I've got a list of complaints but I'm jaded. It's story-lite (maybe if you know nothing about Smoke Jaguar it sells), the combat isn't as satisfying (for me), the mech lab is kind of a joke even when compared to vanilla, and a dozen menus with questionable options isn't good. The graphics are pretty... but there's just... inconsistencies in choices here.
The things that bother me the most at this particular moment being so far in the game are 1) These mechs are as tall as buildings. So why instead of trees, are we knocking down tall plants? Like literally, there's maps with weeds as tall as you are that you walk through but it sounds like a tree is falling. 2) The mission parameters will say something most everyone ignores but my OCD ass. "We've arrived at the AO from the NorthWest" it says. But you land and you're looking NorthWest... so you came from the SouthEast!
At the beginning you miss a bunch of these because it's a lot and yeah I know I'm nitpicking. Just a thought stream here.
But there's other stuff. 3) You get weird level ups all over the place and one of them is affinities in the barracks menu. You can choose a bunch but you can get one for each mech weight class that gives you a bonus. Ok, so there's Light, Medium, and Heavy. No Assault. Huh? 4) The story hints repeatedly that your clan's tech is miles better than the Inner Sphere and when I'm melting Battlemasters with my mediums I start to agree. So what does the Inner Sphere bring you for serious fights then?
Flying vehicles. I shit you not. Bullet sponge flying fortresses. Guess they should'a used these in some of their wars, huh?
But I think for me, the worst offender here is the fact that it's named Mechwarrior 5: Clans. Five. Okay, that should mean that it's somehow related to the other Mechwarrior 5 games right? MW5 Mercenaries' story talks about a protagonist whose father is revealed to have been a spy for 'somebody' that lives outside the Inner Sphere. It's not Clan Wolf, they've got their own thing going. You play the whole campaign, nothing is revealed, but there's a trailer for MW5: Clans. Surely they're gonna answer all our questions about who this guy was, right?
....two guesses. Completely different game, same name. I just don't get it.
On the different game, same version number thing: That’s a tradition that dates to the mid-90’s with the 3 games published under the title Mechwarrior 2.
31st Century Combat was the first, it featured two campaigns from both sides of the Wolf/Jade Falcon Refusal War. Ghost Bear’s Legacy is also post-Clan invasion but largely to do with the Draconis Combine. MW2 Mercenaries is set pre-invasion up through the Battle of Luthien.
Mechwarrior 4 was fairly similar; Vengeance was a relatively small story set on Kentares IV (and its moon) and is kind of a microcosm of the FedCom Civil War. Black Knight does continue the bad ending of Vengeance, and MW4: Mercenaries is more broadly about the FedCom Civil War; most missions are either Davion or Steiner aligned though other units and factions appear (including the Jade Falcons and the Capellans). Kentares IV isn’t so much as mentioned.
So what does the Inner Sphere bring you for serious fights then?
This is something I don’t think any of the Mechwarrior games ever really brought to life because yes the Clans had outright superior weapons and the Inner Sphere to my knowledge never won a toe-to-toe fight during the invasion. Name one time an inner sphere lance stood against a Clan star in a fair fight and won. The clans ultimately lost because it turns out blitzkrieg is a dumber thing to base a religion around than the phone company. And it’s really difficult to build an action cockpit simulator game around that as a primary gameplay mechanic.
Name one time an inner sphere lance stood against a Clan star in a fair fight and won.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wolcott did just this and turned the tide. The Battle of Tukayyid in particular?
And yeah the rest of your post is good... I guess I'm still just kinda confused why Piranha doesn't really use the canon narrative to drive their stories. It raises the stakes in each game, which is great for player engagement.
Wolcott comes the closest as the Kuritans did actually answer the batchall and bid the fight, they played by the clan’s rules. They also presented the Genyosha as green troops instead of the elite force they were, and they dug traps, hid explosives and hung strips of metal from the trees in the swamp they were to fight in. I see it as reaching a similar place that the Lyrans did at Twycross, both took significant planning ahead to take advantage of prevailing conditions that reduced some of the clans’ technical advantages, both involved setting traps, and both still resulted in a lengthy and brutal knock down drag out fight.
As for Tukayyid, the clans lost at Tukayyid through a failure of doctrine. With the exception of the Wolves, the clans thought they were fighting a trial of possession. Comstar thought they were fighting a siege. Comstar was right.
