As you may or may not have heard, the upcoming multiplayer Mechwarior game just entered open beta. Since nobody seems to be talking about it around here, I figured I'd start.
I'm guessing most of you know what Mechwarrior is about, but for those who are new to the franchise, it's based off the BattleTech universe. It's a setting following several centuries of interstellar political struggle, mostly resolved through liberal use of giant robots. Said giant robots are the focus of the whole thing and over the decades Battletech has existed it's acumulated an impressive roster of mechs, tanks and guns as well as a metric ton of lore and backstory. In short, a wide selection of mechs shooting at each other with a wide selection of guns; good times to be had for all.
The Battletech setting also branched out into gaming through Mech piloting games such as the Mechwarrior series on the PC and the MechAssault games on XBox, as well as the MechCommander RTS games. The latest Mechwarrior title is going to be multiplayer-only and Free to play, and has just entered open beta. I've played a bunch of games in the past two days and I'd like to share some early impressions.
The first thing that I noticed were the visuals. The game looks very nice and I especially like the mech design. All the mechs look awesome, even more so than usual. Even the models that I normally find repulsive, such as the Hunchback, manage to look imposing and cool. It also runs reasonably well performance-wise, though you'll need at least some hardware to get it to run smoothly. I can get a solid framerate on low settings, but then again I'm using a GeForce9200. Anyone with a GFX card that isn't quite so archaic should be fine.
Basic gameplay is solid, the controls using a standard FPS layout. Weapons are mostly fired in groups instead of individually (as Mechwarrior veterans are likely to remember) and groups can be easily reconfigured on the fly, or even set to fire simultaneously or one by one (chain fire). Targeting and radar is handled in an interesting manner - there is no active detection, you need line of sight to get a target lock on an enemy. However, once you do get a lock, that enemy is visible to all your teammates and they can use your lock to launch their missiles. This rewards teamwork and scouting, but can be tricky to get used to. There is no third-person view, which makes me sad (I prefer playing MW games from 3rd person), but disorientation is intended to be a factor, especially when under fire. All in all, the core of the game is quite promising.
While I don't have access to Mech customization yet, from what I've read it goes beyond any of the previous games, with more detailed options (you can change engines, internal structure, etc.). Ammo and heatsinks also need to be distributed on the Mech, with ammo getting blown up being a factor in battle. Some of it is work in progress, but it looks extremely promising.
However, the game in its current state has some major drawbacks. First of all is a lack of any proper matchmaking. The game just grabs a random sampling of people and tosses them in. This means that newbies playing Trial mechs (shitty unconfigurable starter mechs) get matched against veterans with fully tricked out custom setups. Even worse, it's fairly common for full teams of newbies to get matched against premade teams of seasoned players. To put this in context, that's the League of Legends equivalent of a Level 1 PuG with only free week champions going against a level 30 premade with full T3 runes. It's a slaughter.
Secondly, there is only one game mode at the moment, team deathmatch. It's supposed to be base capture, but everyone just plays it as deathmatch. Also, there are very few maps. Mech selection is also slim, with a total of 10 mechs available (Raven, Jenner, Commando, Hunchback, Centurion, Cicada, Dragon, Catapult, Atlas, Awesome), though each mech comes with several configurations that have different possible weapon loadouts (like a Catapult that replaces its Missile bays for Ballistic weapons and proceeds to mount two Gauss Rifles there). Granted, this will likely change as the game grows, but at the moment there's not much variety.
I can't really comment on the balance just yet due to a lack of experience with the game, but from what I've seen in-game and read on the forums it's not too bad. There are a few "cheap" builds that work a bit too well, but that's to be expected (apparently Streak SRMs are all the rage right now).
Playing from Europe, I've been getting a bit of a latency problem, with a 150-200 ms. This is borderline playable for a shooter game, though I'm not sure if it's because of poor netcode or a lack of European servers. Likely the latter, or at least I hope so...
The game overall isn't very welcoming to the new players. Besides the matchmaking that tosses newbies to get slaughtered by veterans, the game appears to require some grind. At start you can only play one of four prebuilt mechs that can't be customized. This means that new players don't get access to one of the most important features of the game - the Mech Bay. These trial mechs have so-so setups that mainly fail because they are all-round with nothing really good and can't go up against specialzed setups found on customized Mechs (that they are constantly matched against). You need to play a few dozen games on these to be able to afford even the shittiest light Mech, start customizing your ride and actually having a reasonable chance in a fight. All in all, kinda dishartening.
It's an interesting game with potential, but I wouldn't advise playing it in its current state. It's frustrating, unwelcoming and only really caters to players who pay up front and then join a clan to play premades. If they sort out the matchmaking and make the early game experience less harrowing, the game might be worth a second look. But as it stands, I can't really reccomend it to anyone besides maybe die-hard Mechwarrior fans.
The two common responses to the criticism of the game are "But it's Beta!" and "You should spend money on it, then it's better.". Second one is just stupid because the game isn't making me want to spend money in its current state. It's not fun and being told I MIGHT start having fun if I pay $20-60 is ridiculous, especially for a F2P game. The first one is a poor excuse, since for a F2P multiplayer game, Open Beta IS the launch, or at least that's how it's perceived by the general public. And at the moment, I fear that MWO is driving away a lot of potential players.
