dontjudgemebae

Nah, I disagree with you. The game USED to be miserable, but not anymore.

A lot of the issues people had with Mechwarrior: Online were over monetization. There were 2 companies: PGI (Pirahna Games Inc.) and IGP (Infinite Game Publishishing). PGI were the devs and IGP were the publishers. Early on, IGP was pushing for really dickish pricing schemes. They have since gone bankrupt for being dicks (or something) and PGI is the sole dev/stakeholder/person-who-needs-answering-to aside from the customers. I think PGI is going a good way with it. Things are way more reasonably priced FOR THEIR AUDIENCE and they actually communicate with and respond to their player base on an on-going basis.

Now, Mechwarrior: Online is a fairly niche game as far as I can tell. Its main audience is 20- to 40- something male professionals who were introduced to Battletech in the 80s and 90s with disposable income who are used to paying about $20+ for tabletop models and paint. The non-sale minimum price for mechs is about $10 per mech, but a lot of people get packs of mechs for $30. As a result of their fairly rich older audience, the game is pretty susceptible to whales. On the other hand, the only advantage that whales have is a wider variety of mechs to choose from and you can still buy most mechs with in-game currency and there's no difference. It's not like in other F2P games where paying money makes you better in the game; in MWO, paying money just makes you get things faster. All of this being said, I've only ever paid for one mech and I barely touch it.

Like with other F2P games, you still grind for stuff like money and XP, but the actual act of playing the game is rewarding in and of itself. New players have a variety of trial mechs they can try out much like in League of Legends. Plus, new players get a "Cadet bonus" of in-game money that can be used to purchase their first mech (for me, I went with a Raven).

The gameplay is really quite good. I think I've sunk about 30 or 40 hours into it so far and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. It really, really emphasizes group play and severely punishes lone wolves and I love this. It emphasizes focusing fire in single targets, targeting weak subsystems, staying together and armor sharing, scouting for enemy movement, positioning for optimal firing lanes, etc. This motivates people to actually work together and there is in-game VOIP to help with this (and people actually use the in-game VOIP in this game). I'm not saying all PUG groups are coordinated, but I feel like people are a lot more willing to work together and take direction in this game than in others and I definitely feel that this is partly driven by age and general maturity of the playerbase. My adrenaline is always pumping after it and there's a distinct uptick in my heart rate after a game.

tl;dr:

Mechwarrior: Online has an undeservedly bad rap now because of some stuff that it's previous (and now bankrupt) publisher did. It's much better now, it's fun, it has a mature player base, and you should try it out.

What was it like with the Spill.com crew? I used to listen to their podcasts (and now their new stuff on DoubleToasted), and you were on some of them, but I just wanted to hear some first hand experiences hahaha...

:D

Cheers breh! I got introduced to your stuff when I started visiting their old site. I hope you make an appearance on the podcast at some point. Have a good day mate!

Why does everyone love MW3 so much? I missed out on that one (went from MW2: Mercs to MW4: Mercs... I like Mercs...) but I've heard a lot of praise for it.

Sort of like Chechnya in Russia or something?