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The purpose of this is partially to nudge Reloaded in the direction I feel is appropriate, if they're not doing so already. It's partially to generate feedback on said direction, but it's also to highlight the magnitude of what needs to be done - and this is from a guy who's never developed a game. There are various complicated stages to each of these steps, and many pieces in between. We're still a long way off.
This is a (likely incomplete) list of items that need to be attended to prior to Hawken's "release".
It does need to be released. Why? It's an appropriate cause for an advertising campaign. Does it need an ad campaign?
Find me a better way (not a live action miniseries - however awesome the trailers looked) to get people who haven't played Hawken interested in the game, and I'll say no. In the meantime, yes.
Goal - fix up HWK to get it in proper shape so that an ad campaign isn't wasted.
1. Address Pay To Win Illusions.
This thread was actually a little inspired by this one here. Unfortunately, it seems ADH could have had a much larger customer base if they had made some of the steps that Reloaded already has (toning down the grind significantly, double xp weekends, all of that) however I personally think the grind is still a little high in terms of the mechs - those are the things that people are interested in. Greatly reducing items and internals is great, but the grind for mechs is still pretty significant.
Your goal should be to get Hawken to a point where it is sustainable on solely cosmetic purchases - meaning eliminating the ability to purchase mechs with MC entirely. This again means that the grind must be significantly reduced, because at this point you are relying on the game being fun enough to play for that period of time with a single mech.
This is also why I strongly recommend* that alongside the Assault, you offer the ability to choose two or three mechs at will, for free upon creating an account. Don't force them into choosing immediately, just give them three "mech credits" to spend whenever they choose. It will not give them the illusion of choice - it will give them choice. It will help make the game feel like it's theirs. It will help them feel as if they've just chosen a class in an RPG and are trying it out, as opposed to being forced into the standard "Warrior" class that the assault is.
This is something you can experiment with already - you've already given it a shot, but I currently play Hawken about two to four hours a week - that's less than I've ever played it, but it's also an amount that is consistent with a casual player of video games. I earn scarcely any HC at all at this rate, and if I were a new player playing at this rate, not unlocking basically anything, I'd stop playing.
This is a massive priority. A single article declaring "P2W" can kill off hundreds to thousands of potential players. And that's from stupid Forbes. I mean, people are going to click that. They might not go there on the regular for video game advice, but if that shows up on the first page of google, people are going to read it. In fact, seventy two thousand people are going to read it. I'd bet that's within an order of magnitude of the number of people that have ever installed the game, and tens of thousands of people likely never gave it a shot because P2W is so incredibly discouraged by people that play anything beyond mobile games.
*fuzzy bunnyng do it already - denying this sort of access is the business equivalent of a toddler refusing to share his toys when he's not using them. Unless I see some hard data, I really believe that there aren't many people buying mechs with MC - and even if there are, there are still mechs to buy, and giving players this choice means more people stick around to buy cosmetics (and mechs if you don't eliminate the ability to pay for mechs) if you gave them this choice to begin with.
1.1. On Giving New Players Choice
Every mech (with the exception of the CRT/Assault combo) is in many respects, vastly different from every other mech. The playstyle required for any one of them is different, the feel, flow, and pace of the game playing any single mech is different from any other mech.
How are you using this to your advantage? How are you using this to hook new players?
You're not. You're just not. Not at all. You're sticking players in the single most averaged mech in the game. The most common secondary and one of the most common primaries on a mid sized, mid speed, mid health mech. It's a fantastic mech, one of the only ones that touches the fringe of overpowered, but in all aspects other than how effective it is, it is totally, completely unremarkable.
Meanwhile in order to get anything else at all you need 9,000 HC. Let's be really, really generous and say a new player earns 450 HC per game. (This does not happen with the exception of achievements - which fizzle out after you've gotten your first mech - and double HC weekends.) 9,000/450 is 20. 20 games. TDM usually nears the ten minute mark each game - MA and Siege are usually a fair amount longer. 200 minutes of playing. 3.333333333333333333333333333333333333 hours in game - not in the menus. In game.
By adopting your current business model, you are telling me that you have that much confidence in your game being fun for 3.3 hours not including the mandatory 1 minute wait between games, ready up wait, pre-match wait and other menu nonsense that will easily add up to an extra forty minutes to an hour and also excluding the tutorial of playing - while using your most average, unremarkable mech.
Not only that, but you are telling me that once that player hits >9,000HC, you have the confidence that if they choose a mech that they do not like playing, they will be comfortable either playing that mech, or the same mech they've already been playing, for another 3.3 hours.
I wish that were the case, but it is not. It is really, really not. It is not the case on a good day, and it's certainly not the case when you have 2-400 CCUs spread out over the world, meaning that every third or fourth game, new players are going to get absolutely annihilated by players who have been playing much, much longer and have the option to use any mech they want.
