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[DeathlyEyes]

I have been playing this game for a long time. In fact I have been playing the Mechwarrior franchise since 1996 and extremely competitively since around 2002. I have played in Vengeance League, Mechwarior Leagues and NBT/NBT Hardcore. I have seen all sorts of different ways to play Mechwarrior 4. Mechwarrior 4 had a much wider choice of playing. In Mechwarrior 4 depending on the map you could take all sorts of different builds. It wasn't necessarily the most balanced game but it definitely allowed the widest scope of builds.
The reason for this is the viability of lasers at a competitive level. Lasers are nearly completely useless at a competitive level. The weapons have slow recycle times because they have duration. In addition to this you can't actually shield your mech for as long because you have to let the weapon fire for its duration. This is why PPCs, Autocannons and Gauss rifles are the best option to use. If the concern is focus fired lasers with pinpoint accuracy reduces the length of games, then slowly increase armor. Please, Please, please don't actually introduce an element of randomness to the game. Nothing would ruin this game more at a competitive level by introducing some elements of randomness to the game.

For starters the less than stellar hit detection which has slowly gotten better since the games inception has unintentionally added a layer of randomness to "is my shot actually going to do damage?" Secondly nothing would kill the competitive nature and possibility for this game to become a game that people flock to for competitive and friendly gameplay. Without reliability players might become frustrated from dying from bad luck. Furthermore at the competitive level no one would take a game based off random chance seriously in a competitive circuit.
My next major gripe is how PPC meta was handled with ghost heat. PPC's had a great mechanic added to them havng the damage set to absolutely 0 damage within minimum range.
Then they had the ER PPC heat set back to normal so running ER PPC's in mass wasn't viable.

The Ghost heat nerf wasn't even a necessary thing. If beam weapons were buffed to be proper counters to PPC's by reducing duration, getting close with beam weapons to PPC based builds would all of a sudden actually be dangerous. The fact of the matter is, laser based weapons just don't do enough DPS/DHS to be viable mostly because the shot is spread out and on top of that bonus heat is generated. SRMs are wonky and hit detection is still pretty awful so using those as counters to PPCs doesnt work.

Before anyone says "well we needed ghost heat" I ask you this, did you ever play Mechwarrior 4 competitively with heat enabled? My unit new maps pretty well. For some maps there wasn't getting around it, PPC/Gauss jump sniping had to happen because the maps were just designed for that. Other maps there were routes to getting in close. We brawled and we often won using brawling tactics. Teams that took all PPC/Gauss boats were quickly outmatched by a swarm of Black Lanner SRM Boats and Heavy Large laser LBX20 boats. Why did this happen? Well Mechwarrior 4's beam weapons were viable you could shield components instead of having to stare at an enemy mech waiting for lasers to do their full damage.
Getting close in this game is even really difficult. Some maps like Canyon Network where a brawling group would in theory succeed are now hampered by Terrain movement. It is nearly impossible to take a mech without jumpjets because you just know that a map like canyon network will likely surface. Part of this is because we don't actually know what map is coming up the other part is because of terrain movement and how limited paths through maps are without jumpjets. Knowing maps and the points to get from one space to antoher a team can simply focus and wipe out an entire brawling group. This means the choice of mechs is further limited to just mechs with jump jets.

Ghost heat, film grain and now this cockpit glass implementation has caused me to completely loose faith in this game. I was glad I told members in my unit not to buy the phoenix mechs. I knew that the only viable mech in the pack would be the shadowhawk. The battlemaster doesnt jump gets stuck too easily is too dependent on energy weapons and has cockpit the size of the original Xbox. Fixes after release have been attempted such as shrinking the size of the head hit box but that is stupid too. The head hitbox should match the model so please actually change the model as well when messing with hitboxes.

The other mechs have similar problems, dependence on energy weapons or in the locust's case just being too light. Including anymore mechs under the weight of 25 tons is just a mistake, they are anti infantry Mechs in a Mech fighting game.

All this has proven to me I was right all along with the development with this game. Buying anything before it is actually released and finalized is an absolute mistake because PGI is trying to appease too many different groups of people while holding this original idea of how a few choice game mechanics should work. (lasers being duration weapons and mechs being clunky and slow while at other times being fast paced.) This has lead to ground based snipers being relatively impossible to use because the ability to pop in and out of cover in a timely manner has been taken away. This means beam based snipers are impossible to use because they have to stand in the open while getting hammered. This means that brawlers get stuck and there is no incentive for using them because at the end of the day in a brawl they are simply picked apart since they are at a disadvantage.

Until I see some sort of sustainable long term vision that doesn't constantly require reworking the mechanics of the game I will no longer be purchasing mechs, especially mechs before they are released. The phoenix package was an utter failure. None of the mechs besides the shadowhawk are really all that viable. My solution is likely not the only solution but it may be.

Nerfing weapons to the point of them being useless definitely isn't viable. What was done to the gauss rifle is completely stupid. The weapon is now completely useless for counter sniping and only really works when used as a poptart weapon. That example should be a good one on why nerfing weapons isn't a viable option.

I would like to make a disclaimer here. I am guilty of using a 2 PPC/AC5 poptart. The only 2 Mechs I consitently use are a 2 PPC/2AC5 Dragon Slayer and an ERPPC/Gauss shadowhawk. The main reason for this has been outlayed in this post. It would be a shame to see this stratagey completely nerfed out of being viable because the Strategy despite what many say does indeed take skill. Leading shots is a bit difficult and there is an element of speed aiming involved. Poptarting extremely low is difficult standing out in the open trading blows is not what I would like to see this game turn into.

Furthermore I would loose practically every match if I didn't use a "meta build. With the way ELO works my teams are consistently filled with 6-8 completely incompetent players while just my 4 man is in viable mechs. I have a rather high Win/Loss ratio and don't loose often yet consistently get matched with players on my team using trial mechs and I am convinced ELO still matches players to compensate for some players being worse than others.

If the game were in a better state, yes I would be buying a clan package. Likely the 240 dollar top tier Warhawk package seeing as that the Warhawk is my favorite mech, but after seeing the current state of the game and watching it as it deteorates without any sort of effort being visibly put in to actually correcting the problems I will not. The Warhawk will likely also be a useless mech since it doesn't jump and it is energy based.

That's not to say I am not appreciative of this game. I have fun using the mechs that do work properly and do play well. It looked alright before the cockpit glass but now looks utterly awful. The film grain never really helped and really made it look awful. I guarantee I am not on an Island by myself in the direction I would like to see this game take. This can be seen by the changes you as the developer have made. You just made the wrong changes, I know you want to see an increase in diversity of weapons used and I believe that the route outlayed in this post would be a great starting point.

[auston]

Yeah I love this game but recently took a very long break from it.. I came back a couple of weeks ago excited and ready to fight and I noticed all my brawlers were now next to worthless and I was playing with them way before ecms were even released.. Then they added the glass effect about a week ago and my OCD has me cleaning my glasses every 3 minutes. This is a great game and I really hope they figure it out but as of right now I am face palming at what it has turned into. Good article BTW.

Edited by auston, 29 January 2014 - 05:02 PM.