110 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

DGTLDaemon, on 11 October 2016 - 08:55 AM, said:

OK, let's take a look indeed. I started playing MWO in January of this year. If my memory serves me right, I have gotten the following mechs (each of which came with a mechbay) as event prizes up to this time:

- Cicada
- Ebon Jaguar
- Shadow Cat
- Mad Dog
- Nova
- Executioner
- Zeus (got this one together with the EXE because of the "glitch" with a recent event)

Even not counting the Zeus, that's a total of 6 mechbays with free mechs sitting in them. Seven, if you count the free mechbay they're giving out as this year's loyalty reward for 100 matches played. But that's not even the end of it. Now let's take a look at my MC balance. I started out with zero MC, and I'm currently sitting on 4,098 MC + 400 MC that I'm gonna get at the end of this event. I've so far purchased a single pack of 1,250 MC (and got another free mechbay while I was at it ), and already spent 900 MC to purchase 3 mechbays. I've also won 500 MC from a supply cache - we'll discount that because it's a variable factor. If my math is correct, that's a total of 3,648 MC earned through various events. That is equivalent to another 12 mechbays at full price, or 24 if I wait until the next sale (which is what I intend to do). That's pretty generous, by my standards. But, as I said, you have to invest a considerable amount of time and effort into the game to collect all those mechbays and MC. For a new player, the initial limitation of 4 mechbays together with the need to level at least 3 variants of each mech can be indeed very frustrating.

It's not generous. I wasted weekends to get the first 4 mechbays, and skipped the last 2 because I already had the mechs and had other games to play instead of MWO (like, there are other games that have endgames) and playing FW at times is like mortgaging your soul by feeding off against pretty unorganized players. That's just unenjoyable long term, and it's not even Tukayyid (which is still ultimately a grindfest for boredom). Every FW event burns me out, so even while claiming it all, I get super bored with the game right after.

I've seen better rewards in past years for doing less where the bar to entry isn't selling your soul for an entire weekend.

[DGTLDaemon]

Deathlike, on 11 October 2016 - 09:01 AM, said:

It's not generous. I wasted weekends to get the first 4 mechbays, and skipped the last 2 because I already had the mechs and had other games to play instead of MWO (like, there are other games that have endgames) and playing FW at times is like mortgaging your soul by feeding off against pretty unorganized players. That's just unenjoyable long term, and it's not even Tukayyid (which is still ultimately a grindfest for boredom). Every FW event burns me out, so even while claiming it all, I get super bored with the game right after.

I've seen better rewards in past years for doing less where the bar to entry isn't selling your soul for an entire weekend.

Well, I guess different people enjoy (or hate) the game in different ways I find it boring to play WITHOUT some sort of an objective, so at this time events are one of the two things that keep me in the game (the other is playing FW with my buddies from my unit). I wouldn't mind getting more rewards for less effort, but I'm generally happy with the current reward level.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Deathlike, on 09 October 2016 - 05:58 PM, said:

It's amazing how you're trying to prop up one of the worst variants in MWO in the Vindicator-1X, when even the last Medium mech leaderboards had Vindicators in general in the bottom tier of mediums.

Yes, I'm sure it's just a statistical outlier or something right?

The Vindicator-1AA is the best of the variants. The 1X is the worst. I'm sure I could explain in detail (and I will eventually), but you're trying too hard to understand WHY it's bad and trying to use all the worst reasoning to make it look "mediocre" when it's subpar at best.

The Spider-5V is totally overrated, based on your description. It's the worst variant that can't even fend for itself when challenged by its own weight class. Many mechs can do hit and runs... it just a subpar job at best. Anyone with a brain could tell you this.

The biggest problem with the 5V is that it doesn't have a superior enough torso pitch to look up and down to torture people with its terrible torso laser.

Leaderboards don't really accurately portray the mechs performance, rather they mostly reflect popularity. I know most people don't understand that but is nonetheless true.

