Mechwarrior Online Update Post: On the Highway to Suck

Yes.  It has been many moons since my last MWO update.  Mainly because these patches have continued to make the game boring, unfun, and generally about as boot through TV screen annoying as watching Fox News for more than 5 minutes at a time.

The same old SNIPER PINPOINT DOOM nonsense continues and this week the most contentious thing in a Third Person Mode with mild autoaim is nearly the end of the line.

It has been a good two months or so and thus I forget some of the specific changes.  So we will just go by screenshots and hope I remember the big points.

Also its been so bad hardly anyone in The Word of Lowtax even seems to play any more as like me they try and quit playing in disgust till the next patch.  If ever.

(Click for big pictures as usual.)

 I am not sure what this picture is for.  I forget.

 Then there was PROJECT PHOENIX, referring to a Fanpro era Battletech supplement bringing new looks to the old classic "Unseen" Battlemechs that Harmony Gold liked to sue over.  But Project Phoenix in this is a skeevy way to make money.

 They announced a mech a day.  Some look good others not so much.

 The Locust and Battlemaster look amazing.  The Shadow Hawk and Thunderbolt look kind of dumb.

 And how the program worked.  Kind of lame in that you needed to drop 20 a mech and to get a mech you needed to buy the weight class of the previous.  Many Word players went for the full package.  Given how miserable the game has been a MASSIVE amount asked for refunds and cancelled their order.  Good on them.  (I am too cheap to waste that much money on virtual goods.  And more and more players are doing so given how BADLY the developers are treating us.)

 And as always more new Hero Mechs.  This time heralding the Victor, an 85 ton assault with Jump Jet and arm mounted ballistic capabilities.  Because more jumping assault class mechs with super heavy pin point damage is EXACTLY what this game needed.  (That is sarcasm.  This is the opposite of what this game needs.)

 I think this is just me in pre GHOST HEAT days (more on that later) enjoying the glory of double AC 20 destruction in a Jagermech.  Sure long range sniping is generally the game winner, but a good player can sometimes do well.

 And then a bit later MC purchase for the regular Victors, with a later update letting you use C Bills.  (Which they have made harder now via cutting income.  Yes.)

 And one of the website attempts to explain the infamous GHOST HEAT.  What is this heat?  See in a terrible attempt to stop people from loading up on multiple weapons of the same type (which fails to fix the problems with long range high damage weapons mind you..) by shoving on extra heat.

You see in tabletop Battletech damage would spread out as you rolled for hit location while in MWO you fire nearly twice as fast and can generally aim for things.  Even with armor doubled from tabletop mechs tend to die in one or two salvoes.  Hence why an assault mech with jump jets and multiple PPC and Gauss weapons doesn't even care about GHOST HEAT.  They jump up, shoot, land down to cool.  Repeat.

(Also for a short time jumping was more like tabletop in that hitting things was a LOT harder.  People complained and they reverted to making the Highlander and Victor the only mechs for serious play.)

 This patch's update info from the website.  Artillery still sucks.   They also continue to try to fix the idiotic GHOST HEAT idea.

 New map time!  Terra Therma is basically Planet Mustafar from Star Wars Episode 3.

The map as seen as.. a map.

In mission shots.  Very lovely.

 Very lovely indeed.

The next patch added in this.  More attempts to balance weapons, and now 12 vs 12 mode which basically BREAKS THE GAME. 

 New Hero is the Goldenboy, bringing the Kintaro to us, a 55 ton mech.  Plus this time they had a nice charity mech called Sarah's Mech to help for cancer research.  I feel a bit bad about not donating to it but MWO kind of sucks and I would rather just give blood and stuff.

 12 players.  Oh god.

 The problem with 12 on 12 is massive clusters of mechs with nearly zero reason to ever split up meaning mechs die even FASTER than they already do.

 The Golden Boy.  More like GOLDEN SHOWER OF WHO CARES FIX THIS GAME WANKERS.

 Just a fun little graphic bug.  Trees floating into my Atlas' cockpit.

 This week's massive almost improving the game patch.  Sadly 3rd Person Mode is all but ruining the game for many.  Aiming in 3rd person is bad, but it is helped by AUTOMATIC TARGET LOCK SNAPPING if you do something or other.  Oh, and you get a better field of view.  And this is the default setting.

(Are you starting to realize why many people are sick of this game and the company behind it?)

 The Kintaro.  Its not a bad little medium really.  There are issues with using it as it has a broken hitbox making it more fragile than it should be.

 A third of my C Bills to make a tolerable build.  It took 16 million total C Bills to have two Kintaros that run optimally for me and that isn't including the XL Engines and other equipment I had in storage.

(Everyone is shooting so pinpoint accurate now I don't even worry too much about XL Engine torso death stuff.)

Also note the double XP bonus you get for your first two matches in 24 hours with a chassis.  A way to get people to switch around mechs?

 Inside the Kintaro.

 I am not doing very well in them, but I sometimes have a good match..

And the 3rd person mode.  I don't like it but people are making it work.

So that is the last two months or so of Mechwarrior Online patches.  Nothing really fixed, sad attempts at balance that fail, obvious stunts to try to make people pay real money for fake things, and an ever decreasing player base.

See there is drama and stupidity on the forums, but also more changes the developers don't even TELL YOU ABOUT, outright lies, backtracking, confusion, and ignoring player concerns.

Hell, their forums have a vote on user generated topics for the dev team to talk about in a chat thing.  The way they set it up, they can basically ignore anything they want instead of just answering the most important questions.

Heck, people have asked about this system and had their posts moved or deleted for daring to even call the team on their nonsense.

This game had so much potential.  Yet.. they squander it every time.

Don't cry for Mechwarrior Online.  It is already gone.