31 replies to this topic

[Kotrin]

Esarai, on 05 November 2012 - 07:35 AM, said:

...it leads me to conclude that MWO in its current incarnation is structured to cater to the market of die-hard BT fans...

Considering the way PGI alienated that very community with the Great DHS Debacle, your guess is wrong.

[Frank the Tank]

wuselfuzz, on 06 November 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

"premade teams filled with veteran players" = bunch of random guys on teamspeak

"highly organized" = calling out a basic strategy at the beginning of the match, like "brawlers go D4, scout checks the tunnel" and calling out targets, like "focus fire on streak cat Bravo"

That's all there is to those "pugrolling premade groups". I wouldn't call myself veteran, and yesterday we even had a newbie player in our group, running a "vastly superior" trial Raven, still saving for their own mech. We won like 90% of all matches, even when someone from our group crashed out.

Here's my suggestion: ******* Betty will be in soon. Make her actually tell other group mates if someone took command on the map and say stuff like "Defend D4" or "Scout E-Line". Make the command map working similar to what guys on TS are talking. And let the commander mark targets to attack.

I guess when those orders the commander is issuing have voice-overs, players might actually follow them, instead of ignoring a line of text blinking up for just a few seconds in your peripheral vision.

This.

I was playing solo the other day and losing horribly, because of so many players new to the beta. This happened with every wave of invites during the closed beta as well, and I know when I first started playing I was no better. So I decided to take command. I won at least 6 games in a row with a team of mostly trial mechs every time, and won most of my other games that day. For the most part people will listen to you. Even this little bit of organization will help PUGs win and more importantly learn to play the game. During the closed beta it would take a week or so for invitees to learn the game, then decent matches would resume.

Rather than calling new players noobs, or passively worrying about new player retention rates, why don't all of us experienced players man up and take charge? Can the game be difficult to learn? Yes. Is the trail mech system woefully unimpressive? Yes. Is matchmaking virtually non-existent in its current state? Yes. Fix all of those things and MWO will still hemorrhage new players if the community never takes the time to bring them into the fold.

[Dominatrix420]

Hi! I am a new player.

Loving the game so far!

I started out in the Trial Awesome. I tried the Dragon, but it is bad, bad, bad. The Awesome is great once you learn to Pilot it right!

17 matches later I had my Commando CMD-2D! Yay, my very first mech! It took some time to learn the scouting, hit and run style of play that the Commando requires to be a viable threat on the field.

Now, 20 some matches later my little man is totally pimped out! I even have my Nvidia fairy bobblehead keeping me company and bringing me good fortune!

Good Times! This game rules!
Thanks PGI!

[Agis]

As far as trying out everything for free...no one can. We paid for founders packages, else we'd all be rolling with trial-mechs as well (I actually bought $30 worth of MC before I realized founders packs were still available when I started). Even with founder package I bought, it takes time to get enough C-bill to buy next mech-frame and loadouts as well. It even took time to build enough C-bills to change founder mech loadout. All you need is patience.

But this is a business, they cant continue to fuction without some sort of revenue flow.

[Valaska]

Khrull, on 05 November 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:

Okay, here's a proposition. Don't let your friends try out the game. Ask them if they want to buy mechwarrior online for $60. Your friends will probably say no. So how is Mechwarrior's current business model worse than the traditional business model? At least this way, people who enjoy the game can try it out first and if they are interested in getting a step up, they can make a purchase of $10 and be rocking. Bottom line is your friends are not fans of the game.

That being said, the matchmaking needs to stop matching up PUGS against premades. There should be three types of matchmaking.

#1. Trial mechs vs trial mechs
#2. Pugs vs pugs
#3 Premades vs premades

Wrong, ask your friends to try a FREE game, when they say yes PLAY WITH THEM and teach them how it works. I have reared in four new pilots like this already and they love the game now.

Agis, on 06 November 2012 - 08:40 AM, said:

As far as trying out everything for free...no one can. We paid for founders packages, else we'd all be rolling with trial-mechs as well (I actually bought $30 worth of MC before I realized founders packs were still available when I started). Even with founder package I bought, it takes time to get enough C-bill to buy next mech-frame and loadouts as well. It even took time to build enough C-bills to change founder mech loadout. All you need is patience.

