4 replies to this topic

[Estrous]

Right, so I played this game a number of years ago around 2014. I had stopped due to reasons I will list in a moment. Recently a friend of mine has explained that a lot of changes have happened but didn't have any good details for me so here I am asking.
I realize this is a long list, and could be a bit to read but I really want to like this game again. BattleTech is one of my greatest loves.
Things that were present that I hated:
1) If you qued with friends you were punished.
Explanation: There are two ques, one for solo, one for group. When I went into solo I did okay at the game, but the moment me and a friend wanted to play together the game went to complete ****. We were two people in a group where everyone else on our team was together in a clan using their own private voice coms and the same goes for the enemy team. 10+ people together, one group of sorry souls who just wanted to play together. I have lost every match played this game, the people I fight are too difficult, game isn't fun for this reason.
2) It's an old man's playground.
Explanation: New players are bled fast, new player joins -> fights nothing but veterans at the game in custom mechs while you have the awful trail ones -> loses without contest -> quits game after repetitious failure. Because this game completely and utterly lacks any sort of 'noob friendly' mechanic getting a foot hold is nearly impossible. What is a 'noob friendly' mechanic you ask? Well, in almost every multiplayer shooter ever made the shotgun has been a noob's best friend. Easy to use, effective, has a skill falloff so it encourages a player to move on from it, and best of all even a super experienced player can die to it if they don't watch out, thus giving a nice edge to a noob.
3) I hope you like world of tanks
Explanation: Mech repair costs cut into your already pitiful earnings, if you die in a match quickly you might lose more on repair than what you gain from the match. Also I hope you enjoy that #1 features of world of tanks: if your mech dies in a match it stays unusable until that match is over, no matter how long it runs.
4) The grind
Explanation: I super duper hope you enjoy spending months to get a mech if you're a free to play user as the only way to advance without spending horrendous amounts of time is to pay up. The game doesn't make me want to pay money in support of a product I like but instead holds a gun to my wallet telling me to pay up or grind forever, doesn't make me wanna spend money!
5) The way exp works
Explanation: So let's say you want to get all the perks/skills for a mech right? You have to buy THREE of  the same mech, that's right even if you don't like the other variants! You must buy three and grind out three of them to get mastery. I hope you enjoy those four mech slots because you'll be using them.
6) Mech slots are too limited.
Explanation: basically see point above. With that grind three system in place you were basically locked to a single mech until you got the exp.
7) Trail mechs are walking coffins and money generators for vets.
Explanation: There were limited trail mechs, each of them were awful beyond belief. The one I remember the most was the Atlus that could fire once and their heat would knock up to 90% instantly. I hope you enjoy fighting good players with good mechs with no experience and the worst mech you can get.
8) The sheer lack of 'game' and game modes.
Explanation: You either capture the base, or kill the enemy team. Neither of these modes, as they were played, made any sense at all for the BattleTech universe. The lack of maps, game modes, clan warfare proper.
9) I hope your favorite mech isn't X because it's ****. This game is not balanced.
Explanation: My personal favorite mech is the Fireant/Flea. This mech has appeared mostly in Mech Commander 2, it is a tiny crappy mech but still able to do work. In this game, (at the time I played) it was flat out the worst mech in the game. I realize there needs to be a bottom, in a list someone has to come last... But the difference between a Flea and the second worst mech was miles apart. There was no reason to use a flea, period. Every light mech did a better job than it.
10) Hope you don't like anything but med/heavy mechs, noob!
Explanation: Playing light mechs is too hard, playing assults is too hard, playing half the med/heavies is too hard. What does that leave you? A handful of mechs in med/heavy. The fact the skill needed to to pilot even the most simple light mech is so damn great anyone stupid enough to want to play them as their first mech might as well make a new account.
I think that's about it. That was my experience from 2014, please say three years has made this game less garbage.

[HGAK47]

I read through key points of your post but it was a little rambly so I admit that I didnt read it all.

A few key steps - Run the tutorial / academy. There is plenty to do in there to both learn about mechs as well as earning yourself a good few million cbills. Go through all of it and bag I think 3-5m cbills? Enough to purchase a light or medium mech and perhaps some upgrades like Double Heat sinks and Endo Structure.

