Population increasing ideas?

The peak player count is below 300 now. Whether people raged and left after the most recent patch or the surge of new players quit because of the lack of tutorials, I'm curious to see what (if any) ideas people have for potentially getting people back in here.

Personally, I think the game will need to go the UT3 route - some game-changing, content-adding update. A single new map won't be enough to get and hold new players, I don't think, even if it -is- styled such that Crossfire seems like something different than what it is.

The game lost a lot of new players that showed up for the free weekend, largely because they got hosed by people who knew what they were doing (IMO), and I get the feeling it's a shared opinion that MNC sorely lacks a tutorial. There's a thread talking about the concept of making video tutorials for each class in hopes they'll get added to MNC's "How To Play" section.

Both of those things, plus another free weekend alongside the mention of "hey guy's, ****'s fixed now (we think)" might do the trick. Other ideas on top of it certainly don't hurt - anyone have any?

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Some suggestions so far:

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Some noted problems so far:

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Words I learned in this thread:

What needs fixing...?
Games perfect.

Game's not perfect. There are still connection issues, the server browser doesn't work right (sometimes stays empty/crashes MNC, often shows wrong player counts), Assassin's cloak effect is messed up (lightning change made this apparent), there's only one gametype that's going to bore the small community eventually, balance still needs small tweaks (including a potential revisit of the assault nerfs, it seems), assassin charge/dash still occasionally don't work on spawn and won't work until you die, etc etc etc.

There's plenty that still needs tweaking and fixing, that list is not an exhaustive one. Adding new content, especially more gametypes, is a bit more important than fixing the numerous minor bugs. For example, some classic and simple gametypes could work. Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, Conquest/Capture Points, etc. Bots don't need to be involved. Yes, this would go the TF2 route, but lol tf2 gear. More gametypes would break the monotony and maybe get more people interested if they didn't like the single PvP gametype that exists now.

EDIT: Perhaps a variant of Rabbit (1-flag CTF) could work. Team Rabbit. One-way spawn rooms would be necessary, though.

EDIT EDIT (just because): Call it "Steal the Bacon".

ONCE MORE: Tribes:Vengenace, horrible commercial failure it was, had a gametype called Fuel, in which each team had a fuel depot in their base. Aside from getting fuel canisters from the map and bringing them to your own depot, you could steal fuel from the enemy depot. Team with the most fuel at the end of the time limit or the first to gather all of it won. Could work here as well with a different name.

Population increasing ideas?

let MNC not be MNC ? HaHaHaHa

sorry but its true, the main guidelines that the game would be a shooter Dota was completely accurate but after that it went completely wrong :|

modtools!

Contribute or don't post.

I feel like a comprehensive tutorial system would be really good. I also feel like the Devs should do weekly videos which stress the main points of the game to help new players not suck. New players get turned off to this game because they simply can't keep up with the more skilled players. Another thing is to make Auto balance actually useful.

Autobalance would be retarded in a game such as this. You're punishing a good player, or a mediocre player on the right team, but placing them on an inferior team in a match they already started.

NO MOBA game has an autobalance or teamswitch function once the game is in progress. It's utterly stupid to spend 15 minutes working on a victory, and then have to plan for its defence.

What you want is stricter team matchmaking in the lobby, and punishment for leaving a game prematurely.

Ragequits should lead to 5 minute bans from all servers, stacking cumulatively for a week, with a grace/reprieve for those with >250ms pings.

Auto Balance can currently be turned off in the server options, and the setting is visible in the server browser. Given that playing in a 3v6 that started out as 6v6 is ungodly unfun for some people and quitting penalizes your rating, having the option available allows players to choose a server set up to their liking.

Matchmaking being better requires a system to base it on, which is what the Star Rating system is/was trying to be. It's (hopefully) still a WIP.

MNC has autobalance available. Yes, players are punished by placing them on the opposite site, also you are moved from your friends you're playing with.

The "MOBA" game Defense of the Ancients, a.k.a. DotA has a -switch command to let you join the opposite side. Since there is no stats-tracking or a rating system, people use this alot to even out the teams. I do believe you must all confirm the -switch before it's happening, which wouldn't work in MNC, but a -switch option in form of team selection much alike class seleciton would be convenient.

