193 replies to this topic

[IanDresarie]

Deathshade, on 17 November 2020 - 07:14 AM, said:

This is a great example of why we really need a human. This lets the players know that he/she has a mountain of stuff to learn already. Day one. Odds are this is where you lose your first players that have zero knowledge of the game.

As in, having a human guide you through the UI? In that case I'd suggest a kind of "mentor"-system perhaps. Could be based on Discord or Forums for now to keep it cheap, with potential ingame-UIs added later.

Basically any player can opt-in to be a mentor. A new player gets a big button to press saying "I need help!".
This would in turn generate a forum thread or Discord message notifiying all currently online mentors who could then add that person and guide them through the first steps. After which they'd get a reward. Ideally you would make it 1 on 1, but that requires thought on how to deal with inactive mentors etc.
As with my former suggestion, this is a cheap base system to consider and expand on.

Edited by IanDresarie, 17 November 2020 - 03:22 PM.

[Jormangunder]

GeminiWolf, on 17 November 2020 - 12:27 AM, said:

Remove the groups from the Quick Play. It has brought the seal clubbing one was avoiding in the Faction Play.

If groups got removed (or reduced), I would not play it. This game is no fun going solo. If I'm not in a lance with friends/unit mates, I won't play.

[Deathshade]

thievingmagpi, on 17 November 2020 - 03:09 PM, said:

Discord exists and works fine. Lots of new players use it.

Nothing wrong with Discord. I will detail later here. How do lots of new players use the current one? How do they even know to use it? There is nothing in-game or obvious on the mwomercs.com that will bring new players to the Discord.
There is nothing wrong with the current list. I am saying it hasn't worked until now. Has it? Some of those things already exist.
In my opinion, new player experience should be the primary goal or the other ones will just be wasted as the player base slowly dies again. The only community we have here is the Discord and the forums.

thievingmagpi, on 17 November 2020 - 03:09 PM, said:

100% irrelevant.

Not so. That means you have never witnessed a thriving MW community beyond what MWO was years ago. That had a massive influx of players because it was the new multiplayer MW game.

thievingmagpi, on 17 November 2020 - 03:09 PM, said:

Got a little tip for you in case you haven't realized.

Mechwarrior 2 isn't MWO

Mechwarrior 3 isn't MWO

Mechwarrior 4 isn't MWO

Mechassault isn't MWO

Mektek isn't MWO

Living Legends isn't MWO

Tabletop isn't MWO

Anything else?

It is funny that you point that out. We are talking about a multiplayer community so lets breakdown your list.

MW2 and MW3, I heard they had thriving multiplayer communities.

MW4 / Mektek had a thriving multiplayer community for well over a decade from the late 90's. I was there from 2000 to 2008. It really was the best example of the community thriving. That thriving community was built and maintained on players actively recruiting, training and gathering for matches. I know. I was there doing it as a saKhan. You could launch matches outside of the game. That made it so easy to play matches.
Mektek is still maintaining the game and it STILL has a multiplayer community with Discord I might add.

Living Legends was another originally thriving multiplayer community. That was maintained by players outside the game as well. That community still exists on the hard work of community leaders. Those folks are still working hard over there and they rally players from Discord. The call goes out via email or Discord so players can group up in their servers.

[Deathshade]

Jormangunder, on 17 November 2020 - 04:05 PM, said:

If groups got removed (or reduced), I would not play it. This game is no fun going solo. If I'm not in a lance with friends/unit mates, I won't play.

You hit the nail on the head. PGI, from the beginning, has killed groups and now we are left with the results.

In my opinion, there is no MW game without players to team up with. Playing with other MW's makes this game fooking awesome and brings us back time and again. That is few and far between nowadays. It so hard to even find groups to team up with and play with night after night. It is not just grouping up but the camaraderie that comes with many battles together. That is why so many former/current military and law enforcement types are drawn to this game.

