WhenReaperComes, on 12 October 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:
Not true.
There are a number of mechs that can only be obtained with real $$ and not built from in house "free monoply money". For example: the Goldenboy or the Firebrand. These are just 2 of many, the primary difference being in the available loadouts. These mechs cannot be built starting from other variants. It doesn't matter which way the mechs are biased, be they better or worse than the available freebies. That's a matter of personal opinion and pilot strength. But the bottom line is that it is not "an even playing field" between people that use real $$ and those who do not..
Being new here I could be wrong, and if so I apologize in advance.
Wrong
The only real thing you have to spend money onto is for mechbays, because that way you keep the value of the mechs you've mastered (without wasting the hardly grinded cbills) and you can have more choice/freedom about what to field before any match.
PGI has screwed a lot with this game, but if there's something they did well, it's to avoid pay to win. As those consumables are, you can reach the same level of efficiency investing your GXP to unlock the cbill variants.
A Cool shot 18 equals @1:1 the efficiency of a 9 by 9 upgraded at rank 2 with an hefty 15000 GXP price, but GXP is free, you gather it by playing the game. And if you play a lot without wasting it to exp the mech variants (using only mech xp) you're going to unlock several consumables for free. And quite frankly, besides cool shots, arty or airstrikes are worthless, so it just makes me smile that someone spends real money for those after each match xD.
Getting back to Hero mechs, they are balanced towards the normal cbill variants, and often inferior or allow different things without making them necessarily overpowered at all.
Take the famed Ilya Muromets: at high levels of play, you'd probably see it parked as mine is in my hangar, in favor of a JJ-capable CTF 3D, that costs cbills only.
I even regret having bought the IM to a point I won't buy hero mechs anymore (unless they have some interesting packs maybe for the incoming clans)..
My AS7-D(F) is often favoured to an AS7-D-DC that costs cbills; I've even sold my RS so when I saw the Boar's Head I laughed at it deeply because it's very limited at 1 ballistic and 1 missile hardpoint. But quite frankly, after the movement archetipes introduction, I've not been touching any of my Atlases at all, so the D(F) it's there dusting off.
The Golden Boy? Oh boy, it's slower than any of the cbill Kintaro variants, to a point that a KTO-18 does the same job faster, better and without costing real money.
-CDA X-5 misses the AMS, an ECM-capable 3M is generally better;
-TDK doesn't have ECM (and it's a commando anyway),
-the Yen Lo Wang can go AC 20, but then you completely miss missile slots (in competitive playouts, you see CN9-As not YLWs);
-the Pretty Baby it's an Awesome, an AWS-9M can do similar things with similar speed without costing real money and when you want to stop it stops on its tracks, it doesn't keep running for 100 meters after you have zeroed the throttle like the PB does;
-Fang? Flame? Dragons. they Are walking wrecks, killed by the huge CT, missing jumpjets and so on, quickdraws are better as flankers and fast-movers
-Firebrand: it's nice, you can do a rifleman-like setup. But it's a Jager, side torsoes are huge and you're 90% of the times in need to go XL so the FB doesn't have any advantage compared to a DD or an S and it can't use missiles as the A.
-Protector: an ON-V can do basically the same things. And it's still an Orion, so you are easy to core or to get sided to blow the XL engine within.
-Dragon Slayer: it's nice, but only if you jumpsnipe, besides that it's basically a "different" victor
-Misery: it was pretty good in the GR+PPC meta, although you had an exploding Gauss rilfe in a side torso without arms to cover it, so it blew out pretty fast. Now that GR has been nerfed, it's less critical than a 3F, that has more torso twist and costs cbills.
-Heavy metal: it's a nice brawler. In competitive 12mans you see 733Cs now, 732s before, not HMs.
Nope, Hero mechs are most of the times pretty balanced, they basically give you more cbills and get an unique pattern and hardpoint layout, often cbill variants are far superior or play equally and after all, you're not "constrained" playing a single variant as you'd do with an hero mech, because you're tied to that one to farm cbills, but it might not be the best choice to play especially when the Devs break or rebalance some weapons, making an uber-useful hero mech that was good with a certain meta become scrap within one patch. And this is another plus in not spending real money, can't you see? xD
So the game is free to play for real, it's hard on newbies, it's not balanced properly, has several issues, but you can really play without spending real money; however if you want to improve your experience, you can spend some $$ and buy some more room for newer mechs to ease the grind and get a more varied gameplay or flexibility or invest in some PT, it will level all your variants in no time thanks to the double xp and will make cbill variants instant hero mechs, even better money farmer than hero mechs are (50% cbills under PT vs 30% for heroes)..
3
