14 replies to this topic

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

So, I was closed beta. Where the trial grind was horribad, so I bought the Founders so I could not have it be so horribad come open beta. Everyone knows that the initial grind was bad, and a lot of people still bitched about the new trial grind. Enough so that I wanted to try it for myself, so I created a trial account to give it a whirl.

Besides the bad trial mechs, the "n00b" trial grind was actually pretty cool with the Cadet bonus and all.





In the end, I'd like to see some better trial mechs. They don't even have to get away from the trial loadouts. Just change the SHS to DHS and the trial mechs would become phenomenally better.

[Team Leader]

While I think the cadet bonus was a good step I don't feel like it actually helped new players at all, it just gave them their own mech quicker for them to overheat and die in haha

[Davers]

Team Leader, on 18 February 2013 - 09:18 PM, said:

While I think the cadet bonus was a good step I don't feel like it actually helped new players at all, it just gave them their own mech quicker for them to overheat and die in haha

Getting them into their own mechs was the entire point.

[Homeless Bill]

Honestly, they desperately need to figure out trial 'mechs. They're the first thing a new player sees and they're universally terrible. Very few, if any, could go toe-to-toe with any legitimate loadout.

And canon is not a ******* excuse. DHS, ECM, LRM damage, etc. prove that the devs don't give a **** about canon when it doesn't jive with their vision of the game. It's sad that they haven't made some effort to fix trial loadouts.

[Termius]

Davers, on 18 February 2013 - 09:25 PM, said:

Getting them into their own mechs was the entire point.

Exactly. Being able to get enough cash to buy a decent mech and give it a good loadout is what the cadet bonus is for. But:

Team Leader, on 18 February 2013 - 09:18 PM, said:

While I think the cadet bonus was a good step I don't feel like it actually helped new players at all, it just gave them their own mech quicker for them to overheat and die in haha

The issue is that the majority of new players won't know how to build their new mech, let alone pilot that mech. Giving them a nice chunk of change to begin with is nice, but if they blow it all on a crappy mech it's useless. The training videos help but a in browser tutorial they get for each aspect of the game would greatly improve the "New Player Experience". Trial mechs should be loaded out with different builds for each aspect of gameplay, so that new players get a feel for all the weapons, making it easier to actually build a mech with them.

Edited by Termius, 18 February 2013 - 09:34 PM.

[xMEPHISTOx]

The grind in this game is minimal...very minimal when compared to the grind to a relevant tier 10 tank in WoT.
To be honost in its current state I would say MWo is kinda ez mode in regards to the grind.
I made a alt ftp account long ago and took only a week of sparadic play to obtain a 4SP, and within 4-5 more weeks had the 4 slots available filled with relevant mechs, all fully built. The only grind involved on the ftp acct was in xp.

[Davers]

Homeless Bill, on 18 February 2013 - 09:29 PM, said:

Honestly, they desperately need to figure out trial 'mechs. They're the first thing a new player sees and they're universally terrible. Very few, if any, could go toe-to-toe with any legitimate loadout.

And canon is not a ******* excuse. DHS, ECM, LRM damage, etc. prove that the devs don't give a **** about canon when it doesn't jive with their vision of the game. It's sad that they haven't made some effort to fix trial loadouts.

Yeah. Some trial mechs are hopelessly terrible and don't even show what the chassis is capable of. My suggestion back in the day was the Devs gave out FOTM mechs as trials, maybe even having a player contest to come up with the new loadouts. Would have been a lot better I think.

I also thought whenever a new batch of trials come out they should do a 'lance writeup' showing how they could be used together, and what the strengths and weaknesses of each one was.

Edited by Davers, 18 February 2013 - 09:36 PM.

[Homeless Bill]

Davers, on 18 February 2013 - 09:35 PM, said:

having a player contest to come up with the new loadouts

This. Because I understand that PGI doesn't have time or people to devote to details and ******** like this right now, but it still needs to be fixed. If this community is useful at one thing, it's building 'mechs.

[Elizander]

JohanssenJr, on 18 February 2013 - 09:16 PM, said:

So, I was closed beta. Where the trial grind was horribad, so I bought the Founders so I could not have it be so horribad come open beta. Everyone knows that the initial grind was bad, and a lot of people still bitched about the new trial grind. Enough so that I wanted to try it for myself, so I created a trial account to give it a whirl.

Besides the bad trial mechs, the "n00b" trial grind was actually pretty cool with the Cadet bonus and all.





In the end, I'd like to see some better trial mechs. They don't even have to get away from the trial loadouts. Just change the SHS to DHS and the trial mechs would become phenomenally better.

Actually, I think rather than changing the Trial Mech SHS to DHS, PGI can just buff SHS to 1.1 or something slight to make it less painful for everyone in SHS and maybe make them slightly more viable for assault mechs.

1.1 SHS would get an Atlas RS an additional 4 heat per second if it's stacking SHS with 4 LL. I don't have my excel sheets at work here, but we never really discussed buffing SHS. If DHS do 1.4 instead of 2.0, then it's reasonable to have SHS do 1.1 or so instead of 1.0, right? It should alleviate the trial mech problem without 1) changing the SHS to DHS and 2) throw the game balance out of whack.