I do not believe that punishment for leaving in a short-game like MNC should be punished, most of the times this wouldn't even work out well as most rage-quitters leave and quit the game entirely if they are rage-quitters.

I do like the idea for matchmaking on top of dedicated servers. Let the official servers allow matchmaking so the system automatically places you on a server instead of you having to find one. The system sure needs latency protection so you don't end up on an American server as a European player, but also it needs a lobby-system so you can join up with friends in games already in progress.

Matchmaking would just be incredibly unviable in a game with such a low playerbase.

Yeah the star system is a work in progress. The original idea was to get players that were playing well separated from those who would get constantly going to die. Whoo boy that did not turn out as planned.

I believe user or developer videos for class based tutorials placed ingame (with a friendly reminder to go to Uberent.com) would do well to get newer players suited to doing what they must and having more fun with what they do.

An advertising push on steam combined with the most recent bugfixes, balance changes, star system tweaks and map could do plenty of good but we won't keep the newbies for long if we dont have a tutorial to get them into playing and playing well.

i would say new maps and gametypes, ctf or steal the bacon would be very good. And a well made instructional video telling the importance of early bot killing to get money etc. getting a custom class as soon as you can, and a quick rundown of the pros roles and skills and good uses for them. A bit like s2 games hero spotlights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDZTIFLp ... ideo_title

but obviously a lot shorter with maybes a more in-depth version available on youtube.

Make this video as brief but as informative as possible and make it force play without the ability to skip when the game is first played. Couple this with a free weekend and I think the new guys will have a lot more fun.

Rather than force them to sit through a tutorial, I would bring up a screen the first time the game runs that asks if you want to watch the tutorial videos, mentioning that they explain each class, their abilities, strategy points for each, general gameplay rules/concepts, etc - and that it's highly recommended that new players watch them before joining a MP server, aka "MNC is not a typical shooter - watch these first."

Splitting the tutorials into a video for each, including one to replace the current Crossfire video (the current one isn't quite in-depth enough, it just explains the basic concept), would allow players to watch as much or as little as they wanted. Forcing them to sit through a video would be intrusive enough to annoy me right off the bat, and would make me less likely to stick around if my first day of matches went poorly.

i disagree, whilst i do find non skippable (not even a word) videos annoying, if it wasn't forced none of the new players would watch it, they would just skip it and go straight in then rq. The video does not have to be that long 1:30 max maybes, you can fit a lot of info into that amount of time, just have comedy fast voice, and maybes at the end say something like more in depth video tutorials in the tutorials section of the main menu or whatever.

Also these people are playing in the free weekend, they have just downloaded, what is it? 3GB? so i do not think they would rq cos they couldnt skip a minute or so long video. They would sit it out, maybes even hating it, but in the end they would have more of a clue than they would if they just skipped it, and that is a good thing.


also the reason why it is good to force-play is while it is all good saying tutorials here, and guides there people will simply not bother to watch them or read them. Like for example viewtopic.php?f=31&t=8834 a great guide covers so much and written by the guy at top of leaderboards, tbh i cannot see a newbie reading all that, i haven't read it, so force-playing imo is a decent idea.

I thought you meant something longer than one or two minutes. Something that short wouldn't be a problem. In any case, whatever shows up needs to mention the more complex tutorial material, if there was any.

There should be a link in fine print leading the player to a website to learn about each class. :lol:

And thus I wouldn't play the game anymore. The game doesn't have the playercount for this.



The problems are thus.

A: There is nothing for the player to work towards. Other DOTA games have long term player development that, on top of the "rage quit" penalty, incentivizes playing out the round regardless of if your team is doing well or poorly. Initially, MNC also has some of this, but after your 6 custom classes are acquired, that's it. And you can get that accomplished in a week of casual play.

B: Instead of a strict matchmaking system, the game features dedicated servers. The star rating is an attempt at matchmaking, but it will be wholly inadequate to the task.

And until player count rises, any true matchmaking will fail in the middle.

