Posted 18 January 2016 - 10:21 AM
Hey. Been a while. It's time to review and give some thoughts.
As of today I've had 1156 matches. Been killed way more than survived, but doing not quite 50/50 in the win/loss column. Having all kinds of fun - this is a great game. I'm still just doing what I understand are called PUG drops? Not with a unit, not doing community warfare, just dropping in and having at it. I figure learn the game first, then go for the harder modes. So here's my thoughts.
Of the three available match types, I prefer skirmish, then assault, and last is conquest (unless I'm in one of my Locusts, then conquest is first). I have played thru Griffins, Locusts, Blackjacks, and now Marauders. I've had the most success in the Blackjacks for some reason. My play style favors long range, so that might have something to do with it. Of the BJs, I have the least success in the Boomjack, which with its AC/20 is pretty much a short/medium range mech suited mostly for brawling, and the basic Blackjack is not a brawling mech - too fragile. The Locusts - man, it's just fun to scoot around in those and annoy bigger mechs. I have one fitted out with a single ERLL and that's the one I like the best but all three of them are loads of fun. I also enjoy humbling overconfident Spider pilots. The Griffins just feel manly, all big and tall and "come get some, punk!" And of course I love my Marauders to death. I see some questionable MAD builds running around, people who dont' seem to get the point of the mech, but eh . . . I'll have more to say about the meta a bit later. Mostly I run my MADs with either PPCs or LLs as their main weapons, with autocannon or gauss rifle for back-up. I enjoy them immensely and am trying to get them all levelled up before the Warhammer drops tomorrow. Don't think I'll quite make it, but almost there.
I also have a Cicada, Zeus, and Wolverine that were some kind of reward or prize things for something. Wasn't really clear on it and have hardly used them at all as I don't care for any of them. Never liked them in tabletop either . . . especially the Wolverine, which in its original incarnation was woefully under-gunned. I mean, a single AC/5, SRM6, and medium laser? A freakin' Whitworth has more firepower than that.
Which leads me to my next point. Like I said, I started in BattleTech with the tabletop game back in the 80s and as a result have a really low tolerance for what we used to call "munchkin" players. You know the kind, they want to shove five gauss rifles into an Atlas, that kind of thing. From the perspective of the tabletop game, the meta in MWO is nothing but pure munch. Too many of the mechs have waaaaaaay too much firepower built into them, and the dominant meta seems to be "cram as many lasers into a chassis as you can and screw anything else." Now understand, I'm saying this from the tabletop perspective. From the strictly MWO view, this is only natural - players are competitive, the "rules" allow it, and so it's unavoidable. I do it too, for gosh sakes - I have a Marauder with four LLs and an UAC/5 for spice. The purist in me wishes the mechs were much more limited to what we had in the pen-and-paper-and-dice days, but whattayagonnado?
And that brings me to the always-popular topic of "balance." Lots of stuff is justified in the name of game balance . . . the quirks, the meta, etc. On the forums I've seen a lot of talk about how the Clan mechs started out as too superior to the IS ones, and so things are constantly tweaked and nerfed and buffed in the name of balance. Well, in my view the Clan mechs are supposed to be superior to the Inner Sphere ones. The Clans were stomping every IS unit they fought in the beginning of the Clan invasion. Eventually the Great Houses figured out first tactics, then strategies that enabled them to start winning. In the era that MWO is supposedly set in, tho, the Clan mechs should have range, weight, heat, and damage output characteristics that are just plain better than IS mechs of the same weight class. That was kind of the point of the Clans. Of course, in the lore the Clans would put a star of five mechs against an IS company of twelve, so that kind of supplied the balance. MWO is all about 12v12, and mixed Clan/IS teams at that, so . . . meh. I think this aspect of the game could have been managed better.
