What are the barriers to new players?

MarvelMan · April 2014

I was looking at my roster as I added HT and started thinking about how overwhelming it must be for a new player, who can score a lot of singleton 3*s these days, facing roster slots for them. I dont have all chars (looking at you, Yelena) and have a dup (2* Mag) so Im at 37 roster slots. Working backwards, and that is effectively an Asgard Treasure, or $50. I know that new players dont have to buy slots for all the covers they get but, personally, selling off 3* covers because I dont have the HP to buy slots for them would be demoralizing and probably lead to me dropping the game. Even now, I see the cost for a new slot and have to weigh that versus whether I want the newly released char. And I HATE that feeling. I get that making HP more readily available isnt the best solution to the roster slot conundrum, my thinking is that adding them to the daily rewards at a slower pace than chars are released plus front loading a few more for people starting out, could ease some of that frustration.

That said, what other barriers to new players do people see?

kalex716 · April 2014

Mechanics.

Not understanding how to use rubber banding, and tanking in order to maintain an edge in the game is a significant barrier to the uninitiated. Though they may never realize this. The sooner they can learn how to "game" things though, the sooner they can start building out their roster due to increased prizes.

WilsonFisk · April 2014

kalex716 wrote:

Mechanics.

Not understanding how to use rubber banding, and tanking in order to maintain an edge in the game is a significant barrier to the uninitiated. Though they may never realize this. The sooner they can learn how to "game" things though, the sooner they can start building out their roster due to increased prizes.

I agree completely, and unless one gets into the game enough to spend some time here reading, they'll probably never get it.

I

BearVenger · April 2014

I think for just about all players, we hit spots where we think, "I've progressed (or paid) more, how come I'm not winning more/easier than I had before?"

Also, as someone who joined when there were far fewer 3*s than there are now, I think I'd be overwhelmed with the thought of how many I'd need to compete.

(Now I just think about how hard it is to build up any specific 3* character to a useable level without dropping $10-$50 at a time.)

Unknown · April 2014

MarvelMan wrote:

I know that new players dont have to buy slots for all the covers they get but, personally, selling off 3* covers because I dont have the HP to buy slots for them would be demoralizing and probably lead to me dropping the game.

Using just the HP you gain in the prologue (a total of 1100 HP), you can get up to 12 roster slots. Assuming you keep your core 1*'s (say 3) and the core 2*'s (say another 4) then that leaves room for only 5x 3*'s. If you want to be a casual f2p player and still be a collector, then I don't think you can do it. Even dropping another $5 only gets you up to 15 roster slots.

However, if a player is getting their 3*'s as tourney rewards, then that 5x 3* covers I listed above also adds another roster slot (250 HP). You're also getting 50 HP from tourneys when you place in the high-end 2* reward bracket. And if you happen to get into a relatively decent alliance, that's another 50 HP scored (granted that last part about alliances only affects about 15-20% of the total user base, so not as likely).

I guess what I'm saying with this is that unless you're insanely lucky with your token pulls, you should be fine on roster slots for the month or so that I would consider you a "newbie".

Having just introduced one of my good friends to this game, we had a discussion about this and he feels his biggest barrier to entry is the transition to events. Community scaling locked him out of the last half of the Red ISO tourney. As a 1* with a few 2*'s, all of his nodes were deadly or impossible by the middle of the tourney. The node resets helped, but was still demoralizing to see new nodes and then only be able to get half the story. He didn't understand the point system, but after I explained rubberbanding to him, he decided he wouldn't have to care until he wanted to be competitive.

Unknown · April 2014

The barrier has always been information.

The complete lack of it in-game causes people to quit or get frustrated by their choices (or outcomes).

To compound this effect, there is no prominent links (in-game) that direct people where to get more information. If you are not a naturally inquisitive person, you will be lost and make poor choices until you ragequit.

Even the most simple information like "what does Human Torches green ability do at level 5"? is not available to the player when he 'wins" a cover. So, how is a person supposed to intelligently build a character/team without that information?

IceIX · April 2014

/CompletelyDroppingCorporatePersona

I'm not sure that blind mechanics is really an issue. Or at least, I don't see it as any more an issue than any other game with deep mechanics. Diablo 3 surfaces stats and you can play by clicking, but if you want a build that can take on Torment 2+, you've got to hunt down forums on the hows and whys of build interactions, Area Damage, set bonus interactions, etc. Warframe doesn't explain how potatoes work or really why you'd ever Forma an item. Clash of Clans pushes new unit types at you with absolutely no explanation of what they do, how they affect your army, or how to defend against them. While I agree that MPQ could have more info presented, I think that it's more an intrinsic quality to deeper games that force players to step out of the game and delve into meta and theorycrafting externally if they want to really succeed.

