98 replies to this topic

[Death Knell]

All of what


TroglodyteJB

said is pretty solid so far as ideas.

[StriplingWarrior]

Esarai, on 01 November 2012 - 05:28 AM, said:

If you managed to purchase the Atlas and Jenner with the proceeds of 30 games, you had an income of 10 million cb. I'm going to assume that you mean you already owned those mechs, and simply purchased upgrades. Well, 4.5 million for 30 matches works out to be about 150k cb per match, assuming all losses. Newplayers, under the same scenario, only make 60k cb. You're earning approximately 250% more than they do if your numbers are correct, without the founders' bonus.

Personally, I'm all for having a grind as a means to incentivize people to play, but what I am against is the fact that the opening grind doesn't demonstrate the game well enough to hook new players. It effectively locks newplayers out of most of the game until they've played 40-60 matches, which is more than enough time for them to get bored and never come back.

Honestly, I think the only real solution is to just outright give a newplayer a starting mech that they can customize, and say 1.5M cb to tinker with it. Otherwise what's the point? 'Here, let me spend 15 hours of my life waiting for this game to get good.' For a lot of people with really busy schedules, there are a very large number of alternative activities that would be much more rewarding. PGI is limiting their customer base with the current system. I'm not advocating this because I want the game to be cheaper time-wise (though that would be very nice), I'm advocating it because I'd hate for this game to fail. It needs to open itself to players outside the hard-core gamers and stalwart BT fans, and so the object of the trials should be to hook players and convince them it's worth their while and their money. Right now it does neither since the full scope of the game is hidden from view for an unacceptably large period of time.

The mechs are part of the founders package. The point is that, even without the founders mech and Premium C-bill bonus, which together average in the 60K to 70K range, a loss should get you about 90k C-bills. I dont net that much on a loss if my mech Jenny is destroyed. Which you would see if you looked at my stats I included earlier, happens fairly often, cause I suck. DHS, XL engines, Endo steel, Ferro Fibrous, Streak SRMs are all rather expensive tech. They cost a lot to buy, and repair. If, I can mod my Catapult so it has enough LRMs onboard to be relevant, mod the Atlas for the same reason, and fully change the loadout of the Jenner to include all of the level 2 tech I made a LOT more than 6M C-bills. The 6M number however was there to show that even taking a portion of my winnings and removing about 40% to negate the founders/premium bonuses a new player should be able to buy a light or medium mech after 30 battles.

That was part of my point, and my growing frustration. I have spent the last 2 nights(gotta trick-or-treat with the kiddies) getting myself killed while trying to herd cats, or frogs so the new guys will find some additional satisfaction in the game in it's current state. Because netting a profit aside, a win is always preferrable to a loss, right?

I do agree with you that something needs to be done to give the new player some sense of accomplishment during that initial grind. I am an advocate of giving GXP at the same rate any other mech would get it. I have heard some other ideas that I will list along with the GXP idea

1)give trial mechs GXP at the same rate as any other mech
2)give X C-bills
3)discount the first mech purchase
4)double XP and Cbills for first win per day per chassis.
5)multiple versions of each chassis in the Trial Mech lineup
6)give a "starter mech" to each player
7)give C-bills at same rate as any other mech, lock out trial mechs after first mech purchased.

Most of these are good ideas in themselves, I mean other games do some sort of thing along these lines. Right?
Like I said. I like the GXP one but even I am not sure it would be enough. I also do really like the "daily doubles" like that "other" game. I think the best would actually be a combination of those two with the added C-bills at the same rate but instead of locking out the trials to then toggle them to the current(or less) earnings to keep abuse at a minimum.

The idea behind the Trial Mechs is to have something to fall back on if you go bankrupt or want to try a new chassis. The toggle-remember I'm not a programmer so I dont have any actual idea-could be as simle as mechs in your garage or not, and how hard would it be to place another toggle so that if your C-bill account was over X then it would not unlock Trials again?

[Alex Wolfe]

Remember the announcements that "players will be given one mech to start with"?

Good times .

