Sign In
Create Account
DISCLAIMER: This thread is NOT about the usual stuff like matchmaking, auto team balancing, changes to the economy etc. This thread is about useful suggestions that got buried between the rage and hype of the recent patches.
I made a list of suggestions for improving the newbies' experience based on what I heard in the streams/podcasts and based on what I read in the former playhawken.com forums and Steam forums. If you have more useful suggestions please post them (or a link to them) in this thread and I'll add them accordingly! Please also leave a reply with which suggestions you want to see the most.
At the moment there are a few major problems (mathcmaking & auto team balancing) that make new players quit the game but I think that these topics were already covered by other threads. I'd like to focus on the improvement of the sloppy communication of important information to the player and give some other suggestions as well. Some things can be done by the community (com) but most of these suggestions would require the developers (dev) to make changes:
- Emphasise the ability to unlock ingame content by leveling up (dev)
- Add an explanation of the ingame item symbols to Laila's UI tutorial (dev)
- Make the tips on the launch screen more visible (dev)
- Use the title screen to guide players to the forums (dev)
- Share the knowledge (com)
- Improve the training section to communicate the gameplay mechanics of objective based game modes (dev)
- Make the server region selection more visible (dev)
- Give access to all unlocks in Offline TDM (dev)
- Use VR training to help new players recognize different mechs (dev)
- Use different measurements to make stats less confusing (dev)
- Emphasise the loss of HC and XP when leaving a match (dev)
- Add a mech difficulty rating to the purchase windows (dev)
- Change the display of match quality (dev)
Emphasise the ability to unlock ingame content by leveling up (dev)
Problem: Unlockable ingame content such as weapons, items and internals are labeled with the "Unlock Early" label and do not show the option to buy it with HC later on.
Effect: New players get confused and think that ingame content can only be unlocked by purchasing it with MC and get the impression that Hawken is pay2win (example: thread)
Possible solution: Replace the "Unlock early" by a greyed out HC price and move the lock symbol to the HC price. It would look like this:
Spoiler
Add an explanation of the ingame item symbols to Laila's UI tutorials (dev)
Problem: Most new players don't recognize the symbols that indicate if an item is Universal/Popular/New.
Effect: These players don't know that there's a symbol that indicates that an item is universal and think that everything is universal.
Possible solution: Add a legend of the Universal/Popular/New symbols to every UI tutorial window. Here's one
example of how it would look like in the customizations menu:
Spoiler
Make the tips on the launch screen more visible (dev)
Problem: The tips are tucked away in lower left corner on the launch screen (the screen that lets you select a mech and spawn in a match). After asking around I found out that new players (and also lots of experienced players) don't even know that there are tips being displayed on that sceen at all.
Effect: The tips are 100% useless if nobody sees them.
Possible solution: Make these tips catch attention. Use a little blinking Laila-popup window. It would look like this:
Spoiler
Additionally these tips can be displayed on the loading screens as well. nepaca made a mock-up screen in his thread "
Use the login screen to guide players to the forums (dev)
Problem: A few players didn't even realize that there's a forum on playhawken.com
Effect: They'll miss out on all of the sweet soccer live streams.
Possible solution: Add a label that makes the players aware of the official forums. It would look like this:
Spoiler
Share the knowledge (com)
Problem: New players aren't sure where to look for advice on specific mechs.
Effect: Lots of people calling stuff op/useless because they have no idea how to use it properly.
Possible solutions: Share the knowledge. There are lots of veterans who mastered their favorite mechs.
The Steam guide section would be great for these tips and strategies. So, if you want to share your information to enlighten the new players you can create a guide in Hawken's guide section. I recommend creating one even if there's already a guide about your favorite mech/strategy/weapon. The more information the better.
Having more mech videos might help new as well. Creating an up-to-date series of tutorial videos aimed at newbies (like the "Hawken mindgamer" videos) is probably asking for too much but it would be incredibly helpful.
Improve the training section to communicate the gameplay mechanics of objective based game modes (dev)
Problem: The simple tips when lanching a game of Siege or Missle Assault are severely lacking in terms of communicating what to do.
Effect: Most Players don't have much trouble getting into Missle Assault but Siege is a different story. There are lots of thread about experienced players complaining about newbies not knowing what to do and there are also a few threads made by newbies asking for a better explanation of the Siege game mode.
Possible solutions: Keep the current tips but improve the ingame training section so new players get a more detailed explanation of the Siege game mode. I have two suggestions on how to do that.
Bringing back the tutorial videos for Siege and Missle Assault is definitely the easier solution. Adding a tutorial video section as a fourth tile in the training menu. The tutorial videos have to be updated but their structure will stay pretty much the same. Heck, the voice over of the Missle Assault tutorial video doesn't even have to be changed.
