A_discussion_to_improve_MWO.pdf - Ash Cosgriff

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A discussion to improve MWO Link to TWITCH Live Stream Discussion https://www.twitch.tv/videos/773550907?t=00h16m29s Improving overall experience / QoL. - Skill Tree. There are too many nodes. 91 is too many with nodes that supply 0.7% increases the player cannot ‘feel’ them. A player needs to feel they achieved something and rewarding the player has a huge impact on their fun and experience. Reducing the nodes increases the feeling of achievement as you feel the change to the mech. A minimum of 50% reduction in nodes. Also Skill Trees are, 90% of the time, the same - at least for META. CBill component is also excessive to unlock each node for new players, get rid of it. XP Only - ties into the next point... - Grind - Skill Tree / MWO Grind needs a further 30-40% reduction. The average player takes: o 80-110 matches to unlock 91 skill nodes. o Change a build/skills, 120 nodes quite easily (150 matches). For one mech as a casual player of median skill. - Think about this in terms of a mech-pack. If you purchase one, with say 5 mechs, it takes you 500+ matches to skill 5 of them? That is 6 months for many players, won’t sell packs if it takes that long. Yes events, prem time, loot box helps but it is too high still for a casual player. - Time of Day. Remove time of day change during a match. Hard set it. Leave it for that match. Stops crazy ToD FPS hits all players experience. o Night vision / heat vision adjustments. Neither work properly/as you would expect. - Terra Therma Classic – Add it back in like the other classic maps. Easy/free content. - Disconnection Penalty - Remove the 2min requirement for reconnection before penalties apply. MWO Client alone can take 2mins to load on a crash/disconnect, then another 30-60s to load into the match itself. 2min timer makes it virtually impossible. It offers nothing to players to have this. – ONLY ON Reconnection. - Mechlab Heat Management - The numbers are not representative of heat efficiency. Having it calculate properly would be of far better use. Just because a mech has 1.7 Heat Mgt does not mean it is cooler than a mech with 1.3 Heat Mgt. - MWO Wiki - Wiki is/was a great idea. Restricting the editors to a small group (one who is now banned), won’t work. Open up the Wiki to the community or at the very least, a much wider group. Follow Wikipedia model - need approved editor(s) approval. Community easily can help. It could be a great engagement resource and also helps NPE to find more detail that is not able to be located in-game due to MWO being complex. - Timestamps - Add into Mechlab/Frontal UI timestamps for a chat. You might say play a FP match, 2-3 QP or step away for 30mins. You don't know what time it came in. Add to Global chats, private messages at well. - Torso Heat Spike - Remove it. It is not new-player friendly, it is not explained anywhere properly and is just a bad mechanic. Revert this change. – Mechanic adjustment/penalties that are managed. - Command Wheel - Target Spotted. Half the time the mech shows on the map. It is basically a free map hack and catches too many players out. Does not even provide a match score kicker. o Company commander – trim the command wheel down the amount of options. Simplifications. - Private Lobbies - QoL fix - Function to Assign/Transfer lobby leader to another player. o Add in 3 or 4 spectator slots. In-game/Match Quality Improvements - 8v8? - an interesting one. 8v8 and make GroupQ / Solo-OPT-in and SoloQ. Can also run events around the queue potentially? o Locking to 4man only or open-up to varying sizes o Twitch Chat mostly agreed 8v8/Solo OPT-in - Spawn Points - Merger of the Queues has resulted in significant issues on some maps with Spawns / Groups and very miss-aligned tonnage. Below maps need attention urgently. Also, some maps below just need QoL improvements for spawns o Tourmaline - Alpha on Conquest/Domination. o Canyon Network - Alpha o Hibernal Rift - Alpha o Forest Colony - Conquest - Alpha, both sides a bit closer o Frozen City - Domination - Charlie, Team 1. Alpha, Team 2 o HPG - Conquest -Charlie, Team 1, needs slight move closer to cap point. o River City - Domination. Alpha T1, Charlie T2 o Crimson Straight - Conquest, overall rebalance. Community would need to input here. It’s very unbalanced. o Mining Collecting - Bravo/Alpha moved closer T1. Alpha moved closer T2 - Match Score Kickers - Paul said in July 2020 this would be looked at/discussed. Need to get that happening as without it PSR is still not in a great place. Anti Missile System (AMS) for example gives way too much reward for match score and is skewing players upwards. PSR fix without kickers altered is missing a key component - Secondary Lobby Balancing - Currently the Match Maker just looks for 24 players. Finds them and slaps into a lobby. Deeper option, that would greatly improve match quality, balancing all players in that 24. No longer would the MM put 99% players in a group and then not have 3 more 99% players on the same team for a total of 6-7 - they should be on the other side, or at least a more-even distribution. Faction Play – Quick