The current system seems to be aiming for squeezing the money out of people through sheer physical pain of grinding, just to make it stop. The problem is that there is an easier way to get out of the grinding pit: exit the game, uninstall, tell your friends the game sucks, never play again, which is easy to do for people without a profound mech-love to start with.

The "players online" display was shut off, but I don't see the squeeze policy good for player retention.

[AtomicFrawg]

Alex Wolfe, on 01 November 2012 - 07:25 AM, said:

Remember the announcements that "players will be given one mech to start with"?

Good times .

The current system seems to be aiming for squeezing the money out of people through sheer physical pain of grinding, just to make it stop. The problem is that there is an easier way to get out of the grinding pit: exit the game, uninstall, tell your friends the game sucks, never play again, which is easy to do for people without a profound mech-love to start with.

The "players online" display was shut off, but I don't see the squeeze policy good for player retention.

And they gave us four to start with........


They apparently have a plan.
http://mwomercs.com/...nd-trial-mechs/


Should they have put off open beta until this was hashed out..... But I find it funny no one was really complaining about this in closed beta.

Edited by AtomicFrawg, 01 November 2012 - 07:59 AM.

[TroglodyteJB]

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

And they gave us four to start with........


They apparently have a plan.
http://mwomercs.com/...nd-trial-mechs/


Should they have put off open beta until this was hashed out..... But I find it funny no one was really complaining about this in closed beta.

I'm excited to see the changes to trial mechs in the future. Hopefully it's implemented soon; I have some friends that I think would be unlikely to slog through the trial mech days to get a mech they can modify.

And calling it "giving us" four isn't really accurate. The Trial Mechs gimp the loadout and prep half of the game and negate an entire form of progression. They essentially loaned us four mechs and kept us on the hook for maintenance fees.

[AtomicFrawg]

TroglodyteJB, on 01 November 2012 - 08:04 AM, said:

I'm excited to see the changes to trial mechs in the future. Hopefully it's implemented soon; I have some friends that I think would be unlikely to slog through the trial mech days to get a mech they can modify.

And calling it "giving us" four isn't really accurate. The Trial Mechs gimp the loadout and prep half of the game and negate an entire form of progression. They essentially loaned us four mechs and kept us on the hook for maintenance fees.

Trial mech are not gimped.They are the same mechs/ load outs you can buy. They do fine in battle, again if you don't go trying to Call of Duty it out on the battlefield.

[Flapdrol]

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

Soooo you are wanting them to make the abuse of the lack of repairs bills even more profitable? Yeah I don't see that happening.

I just want people out of the trial mechs much faster, why call it abuse? the trial mechs are terrible, the only usable one is the centurion because if you run one of the others you'll often get a jenner, an atlas or a gausscat/missileboat cat agianst you.

[Alex Wolfe]

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

And they gave us four to start with........

Oh, guess silly me for thinking the word "give" implicates "ownership", then.

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

They apparently have a plan.
http://mwomercs.com/...nd-trial-mechs/

Thanks for the heads-up. Mass burnout started already, or just a reaction to mass suicide grind, I wonder. Here's hoping those changes don't just mean "trial mechs are now on cooldown until the match ends", or some other symptom-treatment-only idea like that.

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

Should they have put off open beta until this was hashed out.....

Yup.

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

But I find it funny no one was really complaining about this in closed beta.

Say, have you seen my sig yet? Among other things, many threads with lots of complaints about the system, terrible new player experience, apparent drive to "force" players to buy mechs instead of endear them to the game, lack of attachment or "hook" to the game until the first purchase, petitions for a "starter pokemon mech" selection?

Oh right it's all deleted.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 01 November 2012 - 08:38 AM.

[The Trice]

Ok Thats it , a free Hunchback For everyone!
Cheers!

[AtomicFrawg]

Flapdrol, on 01 November 2012 - 08:31 AM, said:

I just want people out of the trial mechs much faster, why call it abuse? the trial mechs are terrible, the only usable one is the centurion because if you run one of the others you'll often get a jenner, an atlas or a gausscat/missileboat cat agianst you.