Adding an interactive tutorial (with Laila) is an even better solution but it takes way more time (and requires more resources). This interactive tutorial would only explain the basics of Siege. For example:
take EU from an energy tree, destroy a mech and take his EU, use a depositor, see the battleship launching, launch a missle at an enemy battleship by capturing the AA.
Make the server region selection more visible (dev)
Problem: Lots of players don't realize that they can change the server region.
Effect: They play in the wrong server region and wonder why their ping is so high and complain about it on the (Steam) forums.
Possible solution: Make the server region selection catch more attention by giving it it's own tile on the game mode screen. It would look like this:
Spoiler
If possible setting the default server region to the server region nearest to the player would be great as well (especially for people whao aren't sure which server region to pick for the best ping).
Give access to all unlocks in Offline TDM (dev)
Problem: New players have no idea what specific mechs/loadouts/items/etc. play like. They spend their first HC (and MC) for stuff they don't like or can't use it effentiently yet.
Effect: Many new players are dissapointed because they bought a shiny new mech that doesn't fit their playstyle at all. That is the reason why so many new players ask for the ability to sell mechs/items.
Possible solution: The "Offline TDM" mode would be a great shooting range for players. New players can test mechs before they buy them and will have a much better understanding of how their future mech/weapon/item works when they have to decide between different mechs/weapons/items.
Use VR training to help new players recognize different mechs (dev)
Problem: Lots of players don't realize mechs can look differently due to customization or don't know how to identify a mech.
Effect: They get confused and think that "disguising" is pay2win since they don't know how to properly identify a customized mech.
Possible solutions: Use the VR training to help new players recognize different mechs. There are two methods to do this:
The easier solution is probably to mplement a series of help windows during the VR training that explain how to identify a mech even if it was customized. It would look like this:
Spoiler
The other method would be to show mech models having different customizations. It may be also benefitial to have actual mechs (costomized and normal) running around and asking the player to identify and kill only a specific mech class (for example only Bruisers) out of a larger group of different mechs.
Use different measurements to make stats less confusing (dev)
Problem: The current measurements aren't defined and nobody knows what the current numbers mean.
Effect: New players and experienced players alike get confused by the latest changes to the weapon/mech stats.
Possible solution: Use actual stats instead of percentages and add the measurement units to the numbers.
Emphasise the loss of HC and XP when leaving a match (dev)
Problem: Some players do not think about how much HC and XP they loose if they abandon their team.
Effect: People miss out on HC and XP and get confused why they have to grind longer than others.
Possible solution: Display the least amount of HC and (total) XP that the player would get if the match ended right now. This might make a few players reconsider and stick with their team for the last few minutes of the match instead of quitting and loosing everything they earned so far. It could look like this:
Spoiler
Add a slideshow to introduce the player to Hawken's lore (and sell some novels) (dev)
Problem: There are many players that don't even know that there's a story behind Hawken. (thread 1, thread 2 and more)
Effect: New players often think that Hawken has no story since the story isn't told though the game but though the "Hawken: Genesis" and "Hawken: Melee" graphic novels.
Possible solution: Players can be introduced to Hawken's story by using a "swimple" slideshow that shows the sample pages that are already available on the playhawken.com website at the start of the VR training. It could look like this:
Spoiler
Add a mech difficulty rating to the purchase windows (dev)
Problem: New players often don't know the different mechs yet and are often unsure if a mech is "rookie-firendly" or not when making the decision to buy a new mech. Some even think that more expensive mechs are better than cheaper mechs.
Effect: Players are disappointed with their purchased mech if it's harder to use than they imagined.
Possible solution: Adding a mech difficulty rating (1 to 5) to the purchase screen might help players to pick a class that is more suitable to their current level of skill and comprehension of game mechanics. A higher rating means that mech has a higher skill ceiling to master. As such newer players may find these mechs to be worse than others until they have mastered Hawken's game mechanics. It could look like this:
Spoiler
If possible the mech difficulty rating might also be useful in the garage/spawn screen for test drive mechs. If the "Give access to all mechs as test drive mechs in Offline TDM" suggestion ever gets implemented it would be useful for those mechs as well. It could look like this:
Spoiler
Possible mech difficulty ratings:
Spoiler
Change the display of match quality (dev)
Problem: New players often don't understand the star rating system for the quality of a match in the serverlist. There is a short explanation above the server list but many people don't even see it properly. I also heard of newbies who thought that a 3 star rating means that there are only high skilled players on that server. Due to that misunderstanding they joined 1 star rated servers instead and got stomped.
Effect: Players repeatedly join servers not suited for them and get stomped. Frustrated players are more likely to leave the game.
Possible solution: That system can definitely improved by replacing the ambiguous stars by actual words like "ideal match", "okay match" and "bad match". It could look like this:
Spoiler
Edited by ReEvolve, 28 March 2015 - 02:26 PM.
Back to top
