Woooooooo let's go! (Please don't suck please don't suck please don't suck)
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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as a MWO veteran, I cant wait to see what the clantastrophe is like in MW5.
I expect this to be an utter slog and snore-fest just like MW:5 Mercenaries was. I am unconvinced Piranha can make a game with any real depth. The AI is trash (enemy mechs only target the player, lancemates are worthless). Every mission is the same garbage "surprise" with "bad intelligence." Yet another lance that wasn't detected?! This is my shocked face. ๐
I could write a novella on how we should all do everything we can to make sure this software house fails spectacularly, but then we would never get another MechWarrior game in our lifetimes. Hell, I waited over 20 years for a proper successor to MW2. MW3 and MW4 were less simulators (dumbed-down control schemes) and 4 borked the whole crit model.
Despite my love of all things mech, I refuse to support anything from that utterly shitty game studio.
I thought their hand-crafted missions in some of the DLCs were much improved, and that handcrafted style (instead of their procgen missions which were very lifeless) is what they're doing for the Clans campaign. Perhaps still a little lacking in depth, but at least had some life in it. Even still, it took years of updates, DLC, and mods (by unpaid modders!) to make MW5 "good" imo. It wouldn't surprise me if Clans is weak out of the gate and similarly improves with time (and unpaid modding work..).
I guess it's inevitable that there'll be differences in preference regarding level of sim vs "arcade" style simplification for Battletech games. You're obviously more on the sim side, and the other extreme would probably be the old Mech Assault games which barely resembled Battletech "gameplay" but still used the IP. I'm personally pretty happy in the middle ground, dipping my toes a little bit into the extremes but mostly sticking with the semi-streamlined stuff in the vein of MW4/MW5 and HBS' Battletech game. If how I feel about the MA games is how you feel about the "modern" MW games in terms of simplification I can definitely see how that'd be disappointing though ๐
So it sounds like I need to dive into the DLC and mods. What suggestions do you have for improving the experience? Thanks in advance!
@JayleneSlide @MHLoppy for what it's worth I liked the Yet Another MechLab/this/that set of mods along with a load of 'Mechsets, vonBiomes and vonMissions.
Of course YAMx mods get updated and sometimes break things temporarily, like in my case I suddendly couldn't add more than one of my 'Mechs in the dropship bays. That was fun in the later stages of my save/campaign :D Maybe I'll return to it in some weeks or months again to see how it goes nowadays.
On the modding side there are differing opinions on how much to change. I stuck with mostly the QoL and performance-improvement stuff, but there are mods to do things like add additional mission variety and improve AI. I'm hesitant to provide many recommendations for specific mods because the last time I was playing was before the most recent couple of DLCs, and I don't know if the mods I used back then are still current / updated. An example that I think still works fine would be QOL Upgrades 2 - Thermals and Headlights - small things like headlights imo should just be in the base game but aren't.
DLC-wise I've only played half of them (waiting on sales for the rest!), but for example Legend of the Kestrel Lancers gives you a self-contained storyline of maybe a dozen missions or so. The main thing about those missions for me personally is that the maps are unique (and not just rehashed procgen) and there's supporting dialogue with some cinematics etc. So the gameplay overall is mostly pretty similar if you drill down to it, but the window dressing on top of it largely addressed the lifeless feeling of all the procgen missions (again, at least for me!).
It looks like both The Dragon's Gambit and Rise of Rasalhague are similar in that they add a set of new once-off missions, but I've yet to play them personally. I guess you could try watching a bit of gameplay from a let's play of them or something to see if it tickles your fancy. The reviews on the DLCs hovers around 70% on Steam, so it's not as though they were universally well-liked and to be honest they might not be enough for you if you weren't at least lukewarm on the base game already.
This looks like a great starting point! Thank you for the tips!
to be honest they might not be enough for you if you weren't at least lukewarm on the base game already Given that more people seem to enjoy the game than not, I'm willing to concede that I'm just missing something. Please excuse me while I go fiddle with a bunch of mods.
Happy stomping!