Oh I agree with you on needing them out of trial mech fast. But on the other hand they need to learn to pilot the mechs so they don't go broke trying to keep up with the repair bill.

Example: Last night I had a raven run straight at me in my AC20cat and stopped to shot lasers at me. I then one shotted him in the cockpit. This guy then went off on underpowered noob mechs and how I sucked as a founder.... I am not even a founder.

[Alex Wolfe]

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 08:42 AM, said:

Oh I agree with you on needing them out of trial mech fast. But on the other hand they need to learn to pilot the mechs so they don't go broke trying to keep up with the repair bill.

Solution: keep trials for testing/emergencies, but also give people a "starter mech" to call their own.

Grinding both XP and cash to customize your ride is always a better hook than just cash.

I really don't like the way they're handling the F2P right now, and I don't see it beneficial for the game's longevity either. If you want people to spend, they need to stick around because they like the game, senseless grind gives a terrible new player experience and creates rapid burnout/encourages exploits.

[Pando]

I can't recall where, but i remember reading the game is progressive from one chassis to another going from light to assault. That being said, Either the players need to "choose a path" and begin with a 'mech to customize OR regarding trial 'mechs we just need an increase in Cbill generation AND actually award players for piloting the 'mech and grant SOME exp. I'm not saying it should rival a purchased 'mech's experience but atleast 1/4th the normal exp would be better than nothing. Cbills just need a slight nudge. I'm earning 280,000 on average on my founder account. My wife is making 94,000 when she wins. When I play on her account I'm topping @ 104,000 a match approximately.

My wife started playing with me. She wishes we had spent the other 120$ and purchased a 2nd leg founders pack because its going to take 170 WINNING DROPS for her to build her 'mech after upgrades, weapons and the basic chassis when starting from scratch. That's 170+ games in trial 'mechs, almost two weeks worth of play time @5 hours a day that she's not getting experience for. I understand why things are the way they are now. I just think they need to be re-evaluated.

Edited by Pando, 01 November 2012 - 09:06 AM.

[Rollio]

The grind in trial mechs is so bad it's just gonna scare away anyone who picks up this game as a f2p to try something different. They are without question the *WORST* mech variants available. (Least used = worst). They are NOT even remotely competitive with a properly configured purchased mech, espescially with the recent additions of endo steel, ferro fibrous and double heat sinks.

Looking at my drops last night toward the latter half of the evening it seemed like the majority of players in my matches had the founders tag. If already in just released open beta the population is dipping below 50% new players it should be obvious that something is wrong. The idea behind a F2P model is to encourage more players into your game, not discourage them to the point of giving it bad reviews and a general avoidance. And this is already what we see happening.

I miss the early days of closed of beta where we had a small MC stipend to start with and then had to earn cbills to go from there. Without those starting funds, being stuck in a trial mech for what is realistically probably a 20 hour+ grind JUST to move on to a stock variant of a decent light or medium frame is just asking too much of trial players. Espescially when the mechs they are given to work with are so obviously inferior.

A lot of founders have no idea just how bad the cbill grind is when they make 3 and 400 thousand cbills in a match. Compared to a free to play player stuck in some trial mech losing at least 70% of the games dropped into simply because more often than not they get stuck on team trial mech versus team pay 2 win premade. In the end a trial mech makes 60-70k for most loses and peaks at 110k ish on a rare win. It takes a LONG time to earn a real mech at this rate and it's not much fun getting constant losses along the way.

This in turn leads to free players botting and suicide rushing endlessly. It might be different if trial mechs were matched ONLY versus other trial mech users. This would effectively split the matchmaker, but it would at least somewhat level the playfield.

In the end the f2p model isn't working for this game. But it's frankly too underdeveloped to merit a box purchase price model. 1 game mode with 4 maps doesn't make for a game that people would be willing to throw a box fee at. PC gaming is a very competitive market. If you want to attract playerbase to your game over the thousands of other decent games out there. You better have some kind of hook. In it's current state, MWO doesn't have this.