BearVenger · April 2014

Ice, I want to thank you for every post you put in here, because you put a human face and reasoned answers to every thread you participate in.

More constructive edit:
There is a lot of basic info, such as past storylines, character builds, upcoming events, and changes to award tiers and award percentages that I think could be archived and searchable without too much effort on your end. There have been changes to events that have really caught me off-guard just this week alone.

Finding this forum is the only thing that kept me from ragequitting this enjoyable game back in 2013.

Unknown · April 2014

IceIX wrote:

/CompletelyDroppingCorporatePersona

I'm not sure that blind mechanics is really an issue. Or at least, I don't see it as any more an issue than any other game with deep mechanics. Diablo 3 surfaces stats and you can play by clicking, but if you want a build that can take on Torment 2+, you've got to hunt down forums on the hows and whys of build interactions, Area Damage, set bonus interactions, etc. Warframe doesn't explain how potatoes work or really why you'd ever Forma an item. Clash of Clans pushes new unit types at you with absolutely no explanation of what they do, how they affect your army, or how to defend against them. While I agree that MPQ could have more info presented, I think that it's more an intrinsic quality to deeper games that force players to step out of the game and delve into meta and theorycrafting externally if they want to really succeed.

Yes and no... the stuff you mentioned you can either figure out pretty quickly by experimenting, or else isn't really essential until you're trying to master the game.

In MPQ, most of the "non-obvious" mechanics are in that vein, but how stacks refresh specifically is a really key mechanic that acts as a huge tire boot at all levels of play if you don't know how it works, and isn't something I would expect most reasonable persons to be able to figure out even if they attempt to analyze it

Unknown · April 2014

IceIX wrote:

/CompletelyDroppingCorporatePersona

I'm not sure that blind mechanics is really an issue. Or at least, I don't see it as any more an issue than any other game with deep mechanics. Diablo 3 surfaces stats and you can play by clicking, but if you want a build that can take on Torment 2+, you've got to hunt down forums on the hows and whys of build interactions, Area Damage, set bonus interactions, etc. Warframe doesn't explain how potatoes work or really why you'd ever Forma an item. Clash of Clans pushes new unit types at you with absolutely no explanation of what they do, how they affect your army, or how to defend against them. While I agree that MPQ could have more info presented, I think that it's more an intrinsic quality to deeper games that force players to step out of the game and delve into meta and theorycrafting externally if they want to really succeed.

I agree with your statement ICE... partially.

Some games out there are terrible with their introduction and how their game actually works. Other games (diablo 3) do a pretty good job on how to play the game. And for the most part, you can get through almost all of the content of diablo without going to a website to learn about builds/recipes and item crafting. It's left for the top 25% to make the jump and dive deeper

However, while MPQ has layers of complexity, it's not to the degree of a game like diablo 3. The complexity lies in team builds, character builds and composition and level progression. That is where the MPQ player should jump to the forums to make the next step in progression.

The problem is, currently, non-forum goers are still missing basic functions and strategies that should have been explained to them by now.
(why each color has a symbol and what that means, or when you swipe and match 2 which character will be up front by how you swipe, or who goes in front with environment tiles)

I think MPQ has done a great job creating a solid game and since it's main mechanic has been around for a really long time. But the differences need to be highlighted more.

Look, I think where MPQ can help bridge the gap for new players is more attention to details and the difference between a game like Bejeweled/Candy Crush and MPQ. You do a great job in the tutorial in explaining character powers and even how they can purchase heroes. There are other "basic" ideas that still need to be taught.

All that being said, i think a major barrier to new players is Hero Points (shocker) for character slots and helping a new player understand progression in this game.

Unknown · April 2014

Needing to hunt down a forum for obscure mechanism isn't a strength of the game. It's a weakness.

Though for the most part MPQ is good enough about it. Other than the overemphasis on the last 2 hours of a PvE event which can be hard for a new person to figure out, most of the information you need is readily available. There are some things that can be better presented like how some abilities don't mention all their upgrade (e.g. upgrade Magnetic Translocation also upgrades its damage but you can't tell that based on tooltip), and some inconsistency of abilities that destroy tiles should generate AP unless they state otherwise. It'd also help if you can see what the level 5 abilities are since some abilities do change significantly at level 5 so you can't always know how to build a character without knowing if there's a change at level 5.

What are the barriers to new players?

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