FLG 01, on 20 May 2017 - 09:11 AM, said:
This means PGI has to take even greater care regarding the choice of their heroes. They have to find a hero Mech filled with SL-era Tech.
I don't mind if they come up with their own non-canon hero, but I do mind if they violate the canon by giving 3rd SW-era pilots Mechs that would make the ComGuards envious. It is just an unnecessary violation and an easily avoidable one.
In case of the Assassin it would have been extremely easy actually, since the few surviving Assassins of 3052 were almost all heirlooms, usually modified as we are told (TRO:3050U) - the perfect opportunity to create a plausible, lore-friendly hero. (Still non-canon but at least not anti-canon). But no, they took a pilot who died in 3033 and had zero SL-tech on his Mech. It is certainly no surprise to me that we did not see a nice lore write-up by Randall Bills for that...
Regardless, the point's already been made, PGI and the majority of the community (as per the last time this came up a few years ago in 2014) made it clear that they'd rather take canon hero pilots and their mech concepts, and then update them to new tech and at least modestly optimize them to MWO standards (Endo, DHS, etc. where appropriate to the mech), rather than leave heroes at baseline tech that they could/would/should have had given their era. PGI, also, is
likely to take the most popular or most well known pilot of any given hero option, rather than a more obscure hero that's more "era appropriate" (not saying that's true in the Assassin's case, just letting you know) which means 3rd and 4th succession war hero options are the more likely candidates for any mech available in that timeframe . . . since that's where more nostalgia lies.
So, sorry, you can have the opinion you want on this, but that ship sailed about 3 years ago. You can, and should, expect to see any hero mech PGI puts out updated to newer tech levels regardless of what era the original hero concepts comes out of.
Also, I could care less what Randall Bills writes lore posts for in MWO; and that's nothing to judge what PGI puts out. I wouldn't expect Randall to do write-ups for a game he gets basically nothing out of on every little mech release . . . only the big nostalgia hypes that harken back to TT and the old novels (like the Marauder and Warhammer releases). The game is completely non-canon, anyway (seriously, if it were we'd have to rewrite the loss of Tukkayid to the clans 3 times now); and the only time Randall has written anything is when they wanted to create a lot of hype, like with the early Classics and the Roughneck (since it was christened Battletech Canon by CGL).
Edited by Sereglach, 20 May 2017 - 01:35 PM.