:06 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

Prototelis, on 06 February 2020 - 05:05 PM, said:

NPE experience because the game doesn't explain anything useful.

"Cod with robot skins" ******* cracks me up tho.

This game is nothing like COD, like someone clearly hasn't been playing those games if they make that comparison.

Yeah MWO is COD with skins.

There have been some pretty stupid statements over the years, this would be in the top 5.

[FRAGTAST1C]

New player experience is bad 'cause players can't play WITH THEIR FRIENDS. How's that for a reason? Seriously, a MP game that doesn't let players drop into matches instantly with their friends....

[LordNothing]

after spending some time in the trial mechs they have to pilot, yes, yes it is.

as for wait times, they are atrocious.

Edited by LordNothing, 06 February 2020 - 07:04 PM.

[Zirconium Kaze]

RickySpanish, on 06 February 2020 - 09:10 AM, said:

I played an alt recently and did the cadet games to see what it was like starting from scratch. I think that while the players themselves have a good attitude overall, there is a massive overabundance of choice for new players. There are too many 'Mechs available, with no clear path to follow for anything close to a workable build. The cadet bonus is only useful if you have a good idea of what constitutes an effective chassis and build, and even that won't help with the skill point grind.

Skill points are especially bad because once again, not only is there is no clear path to an effective build, the skill trees, skill point allocation mechanic, and the function of each node are more or less entirely incomprehensible to a new player. It's like a whole new layer of poo on the existing poo cake. Experimentation is difficult because of the vast cost of purchasing nodes and farming xp, players are likely to plow vast amounts of time and money into skills with little success, likely using a chassis that was never good in the first place. Thus the effect of skills becomes a complete hit or miss mystery affair. Aaand this is all on top of equipment costs for new players.

In conclusion I think the community really is fine, but the greatest problem is that the game by its very nature is not new player friendly, and the skill system is an unmitigated disaster by adding a completely new layer of complexity atop an already complex system that is there from the get-go.

The interplay of skills, quirks, equipment, 'Mech geometry and base 'Mech stats is actually rather hideous. One of these things almost certainly needs to be removed foe the game to make any sense whatsoever to new players. Of course, during all this time, a new player is being driven relentlessly to tier 1 by the PSR.

I disagree. I started playing two days ago and things are easy enough to understand and exploring the different options is fun. Been playing the game old fashioned and just buying everything with C-Bills can make it a challenging fun. Just takes time for me to get used to the different mechs and upgrades. I think what might help the game is creating a persistent team death match map that's quite large. Allow respawns and just let it run for three hours. Team with the highest score wins. Match making, waiting times, and one life per match is what puts people off.

Just reduce the amount of c-bills by an appropriate amount for the game type so that the matchmaking is still more profitable to earn c-bills thus giving it importance to participate in. Just use extra large maps and make it where you don't respawn at a set point, but rather, the game does a proximity check for you and spawn you somewhere randomly within the map away from potential threats. Thus giving a time for all to recover from the sudden loss and regain their bearings. Plus, it would fragment the teams in interesting ways which should be enough to break up camps.

call it Anarchy mode.

Edited by Zirconium Kaze, 06 February 2020 - 10:23 PM.

[Valdarion Silarius]

FRAGTAST1C, on 06 February 2020 - 06:03 PM, said:

New player experience is bad 'cause players can't play WITH THEIR FRIENDS. How's that for a reason? Seriously, a MP game that doesn't let players drop into matches instantly with their friends....

Pretty much this. It's ridiculous that I have to attempt to sync solo que with my friends just to get into the same match with them. Even that isn't guaranteed when trying to do qp or events with them.

Edited by Arnold The Governator, 06 February 2020 - 10:50 PM.

[Davegt27]

Eatit, on 06 February 2020 - 07:19 AM, said:

When I first started to play this game way back in open beta the NPE was horrible. I would venture to say that it's much better today. Hell, there was no in-game voice comms back then. It was a mess but most toughed it out.

Why is the current NPE causing them to leave?

Grind?
Toxic environment?
Dated graphics?
Small player base?
They never really showed up?

What can we as players do to encourage them to stay?

I think a good start is for people to stop creating alt accounts to prey on them in Tier 5.
Predator and ********* are almost interchangeable titles. Don't be that guy.

What other things can we as players do to encourage new players to join the game and stay around?

