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My first week of playing this game was the best (with the exception of the Atlas head hitbox being broken). The first patch for me made the change so that destroying a torso also destroyed the arm. Not destroying the arm makes sense when you think about a tank with a hole in the armor. It also makes sense when you think about robotics and circuitry. We beat that discussion to death on the forum so I'll spare the forum again. Long story short they could have addressed this problem by doubling internal armor instead of just external armor. This becomes relevant when we start talking about 12 vs 12 but we won't get to that for some time.
At beta launch Gauss was the superweapon (by the way Gauss is the unit of magnetic intensity and is named after a person..... it does not rhyme with "boss" but rather "spouse"). It had literally no drawbacks as it had long range, good velocity and no charge bs mechanic. It also didn't blow up when destroyed. This becomes relevant when you look at the weapon meta now.
A lot of people never gave MWO a real chance because 8 man premades utterly demolished teams of 8 random players. This is relevant today because you currently allow premades to fight random players. You get an F for history and balance.
Around this time LRMs had many rises and falls as the second superweapon. They went basically straight up and when they reached the target's X & Y coordinates they came straight down. LRMs were the only way to kill lights for a long time because they had a lag shield for almost a year into the game. I know many of the old timers out there remember waiting for your target to stand up for the second time to alpha after a knockdown. That was the only other guaranteed way to kill a light mech with strong lagshield.
Double Heat sinks were one of the first controversial points for players. This really made a lot of people mad because you made heat sinks only be 1.4 unless they were in the engine. This was "fine" when everything was IS but now that we have clans it might be time to reconsider this formula.
And then we had ECM hit the game. Back then ECM was an I win button if your team had more Do you see the game is still finding this pattern? Right now clan mechs are the current I win button when you have vastly unbalanced clan vs IS matches. ECM once again ruined LRMs and pretty much buried streaks. Streaks were later buried again with excessive leg targeting routines and reduced explosive damage. RIP old friend. If you're playing now there is still ECM so I really don't need to mention it much other than to say it caused a lot of people to quit as a direct result of its poor implementation.
Medium mechs got a huge nerf when their max engine sizes were slashed in some cases by engine ratings of 100 or more. You should be able to build a medium to be incredibly fast (just slightly slower than a light) or with almost as much firepower as a heavy and be slower. Right now you've only got the latter choice in many cases and this is boring. You wanted every mech to be relevant but doing this put the nail in the coffin for mediums to be able to fight assaults. On the other hand it did open the door for you to try and sell us new power creep mechs with less strict engine options. /sigh
Somewhere in there you added modules. These were interesting as they added spice to the game and made you need the master module slot. I'm quite sad to see the 4 module slot on the Atlas DDC removed. Instead now we have a consumable slot..... yea. But we aren't there yet in the timeline to talk about that disaster. Modules like advanced target decay made LRMs well balanced once again. Before this module most people took AMS off their mech because that is how ineffective they were. This change made people fear missiles again in a big way but in a balanced way. On the downside around this time we lost 1000m lock on sight range so we would all have to buy the Advanced Sensor module.
Somewhere in here lights got "nerfed" (aka read as fixed) when they finally fixed the hit registration for most weapons. As far as I can tell lasers largely remain broken vs lights. It's not as bad as it used to be but it still needs work (especially on the spider and the raven/adder need another look). I remember a game where a raven fought 6+ mechs in one grid for over three minutes before finally being destroyed. Yes he had a ping of about 300 but that's no excuse for a light to be able to take more punishment than would be required to kill 5-6 Atlas mechs. I'm not exaggerating here if the lag shield was strong with you then your Raven's health was basically about double that of an Atlas as long as you did not stop (hits actually register on slow moving or stopped lights). Knockdowns did not return..... lol what?
Around this time we got the SRM/LRM splash nerf. This was a terrible change as SRMs were well balanced for the damage/weight/heat. Their spread had long since been nerfed (forgot to mention that in early days as a super weapon). This killed the very specialized build of the slpatcat (A1 catapult with 6 srm 6 launchers). Many cried because this mech was "op". It was a one trick pony with 40 armor "ears" you can destroy with 1 heavy alpha. Builds like this contributed heavily to the ghost heat situation. Unlike the poptart PPC this had legitimate drawbacks: namely insanely short range and very limited armor. The A1 also contributed to the streak nerf as another common build was 2x SRM6 with 4x Streak 2 launchers.
But honestly the only reason the 1000m sensor range was changed was in part due to the PPC super weapon debacle. Soon there became 1 viable build....... the poptart. Back then Jump Jets had no shake so CTFs used 2 PPC and 1 Gauss rifle for pinpoint torso damage. At this time the game was still 8 vs 8 and it was a very different game. Thermal vision was changed as a result of this build because it was so cheap/cheese. You would go into a game and 90% of the mechs would have PPCs. What made PPCs great? Silly long range+overly reduced heat costs+10 damage with pinpoint accuracy+ infinite ammunition. Since then they have fixed this but there was a consequence for it..... ghost heat.
