66 replies to this topic

[Nearly Dead]

The current discussion of PSR and the PSR reset in the Announcements forum really brings out the root cause of most of the issues that are being discussed there.

The problem of not enough players.

Also, PGI is LISTENING and ACTING on what they are hearing. I think that is an opportunity.

We keep attacking the problems that are caused by that problem, like a doctor prescribing drugs for kidney and heart problems for an out of control diabetic.

So, between PGI and the players how could we/they fix the root problem? How could PGI attract new players and retain more existing customers?

I would like to propose a brainstorming session here on how to get more people playing the game.

So, to state the desired outcome. How can we (PGI and players) increase the player population of MWO?

If anyone wants to play, please post ideas but don't judge the ideas put forward, if enough people participate and PGI wants to read the ideas they can throw out the impractical or just plain bad ideas themselves, judging ideas early just discourages other people from putting ideas on the table. I realize that there is always the possibility that PGI is content with the status quo, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I'll start.
1)
Offer a new Champion or Hero mech for a limited time and use the revenue to create one new map. Once the map is paid for discontinue the mech so that the owners have the satisfaction of other players knowing that they helped pay for the new map. Just like buying a brick with your name on it. Not just new camo, at the very least a variant that is somewhat unique. If successful, possibly repeat annually. If not, well some of us have a really unique mech.

2)
Put a means in the store for players to send a gift link to a non player with ?000 MC (enough to buy a middle range mech) plus 50 GSP. If it is not redeemed within a certain time it reverts to the player to spend themselves.

[Grimm Hammer]

A lot of people try the game and dont come back, the reason is the grind to create credits. If it was a little easier to make money to buy new mechs or improve current ones you would see more activity imo. What you have now is a new player gets in, gets those fast credits, gets, a few mechs then hits that wall. Part of the fun is that "new" shiny thing imo. Dont get me wrong, I spend rwm on mechs to solve this problem for myself because I dont have the time to grind. But alot dont have that and have to grind. Just my .02

[Lovas]

The player base problem is a symptom of the sickness (keeping up with your medical reference) - and that sickness is lack of any meaningful development in this game for the last three years at least. PGI will only get the amount of players they need if they provide meaningful changes to this game - and they stopped doing that when they announced MW5. Sure, they have tinkered here and there, but no significant development has been done for quite a while.

-They have not done anything meaningful to faction warfare since its launch
-Skill tree was implemented very poorly
-Community outreach is non existent
-And they react way to late to effect the prosperity of the game (logtom was horribly implemented and lasted way to long - and this PSR reset is also years too late just to name a few)
-They never hired the proper staff. They always did great with the art, but did poorly with map designs and game mechanics - let alone people who were proficient in the game engine

There is too much to write on what PGI should have done if they wanted this game to thrive - but we can't kid ourselves...this game was given just enough attention to let PGI move on from this game to MW5. They could have had 2 funding streams with both games, but they went all in on their new one - and then pissed off the community when they abandoned steam for MW5.

[CFC Conky]

Just throwing out ideas here...

What if new players could be awarded some of the trial mechs (including mech bay) after playing a certain number of matches, give a player one, say, every 100 matches. Set a max number of matches that need to be played, and/or number of mechs one can earn before going back to the normal game progression. They could be awarded in order of weight class, player choice, or randomly. Trial load outs but no xp bonus and you can keep the xp you earn on them before possession. This way a new player can spend most earnings on upgrades/skill points. They could also sell them for more c-bills and keep the mech bay.

Some of the trial battlemechs aren't horrible, and the omnis are versatile.

Give new players an achievable goal early on.

Good hunting,

CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 09 June 2020 - 09:53 AM.

[JediPanther]

I'd like an mc purchase-able one-time-only-per-account option to undo forced pgi changes to a mech. Hate the jenner's piss poor 14 armor compared to lct's 12? Make that armor up to 20-24. Hate the atlas having one of the worst acel decel speeds? Add 10 to it. Etc. Pgi refuses to make older mechs viable yet tell us to buy them? Why? If they were competitive to current mechs within its own weight class or against other mechs and not obsolete trash then people would have a reason to use them. Lct-1v bring back its super lpl cool down quirk.

