Devs watch this

[S o l d i e r]

To see how newbies fare in this game.

 

[Gumba]

Another issue is that many new players nowadays are people who never played base JKA (nor Jedi Outcast). It's hard enough to get into mb2 with JKA experience, I can only imagine what it's like to start right off with mb2. I think most guides are appropriate for those who have prior JK experience. For people who have 0 saber control, it's absolutely unnecessary for them to learn about PB, ACM, disarm and style perks, often they can't even hit a standing target with their saber so how can they realistically expect to hit moving targets (yet they expect themselves to kill people), they don't know basic stuff that WASD direction defines their attacks, when will they spin etc., essentially stuff that's basic knowledge for JKA players. Maybe the basic special move list from the singleplayer could be transferred into mb2, the list on how to do: roll stab, grab wall, wallruns, DFAs, attack enemy on the ground etc..

Yeah I think this is a HUGE problem. There are people who say the gameplay is so different that it doesnt matter but I think the experience in base let's you learn the basics of mb2 WAY faster

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

'I need a grenade'

Remove blobs, give Clone pulses. Pls.

You can make this game so much more new user friendly, but atm it's a mess of extremely specific information that is not easily accessible.

 

[Dra-Gon]

There are no indicators that tell you to go bind crucial abilities like reload or class specials.

Exactly.
Understanding when to run and when to walk is crucial when fighting a saberist, yet there is no mention anywhere about it, unless you pick it up and ask on chat (tho I often saw people who sincerely didn't know and got instead trolled by other people via bad answers).

There are basically 4 categories of problems that I see for anyone starting the game:
1. Unintuitive / Poor UI
2. Bugs
3. No tutorial / ingame guide
4. The ingame Library

Ad 1 - Unintuitive / Poor UI
First of all, everything is oversized. Why does the top bar menu in game take 1/10th of my screen space?
Staying on the subject of the top bar menu, do we need a Call Vote system? This is mostly replaced by rtv on servers and where it is allowed, it usually serves nothing good (mostly I saw admins using it for silly things rather than deciding something of value, for players it is completely off).
Can't "Call Vote" and "Vote" be merged? Move "Vote" as submenu "Give vote" to the "Call Vote" menu and rename "Call Vote" to "Vote".

Since I have chat in the default position (above health bar) and the font size is so big, it takes over a majority of my screen whenever someone types long sentence(s).
I know there is a command for setting chatbox size (or I think there was) but then again, why is it a command and not a part of the setup panel?
Continuing about things that are missing from the UI, I recall missing voice commands from the voice chat UI. Or the option to actually bind a key for !P, !F or !C, instead of that being predefined for F1-F3 keys.

Team overlay is a must for any player who wants to know about his teammates (at least on open, pugs are different thing since people are on TS anyway), yet it takes 1/2 of the width of the screen and 1/5 of the height of the screen. This option isn't even hightlighted anywhere, so unless someone is fiddling with the setup, he won't know about it.

In key bindings menu, the two most crucial abilities are without any sensible hint - Class Special 1 and Class Special 2. Their hints say that they are class special 1 or class special 2... what? What kind of hint is that?

In class configuration a hint appears when you highlight an ability, giving a general explanation of what it does. Why is this hint under the whole panel? At the very least, there is an empty window right under the character model with no information in it. Mostly, what those hints lack is explanation of what you get when you buy the next level.
E.g. Grip
Level 1 - Deals damage to enemy, slows them down, prevents them from attacking with weapons
Level 2 - Stops the enemy in place
Level 3 - Allows you to move the enemy to where your cursor points

Actual data (e.g. how much damage per tick it does and how much FP per second it takes) and even more detailed explanation can be on the wiki. In my opinion, it is good to explain to players what they get when they do something, but there is no need to throw way too much info on them. It could actually backfire and nobody would even read those hints.

Also, why can I save a class configuration, but I cannot delete one? It's nice to have a 'default' build, but wouldn't it be nice to actually for example create a popup window/image that says you chose a class but did not configure it yet? (Showing you your binded key to "Class configuration" and some predefined key for closing such popups).

Maybe also change how you can select hilt? And why do you chose between staff / duals in hilt selection menu? Shouldn't that be actually in the class configuration menu?