I would add try to help people out

small things like saying "hit R" but also tell them why

"join up" working together is better then working alone

reduce your in game mouse sensitivity

lead your target

just stuff to help people instead of being a troll

its ok to experiment on load outs so dont spend half the match lambasting a player over a build
tone down the personal attacks on the forums it puts a bad taste in peoples mouths (so to speak)

instead you can say nope it was this way or that way

just try to act like your part of the human race lol

[Horseman]

-Winter, on 06 February 2020 - 11:03 AM, said:

This game has a worse New Player Experience than Warframe when it was in Beta. The community is full of bad advice to new players with bad builds, bad strats, that develop bad habits. This community is more toxic then LoL. The game gives you no help to figure out skill trees, sync etc. The game starts placement for Tiers while you're a cadet which means a brand new players are going to T5 to dig a hole. Group Queue is dead which tbh for a FPS is beyond laughable. I mean the list can go on and on. Also playing on an alt as a cadet isn't the same as a new player never touching the game prior let's be honest here. Don't sugar coat it. NPE in this game sucks.

I would agree except for your claim about toxic community. Every community has its' share of toxic ******** and complete morons, but this one is fairly welcoming to new players as long as they're willing to learn and improve.
The moment they proclaim themselves experts or actively defend bad habits, they're going to be put in their place by people who have hundreds of times more practical experience than they did to stop them contributing to that bad advice you've pointed out.

Zirconium Kaze, on 06 February 2020 - 10:20 PM, said:

I think what might help the game is creating a persistent team death match map that's quite large. Allow respawns and just let it run for three hours. Team with the highest score wins.

When Faction Play rolls Skirmish, it can go along these lines (except obviously your respawns are limited to the mechs in your drop deck)

Davegt27, on 07 February 2020 - 03:03 AM, said:

its ok to experiment on load outs so dont spend half the match lambasting a player over a build

Agreed, but if I see a bad build while spectating I'm going to drop a piece of advice (or two) for possible improvements. Some players even listen to it, some go "SHUT YO MOUTH IM GUNNA PLAY DIS GAEM HOWEVAH I WUNT!". That probably tells you who has potential as a mechwarrior and who opted for a lifetime T5 residency.

Edited by Horseman, 07 February 2020 - 03:36 AM.

[Warning incoming Humble Dexterer]

The forum is toxic, it only takes a few unchecked foul-mouthed players to ruin one, and MWO has it's share for sure.

Teamplay isn't encouraged, other then for stuffing 12 hand selected players to farm everyone out of FP and MWO, specially new players, with great success : By allowing full sized groups into FP, PGI chose quality over quantity, and obtained neither, since the average FP match ends up even more one-sided then in a Pay To Win game.

Grinding ? More like no grinding : In similar games you have to grind through a bunch of underperforming unpopular early Tier vehicles to reach the high Tier one that you want, and that's precisely how they separate the new players from the top ones, based on the tier of their vehicle. In MWO you just skip straight to the mech you want, with no previous grinding to unlock previous mechs from a mech tree.

Fixing QP :
- I'm in favor of switching QP from 12vs12 to 8vs8, to help better separate new players from the Tier 1 players.
- This change might also increase the amount of QP players switching to FP for the sake of playing 12vs12 matches.

Fixing FP :
- Change the FP MM : The MM should favor Group vs Group first, Solo vs Solo second, Group vs Solo third as a last resort, instead of always allowing groups to cut the line.
- Maybe pay 1MC to the players who win a full 12man group vs full 12man group FP match, to encourage full group vs full group competitive play over the current group vs solo farming meta.

Basically, make MWO :
- More competitive and more rewarding to competitive players : Outside of Comp Championships the matches are mostly made of one sided stomps.
- Less rewarding but more fun to casual players : Nobody in their right mind wants to play a game to keep getting stomped, not even for free.

[RickySpanish]

Zirconium Kaze, on 06 February 2020 - 10:20 PM, said:

I disagree. I started playing two days ago and things are easy enough to understand and exploring the different options is fun. Been playing the game old fashioned and just buying everything with C-Bills can make it a challenging fun. Just takes time for me to get used to the different mechs and upgrades. I think what might help the game is creating a persistent team death match map that's quite large. Allow respawns and just let it run for three hours. Team with the highest score wins. Match making, waiting times, and one life per match is what puts people off.

Just reduce the amount of c-bills by an appropriate amount for the game type so that the matchmaking is still more profitable to earn c-bills thus giving it importance to participate in. Just use extra large maps and make it where you don't respawn at a set point, but rather, the game does a proximity check for you and spawn you somewhere randomly within the map away from potential threats. Thus giving a time for all to recover from the sudden loss and regain their bearings. Plus, it would fragment the teams in interesting ways which should be enough to break up camps.

call it Anarchy mode.

