Played a bit last night and my first impressions are pretty good. The one glaring annoyance is that the menus could have been much better. Smaller ones include not having all the nice graphics adjustments in game, (had to force them through my nvida control panel), not much in game explanation on some stuff (they do have extensive training tutorials though), and the chat box being small + there are some douchey folks on it.
That being said I enjoy it quite a bit. What seems like a simple game is pretty deep when you start to dig.
The gave has 300+ mobile suits (mecha) that you can get and customize through various means. There are 4 main ways to get new suits.
- Some are granted through questing
- You can buy/rent suits out right from the store (paid for with in game point earned from missions/matches, or real money)
- Buying blue prints of the suit from the store and built using your excess suits according to the blue print recipe
- You can try your luck with the capsule machine which is basically a vending machine with some randomness thrown in (cheaper than buying from store)
So let me explain the capsule machine (or Gashapon) and it's genius (from a "how we can get them addicted" stand point). Basically, the suits are broken down into sets of 6-8 suits per "capsule group". Each group has 1 "rare", 2-3 "uncommon", and the rest "common" suits. You can spend either real money or your in game points to use the machine to try your luck on a group. So basically you have a 1/6-1/8 chance to get the suit you want! When you use the machine, there's a little animation that pops out a capsule which you click on to open. I would re-missed to say that the anticipation factor right before you click to open is real.
"But that doesn't sound like a good idea cause i want XYZ suit NAO!" That's what I thought too, but here what they did to make it appealing. Not all suits are available for sale in the store, and if they are, they're expensive. Ok so what about blue prints? Obviously these are cheaper than buying out right (in some cases) but are still MORE expensive than the Gashapon.
"How much more expensive?" Here's my example. I wanted to get a Gouf Custom (hellz yeah for Patrick Norris creaming the 08th team, F beam weapons!). I check the store, not for sale
oh there's a blue print for 5000 points O_O. OR I can try my luck on that capsule group that contains the Gouf Custom for 1600 points. (almost 3x cheaper). Well keep in mind I just started and have no excess suits to build the Gouf Custom any ways so the Gashapon was my only "real" option. Also, you don't earn points very quickly. Doing the "very easy" co op missions will net you about 100 points per completion. Yeah, you do the math and that's a lot of beginner missions.
Luckily, I was given 3000 points for my first "pilot level up" (more on level ups later). Speaking of luck, I got my Gouf Custom on my 2nd try at the Capsule Machine! Seriously, clicking on the capsule and seeing my suit gave me that little thrill you get from winning a hard fought match. Let me tell you that feeling is addictive.
OK so now to the real meat
"This game IS pay to win" for more accurately, it's
pay to have an advantage. But,
just cause you buy a high spec'd suit from the store doesn't guarantee successes.
Obviously, suits that have high specs are BETTER, flat out, than suits with lesser specs. One way they try and balance this is having two leveling systems. There's a
pilot level (ie rank) which controls what missions you can go on, and
suit expertise which acts as levels for that specific suit. As your suit expertise grows your suit will become better. In some cases a fully level'd Class C suit (C is the lowest quality of suit) could out perform a stock Class A suite (there's also class S suites but i don't think any are out in game yet).
In addition to this, suits are broken into a rock paper scissors system.
- Rock = Melee oriented
- Paper = Long Range oriented
- Scissors = Balanced between Melee and Ranged
It's just like it sounds, Rock based suits do more damage to Scissors, but get disadvantage to Paper etc. This allows for no one type of suit to be the end all be all (well in theory at least)
In addition to the Suit Expertise and RPS system, you can also customize your suit later with new items.
Also forgot to mention that ever suit has different characteristics too which is made up in their HEX
Attack: Attack ability of the unit
Agility: Maneuverability of the unit.
Weapons ready faster with higher agility.
Unit HP: Total Hit Points of the unit
Defense: Defense ability of the unit
Special Attack: Strength of Special Attack of the unit
Speed: Dash speed of the unit
Phew, that was a mouth full and I've only played the game for maybe an hour!
Combat in comparison is more straight forward, you have 1-4 weapons that you use to blow **** up while using your boosters to move around. Yep that simple (course I haven't done any matches other co op so I'm sure there can be more to it)
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