Ad 2 - Bugs
This is probably the most serious issue for first user experience. There is nothing more annoying than when you connect to server, pick a class, actually set it up... and you spawn as completely different class with your points being distributed in a silly way (if only the default build was used at the very least), or you don't spawn at all.
The thing is - you don't know why you didn't spawn, yet you remember you did select class to join the game. So what did you do wrong?
This is only a one of such issues, but there a pile of such silly things - like the first-time-on-server-spawning-as-jedi/sith bug, flying as mando changes your view between 3rd person and 1st person, scoped droideka bug, black screen staying when someone falls into endless pit, etc.
This really makes the mod look bad, moreso if this is being streamed out, which is also the case in the OP's video.

This is most likely going hand in hand with what Eezstreet wrote about the code being a mess.

Ad 3 - No tutorial / ingame guide
There is little information to find in the game. The game completely lacks any noob-friendly intro to understand the basic principles of the game.

The things I would change:

• Separate the class / side selection window and the objective window from the Join menu. Make objective window as a standalone menu (accessed via top bar menu).
• Class selection - instead of where the objective window is there could be information about the class you selected. Like general cons and pros about the class and class highlights. No description about what a 'clone' is like in library. Just cons and pros and for the love of god, explanation of what their class specials are. E.g. Super battle droid
  • Hightlights
    • Uses battery (*icon of the green bar in the hud here*). Battery level affects movement speed, shooting speed, damage and if the SBD can be knocked down or not
    • Class special 1 - Enters/Leaves recharge mode. While in recharge mode, you cannot attack and can only move slowly, but you are recharging your battery levels
    • Class special 2 - When holding down this button while in recharge mode, recharges battery more quickly at the expense of ammo. When in combat mode and advanced targeting ability is bought, zooms in/out your view .
  • Pros
    • Takes basic damage from all shots (even if shot in head)
    • Can greatly migitate incoming type of damage by buying special type of armor or have increased health or increased fire power
  • Cons
    • Slow movement speed, cannot jump or move while crouching
    • No shield
    • Very suspectible to EMP grenades and similar effects
• Objective menu - The new objective menu (or even the current objective window in Join menu) should be more interactive. Right now it is not telling anything. In dotf, the map in the objective window at least shows points of interest (if anyone deduces they are points of interest tho), however for example in corellia not even the points of interest are displayed.
  • Staying on corellia, the objective #1 for republic reads: "Disable the Hangar shield!", with pictures of what one later realizes are the console and the shield generator. objective #2 reads: "Steal fighters docked in the hangar" with picture of ships in hangar.
  • So far, from this - I don't know what to do. Yes, I have to disable shield, but how? Yes, I have to steal ships, but how? Nothing is displayed on the map.
  • It would be better to have this to be more descriptive. For example I click the number 1 in the objective window because I want to know what the first objective for rebels is. Upon clicking it it would highlight the objective on the map (e.g. make it blink in yellow?)
  • Add button that displays spawnpoints of both sides (could even contain description if your spawn point moves, like in the case of rebels on death star, or both team in dotf)
  • Add notes that highlight the point of interest in map when clicked - e.g. on Lunar:
    • "You can destroy windows by slashing them with lightsaber, the vacuum will suck out any allies and enemies in nearby area" with both window locations on map blinking when you highlight this note
    • "Hack the console to close shut destructible windows" with the location of console blinking.

The next thing that I believe is missing is an intro to the game. This mod has a set of very specific rules which are not present in other games - e.g. walking x running.
You could basically divide this into four categories:

• General info - a walkthrough on the game mode (e.g. it is 5 minute round-based game), how to join game by selecting side, chosing class and configuring it, explain tking and what the TKP system is
• Gunner - how to shoot, reload, where is your ammo, the basics to fighting another gunner, the basics to fighting jedi/sith
• Saberist - general view on how force works (deflecting, force powers), bp works, the basics of fighting another saberist, the basics to fighting gunners
• Class - This would be class specific - basically explains the highlights, pros and cons of the class and how to use them. E.g. battery for SBD, shoulder barge, fury for wookiee, and so on. However this would have to allow the player to switch classes immediately (like Mace wrote)

This would need bots acting as players (e.g. a bot that is TKing you to help explain the TKP system), however as this would not be part of the standard game, it would not need fool-proof bots.

Ad 4 - The ingame Library
This thing is horrible, sadly. Yet it is in game, which is imo a mistake right now. Any new player willing to open it for help will change their minds once they gets into it.

