Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries announced.

Game is great gameplay wise but the spawning is completely ridiculous. I shouldn't be fighting endless waves of shit every mission unless I trigger something. Also wtf is the point of the cost going up if you're in a combat zone? Seems like something that needs to be removed with a mod or something.

Fadaar said:

Game is great gameplay wise but the spawning is completely ridiculous. I shouldn't be fighting endless waves of shit every mission unless I trigger something. Also wtf is the point of the cost going up if you're in a combat zone? Seems like something that needs to be removed with a mod or something.

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Impaired logistics/supply lines in conflict zones? One of the core elements of the setting is how constant warfare has fucked things up so much, it's nice to see a Battletech game that makes at least a token effort to show this before showering you in fucking endless lostech. I actually kinda like the idea of mercs being able to do a couple contracts then withdrawing to an industrial hub to repair and refit, whereas the multi-mission contracts represent a protracted engagement.

Gavinmad said:

Impaired logistics/supply lines in conflict zones? One of the core elements of the setting is how constant warfare has fucked things up so much, it's nice to see a Battletech game that makes at least a token effort to show this before showering you in fucking endless lostech. I actually kinda like the idea of mercs being able to do a couple contracts then withdrawing to an industrial hub to repair and refit, whereas the multi-mission contracts represent a protracted engagement.

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I understand from a story standpoint why but in game it's just a mild inconvenience. Infinite spawning enemies is still a giant fucking *NO* though.

Fadaar said:

I understand from a story standpoint why but in game it's just a mild inconvenience. Infinite spawning enemies is still a giant fucking *NO* though.

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Terrible pilot AI and their lack of response to direct commands from the player is a much bigger problem.

I would rather have another Mechwarrior Command game.

I mean come on, Warhammer Battlefleet Gothic? Age Of Empires remastered? I'm sure there's room for a MW RTS game.

Erronius said:

Oh, BTW, if folks didn't already know...not only can you not sell mechs straight from cold storage...and not only do you have to make room in your active mech bays to move mechs one at a time to an active bay, just to sell...COLD STORAGE HAS A FINITE CAPACITY THAT THEY SAY NOTHING ABOUT, ANYWHERE I'VE SEEN

So, if you have 12 active mechs you've been running, and you end up with too many mechs in cold storage, you'll hit a point where you can't even move one of those mechs back to cold storage to make room to sell your cold storage mechs once you get back to an industrial hub. You'll literally get this message:

View attachment 242649

I have no idea what this cap would be. I currently have exactly 50 mechs in cold storage.

Fortunately I have multiple STK-3Hs, both in my active bays, as well as in cold storage. So I can manually strip one of my active ones, sell the chassis, rotate through cold storage and sell off a fuckton of spare mechs, and then when I'm done grab a spare STK-3H and repair/refit back to what I had originally. But it's such a STUPID mechanic to have that I'm just speechless.

I don't even know if I've been receiving all the mechs I've been claiming as salvage. What if the cap on cold storage just happens to be 50 even, and I've been losing every mech I've salvaged since hitting the cap?

EDIT: I just looked at Reddit, and yup, the cap is 50, and you lose everything past that.

Fuck you PGI.

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Yeah that's one of their biggest fuckups with the game, on par with the awful spawn system imo. Since you actually want to use all 12 active bay slots once you can fill them so having to swap an active mech out just to be able to sell salvage is fucking retarded. I had no idea there was a hard cap on cold storage, but if you manage to get 50 mechs into cold storage without needing to sell them for c-bills you're really just dicking around at that point.

Also mechs cost too many salvage shares. By the time you have good enough rep with a faction to salvage a heavy mech you will probably have already bought your first assault mech from the store, and by the time you can salvage an assault mech you'll have a full lance of store-bought assault mechs.

So glad I held off on pulling the trigger on this - Will wait for QoL patches

This is on Xbox pass thingy now.

Boy I'd be pissed if I actually paid for this turd. Can PGI die already and let someone vaguely competent take over the IP or something?

Apparently the enemy spawn system has been vastly improved since launch and holy shit if this the "improved" version I'd have rage refunded the game instantly. Every single mission you just park yourself on top of whatever object and play tank wack-a-mole for 15 minutes as shit spawns directly in your field of view, or above you, or right on top of you even, then maybe sometimes you fight an enemy mech or two. At least the mechs seem to *mostly* spawn behind hills or other terrain so you don't see them directly pop in, but even then they constantly spawn within like 100m of you and just start immediately blasting.

Audio design is absolutely pathetic and distinct step backwards from MWO. So much so I'm not even sure why they didn't just use the audio they already had?

The entire mechanic of walking around in your ship is hilariously unfinished and needed to just be cut entirely, rather than leave this flaccid ship interior that serves no other purpose than to waste your time moving between two points to access the menus or talk to the single NPC in the game.

They cribbed basically the entire mission system from the HBS Battletech game, but then also fucked with the numbers in such a way as to artificially limit your progress and make taking salvage options basically entirely worthless. They also seem to have copied the constant unskippable cutscenes every time you travel, which may have been tolerable if the game were otherwise good like Battletech was, but no way in hell am I spending a combined like 3-5 minutes between every mission walking around in my useless ship, fiddling with the starmap because clicking on a system is ridiculously finicky for some reason, then watching the same cutscene and dropship deployment shit every time.

I put some more time in to this due to boredom and some kind of deluded hope that it gets better later on.

It does not. The missions are all actually the exact same thing, which amounts to "stand in this general location while waves of enemies spawn on top of you for 10 minutes or so, then maybe move to a new location and do it there too". Every single one.

Destroy a base? Just means walk to said base and wait around while the 4-6 waves of enemies spawn, then just walk through the buildings around you until you're told you can go home.