If we can find a way to facilitate that camaraderie, MWO would certainly see players coming back and new players drawn to the hype.

I haven't seen Bombadil bite on this obvious fact so I will just shut up.
Those kind of ideas should go to the bottom of the list because it would mean a lobby system and chat rooms in MWO.
It would mean seeing who is playing currently and who you will fight in the Queue. See players as the connect or disconnect. Like was said earlier. It may be just too much latency for the game to handle.

[Ragedog4]

I want to bring this up again to the community. For brand new players getting 4 standard IS variants for free (fully unlocked/mastered on all skills) would only help the new player base.

They start with a Hunchback 4g. Standard work horse, big gun, pew pew lasers. Just fun.

After 25 games along with the C-bill bonus they get a (and I'm changing this from my last choice) Thunderbolt 5s which has an array of different weapons to try out, but fun armor quirks to take a hit.

Next 25 they get a Raven 3L to test out NARC and ECM and show them they scouting way of Mechwarrior.

Last 25 they get a Battlemaster 1G giving them an assault that looks cool and has a PPC to try out with other weapons.

THE WHY: Because these mechs are not amazing or broken, they can be a lot of fun still. Giving them 4 mechs with 4 free mech bays (especially this late into the game being out) can give us this:

1) GREAT advertisement "Get 4 fully mastered mechs for free by just playing your first 75 games!" along with a new player pack "and buy the new player pack for extra bounus!" etc etc.
2) Helps cut the "bad feels" of dying in a 1 life per match to more experienced players and learning how to play a steep curve of game play.
3) They can use their Cadet Bonus to upgrade these mechs or buy the mech they enjoy more because they had time to play these mechs first before their first big purchase, and...
4) Gives them not only 4 safe mechs to fall back to when feeling bad a new mech is giving them trouble (even I do it still playing since pre-closed beta) as well as a fully unlocked skill tree in each of the 4 tonnage categories, so they can figure things out before screwing up their precious new mech they bought and wanted try out (this also helps remove feel bads)

I for sure don't need any of these mechs so don't bother giving to them to anyone who started an account over 4-6 months old, but do I ever want my new players to feel like they are having fun!

[Jormangunder]

Deathshade, on 17 November 2020 - 05:18 PM, said:

You hit the nail on the head. PGI, from the beginning, has killed groups and now we are left with the results.

In my opinion, there is no MW game without players to team up with. Playing with other MW's makes this game fooking awesome and brings us back time and again. That is few and far between nowadays. It so hard to even find groups to team up with and play with night after night. It is not just grouping up but the camaraderie that comes with many battles together. That is why so many former/current military and law enforcement types are drawn to this game.

If we can find a way to facilitate that camaraderie, MWO would certainly see players coming back and new players drawn to the hype.

I haven't seen Bombadil bite on this obvious fact so I will just shut up.
Those kind of ideas should go to the bottom of the list because it would mean a lobby system and chat rooms in MWO.
It would mean seeing who is playing currently and who you will fight in the Queue. See players as the connect or disconnect. Like was said earlier. It may be just too much latency for the game to handle.

I agree with everything you said Deathshade.

What makes MWO different is that by it's nature, it encourages people to work together. If someone takes the reigns and starts calling shots in QP or FP, the whole team does better and has more fun. This game separates itself not just by featuring big stompy robots, but by being different form some sort of head-shot happenin', no scope snipin' shooters like Call-of-Doody/rainbow six/Halo/Destiny. Those games have regenerating health, but damage in MechWarrior is permanent. So you

I really wish faction play wasn't the only way to throw a twelve man group together. Most people in the unit I'm part of don't really jive on Faction Play, but I know if there was a 12 man QP, we'd be playing way more, even if we were getting our stuff pushed in. The true fun, at least for me, in MWO is teaming up with my mates and executing a plan. Usually can't do that with Pugs and certainly can't improve our team synergy when we can't do multiple drops with them.