So what are your thoughts on the game? Are you interested in it? Are you playing in the beta? If so, what are your impressions?
I'm guessing most of you know what Mechwarrior is about, but for those who are new to the franchise, it's based off the BattleTech universe. It's a setting following several centuries of interstellar political struggle, mostly resolved through liberal use of giant robots. Said giant robots are the focus of the whole thing and over the decades Battletech has existed it's acumulated an impressive roster of mechs, tanks and guns as well as a metric ton of lore and backstory. In short, a wide selection of mechs shooting at each other with a wide selection of guns; good times to be had for all.
The Battletech setting also branched out into gaming through Mech piloting games such as the Mechwarrior series on the PC and the MechAssault games on XBox, as well as the MechCommander RTS games. The latest Mechwarrior title is going to be multiplayer-only and Free to play, and has just entered open beta. I've played a bunch of games in the past two days and I'd like to share some early impressions.
The first thing that I noticed were the visuals. The game looks very nice and I especially like the mech design. All the mechs look awesome, even more so than usual. Even the models that I normally find repulsive, such as the Hunchback, manage to look imposing and cool. It also runs reasonably well performance-wise, though you'll need at least some hardware to get it to run smoothly. I can get a solid framerate on low settings, but then again I'm using a GeForce9200. Anyone with a GFX card that isn't quite so archaic should be fine.
Basic gameplay is solid, the controls using a standard FPS layout. Weapons are mostly fired in groups instead of individually (as Mechwarrior veterans are likely to remember) and groups can be easily reconfigured on the fly, or even set to fire simultaneously or one by one (chain fire). Targeting and radar is handled in an interesting manner - there is no active detection, you need line of sight to get a target lock on an enemy. However, once you do get a lock, that enemy is visible to all your teammates and they can use your lock to launch their missiles. This rewards teamwork and scouting, but can be tricky to get used to. There is no third-person view, which makes me sad (I prefer playing MW games from 3rd person), but disorientation is intended to be a factor, especially when under fire. All in all, the core of the game is quite promising.
While I don't have access to Mech customization yet, from what I've read it goes beyond any of the previous games, with more detailed options (you can change engines, internal structure, etc.). Ammo and heatsinks also need to be distributed on the Mech, with ammo getting blown up being a factor in battle. Some of it is work in progress, but it looks extremely promising.
However, the game in its current state has some major drawbacks. First of all is a lack of any proper matchmaking. The game just grabs a random sampling of people and tosses them in. This means that newbies playing Trial mechs (shitty unconfigurable starter mechs) get matched against veterans with fully tricked out custom setups. Even worse, it's fairly common for full teams of newbies to get matched against premade teams of seasoned players. To put this in context, that's the League of Legends equivalent of a Level 1 PuG with only free week champions going against a level 30 premade with full T3 runes. It's a slaughter.
Secondly, there is only one game mode at the moment, team deathmatch. It's supposed to be base capture, but everyone just plays it as deathmatch. Also, there are very few maps. Mech selection is also slim, with a total of 10 mechs available (Raven, Jenner, Commando, Hunchback, Centurion, Cicada, Dragon, Catapult, Atlas, Awesome), though each mech comes with several configurations that have different possible weapon loadouts (like a Catapult that replaces its Missile bays for Ballistic weapons and proceeds to mount two Gauss Rifles there). Granted, this will likely change as the game grows, but at the moment there's not much variety.
I can't really comment on the balance just yet due to a lack of experience with the game, but from what I've seen in-game and read on the forums it's not too bad. There are a few "cheap" builds that work a bit too well, but that's to be expected (apparently Streak SRMs are all the rage right now).
Playing from Europe, I've been getting a bit of a latency problem, with a 150-200 ms. This is borderline playable for a shooter game, though I'm not sure if it's because of poor netcode or a lack of European servers. Likely the latter, or at least I hope so...
The game overall isn't very welcoming to the new players. Besides the matchmaking that tosses newbies to get slaughtered by veterans, the game appears to require some grind. At start you can only play one of four prebuilt mechs that can't be customized. This means that new players don't get access to one of the most important features of the game - the Mech Bay. These trial mechs have so-so setups that mainly fail because they are all-round with nothing really good and can't go up against specialzed setups found on customized Mechs (that they are constantly matched against). You need to play a few dozen games on these to be able to afford even the shittiest light Mech, start customizing your ride and actually having a reasonable chance in a fight. All in all, kinda dishartening.
It's an interesting game with potential, but I wouldn't advise playing it in its current state. It's frustrating, unwelcoming and only really caters to players who pay up front and then join a clan to play premades. If they sort out the matchmaking and make the early game experience less harrowing, the game might be worth a second look. But as it stands, I can't really reccomend it to anyone besides maybe die-hard Mechwarrior fans.
The two common responses to the criticism of the game are "But it's Beta!" and "You should spend money on it, then it's better.". Second one is just stupid because the game isn't making me want to spend money in its current state. It's not fun and being told I MIGHT start having fun if I pay $20-60 is ridiculous, especially for a F2P game. The first one is a poor excuse, since for a F2P multiplayer game, Open Beta IS the launch, or at least that's how it's perceived by the general public. And at the moment, I fear that MWO is driving away a lot of potential players.
So what are your thoughts on the game? Are you interested in it? Are you playing in the beta? If so, what are your impressions?
