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I will start with the general feel of the UI and options: they do their jobs, but it'd be nice to have some extended graphics options and explanations on what they do. There's no "restrict mouse cursor to window" -option for example (for us with more than one screen), even though moving and clicking outside of the window doesn't seem to do anything. So... adequate, I guess? Generally, all graphics and audio options are lackluster, but probably just enough to not be an issue for most. The look of the menus is decent enough. But the music! That's amazing starting right from the main menu. Good job on that!
Moving on to the mission selection and mech lab. They feel unfinished. I don't know how well these reflect the final product on release, but seeing as there's only a couple weeks left to that, I'm not very hopeful. The logic of the pre-mission menus is sometimes incomprehensible.
For example, you save a loadout from the "edit loadout" -menu, but then there's no "load"-button. "What? Where's the load button? You can save the loadouts but can't load them? What's the point... oooh, there's a tab in the mech SELECTION menu called "saved" and that's where they are." So, why can't there be a "load" -button in the "edit loadout" -menu also?
The same weird logic is also available when editing the loadout of a mech. There are tabs called "filter ballistic weapons" "filter energy weapons" and "filter missile weapons"... and then there's "filter ams weapons" and "filter equipment". You put all the PPC's, lasers, pulse lasers etc. under a single filter, not to mention heat sinks, jump jets and all different kinds of ammunition and probably even more unique stuff under "equipment", but you think the like 2 different AMS -options that even exist in the universe deserve their own filter? WHAT?
And there are a couple more things as well. For example, when you are in the pre-mission menu, there's a "back" -button at the lower left corner. When you're in the "edit loadout" -menu, there's a "back" -button at the lower left corner. Even in the "paint mech" -menu, that same "back" -button exists. But when you're in mech selection -menu, there's no "back" -button, there's only a small cross in the upper right corner. This is confusing and breaks the flow. Then, when you select a mech, but decide you want another mech instead, the mech selection -menu doesn't remember what you filtered last time. If, for example, you were looking at assault mechs on page 3, the menu has reset to all mechs and page 1. If you were looking at Annihilator -chassis, the menu has reset to all mechs and page 1. It can get annoying if you were trying to compare different variants of a single chassis.
Now, some of these things are nitpicking, I acknowledge that. But I think bringing attention to them serves to demonstrate the weird logic - or the complete lack of it - that plagues the menus of MW5. This reminds me of the early beta of MWO and its menus, and the evolution those underwent, from barebones and lackluster to the convoluted mess they are today. Thankfully, at least the MW5 menus don't lag (except for some reason sometimes when they are trying to load the paper doll of some mechs).
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Now, lets move on to the real meat of the game: the gameplay. There's a lot to love and lot to think about here. Firstly, I love the graphics. When I first entered the canyon of the assassination -mission, I gasped. And the sound effects and music here, they are amazing. The stomps of the mechs, the chatter on voice comms, the explosions, weapon sounds and everything is spot on.
The feeling of piloting something heavy is mostly there - except when you get hit. Because there's almost no knockback or any kind of heavy "CLONG!" -sounds. In MWO, when you get hit, you feel it. In MW5, when you lose an arm or half your torso, you don't even notice until you realize you can't shoot half your weapons. Or if you look at the damage you've taken on paper doll.
Talking about damage: the enemy barely does any. I have completed most missions solo. I think most players have by now. Missions that say "difficulty: extreme". And that's not all. I've completed them without even trying while going down the list of mechs towards the lighter end. I've completed some missions with a lance of 3 light mechs. Most of them could probably be done with 1 if you actually tried. Heck, there's even a video of someone completing the raid -mission with Anansi (with stock loadout I think) - and it looks like he was half-assing it while talking with his friends on Discord.
I can't emphasize enough how bad the AI is currently. This is the biggest obstacle for this game to become a great game instead of a mess. Because right now, no matter how beautiful the explosions, no matter how fun the base mechanics or how great the music and sounds are, if the game FEELS hollow and gets old in 30 minutes because you can abuse the AI by accident, it's not going to be a success.
There's no point in bringing your friends for co-op missions if you can't employ any kind of strategy. Or more precisely: if there's no need for strategy to defeat anything. And right now, to me it feels like there isn't.
Talking of strategy and friends, the game lacks some very basic things for co-op to be fun. Enemy targets don't have designations. There's no "target alpha" or "target beta". How is it possible that you have overlooked SUCH A BASIC THING? This is going to be horrible in co-op. It's going to go down like this: "Shoot at the Locust." "Which one?" "The one on the left... no, sorry, now it's on the right." "Left? Right? From which direction?" "My left. Where are you?" "I'm.. over this one ridge here." "Oh, okay, nevermind. I killed the Locust like a minute ago."
Seems like there isn't even an option to reconnect to a co-op game if you get disconnected. What. The. F?
The map can barely be called a map. There are no coordinates of any kind. No "grid C4" or anything. There's ZERO map interaction. You can't even select nav points on your screen. Ordering the AI "to go there" means you need to look at the point where you want them to go. Which is a horrible idea. This was supposed to be a less arcadey, less "twitch fpsy" and more brainy Mechwarrior. And then it doesn't even have some of the most simple, most fondly remembered options from earlier Mechwarriors made over two decades ago. Come on. I really hope this is NOT indicative of how the final product will be.
We want... no, we NEED a rudimentary map with coordinates. And it'd be nice to have some sort of map interaction where you can mark your own waypoints or strategic targets. Best would of course be if you could draw some simple attack patterns there too. I don't think it would be hard to implement, and I still can't understand how it has been so overlooked.
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But lets get back to the AI. It has about two to three "tactics", which consist of:
1) Awkwardly and slowly waddling from behind one building to another while presenting it's full front and trying to shoot at the player with one or two weapons instead of them all.
2) Hysterically twitching its torso while trying to decide whether to shoot at the player behind them or the AI lancemate in front of them.
3) Waddling straight towards the player, then standing completely still and getting headshotted.
There seems to be zero teamwork between enemy AI - at least in most cases. There was this one time when my lance encountered like 5-6 enemies at the same time, and the enemy lights started flanking and circling us. But I'm not sure if that was a fluke or not. Other than that, the enemy generally tends to run towards the player as soon the player shoots at them. It's funny, because if you don't shoot at them, they will happily present their backs while shooting at a random building. Especially in the defense -mission.
Then, other times the enemy AI will go full aggro on the player straight from the get go, for absolutely no reason, and just ignore anyone else shooting at them.
By the way, it's not exactly encouraging when enemies just pop right into existence in front of your eyes after you happen to cross some invisible checkpoint. That means you can't outsmart the enemy by maneuvering to high ground or taking the long route around, because the enemy doesn't even exist before you go where you're supposed to go. I really hope this isn't how the "random generated" missions in the final release are going to work, because it throws any hope of fun co-op strategies out of the window.
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All in all, I'd like to end this on a positive note, as I can clearly see the makings of an excellent Mechwarrior game somewhere in there... but I can't until you fix the AI and give us a decent map IN THE LEAST.
Edited by Jyi, 27 November 2019 - 11:09 AM.