CapnJosh, (lead producer of Hawken currently and the guy calling the shots) in a recent interview you've fully admitted that Hawken takes more than a week of playing to click. I do not understand why giving players the choice to try and find a mech that clicks with them is not at the top of your list of things to do.
The image you are conveying is pay to win, even though by strict definition, Hawken is not. Your model is overzealous, and it's time for a change.
2. Better Game Modes
TDM is fine. It's what it is. DM is fine. It's also what it is. But you know what, they shouldn't be what I'm looking for every time I play. MA and Siege are... MA is Halo 2's territories re-skinned with missiles. That was easily the least played game mode of its time. Other than king of the hill -which is mechanically speaking, Siege when you subtract some details.
MA and Siege are both variants of the King of the Hill game mode. There's a place for it, but the core of KotH gameplay is that you fight around a couple of set points. If you're going to build a game mode like that, the points you fight around better be freaking awesome to fight around.
They're not. "Oh look, we have to go fight on the AA on Origin for the 4 millionth time. Wait, there's five or six people on it? Time to coordinate! Wait, how? (see point 3)"
Variants of CTF and Reverse CTF, like CS's hostage rescue and defuse missions are proven game modes. They are things that people like. They offer usage of the entire map for the purpose of an objective. Granted, it's better with VOIP (see point three).
Here's an idea I had a while back. There are others, but one of the important things to address is that mechs have varying speed. We shouldn't allow that to break the game by having a Raider boost in and out and we're done, but we also shouldn't disable the core mechanics of fast mechs that are "capturing" the flag.
Hawken with reduced TTK is also surprisingly fun, and while it's not "Hawken" per se, we should still be able to see it pop up from time to time.
Additionally concepts like single life rounds need to be looked at - it would make mech composition each and every round that much more critical and thought invoking.
3. In Game Voice
It's been discussed a lot. There's actually a contingent of people who don't view it as necessary - however it's really expected that in this day and age, a game with the level of finish that Hawken has can cobble together a freaking functional voice system.
a) For anything more complicated than TDM and DM, it's practically essential to coordinate timings and convey positional knowledge
b) It will monumentally increase the skill ceiling in matchmade games.
c) It looks really sloppy to not have. It should not be released or advertised without this basic functionality.
You can string together any number of reasons why you don't need it, but 9 times out of 10, I have more fun playing with people on the TeamSpeak than playing solo.
4. Variation In Internals
I don't see this suggestion very much, but it does need to be addressed sooner or later. It stems from the fact that currently mechs and weapons sort of occupy the niche of "collectibles". You get a mech, get three weapons, and move on to the next one. I don't think, based on balance issues in the past, that introducing more weapons for each mech is a feasible way to go about this. Balance issues become tied to each and every mech, the number of combinations to address become staggering, and it inspires a total recall of the system.
Internals on the other hand, can be adjusted individually and added and removed on their own without too much fuss if they truly become broken.
But, they need some real variation, not just conditional stat tweaks. AC is a fantastic start, currently there's no middle or finish. Practically everything but AC is a pure bonus when in use, and is largely relegated to the area of stat tweaks. This is a mech game. I know it's not a simulator, but deeper customization is sought after, and currently this fuzzy bunny is boring.
Here are some stupid ideas to get the wheels turning.
Here's an acceptable framework for internals.
5. Introduction of Market Characteristics to the Economy
A full scale market like that of CS GO and other Valve games is simply not feasible at this point and requires either an art team fully dedicated to such a thing, or a much larger community - but that doesn't mean certain elements wouldn't be beneficial to Reloaded and the community at large
Gifting MC comes to mind obviously, but trading or purchasing fully outfitted mechs or camos is also in the realm of possibility.
However the spark for the market discussion was actually really simple. During the "Love Wins Event" reloaded enabled the purchase of several camos for practically nothing. My bet is they saw in increase in MC purchase, or at the very least, a huge jump in average camos purchased per period of time while that event was in effect.
If people feel like they are getting a good deal on something, they are more likely to spend money. Now, you don't need to consistently lower prices for certain camos to the low double digits of MC, as that event did, but doing randomized offers per player per period of time whereby prices for certain camos or cockpit decorations are reduced in price could seriously incentivize the purchasing of MC.
Of course, what might help the most is simply adding to the camos and allowing the community to design some of them.
If you're properly addressing the P2W scenario, stuff like this is actually super important.
6. Better Maps
The maps we have aren't awful. They're somewhat creative, visually appealing, and at least the size is about right for most of them - but I can't escape the feeling of staleness that comes from a lot of them.
