Mechwarrior Online

[Merusk]

The 60-dollar route is almost a no-brainer.  Even if the extra c-bills is only a 5% boost that will be a shitload of free cash over the long-haul if the game is any good. 

Key point being the last 6 words.

Plus, hey, free exclusive mech.  Depending on what tier it is, that could easily be $50.  Lord knows Premium tanks in WoT cost that much at times.

[Arthur_Parker]

I really dislike the whole idea of paying without even trying the beta, it rewards potential failure and I almost never do it.  However it is giant mechs and it's the first thing that's caught my interest in a long time, so I'm very tempted.

[Falconeer]

Am I missing something or there isn't a full list of mechs out yet? I would love to know if we are talking about 5-10 original Fasa ones, or 20-40 you know?

[Simond]

original Fasa

[Calandryll]

One other thing that I am not sure if people know or not, but you have to activate your beta account. Log into the forums and then click profile. There is a tab called Beta that has a checkbox to activate your beta account. It then asks you for some computer spec information. When I went to my profile my beta account wasn't checked even though I thought I had signed up. A bit of a confusing process to be honest.

[Lantyssa]

Am I missing something or there isn't a full list of mechs out yet? I would love to know if we are talking about 5-10 original Fasa ones, or 20-40 you know?

From announcements:

Jenner
Catapult
Hunchback

Dragon
Centurion
Commando
Raven
Cicada
Cataphract

They've got a total of 11, but I'm not sure what the missing ones are.

[Furiously]

Have they announced what the 60 buck mech is?

[Evildrider]

It was on that page, those recolored/reskinned mechs.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, the "special" mech is a paint job and not an actual mech.  Which is fair enough; people would be rightly pissed if an entire mech chassis was off-limits to anyone who didn't cough up sixty bucks before the game was even done.  Not that it matters much; all of the best mechs are never gonna be in the game thanks to idiots not managing to correctly license things in the 90s.

[Evildrider]

I want LAM's! 

[Falconeer]

Eleven mechs at launch? That's... very few :(

[Furiously]

Yeah, the "special" mech is a paint job and not an actual mech.  Which is fair enough; people would be rightly pissed if an entire mech chassis was off-limits to anyone who didn't cough up sixty bucks before the game was even done.  Not that it matters much; all of the best mechs are never gonna be in the game thanks to idiots not managing to correctly license things in the 90s.

Where did they clarify this? Because I'm reading:

" Exclusive custom "Founder's BattleMech." This 'Mech includes a lifetime, per-match C-Bill booster. "

And thinking of the premium tanks in World of Tanks that no one can get anymore because they were only offered during beta.

[Jherad]

No Atlas?

 

[Merusk]

What Furiously said about WoT is what I was thinking to be the case as well.

There's even premium tanks that you can no longer get.  So long as they're not vastly overpowered to the point a bad player can own anybody then nobody really cares.

[Ironwood]

Atlas is in all the videos...

[Lantyssa]

Eleven mechs at launch? That's... very few :(

No, they're highlighting one every couple of days.  I just skimmed their headlines.

I forgot the Atlas from the videos.  Add that to the list.

[Dark_MadMax]

Yeah, the "special" mech is a paint job and not an actual mech.  Which is fair enough; people would be rightly pissed if an entire mech chassis was off-limits to anyone who didn't cough up sixty bucks before the game was even done.  Not that it matters much; all of the best mechs are never gonna be in the game thanks to idiots not managing to correctly license things in the 90s.

 WoT had if I remember 3 special pre-order tanks you couldnt get any other way. Their $60 one was also quite op for release (it was tier8 with insane armor and most no one had tier8 for first month) .And it was not that big deal.

[Tmon]

Yeah, the "special" mech is a paint job and not an actual mech.  Which is fair enough; people would be rightly pissed if an entire mech chassis was off-limits to anyone who didn't cough up sixty bucks before the game was even done.  Not that it matters much; all of the best mechs are never gonna be in the game thanks to idiots not managing to correctly license things in the 90s.

 WoT had if I remember 3 special pre-order tanks you couldnt get any other way. Their $60 one was also quite op for release (it was tier8 with insane armor and most no one had tier8 for first month) .And it was not that big deal.