[Davegt27]

well the easiest thing is advertisements

its a way to bring in players, they might not stay long but that is what most companies do

PGI would have a few goals
1) bring in new players
2) get them to spend money on the game
3) try to retain as many customers as they can


we spend most of the time on retention or I should say PGI spends most of there time on retention

could you imagine constantly complaining about the rules for football
or having the rules for football constantly changing

anyways best thing to do is have a starter pack sale every month

for $10 you get this ---
the game is already free to play

the cadet bonus is left over IGP BS (all it amounts to is free stuff for getting pounded into the ground)
you want them to spend money before they realize they are being used to feed the top tier players

JMTCW

[LordNothing]

one way to get new players is like half the price of all mechpacks permanently. there is certainly enough stuff in the game to buy, but spending $20+ on 3 variants of a chassis at this late stage of the game is asking way too much, especially when the rug could be pulled out from under us at any moment. making mechpacks cheaper might also make existing players buy more packs to flesh out their inventories.

you can also start giving new players more free stuff just for joining. four mechbays and some cadet bonuses are not enough to start playing well right out the gate, and trial mechs are just bad because they cant be leveled. so maybe giving players about 50 million cbills, 2k mc, and increase free mechbays to 8. you might also get rid of trial mechs and just give players some free starter mechs that they can start to level right out the gate.

at the end of the day the thing that i think ultimately led to the game's downfall is the lack of actual development. maps were few and far between. many were just half *** shortcuts and remakes. new tech should have also been coming out fairly regularly as well. resources were funneled into failed things like solaris and fp while the rest of the game, the parts that most people played were neglected.

Edited by LordNothing, 09 June 2020 - 02:50 PM.

[OmniFail]

Nearly Dead, on 09 June 2020 - 08:28 AM, said:

How can we (PGI and players) increase the player population of MWO?

Oh! Oh!

I know this one.

Pay them to play.

[Nearly Dead]

OmniFail, on 09 June 2020 - 03:18 PM, said:

Oh! Oh!

I know this one.

Pay them to play.

Reminds me of when I first saw some of my son in law's art work. "Why in the world don't you sell these, they're great!"

"Because then it would be work and I wouldn't want to do it."

This whole idea may be pointless, but if someone posts a silver bullet idea maybe something good will come of it.

[Eatit]

Use what you have learned from MWO and MW5 and make MWO 2.0

Advertise

[LordNothing]

OmniFail, on 09 June 2020 - 03:18 PM, said:

Oh! Oh!

I know this one.

Pay them to play.

i had an idea awhile back.

use prisoners as ai!

make em run all the trash tier mechs and crappy builds and let everyone farm them. for this they get 10 cents an hour to spend at the commissary and access to the shower with the working security cameras.

Edited by LordNothing, 09 June 2020 - 04:36 PM.

[Anomalocaris]

I just want solo queue back, then I'll start playing again.

In the meantime, since Russ is so enamored with World of Tanks, I think that cadets should be given the option to select fully skilled mechs when reaching certain milestones, so that they end up with one of each weight class by the time they're done.

This isn't my idea, saw someone else propose it. But I like it and I stole it.

[LordNothing]

Eatit, on 09 June 2020 - 04:35 PM, said:

Use what you have learned from MWO and MW5 and make MWO 2.0

Advertise

pgi didnt learn anything (see mw5).

[Vellron2005]

At this point, there is only one.. I repeat.. only ONE way to attract new players..

4 simple letters..

MWO2.

And it has to be waaaaay better, more expansive, more immersive, and have better core gameplay than MWO ever did.

Edited by Vellron2005, 10 June 2020 - 02:52 AM.

[ingramli]

Whodunit : PGI
Howdunit : Grind
Whydunit : Greed

Solution? PGI need changes, or have the game/IP run by another company.

[CuriousCabbitBlue]

double gxp

more weapons and armor types might help, even if they aren't amazing

ADs ...this is brought to you by rai....

more steam dlcs/steam sales

in game modes with objectives make the objectives more the focus, maybe, also rushing a base and capping it for a win isn't fun for ether side, maybe some weak base defenses or something

this is just a quick sleepy opinion, only one with any thought into is gxp is cause the skill tree grinding can be a huge pain, with more gxp you can grind it up on your fav mech then take in your new mech

eh and idk maybe a new players should be talking here

Edited by CuriousCabbitBlue, 10 June 2020 - 08:11 AM.