An alternative is to buff SHS in Engine much like DHS in engine which makes it a static buff to all SHS mechs without the potential to be stacked and abused by larger chassis.

Edited by Elizander, 18 February 2013 - 09:57 PM.

[PwnStars]

Honestly, they need to make trials somewhat competitive. Like others said, even after playing all four trial mechs, a new player has zero idea of what build or mech is good, since every other non-trial mech with any build will roll you. That's what happened to me, I bought a catapult (not the splat or K2, I don't remember, but I was not impressed) and found that I died like crazy and really couldn't do much. So I wasted 5mil of my cadet bonus right there.

So I made alt and this time went directly for an atlas, and I've been going off there ever since.

It seems to me what the issue is, is that it's not until I actually buy a mech and try to load it out (aka. what trial mechs don't let you do) that I learned what worked and what didn't. I think trial mechs should be somewhat customizable (perhaps provide limited selection of weapons and engines, complete with suggested builds).

Also, I'm curious, has anyone (when they were a new player) bought a mech that was a trial mech at the time? My reason for buying a different mech was that I've already played all 4 of these trial mechs (and they suck), I want to try a 5th - so I jumped into a mech I had zero experience with, which turned out badly as well.

Edited by PwnStars, 18 February 2013 - 11:25 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I have an uncle who started playing a couple weeks back. He eagerly bought himself a Hunchback 4-SP (he'd had some fun driving one when it was available as a Trial option), but wound up going from about 10 million c-bills to closer to 4 million with nothing to show for it. He had no idea what he was doing, and in the end wound up selling the mech out of sheer frustration. Only after I managed to talk him through it did he figure out what was what, and by that point he'd burned through most of his bonus cash. At least we finally got him into a custom mech, though it did eat up the last of his c-bills.

Granted, the in-game tutorials are not implemented, and there are training videos available on the website, but it would probably be a good idea for PGI to offer some kind of refund-protection period when making new mech purchases (this would also help with accidentally clicking MC when you meant to click C-bills). Give people 24 hours after they buy a mech to decide whether or not they want to keep it, and if they sell it in that time frame refund them for the full cost of the mech chassis plus whatever gear they opt to sell along with it. Also, it might be a good idea to offer some kind of Upgrade waste prevention system (maybe allow upgrades to be reverted at no cost if done within 24 hours). This is less relevant after you've kitted out a few mechs and know what you're doing, but it's a huge money-waster for new players who don't know what is what.

Edited by Levi Porphyrogenitus, 18 February 2013 - 11:35 PM.

[Reggimus]

If they made the trial 'mech different to the standard mech could you imagine the tears that would flow? Or the number of "I brought mech X like the trial mech, why isn't it the same they one I brought always overheats???"

The best thing they could do would be to have 2 variants of each chassis available as trials to really see what they can do, and how they differ. I'd also throw in 6 chassis, giving a total of 12 trial 'mechs rather than 4, that'd really give some insight into how they can be different.

[Primetimex]

Never mind a new player, as a seasoned MW veteran, since MW1, none of these games really prepared you of what is in MWO. I wasted a lot of C-Bills and MC trying out mechs and different configurations until I found the one that was happy with.

Part of the appeal of the Mechwarrior series (and MWO) is that each Mech is unique, handles differently and depending on how it is configured - can mean that bit of difference of getting killed ASAP in a match or lasting that bit longer so that you can learn the nuances of the game.

Eg. balancing armor points, Endosteel vs FF, DHS upgrades, Artemis, heat management, engine sizes - this can easily overwhelm someone who is new to the Mechwarrior universe. However, if you manage to work through it, the rewards are great and you'll find the game play experience that much more entertaining.

[Soulscour]

Thankyou PGI for accelerating the grind for newer players. Use of the mechlab is an essential part of the hook to this game.

[Zphyr]

OMG the old grind! Still have nightmares about it whenever they wipe the accounts at closed beta. Brr...

But, to be honest, it's indeed less grindy than some well-known games out there. The difference being in that MW's catchyness it's the multitude of personal customization to be able to feel the game, while many RPGs make the players "feel" it, however partially, early on. This may bore all but the most hardcores. I personally applaud (and kind of jealous lol) of the cadet bonus. At least it enables newer players to see most of MWO without having to wait weeks or months (like end-game raiding). However, it did little to prepare them for the bitterness of "real world" as many don't understand the depth of the game and end up frustrating themselves and others that play with them (like in PUGs).

The matter of trial mechs already fueled dozens of topics and most of us forum posters or lurkers know about it. I do not see them as bad mechs. I loved the good old overheating stock hunchback, liked the slow also overheat master raven or the jenner, the centurion is a good mech and so is the catapult, the awesome is slow but not bad, the atlas even slower and has too many weapons for a newbie but powerful as... an atlas, etc etc. They are not good and can even be considered newbie traps. But can we ask more for mech that cost us nothing and nowadays even give us XP?

As for the suggestion of giving them DHS... no no no. Why should they fare better than the ones we buy? By having DHS, their loadout may have to change significantly and thus have different configurations. Changing the entire stock configuration on all the mechs just to please a few? No.