It has been a while since I covered MWO. Like nearly three months. In that time honestly I have barely played the game. And all the playing I have done was for this blog post. I probably needn't have bothered.
(As usual click pictures for larger.)
Our first update back in November was this. A couple minor tweaks, some new support modules and some bug fixes. Its nice and all but.. not exactly lighting anyone's world on fire.
A new stupid hero mech paint scheme. Blah.
New silly things to buy with real money, and more hit box tweaking. Not exactly a reason to spend your Christmas holiday playing this game again. The spawn point changes are nice however.
Then two weeks later..
Do we get Interface 2.0 and thus Community Warfare giving us a reason to shoot robots besides to shoot them? New game modes?
Nope! THE DEVELOPERS NEED MORE MONEY AND ACTUAL GAMEPLAY CONTENT IS TOO HARD. PLEASE BUY MORE ROBOTS TO DO THE SAME THING YOU HAVE BEEN SINCE CLOSED BETA.
If you buy any of these packages you are in fact a complete moron. Its real money for virtual product. And its just more robots to shoot other robots in so you can afford new robots to shoot more robots. Or just buy some games from Gog.com or Steam and get actual games you can play forever in Gog's case, and likely forever if Steam never goes away. And play great games for under 10 dollars each.
Free to play is VERY customer unfriendly.
Do not worry. They got even worse! GOLD VERSIONS. For 500 dollar each. For the biggest morons on the planet. This is virtually the sign of the apocalypse, the obvious death of the Free to Play model.
But due to some whining a day or two later they modified it. Buy a single Clan mech now (due in 6 months or so) for 55 but get extra mechs for 5 less up to a certain point. I think you could get it down to 35 a virtual robot. Which is still stupid.
More minor bug patches. And one of the Phoenix mechs is now freely buyable without spending real money, the Thunderbolt. Also we now have a new game mode and map. Skirmish is basically all we have been doing except now? No way to win besides KILL OTHER TEAM COMPLETELY. All this really accomplishes is keeping base camping and rushing out of the metagame for this mode.
I would like to show you the new map but after a good 20 odd matches of irritation I have yet to actually SEE it. And I am so tired of what the game is like now. I want actual and meaningful content not.. SILLINESS.
Two weeks into 2014 and we get a new stupid hero mech with its own bobble figurine. I just can't contain my excitement. My pants are as a giant big top tent. Really.
The two big Autocannons both get a speed nerf, making them more useless than they already are. Some bug fixes. Wow. We waited a month for this. I really feel at this point all the jokes about Vancouver (where the developer is located) are not mean enough. More BC BUD jokes! More cracks at pig farmers who feed said pigs with pieces of dead hooker!
Its SAD at this point. PGI is almost inept really. Its like watching a Sinclair Spectrum 48K model try to play any game ever.
Now we can buy the Battlemaster! Its a cool model. Honestly that is really the only thing worth a happy crappy in MWO. The utterly amazing mech re designs. Vancouver shouldn't be feeding prostitutes to piggies. They should be paid to constantly service the art team, and bring tons of cocaine along to share. The art crew deserves it. (Plus you know, women not being dead and all. Least they caught the SOB doing it. I could get political here but I won't other than to say nobody should have to work the streets. Or worry for their lives regardless of what they need to do to survive in an uncaring world full of selfish and self absorbed douchebags.)
More hit box adjusting! More bug fixes!
The Battlemaster isnt a bad little machine. It can be a fast Assault mech if you need heavy armor somewhere quick like. The problem is the weapons layouts and that idiotic GHOST HEAT really ruin the viability of a lot of builds. Running 7 medium lasers in my 1G was.. not pleasant.
Also a problem is that the current 12 mechs a side metagame tends to mean most mechs die instantly outside of Conquest mode since most people stay grouped up. In general either play a Jenner or an Atlas. Nothing else is honestly that viable. You need mega speed and maneuverability or ultra heavy armor and firepower. A fully armored Battlemaster can die in SECONDS if a couple mechs spot you alone or in front. Imagine what the medium and heavy classes go through. Not even really time to realize you are getting hit! Especially since at least the Battlemaster can avoid running an XL engine and still get a good speed going and be survivable. Mediums and heavies practically require an XL to fit a decent weapon, armor, speed, and cooling ratio. Meaning they die even faster since 90% of all shots seem to go for the torso.
(And with an XL engine the loss of any of the three torsos destroys your mech. With a standard only the Center Torso or Head destroyed equals an instant death. Many people target the legs on lights as one destroyed turns a speed demon into an easily hit cripple, and double legs removed is also a kill. Lights almost always have XL engines since speed is what keeps them alive and they need as much as they can get.)
But I have a few in game shots of what I could get over the last quarter so let's get to them so I can go back to playing a good game. (Aka not this one at this point.) Maybe I can get the new HPG map screenshotted some time in the future.
Skirmish mode: Its like the other modes but now as I said there isn't even the possibility of any other type of victory. Meaning even LESS reason for teams to do anything besides huddle up and one salvo kill anything that dares poke its' head out of cover.
The new spreading out of lances is supposed to help with this but honestly all teams do is immediately group back up for the most part. Either lances need to be spread out to the point of instantly being in visual of an enemy lance or they might as well not even bother. It really just slows things down while everyone usually regroups.
Oh yeah. Project Phoenix mechs have gotten into the hands of those foolish enough to spend real money months in advance for virtual robots. Again, great looking designs but nothing to do with them but DEATHMATCH, DEATHMATCH, and WOW DEATHMATCH.
Mechwarrior 4 had more modes within like a month of release and more genuine content.
It came out when an 800mhz CPU with a 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 was enough power to run the game and be a host server for a dozen players doing Capture the Flag mode. Yeah.
Sometimes when the Word of Lowtax is actually around and playing (almost never now) we can do pretty well. Solo dropping into a pick up group (PUG) is usually a miserable experience still. No in game voice communications.
A shot from the cockpit of my Battlemaster. Decent enough but those big old screen frames do block some visibility. I am still tweaking my builds to see if I can't make it actually workable in the current metagame.
And the new windscreen realism thingie. Realistic and classy but... not exactly a MUST ADD IN NOW change. Too much isn't in this game yet.
ANNNNDDD BACK FROM PLAYING. A tiny handful of the Word of Lowtax were on. I bought my second Battlemaster. I still can't manage to do anything with them. Spiders still seem to be tiny little gnats incapable of ever taking damage even though the game has claimed it has fixed hit boxes and the "lag shield".
And I continue to be unable to get the HPG map to show you all.
But.. next week it is rumored USER INTERFACE 2.0 is due. Which the developers known as PGI claim is why we have fart all to do in the game besides shoot each other. Everything is held up because they need to implement it.
If this in fact does arrive and not make the game go kablooey with bugs I will report on it. And maybe even show this mythical new map.
(Ghost Heat will probably continue to make Battlemaster and Hunchback builds effectively useless however.)
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