Thursday, October 25, 2012

Patchmas!

Well here we are, patchmas has finally arrived! 

We have waited long enough for this patch, lets just jump straight into what it does, and what there is to say about it.

NEW BATTLEMECHS:
  • Jenner JR7-K
  • Raven RVN-3L
  • Cicada CDA-2A
  • Cicada CDA-2B
  • Cicada CDA-3C
  • Cicada CDA-3M
  • Awesome AWS-9M
New stompy mechs yay! The Cicada is new medium mech. At 40 tons it sits between the Raven and Centurion in size. In general the Cicada's main focus is speed. The slowest Cicada stock mech goes 113 KPH and the rest clocs in at a blazing 129.6 KPH.

The 2A is an energy weapon specialist with six energy hard-points  however the stock version sadly only uses two of these. Given the current heat system I wonder how many Cicada's will be able to use all six without causing themselves to transform into slag.

The 2B seems to trade one one of their energy hard-points to move several of them to the arms. Honestly, this seems to be a superior build. Given your speed, the additional flexibility of having arm mounted hard-points seems important. Furthermore the chances are most builds wont use all six hard-points. I could be wrong, and if I am please correct me in the comments below.

The 3C is the dedicated ballistic platform. Four ballistic hard-points are supported by one energy hard-point. It is the slowest stock Cicada, but that should be able to fixed by dropping an XL engine in it. I suspect that this will be the "scout" Cicada. Load up a tag and four AC/2s on chain-fire and rock mechs long enough for the rain to fall. That sounds really fun actually...

The 3M will be a pretty decent brawler. Four energy points are supported by one ballistic point. Slap on four lasers and an AC to rock the target as you strafe around at over 120KPH. Could be scary, could also be a pretty nice counter to LRMS and Gauss-cats.

All of Cicadas can be fit with AMS, but none can have jump-jets. It is clear that the main role of the Cicada is to move quickly and get behind the main force and strike and the squishy LRMS and GAUSS.
New hero Mech: Yen-Lo Wang
The first hero mech came out and it is based off of the old CN9-AH, however it replaces the arm ballistic with energy hard-points, which many people see as the entire point of the AH mech in the first place. The mech itself costs 3,750 MC and can not but purchased with CBills. Yen-Lo Wang sports a custom skin (which is not at all as described in the stories), and has a built in permanent 30% CBill bonus. the CN9-AH has been retired and replaced by this mech. This part is a bit confusing. Paul stated that the AH was in the game to test for the Yen-Lo Wang mech without tipping their hand what the hero mech would be. I see this as a pretty big mistake. They already have the other mech built and worked out, and yet they are taking it away and forcing you to pay MC to replace it. I would not be surprised if public outrage caused them to reverse this decision, and honestly I think the game would be better for it. I say, let them have the AH and fall in love with it, that may drive them to get the YLW for the CBill bonus and skin. Make the player fall in love, then offer them a way to invest in their ownership. This is why skins and cosmetic items work so well in F2P games in the first place! Taking something that people had, and then blocking behind a premium fee feels a bit slimy, but I digress.

Honestly, the mech itself is not what I find interesting, but rather what this means for the game. First of all, this sets a precedent for future hero mechs. Up until now there was nothing that altered your in match experience that required MC, this changes that. Now if you want to fight with this variant load-out, you must purchase this mech for MC. No other way around it. Secondly, this shows that hero mechs will likely have the kind of bonus that we see with the CBill boost, we now have two examples of mechs with bonus CBills, so this is likely going to become a norm for hero mechs. Thirdly, this CBill reward is HIGHER then the Founders mechs, which demonstrates a power creep into the system. The F2P premium model encourages PGI to continue to make the next thing better then previous things, to keep people buying, and this demonstrates they have taken the bate. I would not be surprised if we continue to see this convenience "power creep" continue as time goes on. I may write about this more in the future. Moving on!
Ferro Fibrous, Endo-Steel, and Double Heat Sinks
I lump all of these things into one category: make things more efficient at the cost of more critical slots. They have made it so that the excess critical slots can spill over intelligently throughout the mech. A couple of notes is that it seems that in general Endo-Steel is far more efficient then Ferro Fibrous, Double Heat sinks probably are not working as intended (they do not seem to be working as double for many people), and Double Heat-sinks charge EVERY TIME you swap between them and normal heat-sinks (although I think that may be true for all three, the DHS is far more expensive, and so a bigger deal).
New skins and cockpit items
MONKEY BOBBLE-HEAD IS AWESOME!

Also, the skin does not work on founders mechs or the cicada mechs at this time.

One last thing that caught my eye:
We've also made changes to the economy of the game. Firstly, we standardized MC to C-Bill pricing. Secondly, we've lowered engine prices and item prices have been increased. This all adds up to, Mech costs being the sum of it's parts. While it doesn't follow the canon pricing, it is close.
Given my last couple of posts, I wonder if some folks at PGI read my blog. That would be kind-of awesome! They even used a chart! Although admittedly theirs is a bit more polished :)

Over all, you can tell why they felt so strongly they were ready for open beta, after this patch I am inclined to agree. If they spend this week fixing the few bugs that still are kicking around (and the new ones that cropped up), and are conservative with their patch next week, I would say its time for a nice open beta release.

Oh one last thing, they released their tutorial video, and while it is good it is just a video. Give us an area where we can drop and move around in our mechs without fighting enemies. Better yet allow a group to drop in to explore the maps, skirmish, and train. Videos don't cut it. Sorry.

Edit: someone on the forums pointed out that the mech that was removed was the CN9-AH not AL, sorry and it has been corrected.

5 comments:

  1. The Yen-Lo-Wang has an AC20 in its arms as standard. It replaced the CT Missiles with lasers not the arm Ballistic slot. Also the AC arm can move on both x and y axis (although x axis is more limited than the other CNs) where the AH could only move its arm on the Y axis.

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    1. Thanks for that. The evidence seems to be mounting that YLW is intentionally slightly better then other mechs. Which is why we are seeing all the conversations cropping up about P2W and such. I will have to set down my favorite catapults for a while and give YLW a spin and see what I find.

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  3. nice, 2 points:
    1) It has 5% more cbill bonus than founder mechs, but does not get the xp bonus that founder mechs get, so I dont see any power creep here, just a trade off.
    2) You still have "AL" should be "AH"

    Other than that, very nice post.
    -DrVulcan

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    1. 1) That is a good point, however XP is mostly useful to the mech itself whereas CBill boost is useful to all progression (If you want to call it that). So it is a pretty good trade

      2) Thanks, I believe I have finally solved the problem. I would sack my editor, but that would leave you without a writer as well :)

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