35 replies to this topic

[El Condor Pasa]

So, I've just created an account and decided to check things out after hearing that this was a fun game, and I have a few questions.
1. I hear there are vehicle classes, what are they? What roles do they play? What classes should I start with? Which class is considered the best?

2. The game is free to play, BUT, I've played other free to play games where it soon becomes very difficult to keep playing free to play if you want to progress any further... Ahem, World of Tanks, ahem.

3. Are there any good YouTube channels that post MWO content, that could help me learn, give me an intro to game, etc.

[Flu-Epidemic]

1. Sorry mate, no vehicle classes, however, there is the issue of NASCAR... You'll hear more about it when u drop in certain maps. Best thing to do is to get your 25-match cadet bonus on C-Bills with the trial mechs to set yourself up with your very own Mech that you can customize. Also, get a feel of the weigh classes with each trial mech; trial mechs are in a mild way to put it, sub-par. Once you unlock your very own, you'll get to unlock certain skills within that mech class. Note that you will need to have 3 variants of the same mechs to level up. Only purchase you need to do is with the Mech bays to house your roster of preferred owned mechs.

2. Game is NOT pay to win, if that's what your concern is. Plus, with the new Pilot Skill Rating, you'll be fielded with other players of the same skill rating as you so as it is not a turkey shoot.

3. I forgot the link, but you can check the link here --->

Lots of good people in the forum here, i'm just listing a few pointers. Most importantly, it's just a game; enjoy it and if you feel it's your cuppa, then put in a little bit of real money

[Ionna Silver]

TheB33f is a pretty great youtuber: https://m.youtube.co...?v=3uXvli0fK_E:

[John1352]

1: There are 4 mech weight classes:
Light (20-35 tons): Usually the fastest, but often lacking in firepower and armor. While they seem to be the cheapest to buy, some will need major upgrades (like a 4.5m c-bill engine) to maximise effectiveness.

Medium (40-55 tons): Reasonably fast, more firepower and armor. These are a good place to start.

Heavy (60-75 tons): Generally slower (some exceptions), these have a lot of firepower and armor, while still letting you maneuver a lot. These are also a good place to start.

Assault (80-100 tons): Slow, heavy armor, firepower varies, but can be completely ridiculous. Very expensive and unforgiving of positioning mistakes. Not good starting mechs.

2: Most of the time you can get the best mechs without spending any IRL money. At certain stages the "current mech of the month" has been limited to money only, but there has usually been something roughly equivalent you can get without paying.

Edited by John1352, 22 October 2015 - 11:43 PM.

[El Condor Pasa]

John1352, on 22 October 2015 - 11:36 PM, said:

1: There are 4 mech weight classes:
Light (20-35 tons): Usually the fastest, but often lacking in firepower and armor. While they seem to be the cheapest to buy, some will need major upgrades (like a 4.5m c-bill engine) to maximise effectiveness.

Medium (40-55 tons): Reasonably fast, more firepower and armor. These are a good place to start.

Heavy (60-75 tons): Generally slower (some exceptions), these have a lot of firepower and armor, while still letting you maneuver a lot. These are also a good place to start.

Assault (80-100 tons): Slow, heavy armor, firepower varies, but can be completely ridiculous. Very expensive and unforgiving of positioning mistakes. Not good starting mechs.

2: Most of the time you can get the best mechs without spending any IRL money. At certain stages the "current mech of the month" has been limited to money only, but there has usually been something roughly equivalent you can get without paying.

Lights look somewhat interesting, as I've had a lot of experience playing a similar weight/vehicle class in another game and they usually play a completely seperate roll to other classes. Could you give me an insight into what a light mechs roll on the battlefield is?

[Nik Reaper]

Regardless , there are a few things to keep in mind:

1) You will start with 4 "garage slots" , and you will need to pay ( 7.5 $ for credits is worth 4 slots, larger amounts of money have a better conversion rate ) to have more than 4 mechs.
This is the only real limitation and there is an ingame way to get up to 8 extra free slots but it requires at least 8x2 weeks and a lot of grinding.

2) While there is not much power to buy for $ there are things as pre-order, where by paying in advance you will get mechs for about 3~4 months before they become available to everyone for ingame money , meaning that if those mechs are really good those who bought them will have an advantage for ~4 months.

