MechWarrior Online
Talesin
Our own little well of hate Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
Our own little well of hate Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
in Off-Topic
Curious to see if anyone else is playing; was wrangled into giving it another shot by friends (after the initial disappointing try a while back).
So far I'm enjoying it a good bit, despite several balance issues (namely that missiles do incredible damage, causing ECM to be almost a requirement, and leading to an extreme prevalence of Light mechs... which takes a lot of the balance from the tabletop game and throws it out the window, when aiming is moved to the player instead of a weighted die roll and Lights are both speedy and tiny, making them almost impossible to hit reliably/repeatedly).
Also despite the Living Legends kerfuffle, it seems to be a much more polished and professional iteration of the franchise by comparison... even if the mech (and other unit) selection is fairly limited in comparison.
A bigger annoyance is the predefined subtypes (as opposed to a simple dropdown hardpoint selection), keeping them separate and taking up multiple mech bays (an obvious microtransaction-milking measure), as well as *requiring* the purchase and use of three subtypes of the same mech (again, filling three bays) to unlock the deeper masteries; effectively bringing up a very strong specter of roundabout PTW. Same with the 'Hero Mechs', which gain several bonuses and unique hardpoint configurations which tend to make them significantly more effective than any of the in-game-funds (c-bill) purchased chassis subtypes.
If anyone is interested, I'm playing as 'Talesin BatBat' there.
Oh, and as a hint... never buy the Cicada 3C chassis. Four machine guns sound like they could be fun, but are the next best thing to worthless.
(Seriously, at 0.04 damage per shot and 1000 rounds of ammo, even if you hit with EVERY LAST ONE, it's only 40 damage in total, over about two minutes of firing. Like I said; next to worthless.)
So far I'm enjoying it a good bit, despite several balance issues (namely that missiles do incredible damage, causing ECM to be almost a requirement, and leading to an extreme prevalence of Light mechs... which takes a lot of the balance from the tabletop game and throws it out the window, when aiming is moved to the player instead of a weighted die roll and Lights are both speedy and tiny, making them almost impossible to hit reliably/repeatedly).
Also despite the Living Legends kerfuffle, it seems to be a much more polished and professional iteration of the franchise by comparison... even if the mech (and other unit) selection is fairly limited in comparison.
A bigger annoyance is the predefined subtypes (as opposed to a simple dropdown hardpoint selection), keeping them separate and taking up multiple mech bays (an obvious microtransaction-milking measure), as well as *requiring* the purchase and use of three subtypes of the same mech (again, filling three bays) to unlock the deeper masteries; effectively bringing up a very strong specter of roundabout PTW. Same with the 'Hero Mechs', which gain several bonuses and unique hardpoint configurations which tend to make them significantly more effective than any of the in-game-funds (c-bill) purchased chassis subtypes.
If anyone is interested, I'm playing as 'Talesin BatBat' there.
Oh, and as a hint... never buy the Cicada 3C chassis. Four machine guns sound like they could be fun, but are the next best thing to worthless.
(Seriously, at 0.04 damage per shot and 1000 rounds of ammo, even if you hit with EVERY LAST ONE, it's only 40 damage in total, over about two minutes of firing. Like I said; next to worthless.)
Comments
--Scythe--
Decided it deserved a real, fair shake so made myself play it for four days. Uninstalled it promptly as soon as time was up, and haven't had half a thought of going back. And this is from a pretty big-time PS player (VANU!). Taking combat from a fairly protracted event into 'who starts firing first' may please the Shootmania kiddies, but it definitely wasn't in the same vein as the original PS, in my opinion.
Not sure what you mean by 'punchy and smooth'. It's nowhere near 'lololololololololololololroflcopter' trollish idiocy like PS2 though.
Much improved from my first foray months ago, which was essentially 'form a metal meatball, march at each other and fire until one side is dead'. Light mech combat is all about evasive maneuvering, heat management, and loadout building skill. Ultraheavy (Assault) is... well, yeah. Fire at whatever you see until it dies. Slow moving and armored like crazy.
Lots of room for tactical gameplay, and the grouping system is good; allows either up-to-four groups for playing with friends, or eight-person-required full team groups to allow competitive play. Personally what I'd like to see is more on the RTS aspect of the Battlegrid (overmap); at present, the Commander can set a single point for the entire team; flank-right, defend here, move here, that sort of thing. It'd be improved greatly by including a Mech Commander-type setup, allowing hotgrouping units, individual unit selection, and queued orders to set up more detailed battle plans. At current, the only real way to get people on the same page is relying on people herding together, or yelling at them on Team chat.
It's much less 'popcorn' though.
You need to start out with a good foundation; start off playing with the trial mechs to earn c-bills for your actual build. I'd recommend putting a few bucks in to buy a day of premium time, as when you first start, you get a 'new recruit bonus' which jacks your income up to insane levels for about 25 matches (and the premium time is a percentage-based boost on top of that). Average 'recruit' reward is about 500K-1 million c-bills (in-game currency) per match. With the premium boost, figure between 25-50% higher. The most expensive mech in the game is around 13.6 million c-bills (note, expensive =/= best). You then have to spend more in-game currency to re-fit it with new parts or tailor the build to your own playstyle, and tweak it to perform just right.
On top of that, you're earning mech-XP, allowing you to unlock special 'boosts' like faster turning speed or bonus heat capacity. If you own three of the same chassis (different subtypes) you can open the Elite boosts. Get all of those for all three and you unlock the Master boost (usually an extra Module slot).
