Quick Look: MechWarrior Online

I am a Gundam!

I know it's a free to play game with a ton of "Best Value" style crap. But damn do I love me some games with cool cockpit views.

Mechs are cool? Mechs are cool.

Are you guys all on Mech Time? Or Swatch Internet Time?

Give me bullets or gauss or give me death. None of that laser blaster bullcrap.

Really wish they would add a campaign to this game and sell it as a single player game. So disappointing that this is the only Mechwarrior game available

@hassun: I thought laser turrets were always in mechwarrior games? Really all I care about is being able to map every gun to one key.

They have, and were always awesome. A quad ray of lasers hitting another mech? Pure bliss.

This game was such a bummer. They promised big with lots of post-launch content, delivered nearly none of it, and decided to sell $500 gold skins for each Mech instead.

I'm watching Austin pilot an Arctic Cheetah in MWO while I'm piloting an Arctic Cheetah in MWO. Fuckin' weird coincidence.

Wow this looks really good. Growing up I was an Earthsiege guy, not Mechwarrior. (Would love to see Earthsiege come back in something other than Tribes). Guess it's time to delve into this storied franchise.

We're go-o-oin' to Tukayyid and we're go-o-onna get ma-a-arried~

Go-o-oin' to the Comsta-a-ar toni-i-ight!

ETA: This QL is making me really, really want to play MWO.

Superior Weapons For Glory. SW4G.

Fuck.

I was hoping all this funding would produce a single player game which the company had mentioned multiple times. I would love another MechWarrior mercenaries 2 rehash. The multiplayer is fun. I was a backer from the start but haven't played it since it was 'fully released' or open beta/alpha. Anyways, it is a cool game but there are things that feel missing. Like the Rhino from the Ghost Bear Legacy expansion pack.

@gaftra: Probably the main reason I never got into them. I don't dislike the lasers which act like actual lasers as much as the star wars blaster type of pew pew lasers though. Beams are not as bad.

That switch from the cockpit of the one mech launching missiles to the cockpit of the mech on the hill overlooking the missiles being launched was fantastic

Haven't yet gotten to watch this but i did see Tested just put up a video about 3d printing models from the game, looks pretty awesome.

A Gundam game done in this style of free 2 play with customizable parts and weapons would be awesome.

Nothing wrong with charging a certain amount for extra colours as long as the price is not exploitive and you provide a way to earn the extra colours with a in game currency. And at least provide more than 6 colours for free.

The way Austin gushes about this game makes it seem like he would really enjoy War Thunder tanks. Same kind of grognardy attention to detail in an overall arcadey sim, similar pricing structures, similar pace of gameplay where playing well means playing slow, and using cover and positioning is more important than twitching. I love that game, so I'll definitely check this out.

The beat those plasma lasers make at the beginning reminds me of the beginning of 2020 by Suuns.

Epilepsy warning.

As somewhat of a Mechwarrior fan (i read the lore and even used custom tools to mod and design my own mechs) I really really wanted to love this game, was even an early access founder. Hell I squealed like a little girl when they trailer came out.

But the game just dragged it's feet for years through early access hell. Terrible front end UI with no sounds. Expensive micro transactions. A physics system that made mechs feel like paper. And most importantly just the repetitive nature of matches bashing your head against the other team on a handful of small dead feeling maps only goes so far.

It put me off so hard in it's first year I just feel like a bummer even thinking about going back and trying it again. Which sucks, I should feel awesome when thinking about Mechwarrior, not bummed.

The f2p nonsense is real

I used to play MechWarrior 2 all day even though I was terrible at it (overheating all the time, standing still in a fight most of the time). I personally love MechCommander too (1, Gold, 2). Those little FMVs were great!

Huh. I haven't played since the community backlash over a year ago. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

@hatking: yes! Nice pull.

I wanna join papa @vinny 's mech clan. He has lots of high level mech techniques that I want in on.

@gyozilla: Oh my god, MechCommander 2 was so good!

Mechcommander 1 was also awesome, but i could never get over PPC streams gracefully curving through the air to hit the jumping mech they were predestined to hit.

Eeesh... if this weren't free-to-play (and from the looks of things, relatively pay-to-win), I'd check it out.

I don't understand why games like this don't realize they need to let you test out things before purchase. It was a major annoyance in Tribes: Ascend as well - you had to buy classes/weapons etc. before you could try them out. If you didn't like them? Though luck. They eventually fixed that by creating a training mode where you could test shit out to a degree, which was good. But there is no way any game would get me to spend money on shit without letting me try it out first. Nothing worse than buyer's regret.

Love mech games don't think I've played one since mech assault for original xbox and that game was awesome. Is battletech the precursor to all this mech warrior business?

@tennmuerti: If you dropped it early, try playing it again. I dropped it for many of the same reasons you did and it's really enjoyable now. Sure, I'm a huge Battletech fan and I want a singleplayer campaign, too, but mechanically the game is now a lot of fun. The free to play stuff is still there but it was always going to be, you really don't need to buy it to enjoy it. There's pretty frequent events and giveaways that give premium time and credits for free, as well.

@grumpymoose: Battletech is the universe within which the Mechwarrior games take place.

Rare picture of Urbanmech in action

Yay this quicklook is very well timed :) I recently super got back into mech games.