[Kaputnik]

This discussion is old.

We already hat plenty of them in Closed beta resulting in loads of Polls all showing that in general most of the playerbase likes the trial mech thing but would prefer if the trials might be a little bit configureable (maybe with "trial weapons" or so). That way even the new ones could fiddle around with loadout a little bit.

What will happen as soon as you get your first mech? What makes it different to the trials? Except for the changeable Loadout, upgrading, gaining exp and paying repair/reammo costs you still would be "grinding" the game with one mech until you can afford a second mech, then grinding with two of them e.t.c. until you notice that you can do pretty the same thing with just the trials.

OK i have to admit, grinding to upgrade your mech towards perfection is more funny than simply grinding but it still is grinding. BTW all the loadout and upgrades bring nothing if one cannot play properly (no offense to anyone here but you must admit that this is a fact)

The trials will change frequently just like in League of Legends thus providing players with the possibility of testing them BEFORE buying them for any kind of credits and making it less boring by bringing a regular variation of mechs to test.

Of course the grind is not the funniest thing to do but we are going to get more gamemodes, other maps and so on so when released it wont be as boring as it might be now.

Btw, the trials arent that bad with their loadout. I have seen lots of trials that kick every customized mech out of his metal socks.

Heck from time to time even i prefer using trials than the four founders i have. Why? Even founders get boring once in a while.

edit:

Rollio, on 01 November 2012 - 09:25 AM, said:

They are without question the *WORST* mech variants available. (Least used = worst). They are NOT even remotely competitive with a properly configured purchased mech, espescially with the recent additions of endo steel, ferro fibrous and double heat sinks.

that is just plainly wrong, sorry mate, no offense.
heaps of players in trial mechs scrapping customized and/or founders out there.

Teamplay >>>>> (way more) >>>>>> Skill > Loadout
thats the way it is.

Rollio, on 01 November 2012 - 09:25 AM, said:

In the end the f2p model isn't working for this game. But it's frankly too underdeveloped to merit a box purchase price model. 1 game mode with 4 maps doesn't make for a game that people would be willing to throw a box fee at. PC gaming is a very competitive market. If you want to attract playerbase to your game over the thousands of other decent games out there. You better have some kind of hook. In it's current state, MWO doesn't have this.

It is beta, it will not be released with just 1 mode and 4 maps as there are already more modes and maps under development and we get to play them sooner than you think.

Give them the time to finish it, then (not any day sooner than that) criticise them for mistakes or lack of this and that as it is never fair to compare something unfinished to a finished product.

Edited by Kaputnik, 01 November 2012 - 09:43 AM.

[Kmieciu]

AtomicFrawg, on 01 November 2012 - 08:15 AM, said:

Trial mech are not gimped.They are the same mechs/ load outs you can buy. They do fine in battle, again if you don't go trying to Call of Duty it out on the battlefield.

You are entitled to your opinion. But there is that thing called math that tell us otherwise.
A trial Raven can dish out 158 points of damage in 30 seconds. Great!
But if you took off that large laser and put in 5 heatsinks instead, it would be capable of 225 damage in 30 seconds!

So a player with access to a mechlab can easily buff his Raven`s damage output by 40%, and on top of that earn money by selling that large laser! Crazy right? Removing the large laser not only INCREASES the damage per 30 seconds, but INCREASES the time to overheat from 9,28 to 16,61 seconds. So the mech not only outputs more damage, but is almost twice as hard to overheat, meaning it is easier for the new player to run.

If the Devs don`t want to fix the heat balance, maybe they should refit the stock mechs so that they are effective and easy to run under current MWO game rules, not the TT rules.

Edited by Kmieciu, 01 November 2012 - 09:48 AM.

[Jukebox1986]

We need a Trialmech-only battleground via Matchmaking and a some kind of start-money or a free light mech.

I´d really love to see a good tutorial which would give you a free scout when finished. The best fitting choice canon-like would be the wasp, but we all know the little problem with this (and other) mechs.