But this is a business, they cant continue to fuction without some sort of revenue flow.

I actually ran the trial mechs for awhile, they aren't the worst but they still suffer from under specialization or focus, like most canon mechs did through history. They are do-able though and the first mech is pretty cheap, Commando!

[Dorque]

I personally think the trial Mechs are a great concept, and that your arguments about "giving a part of your soul" to buy your own Mech are hilarious off-base.

Observe thusly. You gain an average of $70,000 per match in a trial Mech. Each match... let's be generous... lasts an average of 10 minutes. It will take a new player roughly 26 matches to earn their own Mech, which breaks down to "a little over 4 hours" or "less time than most online gamers spend on match-based multiplayer combat every weekend".

I understand where you're coming from but anyone who isn't willing or able to play out six matches in each trial Mech isn't too likely to stick with the game period no matter what you do to make it attractive to them.

::EDIT::

Quote

And really this problem should have been a priority several months ago, not addressing it has caused a significant loss in potential income.

How, exactly? It just went into Open Beta last week.

Edited by Dorque, 06 November 2012 - 08:50 AM.

[Gaeb]

My $.02 (as a guy who picked up the game Sunday) is I recommend that MWO give new accounts $1MM or $1.5MM CBills on account creation - enough for a starter mech or a decent way towards a mid-end mech. Having your own mech to customize/mod when you're new to the game is important to the immersion/drawn in factor. I now have a stable of three and am agonizing about where to spend CBills first and what to buy next --- and *THAT* is how you get players hooked. Sitting at 300K Cbills going "Um, ~80K per game... its a LONG time until I buy my first mech" is a detriment to hooking new players.

I played about six games when I started until I realized I wasn't generating any XP or as many CBills as I could be, then sunk $30 - but that's because I love the franchise (would have been legendary elite founder had I known the game existed earlier!) and I can see getting my friends into it being more of a challenge. If they own a light/medium mech *early*, getting them hooked will be *much* easier.

Edited by Gaeb, 06 November 2012 - 09:33 AM.

[CCC Dober]

Dorque, on 06 November 2012 - 08:47 AM, said:

...
How, exactly? It just went into Open Beta last week.

You have to trust us on that, being Closed Beta testers and having the long view.
Things as you see now have been like that for a VERY long time in Closed Beta, despite legions of people reporting, suggesting, discussing and outright demanding a change for the better. As you see, nothing helped.

This Open Beta is a release in stealth mode. If you can't make sense of that, ask yourself what differentiates an Open Beta from release and how it is possible that MWO is selling stuff already long before the scheduled release.

[Discordantone]

Here's my thoughts:

• PGI Should have realized about 10 years ago, when they first touched this franchise, people would be dropping as full teams, and had a matchmaking system to separate pugs from pre-mades in Alpha. I did PUG drops when I was new... when I got tired of getting stomped on, I set out and found a team that I A: got along with and B: we win... alot. So, PUGs can either continue to get whomped and whine about it, or go find a team, enough post their recruitment info during a game as it is.
  
• The grind for a newbie's first Mech -is- Ridiculous. This is coming from someone who has purchased MC all the way through closed beta, and even grabbed 100 bucks in MC last week. New Player Grind is nuts. I've tried those trial mechs, I've tried to make myself have fun in them... know what? They are the worst builds of those mechs that I have ever... ever... tried.
  
• Those of you BT Die Hards that are saying "well, hey man, 60-8,000$ ain't much for a game man." ... *slap* that's why we played BT in the first place you idiots, only we could afford it, and it kept the community rather small, compared to the online MMO numbers, it was a major cash sink.

That is all.

Edited by Discordantone, 06 November 2012 - 11:40 AM.

[Mykaelous Wolf]

Esarai, on 05 November 2012 - 11:23 AM, said:

That's the issue though--they don't actually get to 'try it out.' They get a watered down version that doesn't adequately reflect the final product and doesn't give them a decent reason to continue or pay.

And yes, that is the bottom line and that's the main thing that's wrong--the game isn't built in a way that readily generates new fans. It sells to the BT fanbase who already have an idea what's going to go down. New players have no way of knowing and no reason to want to grind or pay.

Word to the matchmaking, hopefully tomorrow's patch will bring it closer to salvation. Though it is a rare gem to see the pug side of a PUG vs. Premade match get its s**t together and roflstomp the premade.