3) A good player earns about 125000 cbills per 7 min game without payed premium time ( it gives +50% more earning ) and good mechs cost from 8~17 million cbills , and the way the skill system is set up you will need 3 different mech variants of the same mech to get the full potential in something called mastering, meaning that for every mech you intend to seriously play you will have to get 3 ( though you can sell 2 of them after you master them ), so unless you want to buy mechs for $ be prepared for a grind , though I hear it's lighter than WoT as you can start with any mech and don't have to go up a latter

Also you will get about 8 mil from your first 25 games ( a big reduction in cash per game after that ) and about 5mil from playing the tutorial so you might have a lighter start.

Have fun with first 25 games , do the tutorial and watch a few streams on http://www.twitch.tv...arrior%20Online to get a good idea how this cover shooter works .

Edited by Nik Reaper, 23 October 2015 - 12:07 AM.

[ABalazs]

1. Grind trough the tutorials and the cadet games, then you will have 12-13 million C-bills to start with. Do yourself a favor and grind a little more with trial mechs until you can buy one of the good clan mechs. Timberwolf, Hellbringer, Ebon Jaguar or Stormcrow preferably. Do not even think about buying an Inner Sphere mech, their weapons are inferior to clans (half range, more weight, less damage...). No real classes here to mention, the game balance is so bad, if you chose the wrong mech, you will forced into hard mode.

2. This is a P2W title, clearly. If you pay 55$ for an a'la carte Timberwolf pack, you just won. But at least you will need some mechbays, so you will have to pay 15$ for some comfort. C-bill income is miserable, at first you will struggle to reach 80k for a match, and a good mech is 11-15 million at least.

3. Start here, for example: http://raksarmory.blogspot.com/

This game can be fun, and has great potential, but at first its several hundred times more frustrating than WoT or WT, if you want to play it free or cheaply. When you elite at least one mech and got Radar Dep. module, it becomes better. But one thing very hard to accustomed to: you will barely see anything on half of the maps, even with heat or night vision. No colored outline here as in WoT, and ECM makes computer targeting impossible most of the time.

[Nik Reaper]

Russian turnip, on 23 October 2015 - 12:00 AM, said:

Lights look somewhat interesting, as I've had a lot of experience playing a similar weight/vehicle class in another game and they usually play a completely seperate roll to other classes. Could you give me an insight into what a light mechs roll on the battlefield is?

They are a distractions and backstabbers in brawls , as mechs have weaker armor on the back then in the front.

[John1352]

Right now, the only real "role" in the game is to destroy all the enemies.

You can move up ahead and tell your team where the enemies are moving, run around the edge of the map to go after objectives or hold a target lock so allies can use missiles.

Really though, most games are won by killing all the enemies, so as a fast mech with limited firepower, you'll either be popping out of cover, shooting enemies and returning to cover before they can shoot back OR trying to hunt down isolated enemies. You can sometimes get a kill by sneaking up on someone and shooting their weaker back armor, but you need to take a good guess about enemy positions to avoid running into half their team and dying.

If you do go for a light mech, I'd recommend Firestarters or Arctic Cheetahs for going after isolated enemies, and Ravens or maybe Jenners for the cover humping style. They're pretty flexible though, you can equip any of those for the other role.

Edited by John1352, 23 October 2015 - 12:14 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

A light Mech can fulfill a wide variaty of roles including:
scout/spotter ^{(Spider, Locust and Raven excel in this role)}
harasser any fast ^(130kph+) light can do this role
finishing damaged Mechs ^{(any Light able to mount machine guns will do great at this as will the more heavily armed lights like the Firestarter, Artic Cheetah, Jenner and Wolfhound)}
distraction, any fast light can do this but the best is probably the Spider
sniper any Light can mount long range weapons and work as a sniper, however the Raven and Panther, Adder and Kit Fox are best at this for different reasons

[Rogue Jedi]

Nik Reaper, on 23 October 2015 - 12:05 AM, said:

You will start with 4 "garage slots" , and you will need to pay ( 7.5 $ for credits is worth 4 slots, larger amounts of money have a better conversion rate ) to have more than 4 mechs.
This is the only real limitation and there is an ingame way to get up to 8 extra free slots but it requires at least 8x2 weeks and a lot of grinding.