I think your need to do some inflation adjustment, their costs increase a lot as well. And raw “record profits” aren’t meaningful when not inflation adjusted.
Everything is getting more expensive, thats mostly not corporate greed (some of it is tbh) its just the general world economics being in a very big crisis from multiple world effecting events, covid, Russia attacking Ukraine, the fucking Suez channel ship thing (yes that shit actually effected world economics), the comeback of terrorism, the right wing people playing Russian spys for their own gains in all of the western world (super left as well, but they don’t have much power gladly) Chinas entire economy is going down the drain for many internal reasons. The World economy has long covid, untreated epilepsy and very bad hemorrhoids all at once basically.
I think your need to do some inflation adjustment, their costs increase a lot as well. And raw “record profits” aren’t meaningful when not inflation adjusted.
They added microtransactions to both Runescape 3 and Oldschool, bonds never existed back then, so now you can buy gold in game, which is huge insane revenue amount for them. World of Warcraft has never had to increase costs even once.
WOW did increase costs, is heavily monetized with micro transactions and thats basically state of the art for mmorpgs right now. The server and development costs are huge for such service games and a company needs to make profits, i don’t say there is no greed involved, but i do understand some of the decisions.
Ohh darn you’re right. I misremembered. Thought it was always 15. But yeah, I get the cost of running the game and all that stuff. Totally valid points.
It’s honestly crazy how horrifically they monetized RS3. You’re spammed with login notifications for your free gambling opportunities. Idk what it is now but it was squeal of Fortune, then some weird chest opening game you get two keys from or you get them from just playing the game and at random. Met a guy who spent $3600 on getting his skills up. Unfathomable to me
The subscription hike is something, but U.S./U.K. inflation from 2008 to 2022 is about 40%, and that’s not accounting for any changes in corporate taxes. Its… well, it’s kinda mad that WoW hasn’t increased the subscription price that whole time, if that’s true, but that’s partially because they sell expansions, right? And those probably creep up with inflation.
The problem is the choices they’ve made with that money, aka shoving more aggressive monetization into the game instead of keeping it simple, which was so central to its appeal long ago. Of taking short term profits instead of investing in R&D, new game development, and deeper development for Runescape. This is the real corporate greed. Making money is fine, but just taking it as pure profit at the expense of long-term health is destructive, greedy, unfair to the employees and wrong.
Also, I played Runescape ages ago, and well… I just got tired of the game. I feel like thats why many people left, and I also think it’s kinda mad expecting most players to play the same game forever.
Well, I mean wow was already at $15 a month back in the day. When it came out in 2004, It was like paying $25 per month today. It was damn pricey back then. At this point I think they’re getting all the money out of it that the market will bear. Yeah the expansions help but I suspect they’re running leaner now than they were.
I doubt anyone knows how much of the playerbase it makes up, but the WoW subscription effectively went up to $20 a month for anyone that’s using in-game gold to fund it.
Meanwhile in osrs team they have open communication with the community, new content is released only if accepted by vast majority of players, no mtx or other major enshittification of games, the developers clearly very much care of the game and want to keep it running.
You can’t say that for vast majority of the game developers
Hmm idk… The community is mad half the time at the devs. The voting is awful and simply doesn’t work at all. They’re not a tight knit company anymore either, they’re owned by an investment company
I played so many games back then I can’t really say I’ve missed too much. Maybe I should have looked more into games like Jagged Alliance or X-Com but I wasn’t into turn-based games back then. But I also didn’t care much about puzzle games as a kid and now I am and that’s ok. These days I don’t care about multiplayer games anymore, which I used to love.
StarCraft. I played it, I liked it but never really invested time to get better at the game. My friends were really good and they would include me by putting me on the opposite team so I can backstab later in the match 😅
That’s actually same as me. I did play Diablo 2 tons of time. But that was just to finish the game with different characters and different skills combo.
Like one time with Amazon with bow skills, then next time with Amazon with Javelin skills. Also, since I couldn’t afford many games back then, I would just re-install it every few months or year or so, and play through it once or twice.
Though, to be completely fair, I didn’t even know you could keep playing after finishing the game. Thought it was some glitch that game restarted again 😀
So, not exactly same as you. I want to play with all the characters. At least once.
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