You can use trial mechs but they are fixed so there is no room to experiment or adjust. Also crucially trial mechs have 0sp attached to them so you are at a big disadvantage there.

Go through the academy, get the achievments in the trials n stuff to earn yourself a few mill cbills. Then buy what ever mech appeals to you. That is a start at least.

[Tarogato]

Estrous, on 11 August 2017 - 12:50 AM, said:

1) If you qued with friends you were punished.
Explanation: There are two ques, one for solo, one for group. When I went into solo I did okay at the game, but the moment me and a friend wanted to play together the game went to complete ****. We were two people in a group where everyone else on our team was together in a clan using their own private voice coms and the same goes for the enemy team. 10+ people together, one group of sorry souls who just wanted to play together. I have lost every match played this game, the people I fight are too difficult, game isn't fun for this reason.

This hasn't changed. There's not enough people playing the game, so sometimes the only groups that fit together like a puzzle are the noobs vs the vets. Nothing you can do about it without tripling the number of people who play this game and feed the matchmaker.

Quote

2) It's an old man's playground.
Explanation: New players are bled fast, new player joins -> fights nothing but veterans at the game in custom mechs while you have the awful trail ones -> loses without contest -> quits game after repetitious failure. Because this game completely and utterly lacks any sort of 'noob friendly' mechanic getting a foot hold is nearly impossible.

This kinda hasn't changed. Trial mechs are better now. But it's still an incredibly uphill battle for new players to get a foothold. Thankfully there is a skill rating system in place now, and new players are introduced at the very bottom where people are mindbogglingly awful at the game.

Quote

3) I hope you like world of tanks
Explanation: Mech repair costs cut into your already pitiful earnings, if you die in a match quickly you might lose more on repair than what you gain from the match. Also I hope you enjoy that #1 features of world of tanks: if your mech dies in a match it stays unusable until that match is over, no matter how long it runs.

Repair and re-arm costs are gone.

Quote

4) The grind
Explanation: I super duper hope you enjoy spending months to get a mech if you're a free to play user as the only way to advance without spending horrendous amounts of time is to pay up. The game doesn't make me want to pay money in support of a product I like but instead holds a gun to my wallet telling me to pay up or grind forever, doesn't make me wanna spend money!
5) The way exp works
Explanation: So let's say you want to get all the perks/skills for a mech right? You have to buy THREE of the same mech, that's right even if you don't like the other variants! You must buy three and grind out three of them to get mastery. I hope you enjoy those four mech slots because you'll be using them.

The "rule of three" for mech leveling has recently been abolished. You can now level any single mech you want without having to buy other mechs. The downside is... now leveling each mech takes TWICE as long, and costs C-Bills AND experience. And it costs more C-Bills and experience to experiment with different skill configurations. So it's not really better... and it's actually probably more confusing.

Quote

6) Mech slots are too limited.
Explanation: basically see point above. With that grind three system in place you were basically locked to a single mech until you got the exp.

Ever since CW was introduced, you can grind Loyalty Points by swearing loyalty to a faction. It's pretty easy to get two mechbays as a reward for earning ranks in each of the factions, so you can earn 20+ mechbays for free. It does take some time though.

Quote

7) Trail mechs are walking coffins and money generators for vets.
Explanation: There were limited trail mechs, each of them were awful beyond belief. The one I remember the most was the Atlus that could fire once and their heat would knock up to 90% instantly. I hope you enjoy fighting good players with good mechs with no experience and the worst mech you can get.

Trial mechs are now built by and voted on by the community. So they're pretty good. Not perfectly optimised... not necessarily diverse and interesting... but they're all capable. Unfortunately, there is still no skill upgrades on trial mechs.

Quote

8) The sheer lack of 'game' and game modes.
Explanation: You either capture the base, or kill the enemy team. Neither of these modes, as they were played, made any sense at all for the BattleTech universe. The lack of maps, game modes, clan warfare proper.

This hasn't changed. PGI has introduced new gamemodes, but they all boil down to the same thing: kill the enemy first, or use objectives to pressure them into making a mistake so you can kill them. Besides, people only want to shoot mechs anyways. There's a strong pushback every time objective-based gameplay comes up, because people don't want to queue five minutes for a match only to have it end in a 90-second objective crush.