Short version, a ton of depth, even with the limited set they've provided thus far.
Down side, once the New Recruit bonus ends, you're down to about 30-70K per match (though up to about 100K if you do particularly well). With premium time, figure a 50% boost on top of that. One month is about $15, so in-line with most other freemium games, or MMOs. On the up side, if there's any grind you don't really tend to notice it. Stomps end quickly, and if it isn't a stomp you always feel like you have a chance. There are some bull**** builds out there (looking at you, RVN-3L!), but for the most part you never feel 'cheated' out of combat.
Also play HAWKEN, which is a much faster, more-limited mech combat game... think Armored Core, but without the customization. Total popcorn, but LOADS better than PS2.
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/92701-lag-compensation/
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/100591-hit-detection-still-wonky/
At some point in time they also introduced engine limitations which pretty much capped the possible speeds of mechs, partly to cover the lag compensation issues i suspect. If you're willing to accept it as beta and put up with prediction shooting the air infront of mechs (super annoying with fast small mechs, even with lasers which have no 'trigger delay'), then yea it's an alright fun game. Not punchy and smooth combat though, especially with higher latency.
Way more authentic mech driving/handling than Hawken though and pretty enjoyable for a while if you get past the F2P grind model and into a fotm mech build off their forums. The game's very heavily gated to encourage people to spend money for ingame credits in one way or another. Maybe obnoxiously so for my taste. The depth mostly a time sink, just like ps2 certs.
What buzzes me is that I didnt experience any kind of real communication. You get thrown in the game and all teamwork there is, stay together, hold points and blast the enemy indicator that fellas give you. No voices, no chat or whatsoever. That's a big minus to me, but maybe I just got it all wrong.
I still havent figured out most of the 'deep game', cause i dont have much time to play but nevertheless I wished for an amazing mechwarrior game like this back when I was a kid and here it is.
I played MW:LL, too and found the engagement there quite more satisfactory. A big point goes to the aircraft, tank and footsoldier warfare which made the game much more diverse. Plus the mega big maps made it a real adventure to play.
As I understand it, point-cap points were disabled because some people had bots that would just run to each of the points, cap them, and move on.
Can't speak as to latency, as every match I've been in, I've been toward middle double-digits. Generally about 140 is the highest ping I really have seen, aside from one guy who appeared to be exploiting with it to 'warp dodge' incoming fire.
2.5 million c-bills is pretty low. It's also the average income from 25 games, most of which run between 5-10 minutes.
If you want to just dive in as a meatshield with no strategy, the Atlas AS7-D-DC is the weapon of choice. Heavily armored, heavily armed, anti-missile system, ECM jamming to either confuse and block the enemy, or strip off a Light's ECM so your team can blow the hell out of it. Also pricey at a good bit over 10 million c-bills. Which can be earned over the course of a single evening, with a 'premium time' boost (or the New Recruit boost, or both).
In-game voice comm is apparently a planned addition. At the moment, I mostly just run a Steam voice-chat session with the friends I'm grouping with, and use team type-chat when talking to the rest of the randoms becomes necessary. Which tends not to be overly-often, as three to four well-coordinated team members tend to run things very effectively, allowing the rest of the team to essentially just be distractions and damage-soaks.
On the bright side, it's a F2P. Only real thing you risk is the time spent downloading it, and learning the initial stuff (and adapting to tank-like movement).
That or an Awesome with five heavy pulse lasers, specifically to declaw splatcats from range. Most likely the Raven though; with how next-to-impossible they are to hit, I've seen one take out three full-health mechs solo before.
I don't know the differences between each chassis. It's pretty confusing to me- do they all have the same base chassis, but different armor/weapons etc? Or is there a fundamental difference that I won't get with a cheaper version of a Raven, such as weapon hardpoints?
I just want a shell and personally kit it myself. I'll probably end up getting the Raven 3L, and strip all the armor, weapon, and heatsinks off of it and rebuild it from scratch. It's what I did with the Guass Kitty so I guess it will work just as well.
All of them come 'bundled' with weapons and armor; I'd prefer a 'barebones' option to help lower the price (seriously, I already have twelve medium lasers between all my mechs, I'm only going to be driving one at a time, I'll just re-kit whichever one I need from my personal parts-stock). Likewise, when I want a piece of gear (like a Beagle probe, NARC beacon, etc) I'll look to see if any of the mechs I plan to buy comes pre-loaded with one that I can just strip off and assign to my current mech.
So yes, variants = different hardpoints, and some determine if you are able to run ECM or not. (Ones that can off the top of my head are the RVN-3L, CDA-3M, AS7-D-DC, one Commando chassis and one Spider chassis... it's a very short list thankfully, as ECM is pretty broken/OP.)
And yeah, Ravens are hard to hit. MULTIPLE ravens are even harder to hit, as it becomes difficult to track just one. Add in that they carry some HARD-punching armament (missiles are some of the BEST damage you can get, and the Streak SRM2 is another broken-as-hell item, especially along with a pair of medium lasers). Really, the same thing can be done with any Lights, but the Raven presents the lowest/smallest profile, is quick as hell, and will tear things up fastest. The Jenner JR7-F is/can be made the fastest mech in the game, and can mount six medium lasers. Other Jenner variants can mount four lasers AND the Streak SRM2, but are easier to hit (larger profile) than the Raven. But no ability to use ECM makes missiles a semi-effective counter to them.