Maybe if there was a day (or even days) that QP was open up for 12-man drops. What could the harm be if it was just one day? Or make one day where FP is similar to QP with map and game-type voting with no drop deck required. I'm just spitballing here, but I think some people would really like to que up as a twelve man for something other than FP.

[Akillius]

Daeron Katz, on 16 November 2020 - 01:13 PM, said:

In this thread, lets discuss ideas for updating, adding to, and improving our new player experience in MechWarrior Online, such as:

• Change Starting Tier (to 4.5)
• Update Trial 'Mechs (regularly with appropriate consultation)
• Increase Cadet Bonus
• Update In-game Tutorial
• Establish New Player Video Tutorials (official and community)
• MWO Discord Channel (update MW5 Discord to MWO/MW5)
• Update Wiki / Add Wiki Contributors

Daeron instead consider these few simple, fast, econo things PGI can do to clean up NPE instead.


Keep Blocked players muted after relog/restart MWO client.

Remove the cadet "C" icon from match screen.
- OR give new player option to hide/show it? (to reduce harassment/toxic aggro bs that rarely/never gets reported.)

Remove Team-groups from SOLO Quick Play
- AND consider... give Solo QP player Opt-IN option with Team QP queue.

Start new players at tier 5
- Unless they Complete all 25 Cadet Bonuses then start at tier 4.

New accounts start with 8 mech bays instead of 4.
- (Was thinking 6 originally but 8 gives 2 drop decks to start with (1clan/1IS), and 9+ is way too many)

Add information in-game (popups?) for new players that:
- more Mechbays can be purchased,
- watch for sales of all items, mechs, mechbays, etc.,
- can get free MC, items, Mechs, and more from events.
- Get millions of CBills and GSP just for completing academy tutorial missions!

Remove costs to have players join Units.
- (to get fun casual and QP-only units to start to re-emerging?)

Remove Tiers from being viewable, in game, in forums, everywhere.
- (If PSR is working finally then seeing Tiers is irrelevant!)

Make supply cache open-able from popup notice.
Simply change the popup's "Close" button to "Open Now" button?
Even if it just automatically brings us to the location to open FFS...
Popup > Close > Home > Inventory > Supply Cache > OPEN >:/


Add Mechs and Mech Bays back to supply caches.
- yes mechs stopped appearing just days or weeks after caches got introduced, way back in the day.
Well do that same bs thing again, for the marketing!!!


Completing all 25 Cadet Bonuses gives 12,500,000 CBills and 48,000 GXP.
More then enough to buy a decent mech. Make a popup to tell new player those facts.
- However the costs to upgrade changed with the timeline advancing with new shootas.
- The CBills were plenty before modules replaced by skill tree
- Those 48,000 GXP will cost 2,450,000 CBills to convert into 61 skills.
Change "Cadet Bonus 25" to give 2,700,000 CBills and 91 GSP. (== 15 mil CBills total)
(Use carrot+stick to get them to complete academy for that cadet bonus #25)

Add a few new "Cadet Bonus 26+" to let everyone earn another "easy" 5 mil cbills???

Remove early disconnect from match penalties IF player rejoins match and stays playing/watching until the match score end screen.
I've seen entire teams both DC'd, like the server kicked everyone.


Immediately after patching, add some new pack to Steam and every MWO player on steam will get notification...
hopefully with some info on whatever changes were made too..... (hint)

[Tamerlin]

Copied from last weeks thread

Change Starting Tier (to 4.5) - Should be done today. I'd start them at Tier 4.9. New players should never see Tier 1s, perhaps not even Tier 2s.

Update Trial 'Mechs - Let's start with the bigger issue: stock mechs are bad. I appreciate PGI using BattleTech Table Top lore values, but lore assumes a turn-based, RNG-to-hit, RNG-hit-location game. No competing game expects the player to completely scrap a new vehicle they just bought and re-configure it from scratch. Every stock mech should be a "champion mech", with a valid build. From there the trial mechs can rotate thru the stock mechs as often as needed.