Quote

9) I hope your favorite mech isn't X because it's ****. This game is not balanced.
Explanation: My personal favorite mech is the Fireant/Flea. This mech has appeared mostly in Mech Commander 2, it is a tiny crappy mech but still able to do work. In this game, (at the time I played) it was flat out the worst mech in the game. I realize there needs to be a bottom, in a list someone has to come last... But the difference between a Flea and the second worst mech was miles apart. There was no reason to use a flea, period. Every light mech did a better job than it.

The Flea was never in this game, and probably never will be, due to its similarity with the Locust. But in general, mech balance is better now that it ever has been. Mechs that are weak in characteristics are now given performance-enhancing "quirks", such as better heat efficiency for the poor low-engined mechs, extra durability for the really fat and easy to kill mechs, and better weapon stats for mechs that have poor hardpoints. The quirk system is extraordinarily bloated and really needs a redesign from the ground-up, but for the most part it does its job at making almost every mech in the game viable.

Quote

10) Hope you don't like anything but med/heavy mechs, noob!
Explanation: Playing light mechs is too hard, playing assults is too hard, playing half the med/heavies is too hard. What does that leave you? A handful of mechs in med/heavy. The fact the skill needed to to pilot even the most simple light mech is so damn great anyone stupid enough to want to play them as their first mech might as well make a new account.
I think that's about it. That was my experience from 2014, please say three years has made this game less garbage.

Lights were in a good place once upon a time, but then in mid-2016 all of the mechs in the game were rescaled to be more scientifically consistent. Turns out that most lights in the game ended up becoming considerably larger... and they are now terrible once more and again you have to be an exceptionally good pilot to make up for their deficiencies. Mediums also seem to be in a stiff spot right now as well, heavies and assaults are really the strongest.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Tarogato, on 11 August 2017 - 02:36 AM, said:

The downside is... now leveling each mech takes TWICE as long, and costs C-Bills AND experience.

Not nearly as bad as it were before. Remember that in order to level out three mechs you had to grind c-bills to buy htem first. And play mechs you were not interested in.

[Athom83]

1) They changed it a bit, so now groups matchmake as x players of the highest tier within the group. MM itself isn't perfect, or rational at times, so its a mixed bag no matter.
2) A lot of things has flattened out now, and a lot of trial mechs are pretty good and new player friendly. There are still newwer people fighting more experienced players, but most of it is because they start out in a group because they joined to play with friends or are trying to learn within a group setting.
3) Repair and reload costs are gone. The only part of it that remains is rebuying consumables after you use them, but now you get more for less.
4) Grind is meh. Sometimes it's tedious, others its fine. They've been doing more and more events lately which helps quite a lot, but the grind remains as in any f2p game.
5) Rule of 3 is gone. You can completely master a mech that you only have 1 variant of now. And it takes less to master that one out than before, and you can push it farther at that reduced amount.
6) Events give quite a bit nowadays, and you gain faction reputation a lot quicker nowadays which lets you grind out those free ones faster.
7) Trials as a whole are a bit better, yet they're still not perfect as with any build.
8) They've added more maps, changed old maps around, and are in the process of making more maps. They did the same with nodes, yet they are mostly various flavors of skirmish yet should still be played differently. I've seen many examples of teams playing the other modes as skirmish only to lose with the enemy team wiped but they win on objectives.
9) Um... Flea was never in this game. However I understand it was just an example. As a whole, balance is getting better. There are changes that can screw with a particular meta or feature that was being abused. Recently, gauss and PPC had their GH linked so you could never fire 2 of either at once. Also, mobility has been desync'd from engine statistics which effected the assaults a bit too much for many's liking (personally I love the way 100ton mechs feel after that change, but to each their own).
10) Actually, there are quite a few new-player friendly light and assault mechs now. The Urbanmech is actually quite good for people learning how to play lights, and lights as a whole are no longer **** in anyone's hands but pros. Also, the 90-95 ton range for assaults is very powerful at the moment and it doesn't take a perfect build in them to do well.