Mechwarrior - It's getting worse by the second

It is SOLARIS time! It's also time to pony up and get reamed.

Remember my previous post about Mechwarrior Online?

Serious case of 'I told you so' incoming.

Prices are out of control and an assault mech can cost up to 18 USD. People on the forums have brought it up, but most f2p veterans seem to think its okay, because they migrated from World of Tanks, where an equivalent purchase over there costs them $40-50.

Are they fucking crazy??? I may not be well versed in F2P, but that is such a ripoff. Hearing that, I would NEVER touch WoT. Not even consider trying it. If that's the same policy they want to take with MWO, they're going to ruin it for me. It already has some issues with balance and design decisions (not hardcore enough), but slapping such an offensive price tag on items, optional or not, just reinforces the notion that they're not dedicated to creating a successor title for the veteran MW players, but instead creating a WoT2 with a different franchise setting.

The sad thing is, everyone I talk to, claims WoT's model basically prints money, and doesn't see how it'll be any different for MWO. They may be right, but since I've seen the cash shop, I've lost interest in playing. Funnily enough, I spent a day trying 50 different ways to reinstall Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries (1996 title), and have been playing it exclusively for the past week.

Sadly, I just don't have a lot of love for a Mechwarrior battle-arena game. It's not Mechwarrior, it doesn't feel like a meaningful part of the universe, it's mindless as hell, there are too many design simplifications for newer players, requires a massive grind to unlock components (that you'd normally be able to buy within ingame cash in every other game), and now there's a horrible cash shop scheme.

Sigh. I wanted to like it, and I still do, but it needs a massive rework that I doubt we're gonna see.

I also saw gameplay footage of Mechwarrior Tactics, but it's like an online version of the tabletop game, but with card-collecting. Cards representing the tabletop units and equipment and so on. And guess what, they're also purchased with cash shop money, but you buy 'booster packs' and get random stuff. Great. -_- I don't like card games, and I didn't buy into the scams that they were when I was a kid. I'm not going to start now.

There's also another game I recently heard of, called Solaris Assault Tech, which is a deathmatch arena Mechwarrior game. Dear God, it sounds like it's gonna suck even more. What's with all the MW titles lately, and why are they all awful? Can someone just make a new SINGLEPLAYER campaign? Nobody seems to know how to do multiplayer.

I look back, and I think my optimism cost me. Never again. Pessimist Cent is prophetic Cent.

Update:
 Spoke with the lead designer for MWO. Unfortunately, he claims that despite the success of the founder's package program (paying 30/60/120 dollars for initial premium packs) there still would not have been enough revenue to produce Mechwarrior 3015, the original proposed title that was not F2P. Apparently, MW3015 would have costed about $20 million, as it was intended as a XBOX/PC game, and console rights aren't cheap.

I'm not too sad though, because even if they did make it, it was going to suck. A mechwarrior game on console will inevitably lead to a dumbed down simulator. That explains why the controls are so simplified in MWO too. It would have been a glorified Mechassault, and yet another travesty in the series that would stagnate the franchise for another decade.