So it’s finally coming.
After being launched without many of the features it was
touted to have, such as Community Warfare, the Clan Invasion is
coming to Mechwarrior Online. The original plan for the Clan involvement was this: Have a form of persistent universe
with factions relentlessly fighting one another. After a year of this, the
community would be shaken up thanks to the invasion. The clans would consist of elite
factions who were few in number, but with superior skills and mechs which could
outgun anything the Houses could throw at them. The idea this was coming
excited many people, even despite the relentless delays, and for some it was a
sign of hope despite the title’s many problems.
Due to the sheer difference in power between the old mechs
and new additions, how they were to be included had to be thought out
carefully. Unfortunately, the Clan Invasion has been implemented in the worst
way imaginable.
Members of the community have been speculating and
suggesting ideas on how this could be added since the closed beta. A common
idea I have personally heard more than once was to ensure that only the
top members with the best K/D ratios were given access to the powerful
machines. They would be few in number, but they would be powerful and skilled
to offset this. They would also be fighting continually at a numerical
disadvantage, perhaps six or eight Clan mechs against the usual group of twelve
House mechs which were in the game up to this point. The chief problem here is
obviously this would require a significant overhaul of the matchmaking system
and would likely be giving PUGs the short end of the stick again.
Another suggestion was to have effectively the same happen
but with players selected at random, keeping them in a minority. There is a decent thread which can be found
here outlining the problems behind implementing the Clan Invasion and some
of the potential solutions. The point of these examples is that every time
there were significant problems with including them and keeping the game fair.
Just about every time someone did make a suggestion, it involved having a very controlled
method of keeping Clan mechs limited to a handful of people. Well, Piranha Games has sort
of done that. They have given the mechs to whoever has the most cash to burn.
If you look on mwomercs.com now you’ll see a lot of mechs and a lot of price tags. These range from a single
$30.00 purchase for a Fitfox (or Uller if you prefer) to $240.00 for the whole
lot. Let’s ignore for the moment that fan favourites like the Timber Wolf are
at the highest priced packs, an obvious effort to convince players to devote
more cash to the game. Instead let’s focus upon the obvious:
If this is anything like what was established in
every other Mechwarrior title, these are all supremely powerful mechs which can utterly outgun all current
competition. If this is the case this is buying power, pure and simple. This
won’t be like good free-to-play schemes where it’s to give you some minor edge,
some variant which might suit your playstyle more, or to grind less, or even to
give your mech a custom appearance. This will be exchanging chash for raw power as all
the new guns, items and goodies will only be compatible with Clan mechs to
begin with.
Worse still is that this is a blatant cash grab. Atop of all
the usual bundles there are sales for a single gold plated mech going for the
astonishing price tag of $500.00. Imagine for a moment how well this would go
down in any other game. Imagine if League
of Legends, Guild Wars 2 or The Secret World tried to offer up a
slightly different skin skin for just a hundred dollars more than it costs to buy a
brand new Playstation 4. There would be rioting on the forums, accusations of
greed and insults thrown at the developers for trying to blatantly grab for the
wallets of the customer. This is even worse than in those cases though, as
unlike those games Mechwarrior Online
is a niche market with only a relatively small devoted community. What PGI
seems not to understand is they have a playerbase which they cannot afford to
keep lying to, keep short changing at their expense and keep driving away if
they want to stay afloat.
The fact this is being implemented so soon after the Phoenix
packages suggests something else: Desperation. This is based purely upon
opinion and speculation, but just consider the following for a moment. The game
currently resembles nothing of what was promised. Community warfare isn’t in
it, the new UI is still way off yet and Piranha Games themselves were forced
to change MWO’s description at one
point because it no longer resembled what had been advertised to players. All
we have had was the PGI churning out new mechs and the occasional map.
Perhaps that would be enough, but during the beta there was no advance towards
anything we saw promised. No major, potentially costly, changes to the basic way
the game was structured to make it resemble a continual war over territory to
gain resources.
Between the lack of significant progress, the number of
micro-transactions within the game and having two major mech sales very close
together, if feels as if there is a warning light going up here. If you are
going to purchase any of these Clan mechs, take note of the date you will get
them and consider what we have seen over the past years. Remember all the broken promises and even outright lies PGI have stated since this game began. Remember that even after all this time there is still no lobby, still no way to set up matches against specific players and still no in-game chat. Remember that this was supposed to be a war between the Clans and the Inner
Sphere, a massive conflict supposed to change everything, has been reduced down
to selling new mechs to people.
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