In points:

• The UI is stretched and looks horrible, it has an "Exit" button for whatever reason
• Buttons don't react even when highlighted
• Data are not initialized (e.g. I click on FAQ, there is a question displayed, but no answer, unless I swap to next question and then back).
• It is all just a huge wall of blue text really. So many colors exist and it just uses one.
• Pictures are irrelevant, except they add a little flavour to the boring wall of text.
• Long text is cut short (e.g. check Saber styles - the entry about staff is cut away)

One important thing to add would be the base JKA library as someone already pointed out. JKA is old game and so new players may not even have any idea how to do blue lunge, yellow or red DFA, butterfly, etc.

Whatever happened to the old wiki, when I was new, I learned a lot from there and it was really useful. Even without the wiki a lot of new guides were made in the recent few years, I would argue that there's lot more helpful guides/videos out there today than let's say 5 years ago. The determined and capable newbs can learn everything important pretty quickly.

When I download a game, the first thing I do is go in game and start playing it (actually I fiddle a bit with key bindings first). I most certainly do not go to a website to check how to play the game.
So even if we have wikipedia, trillion guides and videos, it is all useless. Unless it is presented 'on a plate' to the player ingame most people won't bother with it.

This problem is even more profound when you are streaming. When you are doing a 'let's play'-type of stream, you cannot afford to go on the internet to read countless pages of text about how to play the game while streaming, because then nobody is going to bother watching your stream. And unless you (as the one streaming) tried the game before, you won't know what to expect of the game and that perhaps it's not noob-friendly. In the stream, the dude was crying about being unable to sprint. In configuration, there is no button called 'sprint' and when I watched the stream, he didn't even had the 'class special 1/2' keys bound. He knew he could sprint somehow, but had no idea how and didn't know how to solve it.
This all presented quite a bad look of the mod to the audience.

I just want to remind everyone that we have a 3rd mode (although rarely played nowadays), FA. The playerbase's knowledge about FA is very low (also low about map layouts other than DOTF/DS/Lunar), FA has so many extra features and tricks that you can pull that new players (and even olders) have no idea about.

When I was making a map for MB and an FA for it, I did go through the wiki at the time. It was about 5-6 years back, though, so a lot of things may have changed by that time. The thing is, there was a list of skills/abilities on the wiki and their codes that you put in the FA files and an explanation of what they do. What I want to point out is this: there is no magic. It's just something that is already coded in, but not present in open. All you really need to do is document it right.

For example these are the attributes of the melee SBD on kamino FA:
MB_ATT_WOOKIE_STRENGTH,3|MB_ATT_SHIELD_RECHARGE2,1|MB_ATT_WOOKIE_HEALTH,2|MB_ATT_MAGNETIC_PLATING,1|MB_ATT_CORTOSIS,1|MB_ATT_BLAST_ARMOUR,1|MB_ATT_SBD_CANNON,3

Now take the last attribute - the MB_ATT_SBD_CANNON - this is an FA only cannon (basically it shoots a clone blob from SBD's secondary attack, instead of slap).
Looking at MB wiki, you can find this page: FA Attributes where the attribute is explained. It does not contain any detail info (e.g. how much damage does it do), but at least it contains general information.
The problem here is that there is no link between the explanation of the attribute on wiki and the game, since maps are not documented.
(also, one might wonder why an SBD which has only melee weapon contains an attribute that upgrades sbd cannon )

 

[MaceMadunusus]

Ad 1 - Unintuitive / Poor UI
First of all, everything is oversized. Why does the top bar menu in game take 1/10th of my screen space?
Staying on the subject of the top bar menu, do we need a Call Vote system? This is mostly replaced by rtv on servers and where it is allowed, it usually serves nothing good (mostly I saw admins using it for silly things rather than deciding something of value, for players it is completely off).
Can't "Call Vote" and "Vote" be merged? Move "Vote" as submenu "Give vote" to the "Call Vote" menu and rename "Call Vote" to "Vote".

Don't have time to read your entire post right now because it was longer than I thought but I am going to mention this really quick. The main reason that the top menu takes as much as it does is simple the age of the game/engine/mb2. When it was made 800x600 and 1024x768 were really common resolutions and the only way things were really legible at those resolutions were things being huge. Since JKA scales its UI from 640x480 upwards this ends up being larger than it needs to be on modern monitors and we simply have not updated it since. It definitely needs to be updated though.

However, the Call Vote and Vote part has been merged already as part of some UI updates John is working on. I don't know if it will make it in the upcoming release but at the very least I would see it soon after.

Just by skimming there are a lot of things we agree on. Ill see if i can get back to more later.

 

[foggy]

i learned to play this game because i am a fucking masochist

 

[Damn Polak]

To see how newbies fare in this game.

lol MB2 live blind playthrough
absolute madman

lol he even forgot to bind reload button