Increase Cadet Bonus - Competing games work around this by having vehicle tiers; lower tier vehicles are cheaper than higher tier vehicles. MWO does not have vehicle tiers, so costs are static. A brand-new player can buy the most meta mech after only playing MWO two days. Instead of just giving new players more CBills, how about giving them some kind of "mech coupons" that reduce the cost of mechs. And since you are making better stock mechs (see above), players don't need to have such detailed mech configuration knowledge to start with. You can even add such coupons into supply caches, thus rewarding players who play the game often.

Update In-game Tutorial - I like CPT Adams and the Mech Warrior Academy. It gives good mech control basics, but it doesn't give details. For example - firing a gauss is different than firing an A/C, or how some mechs have missile bay doors (See below in the "Wiki" section for comments on game mechanics). You could have a standard survey for new players: "It's been six months, what do you know now that you wish you could have known at the beginning."

Establish New Player Video Tutorials - This is the same thing as "In-game Tutorial" and Mech Warrior Academy. There are plenty of MWO tutorial videos - Kanajashi's are very good. But many are dated. I see this point as being that none are PGI official. Some real thought needs to be put into deciding if it is PGI's job to teach you how to play MWO "correctly". I think in 2020 we can assume that everyone knows how to search for MWO tutorials and videos on YouTube (or elsewhere). I say if the Academy is updated, PGI-produced tutorial videos are not needed.

MWO Discord Channel - I have no issue with this, but do competing games do this? If it's cheap, then go for it.

Update Wiki / Add Wiki Contributors - As a primary Wiki author I have a fair bit to say here. I believe that every game mechanic should be explained by PGI either in the MWO client or MWOmercs. Not in forums, not in Outreach HPG, not in Smurfy's or MechDB. Everything about the game should be in the game - documented, approved and controlled by the game developers.

PGI needs an Information Strategy. What kind of data should in the MWO client, and what should be in MWOmercs/Wiki? As we initially made the Wiki, Kanajashi and I used Daeron as our editor, but we had a very free hand in what to add. We worked on "what do we think is missing"? The Wiki a bit un-updated (my last one was 2019?) as PGI focused on MW5 and MWO was left flapping in the wind starting in 2018.

Going forward, there needs to be an PGI approved Information Editor/Referee, and a change process. Perhaps a permanent forum dealing with information and suggestions. Determine some rules on what kind of information goes where.

Thanks again for this, Daeron. Good luck.

[Heketon]

Make a variant of all mechs available to new players. That way they can play with more than 16 types at a time. Don't like the Spider or Flea? The Jenner, the Panther and the Wolfhound is also available.

Make a series of official YouTube videos that describe game features like the MechLab or Solaris. Don't rely on having the new user hunt down a possibly out-of-date video about the skill tree from Kanajashi.

[Horseman]

Akillius, on 17 November 2020 - 08:17 PM, said:

Remove Tiers from being viewable, in game, in forums, everywhere.

...Tiers on the forums are opt in. Yours will not be shown unless you agreed to have it shown.

Quote

Add Mechs and Mech Bays back to supply caches.
- yes mechs stopped appearing just days or weeks after caches got introduced, way back in the day.
Well do that same bs thing again, for the marketing!!!

They changed it with the cache revamp around Solaris launch I think. In the current model I think mechs are a bit too much for the cache system.

Tamerlin, on 17 November 2020 - 08:49 PM, said:

Update Trial 'Mechs - Let's start with the bigger issue: stock mechs are bad. I appreciate PGI using BattleTech Table Top lore values, but lore assumes a turn-based, RNG-to-hit, RNG-hit-location game. No competing game expects the player to completely scrap a new vehicle they just bought and re-configure it from scratch. Every stock mech should be a "champion mech", with a valid build. From there the trial mechs can rotate thru the stock mechs as often as needed.

