Mechwarrior Online - Yet another update

So MWO is out in open beta now. I've commented about it several times, and have raised many concerns as to its future. Unfortunately, I was right. Very right.

It's a F2P game that is very shallow in nature, repetitive in its grind, and completely unsuitable for release in its current stage. Netcode sucks, performance sucks, the awful motion blur, film grain, HDR, and bloom are obnoxious, content is lacking, game mode is boring, mech prices are WAY too expensive, matchmaking is nonexistent, the grind is painful even for the cheapest mech, and they still pushed it out the door into open beta anyway. The developers knew too, but they had deadlines to meet, which is a shame. They settled on releasing a minimum viable product (their words), and thus, I do not understand how they expect to receive anything more than a minimum viable score. What a terrible business plan.

They cited a bunch of other similar F2P games (namely World of Tanks) to justify their pricing and launch quality, but like I said before... F2P isn't a cureall, and a game released years ago shouldn't be used as the measuring stick for today.

Sadly, I really wanted to be wrong on this one, and for MWO to succeed. But I don't think it will. The biggest chance for MWO to get noticed was at launch, and they blew their chance. Even if they do fix up the game, it'll be too late, as Mechwarrior has always been a small community without the same level of magnetism. Even though it has only been the first 2 weeks of launch, the numbers are disheartening. The devs, PGI, have smartly pulled out the online players counter that was present in every iteration of beta. Worse, they're using a terrible engine (CryEngine 3) which suffers from persistent netcode problems and poor handling of fast moving vehicles (CryEngine 1+2 also had this problem, so MWLL was affected). Its engine also has shockingly poor performance despite being tailored to adhere to console specifications.

Well, I tried my best back in beta to warn the devs of this problem. I even spoke to them personally. They did stall beta few times to increase it's standard of quality, but this isn't enough. At least I enjoyed my time in the beta with it. You know, back when these flaws were 'acceptable'.

"It's just a beta, it'll be fixed on release." Yea, right.

MechWarrior Online (formerly MechWarrior 5, or MechWarrior 3015, or MechWarrior, PayToWin)

Remember this post I made 3 years ago on the upcoming MechWarrior game?
 
It has been announced officially as MechWarrior Online, a free to play game, launching sometime this year, and with no singleplayer campaign at all. They're aiming at an action oriented online arena feel, ala MechAssault.
 
I should have added another criteria to that wishlist: that it wouldn't be a whored out f2p game with tons of cash shopping to win. In my inbox today, I received an email offer from MWO for their upcoming cash shop packages. There are $30, $60, and $120 packages, giving you 1, 2 or 3 months of exp boost respectively. You also get some exclusive founders-only mech variants with a reskin. It's not clear from the wording whether or not the variants will be exclusive too, or if it's just a reskin/remodel of an existing variant available to all players. You also get a bit of in-game cash shop currency and some prestige crap.
 
Holy damn, that is a massive amount of money to pay, especially before a game launch. $120 is beyond what I'd even expect for a collector's edition, so why would anyone pay that except to get massive advantages? I'm not against all F2P games, but the setup here gives me the wrong vibe. I was expecting players would pay maybe $10 and be able to buy/unlock 3-4 items which could be obtained over a period of 1-2 weeks. But 60 USD for a 2 month buff, 1 reskin and $80 of cash shop? Just how pricey are the items going to be??
 
Next, it really seems these guys are copying the Tribes: Ascend formula. Fast-paced, jump-into-action game with unlockable items per class in an online arena. It worked pretty well for Tribes, but I'm not so sure it will for MWO. It's going to be just like MechAssault if it does that, and that's not how Mechwarrior is supposed to play at all. MechWarrior isn't about arena-deathmatches (although Solaris Arena is), instead, you play a battlefield with objectives and smart tactics and coordinated strategy with a full arsenal of Air, Infantry, Vehicles and Mechs.
 
