Posted 22 April 2014 - 02:30 PM
I've been wondering about the whole pilot thing too, for a number of reasons. As an above poster said, if I wanted to play a game where I'd level, I'd be back in the Korean MMO grind. I'm not. A pilot, as a "leveled" entity seems to be heading in that direction. The thing is, as a "character" having a level, there is no real world to inhabit. That world if anything would be Community Warfare, whether it be Inner Sphere vs. Inner Sphere, Clan vs. Inner Sphere, or Clan vs. Clan. The varying levels of "power" gated by that level system really should apply to what can be done in that World, not strictly in terms of the things we have already mastered in piloting mechs.
One of the things that troubles me about the pilot leveling system is that it seems to be at odds with the "flavor" and canon of Battletech. We as players have a PILOT NAME we registered under when first interested in playing Mechwarrior Online. That's basically just a handle or pseudoname that we have for our account. Although it CAN be a regular surname, or some "stage name" a hell of a lot of those names are not immersive or "genre" appropriate... they are NOT the names of individuals... they are things like "Drop N F Bombs" or "AbortedChickenEmbryo(EGG)".
In Community Warfare, we are sort of trying to give a nod to at least a shallow immersion in the storyline, with roleplay elements and perhaps even politics, negotiations and contracts. Those things aren't happening between "YurMamma" and "YOLOIJUSTCRPEDONU". They are supposed to be taking place between groups, merc companies, corporations, nations and individuals who would have at least somewhat standardized names like most people in the world today. Also, in that setting, most of those mechwarriors...they are lucky if they own a few mechs, thier family inheritance if you will. They may have trained in simulators on how to pilot dozens of them, but in the reality of the setting, owning these mechs is one of those things where because you have them, you're probably treated as the mayor and the police force of your local area, you're bordering on nobility or at least seen as a very influential person/force.
Some of us though, we have 50, 70...100 mechs even. How does this fit into the game world? I think they are trying to figure that out right now. Perhaps while our accounts will remain the same for the number of mechs we OWN, we will have to develop a Roster of Pilots, the actual avatars who are supposed to jump in to these mechs, fighting and dying written large across the canvas of Community Warfare. If they do this, they can develop certain things, be it skills, unlocks, maneuvers, that are developed on individual pilots/profiles that help distinguish one pilot from another, yet require choices so that on any given drop using any given "pilot avatar" you can't have all skills, talents and techniques actively working for you. A give and take balance if you will, such that you'll want to use your light pilot in light mechs, your centurion specialist in a centurion only... and your Assault pilot really will be best off in an Atlas, cause he'll use it much better than if you were using your "light pilot".
This might work I think for a leveling system, as opposed to some elimination of our pilot skill trees, followed by a gxp refund forcing us to buy some sequential leveling system that just gives it all back again, with no variety.
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