Mechbays go on sale at half price every few months, so if you keep an eye on the weekend events you can get 8 for $7.5, also in past years MC has gone on sale, 30% extra free on the black friday weekend, so in about a months time you are likely to be able to get a much better conversion rate

you can get 5 Mechbays per faction in Community Warfare, and there are 10 factions so 50 free mechbays, but it would be a lot of work to get them all, it is relatively easy to earn the first mechbay a week, but I would not bother with this until you have a few Mechs of your own because CW is hard mode, there is no matchmaking beyond ensuring each team has 12 players, so you could end up against a top competitive team.

[segeri9]

Russian turnip, on 23 October 2015 - 12:00 AM, said:

Lights look somewhat interesting, as I've had a lot of experience playing a similar weight/vehicle class in another game and they usually play a completely seperate roll to other classes. Could you give me an insight into what a light mechs roll on the battlefield is?

Just a little warning though. Playing as a light is VERY unforgiving. One mistake could mean the death of you. You need to know when and when not to jump into the fray or else you'll be facing the entire team targeting you. And no amount of dodging will allow you to survive a volley of 12 alpha strikes.XD

This is the main reason why most people recommend mediums as a good starting point. besides the whole engine issue which costs a small fortune, getting a medium usually is good off the shop save for some of the usual mandatory upgrades (double heatsinks, endosteel and the like. although the double heats more than the others). And mediums are still maneuverable enough without sacrificing too much armor and firepower.

In the end though, try all the trials to see what truly fits your playstyle. just a warning about the lights being quite an unforgiving experience.

[dragnier1]

If you're talking about spending no money in this game it gets a tad hard once your 4 mechbays you start with gets filled. You'll eventually have mechs you want to keep and there's not much room to play around with.

There are ways around it, through CW and events. CW gives mechbays at certain levels of accomplishment, besides other things. Some events give mechbays, while some others give , which can be used to exchange for mechbays (some of us hold out till the mechbay sales to get more bays from the we earned or purchased.

I would suggest, if possible, to purchase some for additional mechbays sometime in the future. You can't just rely on free mechbays if you intend to own more mechs.

Edited by dragnier1, 23 October 2015 - 06:12 AM.

[Elizander]

Russian turnip, on 23 October 2015 - 12:00 AM, said:

Lights look somewhat interesting, as I've had a lot of experience playing a similar weight/vehicle class in another game and they usually play a completely seperate roll to other classes. Could you give me an insight into what a light mechs roll on the battlefield is?

You can watch how Sidestrafe plays his Raven.

[Famous]

Russian turnip, on 23 October 2015 - 12:00 AM, said:

Lights look somewhat interesting, as I've had a lot of experience playing a similar weight/vehicle class in another game and they usually play a completely seperate roll to other classes. Could you give me an insight into what a light mechs roll on the battlefield is?

I started in Lights and I'll say this, if you love the BT universe and are committed to the game they are awesome. If this is your first taste of the BT universe or your not sure if you're going to like the game start in a Medium or Heavy. Lights are the most unforgiving weight class, you can be taken out in 1-2 shots from some of the bigger 'Mechs and even Mediums can make short work of you given the chance.

On the flip side if you get good in Lights everything else feels like slow motion. No other class can keep up with a fast Light and 3 - 4 fast Lights moving together can gut a team with proper tactics.

I'll say this, if you're someone who worries about you stats then Lights are not the place to start. The learning curve is steep and unforgiving. I'll be digging my K/D out of the garbage for a long time, but man now that I've got the hang of it there's nothing like running circles around an Atlas, Direwolf, or even a Timber Wolf (which is a great 'Mech, but not the OP god of the game like another poster claimed).

Like WoT spending money makes the grind faster and you can just grab a 'Mech by dropping some cash, but really CBills are as, if not more, important than IRL cash. The conversion rate for MC to CBills is awful and you can't buy a new engine or Double Heat sinks with straight cash.

Edited by Famous, 23 October 2015 - 06:56 AM.

[SnagaDance]

ABalazs, on 23 October 2015 - 12:07 AM, said:

2. This is a P2W title, clearly. If you pay 55$ for an a'la carte Timberwolf pack, you just won. But at least you will need some mechbays, so you will have to pay 15$ for some comfort. C-bill income is miserable, at first you will struggle to reach 80k for a match, and a good mech is 11-15 million at least.

Not only is the first sentence completely untrue your example in the second sentence only confirms it.

OP. This is actually the most non-P2W game that I know as spending money on this game gives you no actual in-game advantage.