Speaking of weapons, tho, I have some observations about that aspect of the game. PPCs, for example, are pretty cool IMHO but I'd like the visual representation of PPC fire to be a bit more robust. Right now they look sort of like "fuzzy" lasers. I think they should look more lightning-ish. Maybe some kind of zig-zaggy effect added around the core bolt? I know changing your resolution settings affects how things appear, but PPC bolts are supposed to be man-made lightning. Be nice if they looked more like that. Lasers, I mostly like how the fire from those appears. And I really dig the "wub-wub-wub" of pulse lasers. Just the sound effect is cool. LRMs, I prefer the Clan "machine gun" missile fire to the IS "shotgun blast." The Clan way is how I always envisioned LRM launchers to work. SRMs, the shotgun seems right for those. I'd like it if they corkscrewed a bit in flight, but otherwise I like the missile stuff. Autocannons, tho . . . look, autocannon are supposed to fire a burst of shells with each shot, not a single one. In MWO, only the Ultra ACs fire the way all the autocannon should. Like, an AC/2 should go "bangbang" with each shot, an AC/5 "bangbangbangbangbang" and so on. And LB-X series are supposed to be able to switch between regular unitary shot and "shotgun" submunition shot. From what I can tell the MWO LB-X series all fire only in shotgun mode. Makes me wonder what might happen if this game ever introduces rotary autocannon. On the other hand, machine guns, flamers, and gauss rifles all strike me as being done just as they should be.
There's a couple other things I think MWO has gotten wrong, but they're minor quibbles. For instance, mechs are supposed to be able to raise their arms. In fact, one of the lore reasons mechs were invented in the first place was that the human-like mobility made them much more flexible than standard tanks and armored vehicles when dealing with multiple environments. So this idea that a Griffin's arms are "fixed" in that low-slung position with only limited side-to-side motion is just plain wrong. There should be no meta for high-mounted arms (like on the Blackjack) because all of the mechs are supposed to be able to lift their arms. Hell, some of 'em should be able to flip their arms into their rear arcs. In MWO the first one I think of is the Quickdraw, and soon the Rifleman. Which leads me to the lack of rear arcs in this game. There are no rear-mounted weapons and no visibility to the rear of your mech, which is understandable from a game-dynamics point of view but frustrating for those of us who played the tabletop game.
I would also like to see a physical combat component to the game - punch, kick, push, charge, and death from above. Which would also have the wonderful effect of making the Hatchetman, Axman, Berserker, and other ax-carrying mechs a part of the game.
Oh yeah, the maps. There's none of 'em I don't really like, altho I do have favorites - Tourmaline Desert and Alpine Peaks are always fun, and Mining Collective and Crimson Straits are great for brawling-style fights. There are a few changes I would make . . . HPG Manifold, for example, I'd "fill in" the rest of the circle around the outside of the structure part of the map so that you could run all the way around the outside. I'd also make all of the maps available in all game modes. There's several that are only used in community warfare mode that should be open to the rest of us. I run around them in training mode just to see what they look like and would really like them available in quick matches. Overall I think the maps are the one area of the game where PGI has not got it right - there should be more of them, they should be bigger and more varied, and there should definitely be a Solaris set of maps for arena matches. I would love to see the stats on which maps are being chosen more than others now that we "vote" on which map we want to use. Oh, and Viridian Bog really needs some attention to scaling - the plants on that map speak of a low-gravity environment due to their sheer size. Especially those lily-pad things.
Umm . . . I think that's about it. Maybe let us "paint" our mechs more precisely instead of being tied to pre-made patterns? I have a favored color scheme (brick red and slate gray) from my tabletop days running my merc unit that I can approximate with the in-game controls but not get quite right. Oh, and it should be possible to concede a match by withdrawing beyond the map edge, so if a skirmish match gets down to something like eleven against two, the two should be able to concede instead of run-and-hide or "last stand"-ing it.
Thanks for reading all this, if you're still with me.
4
Lanzman, on 27 July 2015 - 07:23 PM, said:
