Ok, my brother talked me into trying it (it is free to play, so it can't hurt to try it). I'll also preface this with saying we used to play the board game back in our highschool days. I know the mechs, the technology, and the fluff/backstory to the game. I am a BattleTech fan.
The good.
1. The first thing you notice is that the mechs are not simple to pilot. It is a first person shooter, but then it isn't. This is a proper sim, and today they released the patch that finally adds in the startup sequence for that blast of nostalgia from playing the old PC games back in the day. You even have TWO crosshairs that move independently from each other for arms and torso mounted weapons on your mech. That does make it harder to aim sometimes as the two don't usually line up when turning quickly, but that can also be a plus and adds some player skill to the game.
2. The mech's artwork are designed with a new artist called Flying Debris (Alex Inglacias) that had long been famous for his fan amateur artwork he put up on Deviant Art. He does mechs better than the guys who originally made the game. What is more they don't just have a single mech per
3. It is free. I mean it. The only things in the game you cannot buy with the points you score in the game are paintjobs and fuzzy dice. Yes, there is fuzzy dice you can get for your cockpit, which comes into "play" after another player dies and they ghost spectate from the points of view of the team mates that are still alive.
There are also different "trial mechs" which are unlocked for free each week, one from each weight class. This lets you try them out in case you are not sure you wanted to actually spend the points and unlock it for yourself.
However, I'm not a freeloader. I plunked down some cash to show my love for their work, and then promptly bought some beginner mechs I wanted to play with.
4. This is a min-maxers dream of endless tweaking and fussing. My brother and I have spent as much time going full geek mode in the mech bay just changing out loadouts and armor to try to maximize our fun and play styles. It might be a waste of hard earned C-bills (the currency of the game setting instead of dollars), but if you are a gadget freak, you get to play.
5. Lights, mediums, heavies, and assault class mechs are all part of the game. They don't have the problem as much as previous titles where Assaults were the only ones worth taking. The little lights and their speeds at turning and getting away behind a hill can really be a bear of a problem to win. The faster you are, the harder you can be to hit and the faster your weapons rotate onto the enemy.
This game also has data networked targeting for teams, so anybody you lock your short range sensors on can be fire at with long range missiles from up to a kilometer away. That means lights can get in, NOT fire their weapons, lock onto an enemy, and missiles will rain down onto that guy from the rest of the team. Scouting works.
But, the game is not actually finished. Like many styles of games that are coming out in recent years they've gone public with an unfinished game to start getting the cash flowing in. I'm not disrespecting that decision. As I understand it the Mechwarrior/BattleTech games have been a niche title and getting any funding for it has been a struggle, even ditching a single player game in favor of World of Tanks (or should I say World of Mechs) style of game to at least get something out in the public space.
However, that means some faults are in the game as it currently stands, which I hope get fixed sooner or later.
The bad.
1. Lopsided victories. You learn real quick that you have to stick together to win in this game. Lone wolves are torn to shreds, and this game needs you to play with your squad and focus your fire on a single enemy to bring them down quickly and get the advantage. This is due mostly to the game modes that are limited to 1 life per game. Once a team has a numbers advantage, it usually steam rolls the rest.
2. Limited game modes. Right now there are only two. Assault, which is essentially last team standing, although there is an enemy flag you can capture to win as well. The second game is Conquest, and it sounds just like it has for all the other conquest game modes pioneered by the Battlefield games by DICE. There are 5 flags on the field, and owning them adds points to a total score board at the top of the screen. The first to reach the game limit wins the match, although as there is still only 1 life per game you also can win by just wiping out the enemy team.
The Conquest mode seems to be the more fun game mode for me. It doesn't always go so lopsided as the team vs team game, but the tactics for both game modes tend to be very similar.
There will be more game modes and maps added of course, and the big one is a meta-game with a star map of the Inner Sphere showing the 5 major nations of the lore, and we can join one to conquer the individual planets by playing our matches to see who owns what, but that isn't what you get right now.
3. The games tend to be really short. It normally goes to about 15 minutes, but you can be the first guy taken out and have to just spectate the rest of the match from the other team makes cockpits (and admire the fact he bought a hula girl for his dashboard). You have to do this to get the consolation points for losing the match. However, without respawning you get the feeling you are wasting a lot of your time, and sometimes dead team mates will try to be backseat drivers for you as you play.
4. Player limits to the game are 8 vs 8 right now. That is pretty small for a shooter in the day and age when 32 vs 32 is normal, and it isn't uncommon to have 64 player games. They are going to up it to 12 vs 12 someday, but that hasn't happened yet. There was some pretty bad lag when the game first came out I'm told, so that might have something to do with it.
5. I would stay away from their official forums, as they tend to be rather vocal and negative like most official forums for a game tend to be. I find you get better discussions on offsite forums like this one. That isn't unique to MWO of course. You even see a lot of complaints on AH-2 forums as well, so I'm used to it.
The big thing I see wrong as it is right now is the lopsided victories. Not being able to respawn and get back into the fight tends to make your safety too high of a priority to the point you cost your team a win (and the reward points) if you make a mistake.
If I had anything else to add I was hoping to see a game mode that had some respawing in it. There is always the fear that the biggest mech wins, and I'm seeing that isn't completely the case, yet I wouldn't mind seeing a "respawn" type game that has everyone use a light, a medium, a heavy, and an assault class mech once per game (in any order you want). If you don't have your own mech in a weight class, then just use the free trial mech for that week.
Anybody else play it and what did you think?