Non-viable. There is a portion of the community that does stock mode in lobbies, and you're talking about invalidating their lore builds. Let's... not go there.

Quote

Increase Cadet Bonus - Competing games work around this by having vehicle tiers; lower tier vehicles are cheaper than higher tier vehicles. MWO does not have vehicle tiers, so costs are static. A brand-new player can buy the most meta mech after only playing MWO two days. Instead of just giving new players more CBills, how about giving them some kind of "mech coupons" that reduce the cost of mechs. And since you are making better stock mechs (see above), players don't need to have such detailed mech configuration knowledge to start with. You can even add such coupons into supply caches, thus rewarding players who play the game often.

A clever way of funneling them towards specific chassis, I think that would be great no matter if stock mechs are changed or not.

Quote

MWO Discord Channel - I have no issue with this, but do competing games do this? If it's cheap, then go for it.

They already have a Discord server for MW5, it's just a matter of rebranding it and adding some channels for MWO.

Quote

Update Wiki / Add Wiki Contributors - As a primary Wiki author I have a fair bit to say here. I believe that every game mechanic should be explained by PGI either in the MWO client or MWOmercs. Not in forums, not in Outreach HPG, not in Smurfy's or MechDB. Everything about the game should be in the game - documented, approved and controlled by the game developers.

The core mechanics definitely need to be in the client, probably some kind of glossary of terms too. Anything that requires a more thorough explanation probably belongs in the Wiki.

[BoldBattleBrother]

The new player UX starts with the main menu, which is overwhelming. The game has high complexity and this is thrown in the face of new players from the first second. Honestly, I feel like streamlining every experience moment from first-launch through the tutorial and into the first game by removing all the clutter would be more impactful than fiddly tweaks with cadet bonuses, etc. (But maybe there's no budget for such work.)

The other thing is, compared to other games, there is a lot going on in a match of MWO. Having better feedback about why what happened to your mech happened would be useful in training players. For example, rather than just watching the mech fall down, the camera could pull back and show the killer, or the local battlefield situation. Displaying a minimap replay after matches instead of cryptic number spam would help teach the flow of the game better than anything else I can think of.

[Firearrow]

The New Players need to be moved into tier 4.5 as soon as possible. Just yesterday I had a match with a Cadet in a King Crab that I took out. The player was standing still on Viridian and was a sitting duck and was down less than 2 minutes into the match. There's no reason why he should have been in that match. Getting destroyed that fast in a match has to be super frustrating for a new player and it doesn't help keep them around.

[Telthas]

I'm in agreement with anything that gives new players a chunk of free mechs. There so many out there right and buying the wrong one out the gate can break you right now. Half the fun of MWO is customizing your mech and right now with the cadet bonus you can maybe buy one or two and easily eff yourself with a poor engine buy where it would be easier to restart than grind out of the mistake.

[Nightmare1]

PGI can use my Training Videos from this playlist for community-driven training materials:

https://www.youtube....f3rGq5_d5Wdtw6I

I used to host a Training Night for The Brethren Pirate Periphery Confederation [TBRN] and these vids are from those training nights.

[Telthas]

Maybe some kind of mentor program could be useful? Players who are approved by PGI has being helpful to answering new player's questions? No idea how to implement that.

[Deathshade]

Nightmare1, on 18 November 2020 - 06:31 PM, said:

PGI can use my Training Videos from this playlist for community-driven training materials:

https://www.youtube....f3rGq5_d5Wdtw6I

I used to host a Training Night for The Brethren Pirate Periphery Confederation [TBRN] and these vids are from those training nights.

That is exactly what I have been talking about.
PGI needs to understand that unit leads like you are the lifeblood of this game. You go above and beyond to help new players. You understand that with good training comes solid players that stick around. There are other units doing the same thing.
PGI needs to do the same thing or facilitate this process further.