For example, we know that the leaderboard on takes the 10 best matches therefore even if I only get 1 outstanding match for every 20 horrible matches, as long as I play 200 matches during the event, I will have an extremely high placement on the leaderboard. Point is the more popular a mech is, the more it is going to get played which in turn means there will be more opportunity for that mech to have its score skewed by those random exceptional matches we all have now and again.

Or to put it another way. You play just 10 matches and your stuck with the score from those 10 matches, good or bad. One bad match when you turn a corner at the wrong time and get focus fired down by the enemy team in seconds and your score goes in the toilet. However if you play 100 matches, that worst match you had, keeps getting replaced over and over, until your left with only the 10 highest scoring matches. Obviously your overall score after 100 matches played will be higher than if you only played 10 matches.

So basically if the Kodiak gets played 56,000 times over the course of the event and the King Crab only gets played 8,000 times over the course of the match, it is pretty obvious that the Kodiak is going to dominate the leaderboard. This is why I say leaderboard scores are heavily based on the popularity of the mech.

[Deathlike]

Viktor Drake, on 11 October 2016 - 10:50 AM, said:

Leaderboards don't really accurately portray the mechs performance, rather they mostly reflect popularity. I know most people don't understand that but is nonetheless true.

For example, we know that the leaderboard on takes the 10 best matches therefore even if I only get 1 outstanding match for every 20 horrible matches, as long as I play 200 matches during the event, I will have an extremely high placement on the leaderboard. Point is the more popular a mech is, the more it is going to get played which in turn means there will be more opportunity for that mech to have its score skewed by those random exceptional matches we all have now and again.

Or to put it another way. You play just 10 matches and your stuck with the score from those 10 matches, good or bad. One bad match when you turn a corner at the wrong time and get focus fired down by the enemy team in seconds and your score goes in the toilet. However if you play 100 matches, that worst match you had, keeps getting replaced over and over, until your left with only the 10 highest scoring matches. Obviously your overall score after 100 matches played will be higher than if you only played 10 matches.

So basically if the Kodiak gets played 56,000 times over the course of the event and the King Crab only gets played 8,000 times over the course of the match, it is pretty obvious that the Kodiak is going to dominate the leaderboard. This is why I say leaderboard scores are heavily based on the popularity of the mech.

This is an issue when you're trying to compare top tier mechs vs each other. However, that's not what I'm looking at.

When it comes to the bottom of the barrel, it doesn't take much reinforcement of the notion. Sure they might not have scored as high as the rest due to not enough people representing them, but then again.. if you can objectively understand why they are the way they are (not popular and not represented well), then it reaffirms the problems they do have. Usually something mediocre tend to stay middle of the road with a few outliers. Something truly bad tends to show up poorly.

It's not the most complicated logic.

There's a reason why the Vindicator, Mist Lynx, and Phoenix Hawk comes up in convos of being the worst chassis, with the Spider-5V being the very worst of all variants. It doesn't take a genius to figure out, especially based on the predictable scoring systems we have in game.

[Maqi]

i honestly cannot believe there are people even remotely defending this scam system.
how desperately addicted to this garbage game can you even ******* be to not see the scam right in front of you?
its ridiculous to say the least.

[Imperius]

Maqi, on 13 October 2016 - 01:45 AM, said:

i honestly cannot believe there are people even remotely defending this scam system.
how desperately addicted to this garbage game can you even ******* be to not see the scam right in front of you?
its ridiculous to say the least.

The new user experience is absolutely terrible. I'll never defend it. I'll never bring friends to this game either unless it ever gets fixed.

[DGTLDaemon]

Maqi, on 13 October 2016 - 01:45 AM, said:

i honestly cannot believe there are people even remotely defending this scam system.
how desperately addicted to this garbage game can you even ******* be to not see the scam right in front of you?
its ridiculous to say the least.

We're not defending it, we are just drawing a line between NPE and continued play. A new player is given a choice between toughing it out and gradually accumulating the resources needed to build a viable drop deck, or paying up front to circumvent the grinding process. I chose the former path, and I'm quite happy with the results, although it WAS very tough at the beginning of the game. That's one of the reasons why I'll probably never have an alt account in this game - wouldn't want to go through all that effort again.