Wins - Conquest Tickets - Increase to 1500, might need 1750. - Domination Circle - Increase to 120s. Large maps like Polar don’t allow reinforcements to properly arrive no matter the level of coordination you may have. - Faction Play Maps - Add into Private Lobbies. Respawn mechanic as well? Could run new leagues out of it, give units a chance to have ‘practice’ games, engage the population. Admittedly respawn mechanic is a long shot. ***Daeron pointed towards Faction Play not being on the table in the next 12 months or so prior to the live discussion. Other areas were higher prioritities so not much more was touched on here despite some more options in this area. Discussion for another time*** Events / Community Interaction / Engagement - Weekly/Fortnightly events - Current stuff Matt does is great. Keep that going. - Faction Play events - Monthly or Bi-monthly events. Plenty of players/units still solely exist for Faction, that part of the community needs regular events. Units are a key factor in playerbase retention as well. - Play the Pros - Similar to the old “Masters”. Fortnightly event with Daeron / MWO Comp host (MWO Comp can run the whole thing to make it easy?). Daeron dishes out some cool prizes for people and generally have a chat/fun with it. - Play with the Devs - Bring back that, not always, just sometimes. B33f videos are hilarious, Paul has done it with the FP testers before as well. Different community interaction engages players. - Streamers Support - Daeron used to organise this until late 2019 (before NGNG departure). Matt has recently started it up again after a long hiatus (AMAZING btw!!!). Streamers bring and build communities in games. Continuing to support them helps everyone. Streamers should need to prove themselves first - not stream the game for 1 week and take free stuff and leave as has happened a number of times. Be active for a few months, proven commitment, community etc. o Colour codes / cockpit items of the larger content creators o Hook MWO into Twitch Drops etc. - Social / Unit / Recruiting - MWO and in-game social is a real issue. Units keep MWO and Player and player base around by building a community. Units are a great thing in the game and like streamers, foster/keep communities and groups playing with friends you have made. Social for MWO needs fixing. o Discord - PGI makes a MWO discord. Have a Looking-4-Unit & Unit-Info types of channels. Plus all the others, builds, lore blah blah. PGI can work that out. o Unit Recruiter Chat-Tab for in-game chat. On by default settings. Units can post in there and recruit people. o CBill Unit Recruit Cost - Remove it. Unit Cbills serve no purpose anymore (Faction Play). Having a CBill component just hinders new players/units from growing. - In-game Chat Channels – Simply too many of them, disseminates the conversation - Event Queue - Been talked about - Quick discussion about good idea or not? Issues surrounding further splitting of the Queues. o Be wary of more buckets/splitting Queue even further. New Player Experience. - In-game Shop UI – New players it is quite daunting, small and not very clear. The shop is the main point of monetisation for a game. Needs a rework. A big undertaking that would deliver strong results - CADET Completion Bonus - At the end of CADET games (25). Choice of mech. They have a pile of cbills to give them something to use. - Tutorial - Content needs a refresher and some is out of date. - CADET in Tier 3 - Appreciate PSR and Zero Sum, however CADET need to be Tier 4.5 or below. New player, CADETs should never, ever be against Tier 1s. This needs critically urgent attention. - New Player Pack (NPE) - EXAMPLE. Make it say $35 (price is only example). The purpose of this is to wet the appetite of the new player. o 4 Hero mechs o 4 Champion mechs o XXX c-bills o XXX GSP o XXX MC o 3 colours o 5 warhorns - Trial Mechs. Community voting for them is ok in theory, bad in practice. Let knowledgeable players fix the builds and mechs. They don't have to be fully META. Just ones that work - EG. KDK3 Current. It is missing crucial armour and far too hot for a new user as a Trial. Trials need to be noob-friendly, reasonable builds. A loadout that any new user can play - not having 3+ weapon groups and avoiding things like IS XL on a Heavy for example where LFE is usually more than adequate. - Skilled Trials. If it is at all possible - trial mechs fully skilled. Having a mech with ECM equipped but not skilled out is not useful at all. - XP from Trials. If using Trials earnt you XP for the mech when you purchased, big value-add. - New Player Training Videos - Lot of pros do this on stream for new players ALL the time. Ask them to make a video guide that PGI host and market out (again, EMAIL!!!!!). Just dish out 10,000 MC, a Ulti pack for them or something. Dont need 100 of them, just 4-6, keep them to 5-10mins or so. Easy. o Basic Skills / Gameplay o Advanced Skills / Gameplay o Basic Mech Building o Basic Skill Tree o mdmzero - great suggestion around having it built into the game even. Quick tutorials for first time players etc. Must have a ‘disable’ function however in settings. Monetisation / Marketing - Mech/Mech Pack pricing - Overall mech packs and mech pricing needs to be revisited. $30 for a single mech is extremely high. All areas need attention here. o Move value. Cbill packs, MC packs etc. - EMAIL/Marketing. to your customers. Market to them. Emails are few and far between. PGI must have 1mil+ email addresses. Email needs to be monthly, same date every month. Steam shows feeds from games where posts get shown in a steam player's feed. (Ash - I dont understand exactly this, sure someone else will) Emails do not even have to be MWO related. Engage the customer, even just have a “PGI HQ” update if there is nothing for the actual game - show your staff, your people - personalise the service. Use 1-time special redeem codes into the emails for people to engage with. You can then track this engagement very easily. An especially useful resource that is not being capitalised on currently. Further to that once you email. Link that across all the social medias - there are tools that do all of this, automatically. Anyone with basic social media marketing can set this up. - Refer a Friend!!- Simple to set-up. The Refer-er gets some in-game stuff. Referee gets a little bonus too. Appreciate it could be abused with Alt-Accounts, however as they are tied to a specific email and PGI don’t merge accounts this should be minimal. - Merchandise - Self-explanatory - Have a PGI store. Sell ALL the things. There are no doubt license and IP issues to work around, like anything, just needs to be done. Get people wearing your gear, your branding. - New Pack Options. IS pack, Clan Pack, Heavy Pack. Medium Pack. Change up the mechpacks. o Stock EXE-C costs $29 USD, that should be $1. - Faction Play Starter Pack – Make it say $55 (feedback needed) - 8 IS mechs & 8 Clan Mechs. - 2 Heros for either side - XXX Cbills - XXX GSP - XXX MC - Camo (2 for each side) - 4 warhorns / 2 x drop decks - Cockpit items / Bolt-Ons o Buy a cockpit item, get extra bonuses. The exist now, but make them MUCH more value/bonus giving. 5% Cbill Bonus ones exist now – make it 50% or something worthwhile to spend actual money on for benefit. o Content creator items / decals, warhorns, cockpit item o Bolt-ons – falling off soon as you get shot by even TAG - why buy them? No motivation - Battlepass o Mdm suggestion (refer NGNG cast) o Lots of ways to go about it, deeper dive needed BALANCING - Mech mobility. Approx 35-40% of mechs fixed since Desync. The rest need to be attended too so that mechs are closer to stats pre-desync. - Quirks. 10% RoF for MGs with a single ballistic point are a waste. Quirks for mechs should be used to raise the mechs with limited/poorly located hardpoints to the level of other mechs which then do not need quirks. Quirks should also give some mechs just some fun. Remember Locust 1V? Single IS LPL, good fun - it does not need to be Top Tier to be fun. - HSL and So8 Quirks - MOAR!!!! The Awesome 8Q was an amazing example. PGI did by mistake, and was loved by the community. Gave fresh life to an otherwise low tier mech, it still is not great but it is FUN. o So8 also - plenty of players love their Lore so that should be supported with decent So8 quirks for mechs that can utilise it. 5% ERL range with 1 energy hardpoint is not beneficial or useful. - Rescale. Mech rescale was not true volumetric scaling. Many mechs now are too large where some are totally fine as similar tonnage ranges. This has large gameplay implications. - Weapons o Needs an overall balance pass. This was attempted to be conveyed in 2018 via the Community Balance Document. This needs to be revisited. Examples of things that don’t make sense still. - AC20 VS HGauss. AC20 does not need ghost heat (or at least, not as big penalty). - ERPPC/Gauss linkage. Single Gauss/Dual ERPPC or Dual Gauss/ERPPC is not the highest PPFLD in the game anymore so that should be unlinked. - Jenner/Stalker/Jager arms etc – armour balance, revert it. LIVE DISCUSSION – Comments/Chat. - Maps / Game modes / Variety. o More API information possibly. o Map maker tool? o Dynamic spawn points (on maps that is viable) o Gameplay and level design (IE. Rubellite, good design) o Performance & Optimisation. FPS hits etc. o Supporter Packs? PGI may have ideas there. o Map clutter / enhancement – comes back to invis walls and other items. o MW5 – PvE / MWO – PvP o Missile Bay Door light – Make the light larger so you can actually see it in a mech. o Teamwork – Match score kickers? Encourage team play ▪ Rewards as well for wins vs losses o Supply Cache – Make them more worthwhile. Getting 5 LRM5s in a row… o Strikes – too overpowered/nerf a bit o Shifting Balance patches. o Map contest (comes to above Map maker tool) / making maps New mech pack – variants pack update, mechs already exist. The “top/hot” picks. No particular order. - Mech Mobility - Weapon Balance - New Player Experience o Immediately put CADETs back to Tier 4.5/4.75. - Reduce the Grind/Increase the reward (IE, shrink skill tree). - Monetisation / Shop / Fix Mechpacks (new types, combos etc) / Repackage of mechpack options. - Marketing, marketing, marketing. - 8 v 8 GroupQ OPT-In Split Thank you to all 600+ that came by to participate in the discussion to varying levels.