I agree with both of the points above. Premades should only play premades. The issue with the trial mechs is that its like grinding to level 50 in wow or another game before getting your first chance to go up a level and then afterwards progress like normal. I stomp COD players all day with an average of 5-1 KD ratio but those kids who get stomped on repeatedly while playing COD keep coming back because even though they are loosing every match or two they are unlocking new things, so they feel like they are progressing even if they are losing. The solution would be to give new players goals. Lets say play 10 matches and at the end you can keep one of the 4 trial mechs. That way they get 1 free mech that they can tweak from mission to mission. They can still play the other trial mechs but they get the satisfaction of switching out a medium laser for a small pulse and soforth. This way they get committed to the game. After being committed if they feel that the grind is too slow they will then happily pay money to purchase that atlas. All that being said I still feel that the actual cost of units is too expensive. Right now mechs should be 5-10 bucks with hero mechs being exceptions and costing upwards of 15. Paying 20 bucks for an atlas when you can get CS for that much wont make much sense to the budget gamer who are generally interested in these games.

[stoph]

Ultimately it is PGI's intent to have people contribute money to the game. Having a positive income is the ONLY viable business model for a for-profit company. Yes you want people to enjoy their first experience and feel like they don't absolutely HAVE to contribute money in order to be successful, however you want them to feel that contributing money is advantageous enough that a good percentage of players feel compelled to do so. If you are willing to spend the same amount of money as you would for any premium title ($60) you will have the resources to immediately buy and update a viable mech. If you aren't contributing you should have to grind it out and INVEST time. If you are not willing to invest either time OR money into a premium F2P game then go back to playing Farmville. If you want to earn money faster people should head over to one of several TeamSpeak servers and join up with some other folks, you will win most of your matches. I have both my founder's account and a non-founders account and with the non-founders you earn roughly $50k per loss and $100k per win. So it won't take but a couple hours to earn enough to buy your first mech.

On a side note as a test we have run in coordinated groups with all trial mechs and we are nearly as successful as when we are running our chosen mechs, either founders or purchsed.

[Morikuro]

stoph, on 06 November 2012 - 12:13 PM, said:

If you are willing to spend the same amount of money as you would for any premium title ($60) you will have the resources to immediately buy and update a viable mech.

I should note that 60 dollars buys a complete game, not 1 mech, or even 4 (which is ~60 dollars for 4 high end assaults). That's in no way a good value for the money, and if I told one of my friends that value (he hasn't looked at that yet since he's barely played) he'd probably be appalled enough to never give PGI a dime out of principle. Don't confuse our Founders stuff with actually buying mechs via MC - I paid 120 dollars because I want this game to succeed, the mechs and everything else are a 'thank you' (I don't even know what I'm going to do with my MC beyond maybe buy mech bays). I think if the MC bait is going to be sweet, the higher end of it should be more along the lines of Mass Effect 3 DLC price levels (using them cause most recent that comes to mind for me). Leviathan and From Ashes were about 10 bucks each, and they were better value for money than any single mech.

Before someone says 'WoW/SWTOR/etc were 60 bucks on release and all your little mans started at level 1', sure, they were. You also didn't have to go head to head with other players to get to a point where you felt accomplished, unless you wanted to for the most part (rolled on a pvp server, etc). MWO is a competitive game, any gain you make is through the teeth of the opposition, and when there's a premium value put on grouping up or just being a scrub the experience of grinding is going to feel different from killing 20 rockworms at someone's farm all by yourself.

What you want from the game is for people to pay money, but they will only pay money if the initial experience is a positive one, unless they are pretty solid BT fans to begin with. The lack of a positive experience at the onset renders all figures of actual time to grind/efficiency for first mech purpose/etc talk moot, since it is the decider on whether someone is going to continue to play at all, much less pay for anything. Whether a new player feels he is having fun/has a reasonable curve to look forward to trumps everything else. Remember, time is also valuable to a significant amount of people. Overprice the entrance fee for actual participation in the game and those people will decide that alas, even though the game is kind of neat, it doesn't fit their wants and maybe something else gets their 60 bucks. Enough people do this, and we will become a niche community filled with people who have killed each other hundreds of times before and the game won't continue to expand and get new content.