Worse, MW has an incredibly rich history of lore that's just going to be abandoned for F2Ping. No doubt they'll add more and more items as the game goes on to milk it, but the rich backstory that MW is built upon is going to be unimportant. Who cares what's happening in Tribes? Who even knows the lore for that? You just go in and FRAG. That's not a mold MW fits into, no matter how hard MWO is jammed into that role.
 
Last thing, it seems rather likely now that mechs cannot be customized, and players will be limited to variants. This is probably the best way the devs can continue to milk players harder and harder. It also means things will be a little more bland, and less freeform as MW is supposed to be.
 
Well... At least there's MechWarrior Tactics coming out soon.
 
Wait, that's F2P too. Shit.

Mechwarrior 5 - FEUDALISM. IN SPACE.

The game is just called Mechwarrior, since its a series reboot. It still isn't too clear to me why a series reboot is justified in having a name that allows it to be easily confused with the original Mechwarrior game. That just sounds stupid to me.

"Hey lets reboot Spiderman and give him a new image that will rejuvenate the franchise"
"Alright, so we want to make it different from the original Spiderman right?"
"Yea, for sure. The old Spiderman is too boring, so we're making him different. This way fans can't even complain about inconsistencies."
"Uh okay. So what do we call it, if we want to make it differentiable?"
"How about... Spiderman?"
"..."

Seriously, that must be the conversation that occurs in Hollywood or wherever reboots may be made. Only God knows what is wrong with these people... And how they should be punished in hell accordingly.

So anyway, I will be referring to this new upcoming 2009 game as Mechwarrior 5, since it makes far more sense. Here is a trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4eI3htAuA

It uses the UT3 engine. Cool that they were able to adapt the UT3 engine; it looks good. Not so cool that I can already bet that many sacrifices to gameplay were made to cater to this engine. Also, when a developer reuses an engine, they save development time and money. I fully expect that these resources are reinvested to the game itself, and the game should be even better than if it had its own engine. So, the bar has been raised, even though the game hasn't even been released. Well, they brought it upon themselves.

So whats the problem?
There is no problem! Yea! What a surprise, coming from me, the pessimist of the century. I am actually glad they are doing this game, as I am a big fan of Mechwarrior, and although I hate unfaithful adaptations, Mechwarrior's franchise was dead because its original IP holder, FASA had been liquidated. Microsoft held the rights, but they weren't going to touch the money-losing franchise with a 10 feet pole. Basically, the Mech fans had lost hope of having another game for ages... And here we have an opportunity to restart it... And its on PC! Man that sounds great way to bring back some old memories. Considering how I've been waiting on a MW mod that has been in development for years (and still is)... You can see how eager I am to play MechWarrior again.

With my optimism though, there are some things that bother me, although I won't really mind either way. Just think of it as a wishlist.

- I don't think that MW5 will support fully customizable mechs like in MW4. It may be following more of the boardgame rules in this sense, and only allow pre-set variants. That's a shame, because it makes it a little less fun, but it comes with the benefit of cutting out cheap variants that can abuse certain aspects. The gameplay will be more well balanced instead. I can appreciate both results in this case, although having full-customization for unranked or offline play would be the best of both worlds.

- The date in the trailer says 3015. The clans invaded in 3050 (late 3049 if you're really anal) so clan tech will probably not be in the game. That's a shame, since a lot of my favorite mech designs were from clans, and some of the best weapons in the game were also clan weapons. While this is alright from a lore perspective, clan weapons have always been plain superior upgrades relative to standard weapons. It made standard weapons instantly obsolete and redundant. I can understand the advantages to having clan weapons in the game, but also not having them. Like I said above, having the option in unranked/singleplayer would be amazing. However, I doubt clan chassis will be in, since that requires a lot more work for the developers. A friend though notes that the Atlas-C in the trailer is a variant made in 3080, so it could be possible that the reboot cheats the standard lore a little bit, and clans could be in anyway. How's that for geekdom?

That's really it for my wishlist. I'm really excited about this game, like I have not been for a game in a long time. I hope it'll have a larger and more tightly knit multiplayer community than the previous games.

Edit: Apparently the game is being called MechWarrior 3015 by the community. Fair enough.