Mechwarrior Online: New Update. Artillery Strikes Out.

As is PGI's current schedule, a new patch shows up every other week.  This week was.. not so impressive.

But let's delve into it.  If nothing else its a neat way to see how a game evolves from a bare bones thing into a fully fledged game.

The first new addition is the most important.  (New Camo and Cockpit Toys don't really count.)  The Heavy Metal, the Hero class (aka GIVE US REAL MONEY FOR IT) Highlander that plays a tiny little tune whenever it gets a kill.  It is based on a mech used by Rhonda Snord of the Snord's Irregulars.  I am a bit of a BT fluff fan and I wasn't even really aware of her having this mech.  And I own a sourcebook for that unit!

In the base configuration (currently one cannot change paint on a Hero mech) our nearly bright pink Assault class mech has jump capability in a 90 ton machine.  Not the greatest weapons loadout and currently thanks to it having an XL engine it means I get kills on many of them when I blow open a side torso.  XL engines may be much lighter than normal, but the weight gained is offset by 6 slots taken up, and dying whenever either side torso is destroyed.

Here is a shot of it in game, piloted by House Liao's least favorite wanna be Starscream, Metro.  (He does not like the Word of Lowtax or our attempts to basically run House Liao via not caring and actually being interested in having FUN as opposed to taking the game and its setting too seriously.)

The weekend before this new patch we had a double XP weekend.  The XP numbers got doubled but the game really didn't tell you.  You just see BIGGER NUMBERS.  It started Thursday and went till Monday giving me two days to Elite my Jagermechs and Master the one I choose to keep.

And now that I got my little mechs done it means time to get back in my Magic Murder Bag, the Atlas D DC.  I got the best damage this match.  And also punished Word of Lowtax players Ohsh and Coolwhoami for betraying the Word.  You can note how Ohsh isn't properly in Liao like he should be (I got ragged on for about a month till I went from Davion to Liao just to shut it up.  It doesn't exactly MATTER right now anyway.), but our two errant birds were top players on their side.

The other big thing that is in fact not very big is another suite of consumables, Air and Artillery Strikes.  You have to spend CBills (or MC if you are nasty) each match and manually refit them.  They are activated using those 6 keys above your arrow keys nobody really uses much.  And are a PAIN to activate in match.  You have to have Line of Sight to your target then press the key.  Which leads to snipers sniping you and the effects are generally mild at best.  (You can have one of each.)

As we see, dropping 15,000 GXP improves the attack slightly, but weakens its' uses as harassment attacks to break up the sniper hell the game seems to be turning into.

Once you drop that sweet GXP that is so hard to earn you can also buy the Accuracy upgrade which isn't required to be mounted in a Hardpoint Slot.  See my above comment though.  Is it worth 4 million C Bills to hit a smaller location?  Right now I would say no.  But maybe once 12 a side drops happen and unified voice communications..

 Once you get your LOS and the little picture has charged to activate status you can use your once a match (unless you buy the same one multiple times I suppose..) attack.  A nice bit of locator smoke appears..

 Then the hammer drops.  Damage tends to be minor but every now and then it has a tactical use.

But the use doesn't involve making dummies go around lighting everyone on fire go away.  Teammates should not do this.  Even if folks like Metro are rumored to be using folks like this to get people to correct said attitudes with heavy firepower banned for "Team Killing".  

This upsets me because I love shooting people with canon names regardless of what side they are on.  It is like wearing a band's tee shirt to said band's concert.  IT IS GAUCHE AND SIMPLY NOT DONE.

Also if the game gets any role playing or event type stuff it is also killing immersion.  I am sorry you are not the Black Widow Natasha Kerensky nor do you run the Grey Death Legion.  And it will look silly if there are GMed type events with said NPCs involved.

Please stop it.  Please.  Do it for the Baby Jesus.  Or Raptor Jesus.  Hell, do it for Princess Celestia if helps. The King of Cartoons.  The King of all Media Howard Stern.

And spread this philosophy.  Together we CAN make a difference.  We cannot do anything about that fat nutbar in North Korea.  But we can do this.

The other bit of updating is drastic changes to Night Vision (seen here and below) and Heat Vision modes.  Night Vision is now almost useful outside of certain maps.

 Like Frozen City where it is nearly unusable in some parts.

 And Heat Vision which now had it's range reduced from the entire map to a VERY short range, and the awesome blue to red heat signature of mechs turned into this world of grey.

The path is grey.

You see before these changes, Night Vision was basically ignored and Heat Vision was almost never turned off no matter the visibility.  You could see clear across most maps and even take pot shots at a kilometer plus of range (handy since unlike stock tabletop Battletech weapons have reduced but not eliminated damage past their normal effective ranges) turning the game into a giant camping festival.  Like Burning Man but with more ER PPC and LRM spam as opposed to stinky guys hitting on 16 year old girls.  (Chris Hansen cannot be everywhere you know!)

