As I write this, MechWarrior Online has a slightly belated Valentine's Day sale on, with cheaper experience-point conversion, a discount on the rather ordinary Yen-Lo-Wang "hero 'Mech", and, more importantly, another free day of "premium time", giving you a 50% money and experience-point boost for 24 hours.
(The observation that Wang is cheap on Valentine's day is... widespread.)
For new players: The current trial 'Mechs are pretty decent by the very low standards of those 'Mechs. (Trial 'Mechs are the ones you can jump straight into whether you've bought any 'Mechs of your own or not. Play trials for a little while and you'll very soon have money to buy your own.) But the current trials include the iconic, gigantic, terrifying, Atlas AS7-D.
A new player should NOT jump straight into that hundred-ton monster. It's too slow, and it has too many weapon systems for a newbie to manage.
As is usual for big slow trial 'Mechs, trial Atlases are generally assumed to be piloted by a small gurgling baby. They are treated, with good reason, as slightly dangerous experience-point farms.
If you're new, drive something faster, and you'll learn more and have more fun.
16 February 2013 at 10:33 pm
Having started playing a few months ago, because of your articles, I've now spent many work days far too tired!
I can also assure you that even a moderately experienced player finds them too big, too slow and too easily hit in the torso!
. Or, I could just be a bad player...... Hmm, that thought hadn't occurred to me before.....
17 February 2013 at 12:03 am
Small, medium and big 'Mechs all have their own play-styles, further modified by perverse things like super-fast Awesomes and ER-PPC lights.
This is one of the two major drawcards of this game, I think.
Number one is that it really is a tactical, and somewhat strategic, game; twitchy Counter-Strike kids are at a disadvantage.
Number two is that you can configure 'Mechs in many different ways, and once you've bought a few guns and other bits and they're sitting there in your garage, you can easily plug them into other 'Mechs. And, then, play a game or two in an ultra-fast machine-gun Spider, a very very slow 6-PPC Cicada, an Atlas with just a couple of AC/2s and some Streaks, or any number of more sensible builds.
Also, the very small number of maps so far means that when you're struck by the no-map bug, you'll probably remember where everything is anyway. :-)
17 February 2013 at 6:58 pm
With about three hundred matches behind me, I've bought all the Ravens, a few Commandos, the MissilePult and the CN9D, and dropping a max engine into the lights is by far the most fun to me. I have played CS regularly for more than a decade, though, while it's been probably a decade since the last time I played a Mechwarrior game, so I probably count as a twitchy kiddie.
I'm just wondering how long it will be until PGI drops behind on their "history re-enactment." The Clan invasion is supposed to start in about two weeks, and something tells me they aren't ready to start adding clan weapons and mechs into the game just yet.
18 February 2013 at 5:15 pm
When I started, the AS7-K was the trial assault. Talk about being way over my head.
I rather enjoy the eye-gouging camo options that they recently added. Blaze orange/Lime Green/Bright purple tiger-striped Stalker, mmmmm. Don't stop to gawk, run away!
The clan invasion technically starts in short order, but it continues for years. Is it plausible that they can claim that it hasn't reached the area we're fighting over? It doesn't seem likely that clan tech would suddenly be everywhere in the blink of an eye, but that it would filter in in dribs and drabs... Gimme my Highlander first! Death from above!
19 February 2013 at 1:01 am
Technically, it's already begun - the Clan hit several Periphery worlds in 3049. But the IS proper starts losing worlds in March, 3050. If you're bored, Sarna.net has a canonical timeline.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Operation_Revival
I think according to canon, the IS didn't actually figure out what was going on until May or June, or something like that, since ComStar was colluding with the Clans.
On TheMittani, I read in an interview yesterday with one of PGI's head honchos that they aren't going to be sticking word-for-word to canon, though, which is kind of saddening since they aren't giving us much in the way of story.