The game implemented Elo and this too made players quite unhappy. The system unfairly weighted certain mechs (my favorite that Atlas included). I said hey this wasn't working for a very long time and people told me I was bad even though at the time I was running a 4.0 KDR (did not play during the 8 premade vs 8 random stomp fest so I earned that legitimately). The Devs repeatedly said the system does not balance total scores when quite often it was revealed by posters that it did. The worst case scenario was when you had one or two guys with really high rating one one team. Quite often the system would give you near braindead allies with low Elo scores to compensate for very high scores. The enemy team would generally be composed of all slightly above average players so the game was often rigged so you didnt have a fair chance to win (if you were good and piloting a mech "overweighted" by the MM). It was around this point in time where I lost all faith in this game.
I'm not really sure when it happened (this game was as dead as dirt for quite some time) but they went and changed ballistics in a very bad way. The AC20 was previously a 660m weapon in game. But it was very slow moving and required a lot of skill to hit targets at that range. You could still shoot effectively out to about 800m and make people quite unhappy. Most people were bad and could only use it around 150-100m effectively. This change lowered the skill ceiling and that's almost never a good thing. Now the Gauss rifle has a charge mechanic and is back to the old ppc velocity (if I'm not mistaken). The system seemed pretty fair to me when you could have either Gauss rifles that could blow up when destroyed or an AC 20 with range out to 660m before damage fall off.
Somewhere around here there was a second set of founders mechs that were literally nothing more than an overpriced cash grab. Community warfare is coming. But not for about a year so pay us some money instead for the latest and greatest new hype? I still see a fair number of founder mechs but I rarely see these 2nd gen founder mechs. You still owe these guys and I hope like a Lannister you always pay your debts. I'm still happy with my founders mechs except for the hunchback. Ghost heat+ ~260 max engine means never play it again.
And now we head into the "modern" period for MWO. We have airstrike/artillery strike and all the players demanded it be removed from the game/store. The Devs didn't listen and went ahead with the cash grab. At the same time they also stole 1-2 module slots from your mech depending on model; GG, I hope you didn't want those. Devs teased players with 500$ gold paint job Clan mechs with an extra module slot. Seriously? GTFO. The Devs got a clue and took the extra module slot off the gold clan mechs.
MWO now has physics but no knockdowns. Really? It's a pain in the arse to pilot assault mechs and we still can't punch (or shove) with mechs that have fists. Hand allow you to grab and interact with your environment. I'll give up on the melee combat and knockdowns because it basically means you redesign your engine. But I will ask for improved hill climbing for mechs with hands. A 20% speed penalty reduction for going up steep slopes seems appropriate. When Alpine peaks was first introduced people figured out you could never play it if you wanted (most didn't because at the time LRMs were once again in a hay day). All you had to do was hit alt-f4 when the splash for alpine loaded (fixed) and you would go instantly back to the mechbay without deploying. There was even a permanent solution by intentionally damaging your map file for this map (also fixed). I liked when you could climb up almost anywhere but now it's just a pain. Most fights use about 10% of this map. Less mobility across 75% of all mechs does not increase the fun factor of the game.
We finally got the 12 vs 12 fight and the game has never been worse. This is my opinion but I'll take a moment to defend it. At its heart MWO has elements of teamwork but there is a lot of lore in the game about pilot vs pilot. When there were 8 players in the game you had a lot more 2vs2 and 1vs 1 fights. You also had some 2vs3 and 3vs 4 but it wasn't always a zergfest. Back then the pug game was more concerned with DPM but now it's all alpha. In a 1 on 1 fight the DPM mech has a huge advantage because he can fight continuously without overheating. With the current meta Alpha is king because a lance can kill one mech with each coordinated alpha. This type of mindset makes the game boring and leads to more landslide style battles. More players also devalues the role of a light mech. There are 50% more players per team so someone can always watch every approach angle while waiting to engage the enemy in the "zerg camp" formation. Triple capture times made assault and conquest modes redundant this too reduced the role of lights on the battlefield. For the most part there is no "oh crap we have to prevent the enemy from going here" mentality. Every game has the same strategy: get all your mechs together and wait (sometimes a group will push). By contrast 8 vs 8 had a lot more small skirmishes which often led to the "real battle". Gone are the days where you can solo 4 mechs with srm/ballistics and end just around the time the last mech falls. I will point out again that 8 vs 8 was also more balanced with the ammo counts. I'll throw one last late hit and say that doubled armor values need double ammo values (we still haven't forgiven you for that one either).
After doing some reading it seems that clan mechs are overall 30% more effective than their IS counterparts. This is no surprise when you stop and think about the benefits. Clan engines are XL but require double torso destruction. So you live longer, use less weight to move faster and get to carry more true double heat sinks. We must also not forget that clan DHS are only 2 spaces instead of 3 and that is a huge benefit too. The only area where clans have a disadvantage is LRM delivery where IS mechs fire everything at once. But this is a wash as clan mechs still deal damage inside ranges of 180m. And with increased speeds you are less likely to be inside that range unless that is what you want.
TLDNR version: things that have been handled poorly in this game
1. Unfair loaded teams vs random players (can't believe that is still a thing)
2. Repitive formulaic power creep (if we have more of this we win: assaults/ecm/poptarts/clantech)
3. Blatent cash grabs (remember your promise..... no gold lasers)
4. Poor mechanics (DHS/ECM//Elo/ghost heat/clan mechs >>>IS mechs)
Edited by Glythe, 10 September 2014 - 07:46 PM.