Edited by DGTLDaemon, 13 October 2016 - 02:51 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Imperius, on 13 October 2016 - 02:34 AM, said:

The new user experience is absolutely terrible. I'll never defend it. I'll never bring friends to this game either unless it ever gets fixed.

Pretty much the same here, unless there willing to invest a lot of time and/or money into it, I won't ever recommend it to friends because it is not kind to new players, still.

[Shiroi Tsuki]

I play both MWO and AW, but to be fair; AW feels more grindy than MWO.
I mean, I LITERALLY play the game for the M1 Abrams, but why do I have to grind through all the tier crap the game throws at me? Why do I have to play the Oh-so-horrible Starship just to play a certain vehicle that I want? Why does the Light tank tree change so much when it comes to gameplay? The drastic change of playstyle from the Scorpion to the Sheridan and then to the Bagelpanzer. At least in MWO, as long as you have the money, you don't have to grind for any tier bs to play a certain vehicle.

Anyways, enough of that. You are not forced to buy Mechbays. I am a free player, I will admit. I have spent $0 on this game, but I have 13 fully loaded Mechbays (and some colors and some spare MCs, just to add that in). You can earn Mechbays in events and in CW. While I do agree the Three variant system is an utterload of crap, it's not really something that you should be worrying a lot about. They do help, but a not a massive game changer by any means. Tbh the only thing worth grinding for in the Elite Efficiencies is Speed Tweak. If Speed Tweak doesn't tickle your fancy, I would not suggest buying and grinding two more variants. Try out other Mechs and builds as well

[Charronn]

The 3 variants of the same mech is a pain especially if its a mech with the typical crap variant you need to unlock.
The whole elite 3 mechs in the same weight to master them is highly annoying.They need to get rid of it.I really don't see the point other than just a time sink.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Shiroi Tsuki, on 13 October 2016 - 07:09 AM, said:

I play both MWO and AW, but to be fair; AW feels more grindy than MWO.
I mean, I LITERALLY play the game for the M1 Abrams, but why do I have to grind through all the tier crap the game throws at me? Why do I have to play the Oh-so-horrible Starship just to play a certain vehicle that I want? Why does the Light tank tree change so much when it comes to gameplay? The drastic change of playstyle from the Scorpion to the Sheridan and then to the Bagelpanzer. At least in MWO, as long as you have the money, you don't have to grind for any tier bs to play a certain vehicle.

Anyways, enough of that. You are not forced to buy Mechbays. I am a free player, I will admit. I have spent $0 on this game, but I have 13 fully loaded Mechbays (and some colors and some spare MCs, just to add that in). You can earn Mechbays in events and in CW. While I do agree the Three variant system is an utterload of crap, it's not really something that you should be worrying a lot about. They do help, but a not a massive game changer by any means. Tbh the only thing worth grinding for in the Elite Efficiencies is Speed Tweak. If Speed Tweak doesn't tickle your fancy, I would not suggest buying and grinding two more variants. Try out other Mechs and builds as well

You are forgetting the fact that if you grind all the Elite Efficiences, all your Basic Efficiences get doubled so it isn't just Speak Tweak which by the way, makes a huge difference in and of itself, it is the double cooling, double heat threshold and double agility that really stand out as a requirement if you want your mech to even approach a competitive level. This is why you NEED to Elite 3 chassis, it really isn't much of an option.

For myself, I don't really mind the 3 chassis rule but combined with how few C-bills are awarded and the cost of critical addons like Modules plus the outfitting and experimenting costs that are required for every new mech your purchase, it just gets to be too much. As I mentioned early, you want to run single Direwolf, your going to end up investing probably at least 70-80 million C-bills to outfit and master it at least as an initial outlay. At 200k earnings per match, that mean you will only have to play between 350-400 matches to master that one Direwolf. That is an obscene investment in time for just one mech, especially in a game that has something like 70+ mechs to collect. Also I say collect because what other point is there to this game.