[Ethereum] Ether in ropsten testnet using metamask

It is that simple! You do not need to import your private key from MetaMask into MyEtherWallet. To send ether to another destination (either yourself or another user's account), all you need is the account address. So, copy your receiving address out of MyEtherWallet, and put that in the "Recipient Address" field in MetaMask.

There are "gas and fees" and stuff, they're just on the next screen in the wizard flow of sending Ether in MetaMask. So, hit "Send", and then you'll see them. On that second screen, hitting "Accept" is the final confirmation that sends the transaction to be mined. You don't need anything in the "transaction data" field because you're not activating a smart contract, you're just sending Ether value. Set your gas price to 2 GWei (unless you're really wanting it to confirm really quickly), and you should be set to go!

I have found a fix for my problem (and answer here for people who find this in the future) - in the Metamask window, even though I am deploying to Ropsten test network, it turns out that I need to set the network "tick" on localhost:8545 rather than on the Ropsten network directly - if I do this, then I get correct values returned.

Hope this helps someone...