Glad you are having a good time, afterall that is what counts! Tinkering certainly is the essence of the game and it has more opportunity for that than any other. Regarding Anarchy mode, that would be interesting, perhaps it will be added at some point. The large maps are presently rather unused in regular quick play and random spawns could change that.

[Kodyn]

Honestly after thinking about it and reading a lot of these responses, plus thinking back to older threads- a lot of it comes down to this:

PGI should have instead of making MW5, combined the effort and resources into redoing MWO, like several other games have done. A lot of what's in MW5 would have been great for MWO, and even vice versa. Having a single player campaign for the TT guys, the casuals, the joystick users, the AI stompers. Then a fully fleshed-out FP mode for the main game. If FP were populated, rewarding and fun, I think the largest chunk of the player base would reside there. At one point in time we did, even with the sub-par iterations we've actually had.

Instead I see guys with joysticks in T1 QP matches running around with 5 different weapon groups attempting to RP their favorite Mech Warrior while their allies are trying to just win a match. As a solo, I can't even play FP anymore without linking up with a unit or using external voip to meet people. A new player likely wouldn't have much idea what FP even is. Wouldn't understand what happened to GQ, what the purpose of Solaris even is, etc. Needs to be better in-game tools for explaining and directing players to various features.

More than anything else, the game needs polish, and needed proper advertising a long time ago. Barely anyone has heard of it, so the population was never going to get very large. Then the lack of polish, the relationship between the community and devs, the lack of trust, everything else come into play and it's tough to retain people. The community is actually great. The toxicity is generally directed at PGI, not each other, or it's specific rivalries between forum users or units. I've always seen newer players actively seeking advice or to improve be treated pretty well. I joined a unit as a pretty fresh newb and learned as I went along with them. To this day I see bigger units still offering to take on new people.

There's far worse communities for far more successful games, so any amount of bitterness around here is definitely not having much if anything to do with the NPE. PGI just kinda gave up after a point, we could all feel it and it showed in the product. The community doesn't want to give up, those that are left, but we haven't been given much to work with anymore, outside of Matt still chugging along trying to keep us entertained with events. QP, rinse, repeat, unless you like Solaris, which I'm pretty sure most of us don't. Some of us will be here til the lights go off, but I'm not sure how many new people will be with us by then.

[Horseman]

Quote

Instead I see guys with joysticks in T1 QP matches running around with 5 different weapon groups attempting to RP their favorite Mech Warrior while their allies are trying to just win a match.

(bad trigger finger, no shooting friendlies)

Quote

unless you like Solaris, which I'm pretty sure most of us don't.

It's fun if done in bursts. I typically play 25 per division per season just to cash in the huge pile of GXP (although several million C-Bills certainly don't hurt), sometimes a few more, and those runs are pretty enjoyable (also potentially useful as brawl practice)

[martian]

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the worst problem of MWO:

MWO is one mile wide, but only one inch deep.

Seriously, after one or two weeks of playing, you know everything that you need to know about MWO:

1) Maps:
It does not matter that MWO has a dozen of maps, since the players consistently voted for about three or four maps. It is always Polar Highland, Canyon Network or Mining Collective (if available). Maps such as Forest Colony Classic, Frozen City Classic, Terra Therma, etc. might as well not exist.

2) Grind:
Endless grind with no purpose. Once the beginning player buys a few 'Mechs (either for MC or C-Bills) and masters them, what further goal is there?

• Good 'Mechs - once the novice player gets some good 'Mechs, what is he supposed to do? Buy "bad" 'Mechs? We all know that using some junk 'Mechs is chore, but definitely no fun. Keep using his good 'Mechs? Then you are simply hoarding C-bills with no use for them.
  
• Bad 'Mechs - some 'Mechs can be described such as "noob traps". It does not matter if those 'Mechs have been been bad or mediocre from the start (Orion) or if they were left behind when meta changed (Cataphract). The only thing that really matters is that if the beginning player buys those 'Mechs, he will usually end the game disappointed and probably will leave the game soon. Trial 'Mechs share this problem too.

3) Game mode
It does not matter how many game modes MWO has, since all those game modes offer the identical gameplay: The right-hand nascaring ...

4) End game:

Supposed endgames are joke and I am certain that everybody knows that:

• Faction Play: The novice player checks the FP, sees the stupid design of FP maps, is quickly farmed and leaves - probably forever. My personal guess is that about 99% players, who have checked the FP, have already done so.
  
• Group queue: We all know how it looks.
  
• Solaris: No difference from above.

And that's all, gentlemen. MWO can not offer anything else.


P.S.: As for the supposed toxicity of the forums, I do not think that this is a big problem. Why? Simply because the majority of MWO players does not visit the forum anyway.