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How do we get people to play mp?

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Ozymandious

Ozymandious

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Mar 1, 2018
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OK, hbs is working on the connection problems, but at this point it is starting to feel to little too late. I see fewer and fewer people on the discord and I am playing less myself. The tournaments arnt filling up as quickly as they did a couple of weeks ago. So what are we gonna do? How do we get more people into the mp scene and have a healthy growing community? I ask cause I know battle tech players are smart enough colectivly to figure this out. What are some ideas on how to attract people to mp and make them happy to be there?
 
I think having more HBS supported tournaments will help. Valhalla calls and they hold the keys.

If Prussian Havoc’s tournament is the only one to reward its victor, what other draw is there?
 
I just really like that we have a BATTLETECH Multi-player subforum now.

I see it as a vote of confidence, validation and a hint of things to come that we can now gather, discuss and raise awareness of Multi-player issues, concerns and opportunities.

HBS has an awesome track record of hearing its consumers and fans on the forum and responding.

It may take a number of updates or even an expansion, but my hope is high for some love to be shown upon BATTLETECH Multi-player down the development road.

And of course the more HBS might highlight Multi-player in the hoped-for first expansion, the greater the bump of potential Multi-player gamers.

So as I see it, the better we as a nascent BATTLETECH Multi-player Community can prepare for an influx of new players (Unofficial Doscord, Multi-player guides, etc) the better we might make the most of whatever is to come as BATTLETECH Moves Forward. : )
 
Zakhodit said:
I think having more HBS supported tournaments will help. Valhalla calls and they hold the keys.

If Prussian Havoc’s tournament is the only one to reward its victor, what other draw is there?
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It is a beginning. A beginning I would not soon jeapardize.

And to me, the lone Valhalla heartbeat at the moment.

I may be a hopeless dreamer, but I have faith that at some point, HBS might revisit their decision on Leagues, Tournaments and Leaderboards. Though if Valhalla is ever to have value, just like this Multi-Player subforum, it will be on us, Valhalla’s Initiates, to generate that value on the Valhalla forum floors. :bow:
 
I agree as the game grows the playability of mp will improve, which will in turn help with interest and retention of mp players. However what hbs does is out of my hands so what can I do to help others join our mp community. I have floated the idea of a tournament with a small cash prize to address the why play mp with out the bragging rights of a leaderboard issue. I am wondering if we can devise a better way of communicating with the sp players. So we can communicate to them the existence of the tournaments and the is wars league. I keep seeing people asking hbs for an expansion that essentially does what is wars is already doing. That makes me think we really need to increase our visibility some how. Any thoughts are appreciated.
 
Ozymandious said:
...That makes me think we really need to increase our visibility some how. Any thoughts are appreciated.
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A series of videos, where a BATTLETECH Play-by-Play Person and Color-Commentary Person breakdown a 30-Seconds-per-Turn match, would to me be a great vehicle to both introduce gamers to BATTLETECH Multi-player as well as bring in longtime BATTLETECH Multi-player gamers, if the gamers involved are well known.

Over time, if there is good enough chemistry, the commentators would themselves be well-known.

If such an effort were to grow out of the regulars of the HBS BATTLETECH Unofficial Discord Server, it could develop into a WIN/WIN/WIN as a landing pad for gamers new to BATTLETECH Multi-player is offered up from the get-go. :bow:
 
Ozymandious said:
That makes me think we really need to increase our visibility some how. Any thoughts are appreciated.
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For now the best we can do is advertise the discord in as many places as possible. And keep advertising.

Within reason, a post every now and then here looking for more players. And I don’t mean just here but on Reddit and any other sources we can find.

The multiplayer community for Battletech is Tiny. We can’t afford to be separated among several different venues. We have to be a presence in every venue.

If @Prussian Havoc were to organize another tournament, would we get 100 players? I hope he can again organize such a tournament and our success can be measured by who signs up.

Some of the other tournaments have small player pools. I think In part because there is no reward. No shiny Valhalla badge to give winners. Very few of us play for the love of the game. We have to have a cookie to give the winners.

And I think it needs to be an official HBS cookie to make it worth it.

If we organize tournaments and make them inclusive. We can ask HBS to approve them. Meaning they feel the tournament is something they can support with a prize like something as small as the Valhalla badge.

