3
Now to the point: A lot of new players are complaining that the game is too hard, trial mechs aren't balanced and it takes a long time before finally having your own mech, never mind actually equiping it. Whereas the Closed Beta players and especially founders say that trial mechs are actually decent mechs and that you need the experience before buying your first mech.
Whether the game is too hard depends entirely on the player, but there are a couple things that can be done to improve the first experiences:
- Currently a new player immediately drops into a PvP match and has to learn everything from scratch. A tutorial would immensely help them by allowing them to quietly learn how to control a mech.
- New players don't know their mechs yet, nor do they know how to choose a good mech. So they think "I need a heavy mech so I can survive longer" and pick the Awesome trial mech. Then they don't do well with it and decide to try a heavy class mech for a bit more speed. Basically they're not sticking to a specific mech and learning how to use it. In such a tutorial, the advantages and disadvantages of every mech class can be discussed as well as giving such advice as playing 10 matches in a row with a mech before trying a different one.
- Lack of accessible equipment (weapons and such) descriptions don't help either, they have to guess what the benefits and disadvantages are of weapons. So either they waste C-Bills on trying out weapons just to figure out how it works or they aren't trying out new weapons.
- New players tend to fight experienced players due to the MatchMaking system. Of course experienced players know how to optimize their mechs for their own playstyle, while new players don't know how to, nor have the access to do so. One possible solution for this is a separate matchmaker for new players only, but whether this is a viable option is debatable. Players can also benefit from experienced players both showing how it is done® and giving advice to the new players (like turning your torso when not firing in order to spread damage, which increases your survivability).
- [New] Perhaps we could introduce a buddy system, where a veteran can opt to help new players. The veteran is then grouped up with a couple new players, has the opportunity to tell them about the weapons, the trial mechs, how to play and then can launch a group game. Depending on the general attitude of new players, I for one would participate in this as a veteran, I just tried it with a buddy of mine and he enjoyed his first round.
- The advantage is that playing 10 matches with every trial mech currently in the rotation gives you a reasonable idea of how the various weight classes can work and whether you're more suited to a light but fast mech or a heavy slow but well-armored and well-armed mech.
- It also gives you general mech piloting experience instead of crashing and burning regularly in a new owned mech, incurring the repair and rearm 'penalties'.
- The disadvantage is that it is a bit of a grind, especially for non-founders closed beta players. They should already know how to pilot a mech and what good builds are. But closed beta players aren't important in this discussion, it is about new players. One of the major advertised points for MWO is the customization of mechs. Due to that grind and no customization in any way with trial mechs, it is just a carrot being dangled at the other side of the road.
- The trial mechs are 'Canon' mech variants, based on the calculations of how heat, fire rate, accuracy works in TT or the lore. Since heat, fire rate and accuracy differs in MWO from TT, the actually intended design doesn't work the same way it was intended to. That is the main problem with the trial mechs. However, due to that it also is less tolerant of new players, due to generally running hotter than intended. This is both a blessing and a curse: The curse is the steeper learning curve for newer players but the blessing is that once they're used to it and can play full matches without overheating on Caustic Valley, they'll have less issues with running hot mechs generally which makes them more competitive with other players. Otherwise the players that learn to do so generally will outgun the players not learning so in a straight 1v1 fight.
Why would we do such a system?
First off, by requiring 10 matches played, they need to get at least a bit of experience with that specific mech and an idea of how it should be played.
Secondly, after 10 matches they get access to customization. This access is severely limited by a low income though, meaning that they slowly evolve their mech to something worthwhile, so they won't have to suddenly learn various new weapons. However, while they can't as easily customize the weapons load out, they do earn the XP normally and so can get those efficiencies, which means that 5k GXP isn't as far away as having to play all the time with trial mechs first before finally earning XP (correct me if I'm wrong here, but trial mechs don't earn MXP and thus also no GXP, right?)
Thirdly, it forces them to focus on one mech first, slowly customizing it, so they slowly get to know how to customize it, what is important, how many heatsinks they need in comparison to their weapons load out, which means that once they've earned enough to buy their second mech, they have enough knowledge to actually understand how a chassis would work.
Fourthly, experienced players can opt to skip the whole process if they don't see any interesting trial mechs to own and instead grind a different mech. So for them nothing changes if they're not interested, otherwise they have quicker access to a trial mech.
Feel free to come with constructive comments and perhaps other suggestions..
Edited by Kutagh, 01 November 2012 - 06:43 AM.
So far so good.