I am a tad disappointed in the Strike modules but I am pleased at the changes to the vision modes which should improve overall gameplay.

The game is STILL a work in progress and PGI STILL hasn't fixed the lock ups and HUD errors that occur randomly, but it keeps improving. 

Hell, it is fun enough I have even made use of MWO in tabletop:

You would think this kind of heat would bring all the mechaheads to the yard but no.  And then they missed out on this:

 Battletech players and Connecticut people make for a VERY antisocial combination.  As always.

:(

Mechwarrior Online: I got three problems and the Jagermech is only kind of one.

This fortnight's patch brought us the Jagermech, a 65 ton mech that in tabletop is mostly known for being super sucky and ugly.  In MWO it is improved!

There were other things too so let's get up in it!

 A note on winning:  Wins require kills.  Equal kills but time running out will be a tie even if one side has more captured of a point than the other at least in Assault.

Still pimpin the X 5 Hero Cicada and showing the new camo type plus more silly cockpit toys.  But there are 3 big changes.  Control options which make the game play like a terrible console game such as the Mechwarrior 2 PS1 port.  

Trust me.  Go into the Options and unclick both those bottom checks.  Throttle Decay means you have to hold throttle down or you slow and stop, and Arm Lock keeps your arm weapons locked to your torso which is also bad.  The whole benefit of arm weapons is the extended traverse they have.

The new map, the utterly awesome Tourmaline Desert.  Kind of warm but so pretty to look at and so many places to hide and fight.

A big feature of this map is the crashed ships you find laying about, the wreckage strewn across the field.

Downed mechs.

Crashed ships.

But what was LURM DAY?

LRMs weren't working right for 2 days or so with this patch, again becoming unstoppable avatars of head destroying explosive death.

Many matches went like this.  Some for me, some against.

Too much damage.

You see, the current MWO metagame is long range sniping and shooting.  LRMs were made super powerful even beyond the usual overwhelming power and popularity of PPC and Gauss weapons.

The Jagermech is the other big update (besides PGI's odd programming.. deficiencies) this time.

The A is overall the best, though they are all decent.  Not great, but... decent.  The problem is their stock builds are all terrible.  Even in tabletop the Jagermech was awful.  Though PGI continues to make every mech look light years better.

Some beauty shots including in cockpit views.  And a terrible build with an XL engine.  Note me being my usual jerk in MWO self but in a way that is pointing out terrible things large organizations that are supposed to be in the public interest have done, or hidden others' doings. :(

You will also note the Jagers are all showing new weapon mounts.  This is another change.  They are starting to show mechs equipped with the loadouts they have.  Right now only the Jager and Catapult have this feature but apparently PGI is gonna add this to as many mechs as possible.  Eventually.

And the final most controversial addition is CONSUMABLES.  "Pay to Win" items some of which are RL money, others you can use C Bills for.  Also with GXP uses to make them work better.

These are the two GXP modules.

And these disposable modules.  Now "Mastering" a mech is important for the extra module slot to utilize.  

Still lots of random bugs in the odd match.  Map issues, HUD issues.

A cool picture of incoming missile fire plus the Tag/Narc bonus you can get for using said deviced.  Even if Narc is terrible in every way.  (Speaking of which the "Savior Kill" from last update:  you get this by helping to kill an enemy mech while it is fighting one of your teammates the enemy player has gotten to the internal structure.)

I am overall happy with this patch even with the temporary LRM superboost that they removed today.

PGI needs to fix a LOT of these random bugs that are still popping up on us though.

Mechwarrior Online : More Updates, More Issues

Mechwarrior Online keeps trucking along.  It plays faster and is generally a lot more stable than it was but.. for every improvement there are a couple flubs along the way.  Sadly the newest one might be a killer.

http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/103677-consumables-back-to-the-drawing-board/

It will be easier to just let that one be a thing you read yourself.  But while it IS nice that PGI is taking feedback on this, adding in a "pay to win" buff/money sink (both RL and in game money) like this is kind of messed up.  It just means veteran or wealthy players get an even BIGGER leg up on new players who already get the shaft.  Between the AWFUL "Trial" mechs, inexperience in playing the game, not having a group of friends coordinating and playing together (which is 80% of the fun really.  Playing with Something Awful Goons is a BLAST.  6 AM EST.  6-8 of us in Mumble.  4 active players.  Everyone else kibitzing.  Someone has a stream of music going on some of us are listening to.  WE ALL START SINGING Don't Stop Believin' BY JOURNEY.  YESSS!), and the inexperience of making good mechs or having the resources to do so PLUS the whole XP trees that improve a player's mech as he or she uses it and buys other mechs of that chassis core means they are SOL.