If all you have is the penalty and no real reason to stick out bad rounds, people will just leave THE GAME faster than they already do. Because there is nothing there to keep them playing when bad round after bad round happens.

I could see having a minute long video about the overall basics or one for each class with a friendly reminder to check the website for longer videos/tips.

If they were user submitted it would mean less of a workload for Uber to edit/implement.

Its nice to see some of these ideas.

I'm a new player. After the free weekend we bought 5 copies of the game and rent a server in Dallas. I now have 33 hours in MNC although I think about half of that time was spent in blitz.

I like MNC because there is a lot to learn. There are good opportunities to play Def and Off. You have to learn which classes to use/attack from a distance and which classes to use/attack up close. I would say that after about 15 hours of play, these are the things that have inhibited my fun or confused me. I will say that I got some very good advice from shacknews.com players which was stick to one class for the first 7 hours of play. This was universally agreed upon by my 5 friends as good advice. We have played games together since 2003.

***= more important
- = less important

Technical Issues
***The game screws with the volume levels in TeamSpeak causing the need to disconnect/reconnect. This means quitting the game first.
-Cannot alt-tab without hanging MNC.exe. See above.

UI issues
***button/skill inconsistency. Most of my friends reported problems remembering which skills are mapped to which button. I think part of this has to do with inconsistencies in how the skills are mapped. For example, my default grenade button for the Assault is Mouse4. However the Support's airstrike marker (grenade) button is mouse 2. Hack turrets is mouse 4 There are other examples with the Sniper and Assassin.
***gold/silver/bronze endorsements- A)Game doesn't explain how these work (Gold boosts skill more, bronze less. When I first started I thought you ranked up to earn gold status. B) Game doesn't show the boost you get when choosing gold vs silver vs bronze. I had to go to external site to learn what the gold/silver/bronze values actually were.
-ability to change classes-only for a short time during spawn. I've missed changing classes more than once because of this. It would be nice to be able to choose your next class before you die.
-career/milestone mode stuff: Does buying this stuff do anything? I still don't know.
***is there any point at aiming for the head in this game (except sniper)? Cone of spray? Is this what the Crit endorsement is supposed to compensate for? It's unrewarding if headshots don't matter.

Tutorial stuff
***assassins-dealing with them. I have learned, but initially learning to deal with the assassin class was NOT FUN. It's fun to loose a fair fight. It's not fun to get ganked by an enemy you can't even see.
***importance of the annihilator. Didn't know what it did. Didn't really differentiate the lightning bolt symbol from the "!"/ejector symbol. I think it should be "A" for annihilator with a big arrow that says PRESS ME.
-importance of overtime and getting to the ball. ie knowing that everybody's shields are down.
***stick to one class for the first 7 hours of play.
-No instruction manual PDF when purchased through STEAM. At this point this could just link to instruction videos although those would be better to have as an in game menu item.
-TBH, tutorial wise, I would just make a video of a competitive match and explain what you are doing and why. First video, focus on annihilator, ejector, turrets, and bots.
Second video focus on classes. You don't have to explain every detail for each class. Just focus on effective stratgies/builds for each class.

Maps
***Spunky Cola arena. This is the map with the 90 degree turn? We all hate that map with a passion.
***maps limited: I bought this game to entertain me for 2 months until Brink comes out. The limited number of maps is making that a stretch. I personally play no more than 1 rotation through the maps and then I quit the game.

That was a pretty nice sum up of the issues new players face and I have to say I agree with most of them with exceptions though they are only ones I see a hard time implementing a solution.

One, how do you propose we fix the issue about control mapping? If you would change it now it would probably mess with a lot of people who have gotten used to the buttons.

Two, how could you make it so that assassins are easier to deal with for newbies but not wipe out the class completely. I understand your point completely but I'm not sure what is to be done.

Three, Spunky is difficult because of the corners as well as how forward the forward most turrets are. It makes it a challenge to push bots which leads to a stalemate more often than not. I can see how map changes could be made but I dunno I like a challenge.

I like the points you made as well as giving a new persons perspective on it. I do agree with your ideas on the other points you pointed out. (and now that "point" has lost its meaning...)