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FLG 01, on 24 July 2018 - 07:34 PM, said:
*snip*
For one, I'm all for sensible lore-based hero variants. However, I'm going to play devil's advocate here over some likely reasons why PGI doesn't do it all that often.
1. Using the Crab as an example . . . if they stuck to all energy for the hero, it'd be boring. Lets face it, there'd be very little they could do to differentiate it from the other already-existing variants. The Crab already had a jumper, a speed demon, an AMS carrier, and a "standard" variant . . . there's not much else that they could do. ECM? It was created during a time when giving the hero ECM with no standard ECM variants was often decried as PTW. For some chassis the only way to make a hero that's going to really stand out is to do something completely different from the typical variant. The Quickdraw IV is another good example of this, as Quickdraws have almost no differentiation until the more "extreme" 8P, 8X, and 9M.
*As a note, I'll fully admit that I'm all for PGI making heroes that wildly deviate from lore in order to provide a unique hero to an otherwise homogeneous chassis or a chassis where all the notable pilots aka "heroes" pilot either stock versions or versions where the customization sticks within the MWO hardpoint confines of the stock variant.
2. Sometimes PGI likes to take the same creative liberties that they do when creating their own in-house chassis when creating their heroes. I'm sure the art team appreciates the occasional deviation from, "make another (insert faction here) paint scheme". It also allows PGI to throw a bone to people who might not like a particular faction that a mech is associated with, but like the mech.
3. PGI really hasn't done much in the way of hero write-ups and lore tie-ins, outside of their in-house chassis, for quite some time. Call it lazy . . . call it shameful . . . call it a wasted opportunity . . . call it whatever you want, but the fact of the matter is that PGI/Russ is dead set on creating an e-sports scene for MWO over a game that engages in the lore. The gradual shift from "MWO: A Battletech Game" to "MWO" to "MWO: Solaris 7" makes their intent very clear. Expect more and more in-house heroes that look more at home in a Solaris 7 arena, or e-sports tournament, instead of a inter-faction battlefield. This situation for the hero mechs is rather ironic, considering that the rules prohibit base variants that cannot be purchased for c-bills.
4. For every person who is willing to let PGI bend the canon of a lore hero to create something truly unique, there's someone else who will be upset at PGI for daring to deviate from lore. After the release of the Phoenix heroes (around the time of Sparky, I believe) PGI had run a poll about pure lore heroes, or pre-optimized heroes (endo, DHS, etc., even if the lore hero didn't have it). "Pre-optimized" eked out a win, but it wasn't by a huge margin. That's another possibility why PGI has been less inclined to make lore themed heroes . . . they can make a "pre-optimized" purely PGI hero and not set off the lore friendly/unfriendly hero debate.
Who knows, maybe MW5 will have skin packs or built in camo patterns that are just chock full of lore unit paint schemes. Maybe if they make something like that for MW5 they'd eventually make their way into MWO. Maybe PGI will focus on more lore-related heroes on more keynote chassis, like if they get around to doing the remaining classics. Maybe hoping for a concerted focus on lore in MWO has just become a pipe-dream that will never happen (or happen again, if you consider the early days of lore posts with mech releases as being lore rich).
In the mean time, I won't be holding my breath for lore-rich, canon-based heroes for the foreseeable future.