Atm im playing Techromancer on dreamcast, Mechassault and Battle engine aquila on xbox, amored core on ps2 + ps3, gun griffon blaze on ps2 and on ps1 some Brahma force and G-police1+2 on the side (G-police 1 only has a helicopter jet but it kinda controls like a mech anyways :P)

I dont have a decent PC and I've actually never checked out any of the proper mechwarrior games. Color me interested!

Tips for new players in regards to the F2P nature of the game:

The best buy for your MC (real money currency) is always Mech Bays. As you level a mech's skill tree up, you probably earn enough in game currency (cbills) to buy more mechs. There are tons (pun!) of mechs to buy before you start worrying about the packs of mechs you have to buy for money. And the packs are generally going to be available for cbills eventually anyway, so you can buy them in game.

Also, they run mech bay half off sales periodically, so I stock up then.

They do run events regularly that give you some of the pay items as rewards. Most of my paint colors have come from those, as have several whole mechs (with included free mech bays), mech bays on their own, etc. I've even gotten a good selection of the cool warhorns :)

I've spent a few dollars on this game over the past several years, but not a ton. Mainly as a way to support the developers more than something I ever felt was a necessity.

Yes, individual mechs are expensive in real dollar terms. Kind of like World of Tanks, War Thunder, etc. But I don't think you'll really need to buy those. Just spend your real money stuff on mech bays if you want more mechs, and earn the actual mechs by having fun playing the game.

@austin_walker No mechs with swords? There's mechs with hell of swords http://www.sarna.net/wiki/No-Dachi

With the amount of movie chattery and ideas I've heard from Vinny within the past few months, I'm expecting that he'll leave GB during this year to direct his own movie, that'll either get all the movie awards there is, or bomb like no other movie has bombed before.

Is nobody playing as Wolf or Ghost Bear - what's wrong with these people?!

Idea: Tom Clancy's Mechwarrior, like Mechwarrior but you get got by one shot basically.

@andys: If you don't mind me asking, how much money have you spent on this game and how much have you played it? And how "pay to win" is this game?

I played a bunch of War Thunder but I had to quit because the F2P nature of it got downright disgusting pretty quickly.

I miss Living Legends.

years ago i payed 50 bucks for early access to this game because i loved mechwarrior. i was a FOOL

The sound design is truly great.

Visually looks a little better than the last time I played it. I guess I'll re-download on steam and check it out. I got tired of the simple world of tanks style gameplay, I was hoping for some more BattleTech/Mechwarrior lore and maybe some single player or co-op stuff. But its probably worth dipping into now and again.

@oatsaplenty: I am playing on Ghost Bear clan. The best clan.

There totally are rear-mounted weapons in the lore (I kinda wish they'd implement them in the games just as a neat thing). I've killed an enemy in the board game with a butt-mounted small laser, it was awesome.

@hassun: I've probably played well over a three hundred hours since the game went into alpha several years ago. I paid $30 during the alpha because I thought the game had promise when I tried it, and wanted them to make a go of it. That was the cheapest "founders pack" IIRC. I think I'm still operating from that original MC currency (real money) to buy my mech bays, but I did buy one cheap Hero mech on a sale, too from those funds. I keep getting free MC from events to fund my mech bays now. I've never bought MC directly.

A couple of times since, I've preordered one of the mech pack releases for $40, just to keep supporting the game. I figure I play way more than that in dollars worth. Those generally come with 9 mechs and bays and some assorted other stuff. I have from those packs and events more than 3300 hours of "premium time", but I never activate it for some reason. Running "premium time" gives you extra XP and extra Cbill currency.

So total, maybe $100 give or take in nearly four years? I just logged in and I own 62 mechs and 71 mech bays right now. I've earned probably 6-8 free mechs from various events and give aways out of that, too, even though I've struck out in the last couple of random draw per match events and not gotten the free mech. Some of those free mechs I've already owned versions of, so sold off the mech to have a free mech bay.

Is it F2P? Yep. But can you manage it without being a huge whale? I think $25-$30 a year is OK for the amount I play.

Another tip to managing funds: Once you get a few mechs, you can easily swap stuff around as you add more mechs to your garage. I only have a few of the expensive XL engines that I move from mech to mech as I'm leveling up mechs. And as you buy new classes of mechs, some will have XL engines to go into my engine pool. So by playing smart within mech lab, you'll cut your costs a lot as you buy and spec out mechs.

Anything involving the Draconis Combine is always a good reminder that this is a product of the 80s given the way its a giant absurd (and sometimes offensive) blob of stereotypical Asian depictions.

Given how the monetization model of this game seems near identical to Warframe, I really wish MWO also had some sort of function that allows you to trade things for real money currency with other players.

@turambar: You can get real money currency rewards during the frequent "events" they run. Not the same thing you're wanting (which could be cool), but a nice way to fund my mech bay needs if I save up those winnings for a mech bay 50% off sale. Last event a couple of weeks ago I "won" a couple hundred MC. Mech bays on sale are 150 MC. Not going to buy you a mech unless you're really lucky, but can buy you a spot for one to sit that you'll buy with in game funds.

Used to go to my friends house in 5th grade to watch him play Mechwarrior 2. That intro FMV was so cool.