[Firewired]

Change the default MWO install settings for MOUSE SENSITIVITY to between 0.1 and 0.2.

I cannot recall what the default install setting is, and I do not claim to know what the ideal setting should be, but I do know it is too sensitive for new players to properly control their Battlemech and target opponents.

Most new players will not try to change default settings until after their first few drops of endless pain, and by then it may be too late. They are not going to peruse forums or do goggle searches or read wookies (puns intended). They will simply quit.

As has been said by many people already, if you want to hook new players you have to make their first two hours very enjoyable and easy to play, or you will lose them forever.

[Alreech]

Jormangunder, on 17 November 2020 - 05:38 PM, said:

What makes MWO different is that by it's nature, it encourages people to work together. If someone takes the reigns and starts calling shots in QP or FP, the whole team does better and has more fun.

And it kills the fun of the Solo Players on the other side.
A big coordinated premade on the other side is bad enough, if they start to cheat by using MWOs VOIP to call out targets and work together with the rest of the team it's just IMBA.

Solo Quickplay is all about quick matches (5-8 minutes most times) without the need to find some mates first, like instant action modes in CoD or other shooters.
To improve MWOs Solo Quickplay PGI must move it even more towards that style of play, starting by better matchmaking for the competetive solo players who don't want "Mechdads" or "Noobz" in their team.

It also affects new players: PGI must improve the experience for new player without forcing them to play in a group.
While a group of experienced players using VOIP to give hints & anwser questions is clearly the best way to train a new player, such groups are bad for the match quality in Solo Quickplay.

So instead of improving the Looking for Group Lobby and creating a Teamspeak Channel for the group members every time a group is created PGI should focus more on Videos & Tutorials and other stuff that helps new solo players.

[Blechreiz]

Firewired, on 19 November 2020 - 08:46 AM, said:

Change the default MWO install settings for MOUSE SENSITIVITY to between 0.1 and 0.2.

This is very important.

The default sensitivity is way too high for beginners. I was also struggling with my aim (in addition to many other things that I didn't know of) until I found a hint somewhere in the forum to lower it to 0.3 or 0.2. After that it was much easier to play...

I think the idea of awarding "workhorse" mechs & mechbays to beginners after some matches sounds quite nice. Adding GSP to the cadet bonus would also help beginners. Maybe have a short tutorial to explain how the skilltree works and so people can see what difference the different skills can make in terms of mech perormance. Maybe give beginners the opportunity to chose a medium mech after this tutorial with 91 GSP so they can head into their first matches with a fully-skilled mech.

To help beginners with modifying their first mech, 3 popular builds from mechpecs for each medium chassis could be added to the client. This could also be explaine in a short tutorial after people have chosen their first mech during which they can modify their first mech free of cost.

[dr3dnought]

• Change Starting Tier (to 4.5)

ASAP. The INFREQUENT trolling of low tiers by an alt-account or two (which is still possible as it is currently) is far outweighed by the benefit of not having new players FREQUENTLY in a drop with MANY tier 1's

• Update Trial 'Mechs (regularly with appropriate consultation)

Update the builds and give each trial mech a full skill tree (91pt or equivalent if skill tree changes)

• Increase Cadet Bonus

Double the c-bills and give a bunch of GSP (at least enough for 91 skill points on their first mech)

• Update In-game Tutorial

I'm sure this needs doing but I don't have any specific ideas as it has been a long time since I did the tutorial as a new player

• Establish New Player Video Tutorials (official and community)

These need to be high quality with a unified look, otherwise they might be a turn off. Must be viewable in the game.

• MWO Discord Channel (update MW5 Discord to MWO/MW5)

Yes and link to it in the game

• Update Wiki / Add Wiki Contributors

Yes and make it viewable in the game. At the very least link to it in the game

Edited by dr3dnought, 19 November 2020 - 06:29 PM.