Dear Uber Entertainment, I love MNC! Or maybe it should be, I want to love MNC but it's hard for me to do so. I pre-ordered this game on steam, been playing it constantly since the release and have clocked 312 hours on it but I stopped playing shortly after Product Update 7 and even uninstalled the game. It started becoming too frustrating. The learning curve is too steep for most of the new players to stick around, there isn't a proper tutorial to teach players what objectives they need to keep in mind, as well as teaching them what roles each class are best for. Additionally, the Sniper Class feels extremely over powered. Most of the really good players would only pick Sniper (and on occasion the Assault) and would dominate the playing field. Never have I seen Snipers dominate a game like in MNC. So with the combination of God-like Snipers ruling the servers, and lots of players who don't know how to play the game (and are too stubborn to take advice) it makes for an extremely frustrating experience. With today's Daily Deal being MNC at an extremely low price, and seeing that it shot up to the top of the sales chart, I decided to go ahead and reinstall the game. It's bitter-sweet. It's really great to see tons of games going on and lots of players, but so many players are completely lost. Seeing 4 players on a team as the Assassin is just frustrating. And when I tell the team that we don't need more than 1 assassin, no one wants to change. They don't understand what the role of the class is, and I blame it on the lack of a proper tutorial. The game never told them that it's stupid to have a team of all assassins. The game didn't tell them that attempting to backstab a Tank is suicidal. Uber Entertainment, I really have a lot of respect for you guys as a developer. You guys made a great product that you all poured your hearts into. I have lurked through the forums for a while, and notice that you guys respond back to your fans. I have watched your developer interview videos on gaming sites, and you show that you care for making a great product. But I think you guys made a mistake to put a marketing push on this game without making fundamental changes to the game. The Sniper needs to be nerfed, or Snipers will go back to dominating the servers again. And MNC desperately needs to proper tutorial that teaches the objectives of the game, as well as goes through every class and explaining what they are used for. Or maybe even a single-player campaign that functions as a tutorial. One that forces the player into playing every class, and putting them into certain situations that gives them a better understanding as to what the class is good for and what they shouldn't do (ie backstabbing a Tank). I really want to love MNC, I spent tons of hours with this game, but you are over-estimating the ability of players overcoming the steep learning curve of MNC. I highly suggest adding an in-depth tutorial to the game before pushing another marketing campaign.
Although anyone could say that new players will learn naturally, I'm sure everyone has seen how many times a single Assassin has suicide-charged a Tank. And as it turns out, the "Assassin" is actually best used for killing bots and not necessarily pros anyway! But how are people supposed to know little things like that? We don't need a complete interactive tutorial for the classes(although that would be the best option), but we at least should have some better information that can be easily accessed in game or at least some more forum visibility. I was trying frantically to get into different servers earlier to explain to people they need to come here for advice, and I got a surprising number of "ignore the bot" or similar comments. The population may be up for now, but it WILL NOT stay as long as no system to nurture new players exists.
There actually is a tutorial that goes through things like the different bot types and what they do, to the fact the assaults bombs can be stuck on people, to having to build turrets to defend them balls. The rest of the stuff is basically picked up by playing. The players that stick with the game are the ones who don't need their hand held anyway.
That's the wrong way to go about this problem. I have 18 people on my friends list who own MNC, 17 of them walked out of the tutorial feeling that it only taught them what the controls are. The current tutorial is not sufficient for teaching players what they need to know to play this game. The Cross Fire video provided the Play Book teaches more to the player than the tutorial, and that video is buried deep within a couple of menu choices. There are people who have no clue that there is a video in there. And as for "The players that stick with the game are the ones who don't need their hand held anyway." With that mentality, the community for this game will drop AGAIN! That's the worst mentality to go with when trying to promote a game and revive a near-death community!
Here here the the above posts. It cannot be assumed that players will learn by trying and trying again. Tactics we take as basics are not at all presented or hinted at. MNC has defined class roles, consistent atmosphere, solid gameplay and killer humor. But all of this falls short because there is a learning curve that takes the kind of person that is willing to actually do some background knowledge about their games. Unfortunately there seem to be only 160 of us. It hurts that MNC is good but flawed in an area that is dependent on the player.
Yes it can. If you keep getting raped, you learn what you did wrong and stop doing it. People aren't going to listen to what you're 'supposed' to do and how you're 'supposed' to play, because they want to explore the game and have some fun with it. If they decide they like its style, they'll eventually pick up the things that are accepted as good strategy by either trying each class out or seeing how a different player gets such a good score with a certain class and copying it. People won't come here either. I only came because the community got so tiny after a few weeks of purchase. I certainly don't visit the forums of any other game I may play. People will learn how to play because they want to, not because some guy on a server says "HAY DOOD, KILL BOTS WITH ASSASSIN OK?!". The only thing that can be done to retain players is fix the horrible balancing that 90% of games have (games are still either far too easy or far too hard), as well as some other class balances (sniper uzi beating gunner miniguns is retarded).
i kinda agree with the point of this game REALLY needing a tuorial system. Actually, if we would have gotten the modding tools by now i would have made these. This has been my plan already for a while now, but without tools i wont get far. You need to give people the info ingame, ofcourse there are nice guids here but if you expect a player to go look for the information outside of your product you are kinda missing the point. (the exception to this are games like minecraft or terraria which actually foccus on having the player discover the world a step at a time. However, this does not count in a game like MNC where a team of 6 will forcefully molest you in every possible way when they get the chance) I would still love to do this and if given the chance by uber i would gladly do this for the classes (although i mainly play assault, about the same way TheWilder does (as more know his play then mine), i do have a decent understanding about the other classes playstyle) I would do a basic ingame tutorial showwing the basics for each class, covering movement, does and donts and more basic tacics to help people survive their first round. Sure, they would stil ldie often enough, but they would know WHY they died and by understanding the reason behind it (say facestabbing a tank) have an easier time addapting their personal playstyle to the given situation. (excuse any grammar errors, its 6am and im just taking a study break before diving back into my books)