Maybe the Designers could make a new 20t MW:O-only mech, wich gives a 5-10% C-Bill boost. New players would have a quicker start, nearly instant access to the mechlab and have a higher chance to stay long and buy mechbays, decals and certain mechs.

[Kaputnik]

Kmieciu, on 01 November 2012 - 09:38 AM, said:

You are entitled to your opinion. But there is that thing called math that tell us otherwise.
A trial Raven can dish out 158 points of damage in 30 seconds. Great!
But if you took off that large laser and put in 5 heatsinks instead, it would be capable of 225 damage in 30 seconds!

So a player with access to a mechlab can easily buff his Raven`s damage output by 40%, and on top of that earn money by selling that large laser! Crazy right? Removing the large laser not only INCREASES the damage per 30 seconds, but INCREASES the time to overheat from 9,28 to 16,61 seconds. So the mech not only outputs more damage, but is almost twice as hard to overheat, meaning it is easier for the new player to run.

If the Devs don`t want to fix the heat balance, maybe they should refit the stock mechs so that they are effective and easy to run under current MWO game rules, not the TT rules.

Trials compared to stock are equal.

Of course trials compared to tweaked are not equal.

Sorry but it always sounds like you are ignoring teamplay and skill, that weights more than just Trial VS Beefed version.

And about the heat balance, if you do not want to learn how to dance with your heat meter you are definately in the wrong game here. No offense to you personally.

Janus Wealth, on 01 November 2012 - 09:46 AM, said:

We need a Trialmech-only battleground via Matchmaking and a some kind of start-money or a free light mech.

I´d really love to see a good tutorial which would give you a free scout when finished. The best fitting choice canon-like would be the wasp, but we all know the little problem with this (and other) mechs.

Maybe the Designers could make a new 20t MW:O-only mech, wich gives a 5-10% C-Bill boost. New players would have a quicker start, nearly instant access to the mechlab and have a higher chance to stay long and buy mechbays, decals and certain mechs.

I like that idea and you have my support. A starting money to get one starter mech IN ADDITION TO TRIALS will work magic on the whole discussion.

League of Legends does it that way and it works perfect!

btw i think something like dedicated trial battlegrounds and matchmaking battlegrounds are in developement or atleast planned. Have read something similar somewhere while closed beta.

[Kaputnik]

UPCOMING CONTENT:
http://mwomercs.com/...ed-oct-16-2012/


UPCOMING FEATURES:
http://mwomercs.com/...ed-oct-16-2012/


YES THEY WILL DO SOMETHING ON TRIALS:
http://mwomercs.com/...nd-trial-mechs/


i hope that clears some questions out for most of you.

[WVAnonymous]

I've been last man standing in a trial Dragon more than once. The team may have lost, but as many others have said, a dose of knowing what you're doing goes a long way.

Also, as many others have said, I generally net more with a trial and (believe it or not) it's more fun in a trial because i KNOW that I'm not going to have to repair my endo-steel etc etc mech and net ZERO on the match.

[AtomicFrawg]

Kmieciu, on 01 November 2012 - 09:38 AM, said:

You are entitled to your opinion. But there is that thing called math that tell us otherwise.
A trial Raven can dish out 158 points of damage in 30 seconds. Great!
But if you took off that large laser and put in 5 heatsinks instead, it would be capable of 225 damage in 30 seconds!

So a player with access to a mechlab can easily buff his Raven`s damage output by 40%, and on top of that earn money by selling that large laser! Crazy right? Removing the large laser not only INCREASES the damage per 30 seconds, but INCREASES the time to overheat from 9,28 to 16,61 seconds. So the mech not only outputs more damage, but is almost twice as hard to overheat, meaning it is easier for the new player to run.

If the Devs don`t want to fix the heat balance, maybe they should refit the stock mechs so that they are effective and easy to run under current MWO game rules, not the TT rules.

Your Math works only on paper. A pilot that has learned how to pilot his mech can make your mech burn with that 158 dps.(or even if that damage is correct)
If its heat problem, maybe don't pull the trigger in that large so often? Just because it is there does not mean you have to spam it.