Mechwarrior Online: Legends

[Brother Glacius]

Long ago, I was a fairly big MWO player. I was part of a unit, we'd play regularly, and I had several mechs that I specialized in. Eventually life got in the way, play time died down, and it was something that I'd hop on every once in a blue moon just to keep the game updated. Then they went through several major changes and the game really fell to the wayside for me. I didn't want to learn a new skill system or how mechs and weapons had been rebalanced.

Well thanks to the general Battletech resurgence, I've been playing MWO again. I can hop in and play a game within 10 minutes so its fairly easy to fit in. It took a little doing, but I learned the new skill tree system and have gotten enough games under my belt to understand most of the balance changes. It took me about a month of solid playing, but I finally crawled out of the Tier 5 pilot skill rating (PSR). 

The most important part of all of this, is that I'm having fun again with the game. It runs beautifully on my current system and I'm typically the first to load in a match. I have no trouble finding a game, typically waiting < 1min or maybe as much as 3min before getting one. I'm probably at about 60% chance to get a positive or at least neutral PSR xp at the end of a match. Sometimes I do something stupid, or just get in a bad situation and lose xp. Frustrating at times, I'm not a fan of how they determine PSR, but I know it well enough to adjust my play to try and improve it.

I have sunk a pretty penny into the game. I was a founder way back when and from time to time I did purchase bundles, so I have a large selection of mechs to choose from which is really nice. The game is now Free to Play. I'm somewhat tempted to make a new account to see how hard it is to play for a new player. The lack of mech customizations and skills would make it pretty hard to be competitive I feel. But hopefully their matching would make sure you are playing mostly against others using stock mechs as well. Again, don't know...but it intrigues me enough to find out. (that being said, you can buy mechs or bundles with cash which isn't too bad and you can also earn in game currency to buy mechs so you can customize them...just takes a little grinding)

Anyways, back to the point of all this, the game has players again. And they are releasing new stuff for it. They are putting out new mechs and maps and supporting the game. The pandemic gave the game a boost in players and now the rise in popularity of Battletech in general is aiding the resurgence of the game. If you like Battletech, it offers up a fairly unique way to experience it.

If anyone would like to get into it and need some help or advice, please feel free to contact me. The one thing that is missing for me is playing with people I know and I'd really like to do that again. It adds a whole new level when you have a group.

[Duckman]

The main reason I quit playing was that the guys who played with the PGI staff directly were caught using aimbots (actual posted audio and video of) and were not punished.  Is the game still all client-side and easily hacked?

The other main question is whether or not the balance pass did anything to fix clan balance (since they never managed the concept of a star vs an inner-sphere lance).

[Brother Glacius]

No idea. But I haven't seen anything like that. Clan mechs are better, but no where near as customizable. 

[Duckman]

I reinstalled and looked to confirm that I still had an active account.  I am Rakashan.  Looks like I still have most of my mechs although I was notified of a lot of changes when I started things up and clearly there have been changes (like all my Spiders were swapped out maybe for Arctic Cheetahs?).

 

Where should I go look for the "how to play" now and is it worth maybe making a new account to get the new tutorials and primers?

[Brother Glacius]

Maybe the web site has some tutorials on it now? not sure...never looked really...I just sort of dove into it. The thing I most needed to know was when going into the mechlab, Skills section, click on Add SP and see if you have any banked SP for that mech already. It was a bit confusing at first. I spent a lot of money converting XP into SP, and then discovered that I already had banked SP for that mech that didn't cost anything to use. I'll be on later today. I'll toss a friend request.

We could find some time on the ordo discord chan to go over some stuff probably.

[Duckman]

I found a primer on the new skill tree (well, the first iteration of it which is enough)...  The key was finding the HSP (which are not displayed anywhere until you go into the Add SP menus)...  I had *lots* of chassis mastered...  The 91 points for each of them will be *huge* when I go to put skills in place.  Now I just have to find out what all the skills do and remember how I liked to play certain chassis.

Still thinking a dunny account to go through the modern tutorials may be a good idea, especially while I am trying to remember controls.

[Brother Glacius]

I max out the armor, IS, and critical reduction on my mechs...makes them much more survivable. There are 6 slots for missile boosts, 4 for lasers, and a total of 8 for ballistics, but only one general boost, the others are LBX, Gauss, or RAC/Ultra specific. Heat reduction is probably next, then speed boost. Honestly, I could probably reduce the Crit reduction on mechs with no ammo, but any loss of crit is pretty good.