Protect a base? Same deal, just be careful not to walk through the building on accident for this one.

Assassination? No different - walk to a location, groups of enemies spawn magically as soon as you're in range, and maybe a mech if it's the right location which is like a 1/3 depending on the mission.

The only missions that are even vaguely interesting are the warzones where you are basically playing survival mode, so there's at least something there in terms of optimizing your shots/damage taken to try and get a bigger payout.

Maybe the story missions get better later on? But I'm pretty sure I don't care enough to grind through another 50 procedural maps that are exactly the same.

And where's my damn environmental variables? Lava/snow/acid storms all appear to be biomes that you can visit, but they don't do anything? Where did nightvision and thermal vision go? Why is the radar so zoomed in and devoid of information? Does ECM or any kind of EF even exist?

I'm not even sure how PGI got to where they did with this game. They already made a better game in MWO, multiplayer balancing issues aside. So where did all those features and experience go?

This shit rustles so me badly cause I knew it was gonna be bad, but I hoped anyway. And reviews were giving it a pass, but nothing amazing, but no they are all full of shit. This game is a dumpster fire and every review being like "welll if you like mechs you'll still like it" can fuck off. Your desperate desire to play a mech game does not excuse this fucking trash.

ronne said:

I put some more time in to this due to boredom and some kind of deluded hope that it gets better later on.

It does not. The missions are all actually the exact same thing, which amounts to "stand in this general location while waves of enemies spawn on top of you for 10 minutes or so, then maybe move to a new location and do it there too". Every single one.

Destroy a base? Just means walk to said base and wait around while the 4-6 waves of enemies spawn, then just walk through the buildings around you until you're told you can go home.

Protect a base? Same deal, just be careful not to walk through the building on accident for this one.

Assassination? No different - walk to a location, groups of enemies spawn magically as soon as you're in range, and maybe a mech if it's the right location which is like a 1/3 depending on the mission.

The only missions that are even vaguely interesting are the warzones where you are basically playing survival mode, so there's at least something there in terms of optimizing your shots/damage taken to try and get a bigger payout.

Maybe the story missions get better later on? But I'm pretty sure I don't care enough to grind through another 50 procedural maps that are exactly the same.

And where's my damn environmental variables? Lava/snow/acid storms all appear to be biomes that you can visit, but they don't do anything? Where did nightvision and thermal vision go? Why is the radar so zoomed in and devoid of information? Does ECM or any kind of EF even exist?

I'm not even sure how PGI got to where they did with this game. They already made a better game in MWO, multiplayer balancing issues aside. So where did all those features and experience go?

This shit rustles so me badly cause I knew it was gonna be bad, but I hoped anyway. And reviews were giving it a pass, but nothing amazing, but no they are all full of shit. This game is a dumpster fire and every review being like "welll if you like mechs you'll still like it" can fuck off. Your desperate desire to play a mech game does not excuse this fucking trash.

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The tutorial having ECM and in mission repair bays, then the game having nothing was comical.

I hate base defense and base assault missions.

Defense because my units will trash the base getting to threats that magically spawn on the opposite side of the base from where I am. So I end up doing about 60% of the damage to the base just getting into position. And if you try to run around the outside, the enemy will just play ring around the rosie with you so you can't ever catch them once you're fielding heavies and assaults.

Assault because it is a race against the clock with the endless spawning bullshit that the fastest way to do them is equip a firestarter with flamers and drop solo to wreck the base with high avoidance and then extract.

The AI complaining when you shoot them is fucking infuriating from a design standpoint because a lot of the damage I take during missions on my lance mates is the fucking shitheels shooting each other in the back. Why is my AI even doing this? Why did you put a voice line in if they don't mechanically give a shit when they do it each other? Fuck you coders, stop letting my AI shoot each other in the back.

The squad commands are a fucking hot mess. You don't have a pointer or a command acknowledgement by lance mate. So if I order an "all go to x" command, half the time, one of them couldn't path there and continues to follow me in the shitty fucking triangle lance formation that you aren't the tip of the spear of. So I'll have to spam the fucking thing around where I want them to go to get them to all finally go there.

Micro managing the lance is another fucking disaster. When you load your guys out with long range stuff, you don't want them brawling so you need to command them to go somewhere so they'll stay put and plink at range. But when you command them all, they end up strafing back and forth over the same 30 meters of terrain shooting each other half of the time. Game needs a strategy map and a time slowdown or something so I can properly order these fucking retards to where I want them to respond to threats.

The default lance formation is ass, why am I not point? Why is the 4th mech or w/e point?

It's what you faggots deserve for using the EGS.

Bruh it's on Xbox pass now.

Still not worth the 5$ I pay Microsoft tho, games booty.

Its really that bad eh? Its on my "waiting for Steam release" list ...

Shmoopy said:

Its really that bad eh? Its on my "waiting for Steam release" list ...

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I think Erronius said it a bit better than Ronne's angry ranting.

Erronius said:

The game totally feels like it's a minimally viable product, in a lot of ways

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The game is more of a disappointment than just outright bad.

Calling it "minimally viable" is relatively accurate, but still being fairly generous.

The framework of a game is there, but it's at best in a mid-alpha stage. The systems all mostly work, but content is 99% procedural mission generation with abysmal AI (both friendly and enemy) and a spawn system that devolves the entire gameplay loop in to standing in one spot spinning in a circle to find enemies as they spawn on top of you.

It's just super obviously nowhere near a 1.0 release, and I wouldn't recommend anyone spend actual cash on it. Maybe in another year of community modding it will be something worth checking out?

You can fix the Battletech game via mods, but I haven't bought any of the DLC so can't say if any of it has been fixed "officially" yet.