What money does give you are things that help you reduce the grind (Hero mechs their C-bill bonus, Premium time's C-bill and XP bonus), vanity items (colors, camo-patterns and cockpit items) and early/immediate access to mechs. Early access in terms of packages that come out (and are later released for C-bills) and immediate access for when you directly buy a mech(package) that has been released already.

Packages can be hit or miss so yeah you could get yourself a mech with an advantage for some time (like the Arctic Cheetah for instance) or maybe you get a mech that's considered a dud (Shadowcat), and eventually the mech is released for C-bills. The Timberwolf mentioned in the quote above? Yeah it's good, but you can also buy it for in-game money (that's how I got my 3). You'll find no golden ammo in MWO

As for mechs? I started out with an Assault and did terrible. Switched to the Light Jenner and did far better. Still a rough ride but luckily I've never really cared about K/D or W/L.
Do what you enjoy, but be aware of the downsides that may exist for certain mech types.

[Spleenslitta]

ABalazs, on 23 October 2015 - 12:07 AM, said:

2. This is a P2W title, clearly. If you pay 55$ for an a'la carte Timberwolf pack, you just won. But at least you will need some mechbays, so you will have to pay 15$ for some comfort. C-bill income is miserable, at first you will struggle to reach 80k for a match, and a good mech is 11-15 million at least.

My first piece of advice is.....do not listen to this piece of advice. The Timber Wolf is a very cool looking and good mech, but it is most definitivly not a mech you buy and then instantly win everything.

I also advice you to do something Rogue Jedi said in another thread.

Rogue Jedi, on 23 October 2015 - 09:05 AM, said:

Do not disregard advice because it contradicts other advise you have received

I got loads of advice but some of it is against the meta....i'll just drop a link. Everything i want to say is in that guide i made anyways.
With maps and all kinds of details.
Non Meta Light Mech Tactics Guide.

[The Bill]

SnagaDance, on 23 October 2015 - 09:58 AM, said:

Not only is the first sentence completely untrue your example in the second sentence only confirms it.

OP. This is actually the most non-P2W game that I know as spending money on this game gives you no actual in-game advantage.

What money does give you are things that help you reduce the grind (Hero mechs their C-bill bonus, Premium time's C-bill and XP bonus), vanity items (colors, camo-patterns and cockpit items) and early/immediate access to mechs. Early access in terms of packages that come out (and are later released for C-bills) and immediate access for when you directly buy a mech(package) that has been released already.

Packages can be hit or miss so yeah you could get yourself a mech with an advantage for some time (like the Arctic Cheetah for instance) or maybe you get a mech that's considered a dud (Shadowcat), and eventually the mech is released for C-bills. The Timberwolf mentioned in the quote above? Yeah it's good, but you can also buy it for in-game money (that's how I got my 3). You'll find no golden ammo in MWO

As for mechs? I started out with an Assault and did terrible. Switched to the Light Jenner and did far better. Still a rough ride but luckily I've never really cared about K/D or W/L.
Do what you enjoy, but be aware of the downsides that may exist for certain mech types.

^^ This guy gets it.

Now, "pay to collect," or "pay to grind otherwise free stuff faster," or "pay to have it sooner than some of your friends and frenemies," those I'll agree with.

When the only privilege that's behind a paywall is some private match lobby functionality, that's not pay to win. Even that's maybe more like, "pay for exclusive and customizable matches. (Edit: which provide no in-game rewards of any kind)"

Edited by The Bill, 23 October 2015 - 10:35 AM.

[ABalazs]

Spleenslitta, on 23 October 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

My first piece of advice is.....do not listen to this piece of advice. The Timber Wolf is a very cool looking and good mech, but it is most definitivly not a mech you buy and then instantly win everything.

So sad you picked this part of my advice. I gave it with the best intetnions. But I tried it. I bought an IS heavy with my Kadet bonus, and then some IS mediums, just after the clan invasion (there were no clans for c-bill). With those I am happy if I do 2-300 dmg in a match, but with a mostly stock Timber I can do 700+. So buying a strong clan mech is the best way for a new player to avoid needless frustration, at least in my opinion.

[Sonny Black]

Russian turnip, on 22 October 2015 - 10:18 PM, said:

3. Are there any good YouTube channels that post MWO content, that could help me learn, give me an intro to game, etc.

Critical Rocket

This one is fairly new


This one is a bit dated but still good