Also, I think such tournaments should have this format:

A group Stage. With 25% of all participants in each group. Everyone plays everyone else at least once (twice depending on how big the event is) the top 25%(round down) of each group move to single elimination brackets.

The group stage allows all players to play multiple games. Win or lose they get to play. Top players move on to the more challenging single elimination.

Again, I firmly believe we need support from HBS on this. We are only asking for their approval and the promise of an official award. Not money or goods. Just recognition in the form of Valhalla status. We have several players already with that badge so a number on the badge signifying how many times it’s been earned.
 
What can we do? I think the most effective Way is more visual Contend. Streams Youtube Videos. ISW should be super intresting even to the SP Guys. And tournament matches with good commentary and the right support might also help alot *hust* Paradox channel *hust*. The Problem with Tournament Videos is they would come out to slowly. I.e. I have like 1 match every week mroe like 1 match every 2 weeks for Vallhalla where I could produce a Video. Thats just not enough content. and to be honest not all of those games are intresting. Maybe a Collective Youtube Channel where we link all the diffrent games might be an Idea. @HBS_Eck @Anaro Sunfire @TheSpydyr @Zhakodit
 
I would love to be able to direct new people to a single channel for all the best game play especially if you guys could do instructionals as well. there are the various collections of the individual twitch streams and other videos but I think what you are talking about would be much more effective.
 
I would love to have a sort of MP-campaign. Sort of like in Shogun 2. And I think it would boost the player base aswell.
 
There's only so much you guys can do with the discord, it's mostly its own self-contained community. It's pretty admirable it's even there, considering how bare-boned the multiplayer is.

But if actually want people to be attracted to the multiplayer of this game, instead of the MP achievements having 1% completion rate, it's all about the Devs. They have to put the work into multiplayer.

It doesn't have to be as insanely well developed as DOTA 2 systems, with an absolutely amazing UI and metrics and recording of every game and all kinds of jazz they have being a professional esports level game, but it does need things like that.

I mean for starters, stat tracking. Basic win/lose/disconnect career tracking. Give people a number to chase after. Earn ranks and customization perks from playing. (obviously not reward anything that affects game balance, just cosmetic and 'rank' rewards)
Give players a lobby to hang out in game. Give players a reason to form a community, like a Great House or a Clan or guild or whatever.
Have more freedom in setting up multiplayer. Rather than 1v1, 4 Mech limit, expand it out. 2v2, 3v3, COOP, 12 Mechs vs 12 Mech company battles. Only way to have more people playing is give the more modes to play. There's literally only a single mode with deathmatch right now. How about some team modes? Hell if 12 Mechs v 12 Mechs is too slow for the pace of the game, you can still do other things.
Image 4 mechs v 4 mechs, but there are 4 players. Each controlling 2. So it's a team game now, a reason to make friends, invite other friends to play, and play with your friends. As opposed to only firing against your friends in a 1v1 setting.

I could go on and on and on, but it's really up to the devs to build and support these multiplayer systems. They cannot be modded, because needing everyone to use the same mods is impossible to govern.
 
My best friend and I dropped $2k each on this game's kickstarter. I ask him, why did he stop playing? Because he finished the game. Beat singleplayer, and he said there is no multiplayer environment worth playing. And he's right. Look at any other multiplayer game, and look what they do to draw in players and keep those people player. Tournaments, special events, cosmetic perks to chase after and earn, seasons, hell even just good old fashioned bragging rights for being the 'top player' in a season. None of those motivators to play exist in BattleTech as it is, and without any of that, I don't see how you will ever get any size-able community of players interested in 1v1 4mech deathmatch with literally nothing else going for it.
 
Stop running Deathstars and injury-fishing missile lances unless you know the other player is cool with it. They're boring to play against and have to be teched against in the Lance-building phase, which drives away players just looking for a fun stompy robots match.
 
Ozymandious said:
I think you may find that not to be a problem on the discord, especially if you voice a concern about not wanting to face such lances before the match
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General statistics for forum usage dictate that at most ~10% of a player base uses the forums at all and even fewer are going to see and use the Discord. Individual solutions aren't particularly useful for building or maintaining a general community.
 
While this is true, what I am trying to do with this tread is find and leverage every means at our disposal to help create a mp community. I can't control what the devs do, and I am not willing to wait for future improvements. I wish to find what small solutions we as players may implement to improve our own community.
 
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