It actually got a lot of people twisted around the axles at launch, it was a rare match that I ran mine that I didn't get people bitching about Wallet Warriors and suggestions that I needed to earn a tank like real players did.  People who didn't really understand the game thought it was completely unfair that just because you did the $100 preorder you got a tier 8 heavy.  People who knew how to play the game weren't that bothered by it once they learned how to fight it.   A lot of people sold theirs not to long after launch because they really didn't earn that well and the release of the later high tier premiums pretty much overshadowed the premium M6.  I still have mine, and thanks to a tweak to its earning potential  in one of patches, it earns a nice pile of credits every match.  But the current target of anti-premium tank anger is the type 59 tier 8 medium so instead of "die in a fire wallet warrior" I mostly I just get "wtf is that thing" kinds of comments when I run it now.

The tightrope that the Mechwarrior folks will have to walk is making the premium mechs good enough to be worth buying but not so good that they break the game.  WoT got burned pretty badly by the Type 59, the thing was just a monster in pug games until they were forced to nerf it, which pissed off the folks who had already bought one, and then stop selling it, which pissed off the folks who didn't have one.

[Kitsune]

The trick with exclusive mechs is that lots of battletech nerds are insanely attached to their favorite mech.  It's not even a pay to win thing; if they make it so that people can't get, say, a Zeus if they don't preorder, you can bet that there's some Zeus fanboy out there who will be plotting to bomb their offices over it if he misses out on the opportunity to get a Zeus.  Even a crap mech like Urbanmechs probably have rabid fans somewhere.

[MahrinSkel]

Especially the Urbie.  That along with the Locust had the biggest cult following in MPBT.  My personal preference was the BNC-S, a model that performed far better in video games than in the boardgame.

--Dave

[Ingmar]

no Archer no peace

(And yeah I know it is one of the copyright violation ones.)

[Lantyssa]

Go Orion!

Locust lovers deserve derision.  At least there are tales of Urbies saving the day.

[Evildrider]

no Archer no peace

(And yeah I know it is one of the copyright violation ones.)

Also means no Warhammer or Marauders.  :(

[Falconeer]

I'm a Thunderbolt guy, and yeah I'd pay real money in order to make sure I get one at launch.

[Evildrider]

I'm a Thunderbolt guy, and yeah I'd pay real money in order to make sure I get one at launch.

For me it's the Victor.

[Lantyssa]

The Victor-9B is a great little big ambusher.

[Bungee]

Does the Mad Dog fit the timeframe/rules? I fucking loved that one in every MW I played...

[Evildrider]

Does the Mad Dog fit the timeframe/rules? I fucking loved that one in every MW I played...

 I think this is set just before the clan invasion.  If it had clan, no one would play Inner Sphere.

[Bungee]

Does the Mad Dog fit the timeframe/rules? I fucking loved that one in every MW I played...

 I think this is set just before the clan invasion.  If it had clan, no one would play Inner Sphere.

Bummer...

[Lantyssa]

You'd have both, but mixing the two techs is just asking for disaster.  It only works in carefully plotted tabletop games.

[Fordel]

Clan tech is literally overpowered, it takes like 15-20 years of 'game time' for the InnerSphere to even pretend to catch up.

[Sheepherder]

Yes.  In canon the clan is overpowered by a few centuries of relatively unimpeded weapons development while the Inner Sphere hammered itself into the stone age.  The factions are evenly matched because strategic and tactical thinking in the Clans is about one step removed from building mecha horses so they can joust.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, any game with clanners would have to have some sort of balancing mechanic in place or else they'd just steamroll the IS team.  Assuming that such a mechanic would be based around the C-bill value of the mechs, the IS team would need either more people or heavier mechs to reach an equivalent value.  As far as the Clan fighting goes, their tactics are usually fine, once they got over their hangup on single combat; its their strategy that throws them off.  Game lore fluff indicates that they're resource-poor to the point that they're insanely frugal with their machines, and their bidding system is meant to minimize the loss to equipment by only sending in as many troops as absolutely required to do a job.  Which I guess is just a nice way of trying to explain why the clan player's fielding half the number of mechs as their opponent.

Battlemasters have always been my favorite chassis, and they're caught up in the copyright abyss so I don't expect to see them.  FASA's efforts to redesign the copyrighted mechs always wound up looking godawful, so even if they do bring back the locust/wasp/marauder/etc. they're probably going to be too ugly to bear any resemblance whatsoever to the originals.

[Sheepherder]

I would just like you to stop at this point and reflect on the notion of sending half the dudes your enemy has fielded with the expectation that your opponent is going to settle for one-on-one mecha duels.

[Fordel]

Well they aren't refitting between said duels, so there is still some merit to it!