Mechwarrior Online open beta is open

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Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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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?
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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nikki191 said:
coming from a background of playing the table top game through to all the mechwarrior games i was really looking foward to this and i have tried the beta. it maybe pretty but it feels like a half assed world of tanks with mechs but without the detail and with really bad matchmaking
I never played WoT, but I've heard the comparison before. I've found that the game plays a lot like the previous Mechwarrior games. As I said, the game deserves a chance, but only if they put in actual matchmaking.

Also, I'm still not quite sure about the business model and if it'll include Pay2Win...
 

GrandmaFunk

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Oct 19, 2009
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I'd be really interested in it if they also created some co-op PVE missions/campaigns... I can just picture my lance jumping out of a landing dropships to assault dozens of AI tanks and mechs, trying to accomplish strategic operations like securing the Comstar compound, local govt buildings, joining up with local militias.

limiting the game to mech-on-mech deathmatch kinda nullifies the awesomeness of the setting(I'm a HUGE Battletech nerd).. which means I might as well just play Hawken instead.

that being said, if they recreate some of the Solaris arenas, duels in there could be loads of fun =)
 

fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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GrandmaFunk said:
limiting the game to mech-on-mech deathmatch kinda nullifies the awesomeness of the setting(I'm a HUGE Battletech nerd).. which means I might as well just play Hawken instead.
There are a lot of things they haven't yet implemented yet that aren't a million miles from what you describe. The plan eventually does seem to include a more constructive, objective based play. Whether that's PvE or all within PvP remains to be seen.

But between the betas for this, Planetside 2 and World of Warplanes I am clearly doomed. God doesn't want me to do anything but game this winter.

On the other hand, MMOs are finally getting awesome!
 

Smooth Operator

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Oct 5, 2010
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Well it's certainly not ready for prime time.
Gameplay wise it is a pretty standard Mechwarrior game, but with it being MMO like you get zero options regarding where and how you play so it's pretty terrible in that aspect, matchmaking is awful by default and this one is the worst I've come across.

Visuals are modern FPS type thing, riding that color blindness and image fuzz to the fullest... it's really not something I enjoy.
Mechs do have nice designs but out on the field with the visuals set up as they are you are left staring at a bunch of dark gray blobs, I found WoT dreary in that regard and I never imagined MW could beat them.

I think it just isn't the game I wanted out of it, even the old Mechwarrior games left a whole bunch to be desired and to me this one isn't bringing anything new but rather reheating old stew.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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Played some more, it went a bit better today. I wound up with some decent teams and even managed to win some for a change.

It's a fun game at its core, there's no doubt about that. It could definitely grow into something awesome if the rough edges are smoothed out, more game modes are added and more mechs are available. I'll probably keep playing it for now, at least casually, but it still has a long way to go.

Another slight problem is that the game lacks feedback on wether or not your shot connected, especially with energy weapons. Part of this problem is down to the washed-out color scheme and part is due to a simple lack of visual cues. As a result, I can go through the whole game not sure if I'm doing it right or not...
 

Ryotknife

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Oct 15, 2011
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no clan tech makes me angry

very angry

RYOTKNIFE SMASH PUNY INNER SPHERE NON OMNIMECH TECH!
 

fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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nikki191 said:
how did you find world of warplanes. i just could not get the hang of the thing despite playing flight sims for years
I'm really enjoying it, but it's still very fluid, pretty much every week something is changing.

I'm finding it more like Counter Strike with planes than a true flight sim, it gets a lot more fun once you get a handle on using the terrain and making proper flight manoeuvres, my first couple dozen flights all ended in trying to out-turn the other guy ad nauseum followed by his mates blasting me.
Then I started reading about immelmanns and thatch weaves...
 

fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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Ryotknife said:
no clan tech makes me angry
Give it time, they are running a timeline of 1 year = 1 year in the game, with release day being equivalent to Jan 1 3049. We all know what happens at the end of 3049...
 

gigastrike

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Jul 13, 2008
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Jandau said:
Another slight problem is that the game lacks feedback on wether or not your shot connected, especially with energy weapons. Part of this problem is down to the washed-out color scheme and part is due to a simple lack of visual cues. As a result, I can go through the whole game not sure if I'm doing it right or not...
When you hit, the targeting reticle turns red. Though I heard that the game currently has issues understanding that you hit someone at all (mostly on light mechs), so that might also be the problem.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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gigastrike said:
Jandau said:
Another slight problem is that the game lacks feedback on wether or not your shot connected, especially with energy weapons. Part of this problem is down to the washed-out color scheme and part is due to a simple lack of visual cues. As a result, I can go through the whole game not sure if I'm doing it right or not...
When you hit, the targeting reticle turns red. Though I heard that the game currently has issues understanding that you hit someone at all (mostly on light mechs), so that might also be the problem.
The targeting reticule is a problem all of its own. It contains information regarding weapon readiness, separate aiming locators for torso and arm weapons, targeting data (range, type, etc.), torso orientation information, target lock information, missile lock information, and so on and so forth. It's all crammed in there into a very small area at the centre of the screen and any number of those components can turn red. The reticule itself turns red once you have a missile lock, it's kinda hard to distinguish from a different kind of turning red for something else.

What would be welcome is a slight flash at the impact spot, at least for energy weapons. If I hit with an Autocannon, I get to see a small explosion and kinda tell if I hit the enemy. Similar thing for missiles. But beam weapons just lack immediate visual feedback. Yes, the areas of the mech that are hit start to glow, but in a pitched battle a mech might be glowing all the time. Or is the glow from heatsinks? I'm not quite sure...