[Nearly Dead]

My concern with PGI is that they will do the same thing I saw managers do for over 40 years in manufacturing. When challenged, they TALK about innovation and finding new ideas but they DO what they have always done, only harder.

Trying to get someone outside to box to think, because from inside the box, the sides seem pretty tall.

[GARION26]

Davegt27, on 09 June 2020 - 01:10 PM, said:

well the easiest thing is advertisements

its a way to bring in players, they might not stay long but that is what most companies do

PGI would have a few goals
1) bring in new players
2) get them to spend money on the game
3) try to retain as many customers as they can


we spend most of the time on retention or I should say PGI spends most of there time on retention

could you imagine constantly complaining about the rules for football
or having the rules for football constantly changing

anyways best thing to do is have a starter pack sale every month

for $10 you get this ---
the game is already free to play

the cadet bonus is left over IGP BS (all it amounts to is free stuff for getting pounded into the ground)
you want them to spend money before they realize they are being used to feed the top tier players

JMTCW

I think this is the best post in the thread.

The issue is bringing in new players - not just retaining existing. For any game there is major drop off over time. Think about all the games you have played over the last ten years. How many are you still playing? I've got two games I play now that I've been playing for years (Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes) and I'm a purely FTP player on that game, and Blood Bowl which has a set initial purchase price. Everything else I'll try out for a month or two almost always as a FTP or with a set small initial purchase price. MWO online on the other hand I've spent money on happily (during MC sales) and am still really enjoying 3 months in.
You have to get new players in - some will like the game and stick and spend cash, a few (the Whales) will spend very large amounts of money. You bring in lots of players for a FTP with the hope of some spending small amounts of cash ($5-20 in the first year) and then leaving, and a very small subset willing to be big spenders (for sake of rough estimates $300-1000 over a year) over time. But you've got to get people into the game.

There isn't any actual advertising for the game to bring new players in. I found this game because Baradul's youtube videos popped up in my suggested videos. I watched for a year until Coronavirus and a new laptop made me try out the game. I watched because the graphics looked great, Baradul is a great ambassador for how enjoyable and tactical the game play can be. I played because I had time and the hardware that let me try it out finally. I'm three months in and still loving it. That's dumb luck, but PGI could pay to promote his videos potentially in the youtube our twitch or other social medial platform.

But it doesn't have to be just on PGI's back. If you are on social media - talk about the game in non MWO venues. Particularly if your circle includes people who want to play video games with stompy robots (don't post it to your FB italian recipe group.) With advertising on social media the return is low usually less then 1% of viewers but that's fine - social media means a lot of views may happen from one post that took 30 seconds to write. If even 10% of currently active players write that positive post advertising post on their social media account once every week or two that's a lot of eyeballs and resultant new players testing it out.

The separate issue is how to get money from players who are longer term players. For the non whale low value spender I think themed sales are a great way to get people to spend. If say a specific mech pack was for a week $5 instead of $10 I'd think about it. The game is actually really well designed from a player perspective in that spending money doesn't give you a pay to win advantage. Alternatively pair a mech pack sale with an event using that mech maybe that would encourage people to pull the trigger there.

For the whales I'm not sure what to offer them particularly without further expansions planned. Lots of other similar games offer Pay to Win options for whales which MWO has avoided - thankfully. Say you could buy weapons with 50% more damage for cash I think it would wreck this game.

Get people in - honestly the game is a lot of fun as is I think if more played it they'd get hooked. It could do some things better but it's a lot of fun (and if you don't think it's fun why are you spending your time playing and posting on this forum?)

[My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ]

As with every game the constant updating and changing or adding of content is what keeps people coming back to it. Instead of putting effort into a PSR reset that honestly could do more harm than good PGI should be putting that effort towards rebalancing and the adding of more content.

An example of new content is adding more variants to the game, its something new and interesting to pull players back in and can be done without needing much if any modelling work as most mechs have the existing geometry to accommodate different hardpoints.

[PurplePuke]

It's over.

Every game reaches its end, and that's a good thing.

There will be no new influx of players or new development. Just accept it and enjoy the final days/months of MWO.

Maybe, just maybe, there'll be an MWO2. And for those of us who found MW5 sorely lacking, MWO2 is our next best hope for a mech game.