I'm not a map designer, and have no real experience critiquing maps, so this is a pretty short section, but especially for most objective game modes, building in the concept of "lanes" is crucial. Hawken doesn't really have those. It has cover. There are some places where lanes exist for a very brief length of space, but then just evaporate into scattered cover. Most lanes that do exist (like tunnels in origin) are basically just extended chokepoints. Surprisingly, Uptown is an example of a map with at least a few lanes done rather well.
Of course, verticality needs to be built in to this concept given Hawken's gameplay, but in general a redesign of most maps is in order.
If someone knows better, I'm open to suggestions, I just can't escape the feeling that the maps are designed to just bounce around cover in different areas, rather than (with the exception of a few cases) fight over map control.
7. Tutorial Improvement
This one barely made the main list here, but I really do think that as long as there's not a huge community generating all sorts of guides and passing around knowledge every other game, that some of the finer details of playing really do need to be touched on in order to keep people from rage-uninstalling.
Simple L dodges escape our current tutorial, as well as practically all instruction on how to play gametypes like Siege. A mid level player's input would be appreciated here. I recall the tutorial being quite lacking, but it's been a while since I went through it, and at the level of play that I'm writing this at, a lot of basic stuff isn't at the forefront of my head rather than instinctively built into my playing.
Regardless, Hawken does have a pretty high skill ceiling in terms of pure engagement combat, and the tutorial we have basically just tells you how to press buttons.
Hyginos has kindly linked me to some ideas that S9 made a few months ago, which I think are a handy stepping stone.
8.0. Spectator Mode
This is kind of a weird place on the list. It's not wholly necessary. It won't help making gameplay more fun, and it won't incentivize buying into the game - on its own.
But the impact it could have is drastic. Hawken is fun to watch, or at least it can be. It's fast paced, there are in any given minute, hundreds of small decisions being made on either team in an organized match, and there is already an established top tier of players and teams with their own rivalries, structures, and unique talents and histories being brought to the battlefield.
Properly implemented, spectator mode could give birth to a casting experience that rivals that of Starcraft 2. (If you've ever played it, watching pro matches is just absurd and engaging on another level.)
It desperately needs the ability to see which silos are capped and by whom as well as player names and possibly even internal/item setups on the sides. It needs to be faster when boosting, and it very much needs to be smaller. As it stands, it doesn't fit through chokepoints as small as the central (orange) choke between S2 and Stage on Wreckage, forcing the spectator to fly all the way around and miss critical engagements.
Adding things like whiteboard maps (maps you can draw on) that also display player position are important as well.
8.1 Miscellaneous
A grab bag of suggestions that are worth looking into, and having a few of them taken care of prior to release would be something of a boon, but individually not things that I deem crucial to my vision of Hawken's economic success via player retention and payment restructuring.
New mechs would be neat, but currently stuff is pretty balanced.
Balance tweaks (just tweaks) could be good in the realm of certain items/sustained weapons, TTK (maybe).
Clan support. Not necessary off the bat, but really should be implemented.
Those. Goddamn. Sticky. Walls. (There's an especially strange one on Test Arena that drains your fuel when you boost into it. I hope to god that's not found in other maps, because it's freaking ridiculous.)
In the same vein, this thread is worth a look.
Projectiles should exist after the player dies. Really.
Reduce in between game wait times.
Scanner still grants omniscient levels of information to an entire team over a certain area for a significant period of time. No other item (that you don't have to aim or one that has a lasting effect) offers the ability to effect an entire team to such a degree.
There's more, clearly, but no game is perfect.
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Now look at this. This is some serious time and money that needs to be put into this game in order to get the game to the dreamland that ADH and MTR wanted. I don't have your solution for how to get there. It's a lot of work, but each and every one of these needs to be addressed in order to create a game that both retains players and makes you money.
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9. The Ad Campaign
Superbowl Sunday, on my 65 inch TV, surround sound on and everything, there's a fade to black before a sequence of axe feet thump across a grainy city setting. As the dust settles, the camera snaps to a sky view with multiple battleships in position overhead - the sound of a missile in flight builds behind me before striking one of the lowest ships and it goes down before, I mean. What the hell. There's so much visual awesome that can be applied here. Obviously don't do SuperBowl Sunday. The return on that would be crap considering the inverse relationship between how into PC games someone is vs how much sports they watch.
Don't start with an overambitious live action series. Don't do some grassroots advertising movement, do what works while you still can. If you wind up with the money and have the room to experiment, then go for it, but take your cues from PC games that have made it.
Without some sort of release and advertising venture, there's little cause for people to try the game out. There's no more hype for Hawken as it stands. A few months before release, return to closed beta so people aren't just coming in willy nilly - build anticiption, and give them something worth unveiling.
Work from the perspective of this game still being in Beta, and finish it.
Oh yeah.
Unlock the damn servers.
Edited by ticklemyiguana, 07 September 2015 - 07:06 PM.
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and Tickle hit many of the issues facing Reloaded right on the head like a laser guided tow missile !