Which means new players, the lifeblood of any game probably won't enjoy things at all and will leave, making it an ever decreasing number of veteran players who will eventually get too good and too bored with the game, moving on.

BAD NEWS.

But let's get to new pictures full of all the new stuff MWO has added since my last post, in rough order.

Our first major change is the addition of the Trebuchet, a 50 ton Medium mech.  It.. kind of sucks.  It is to the Medium class what the Awesome is to the Assault.  Not fun to play and kind of useless in spite of having a really great model.  This game basically has THE best renditions of Battletech's mecha ever.  In fact I would say their graphic redesigns should be retconned as the canonical looks.  (Something I really cannot say Mechwarrior Tactics' mecha redesigns are.  Though theirs are still better than the old Mechwarrior Dark Age minis..) 

I chose to make the Centurion my Medium class mech to master even though it has been in the game for a while now.  Its small, relatively fast, and it can be quite durable for such a little mech.  The general strategy is to use the arms as shields and put nothing in them and run a Standard class engine. A really good player can make this setup SING.

(Also note some interface changes and shading on the buttons.  Sadly you STILL can't move mechs around your mechbay.)

Since I want to Elite/Master the mech variant above I need 2 other Centurions.  This one has PPCs in the arm which while ruining the whole toughness of the Cent, does make for a nice sniper assistant.  And being an arm mount means I can shoot them at an angle which lead to this awesome shot on our newest map...

ALPINE PEAKS!  A massive map designed for future 12 on 12 battles this map is full of wide open vistas, tons of hills and mountains, and it makes for a map many players hate.  I enjoy it.  It keeps close in brawlers from owning the game, while still preventing your average long range sniper mech from dominating.  It encourages players to take a variety of mechs and loadouts and helps keep things from being too ONE MECH TO RULE THEM ALL.

It is a fun map that I really don't understand the hate it gets.  To be sure some builds kind of take it on the chin here right now but with the continual weapons rebalancing and the like the map will get respected, especially if PGI does some more tweaking to the map as they have the others.  Heck, some weapons like the PPC now have extra effects such as eliminating ECM on a target for a few seconds after impact!

 These two pictures are just me ranting about a little something I REALLY need to do a full blog post about sometime:  NAMING YOUR CHARACTERS IN GAMES.  Both offline and on, tabletop and electronic, some people just take offensive or unimaginative names that instantly make one want to hate on or even "Team Kill" (GUILTY!) people who do them.  In MWO tons of people have Clan or Great House last names if not as close as possible to an actual in canon character.  This is terrible and idiotic.  Don't do it.  And deal with the mockery you rightfully deserve for helping to break game immersion and showing how creatively bankrupt you are.

 These two pictures show a change to the base capture setup.  Now a colored set of beams replace the ground coloration and change colors based on who is capturing or captured a point.  And the bit of objective itself now has animation on it, like a working mining platform with spraying dirt and electrical arcs.  Nice!

 Here is the new main interface page showing a couple of additions.  Another Hero mech, a Cicada variant that fails to impress.  More cockpit ornaments, and another Camo style.  The big change is a place with targets so you can try out your mech build without anything shooting at you.  They are immobile targets but this is nice.  It also gives "Mathwarriors" a place to test out game mechanics properly.  Perhaps it is the start of a solo mode or AI enemies?  Let me dream man.  LET ME DREAM.

 We even have new scoring objectives for more XP and C Bills.  The "Saviour Kill".  I am not quite sure how one earns it, but it involves helping someone out in killing a target.  Which is how most people play anyhow.  But it is nice to speed things up and encourage more team tactics instead of being a solo type.

The end match status is now different too.  Shows you a more in depth set of results.  And gives players a chance to talk post match.  Which hardly anyone ever does though.

 You can also talk during the neato animated mech startup sequence.  UncommonGray has a neat macro.  If not the neatest.

 Some things still haven't changed.  The "Frozen City" map still has random texture issues.  Usually it is part of the terrain, once in a while its the mechs.  The game is much less buggy than it was but.. bugs still abide.

And it hits other maps from time to time.

There has been a new built in "Ranking" Matchmaker that tries to put players of a general skill level together. With my Centurion grinding it usually leads me to losing horribly but this match..

And this one during "Prime Time" for North American players shows I can still sometimes kick butt like a boss.

And now the MWO website shows you more stats.  However it is mostly just recording the recent events right now so the listings are not totally accurate.  And this sadly shows how my Centurion playing is having a negative impact on said stats as my previous Kill/Death Ratio was around 1.76 has dropped to 1.67.  In the long run these sorts of numbers will help PGI make a better balanced game.

You know, if they don't screw it up with the stuff I showed in the first link.