So, after almost a year of silence here, some thoughts about the state of the game:
Contrary to some players who just ragequit and never touched the thing again, I've kept playing through it all. Sure, I've had a break of about 3 months of not even touching it, but that wasn't due to some imbalance with clan mechs or screwed up mechanics, but attributed more to a general lack of interest at the time. In hindsight, the 3rd person view disaster wasn't even a storm in the waterglass. In most matches you don't even see a single camera drone.
Since I've re-started playing, a lot of things have happened. For one thing, most clan mechs are now available for C-Bills, which is nice, since I've still not sunk any more money into the game than my initial 60$. I've even still got about 3000MC lying around from that one payment.
After a lot of balancing, clan and IS mechs aren't equals, but it's not an auto-loss if an Atlas meets a Direwolf. One of the main balancing features seems to be a total removal of the omnimechs' canonical strength, its versatility.
You cannot change the engine or leg layout of clan mechs, and omnipods are only available in so many variants. So, good thing: In theory you just need to have one mech bay to run all the variety of available omnipods of the variants, since you can just keep the omnipods and sell the chassis.
I currently own 3 Timberwolves, and I love them to pieces, even if I seem to be better at piloting IS mechs. Surprisingly, the Nova sucks hard.
Another balancing feature are quirks. These are great and mainly available for IS mechs (and a few clan mechs, that aren't as well received as others). For example, the standard Hunchback has a 25% bonus on AC20 range, reload time and projectile speed, which makes it a real hard hitter. A thunderbolt variant has a bonus to heat generation for ER-PPCs and can just spit the lightning balls of death on chainfire for basically forever, disabling ECM with each hit.
All these changes made the game far more dynamic than it ever was.
There are a ton of hero mechs now, which I generally ignore, and trial mechs are usually either community created IS loadouts (available for MC, with a C-Bill and Exp bonus) or clan mechs in their prime variants.
Behind the spoiler there's a list of (for C-Bills and MC) available chassis. There are other mechs already injected, but not yet available if you haven't bought them, such as the Hellbringer, Ice Ferret and Gargoyle. Hero and Community mechs are only available for MC, and come with a 30% bonus to Exp gained and C-Bills earned.
[ Spoiler ]
Light Mechs IS- Locust - 20t
- Commando - 25t
- Spider - 30t
- Firestarter - 35t
- Jenner - 35t
- Raven - 35t
Light Mechs ClanMedium Mechs IS- Cicada - 40t
- Blackjack - 45t
- Vindicator - 45t
- Centurion - 50t
- Hunchback - 50t
- Trebuchet - 50t
- Griffin - 55t
- Kintaro - 55t
- Shadow Hawk - 55t
- Wolverine - 55t
Medium Mechs Clan- Nova - 50t
- Storm Crow - 55t
Heavy Mechs IS- Dragon - 60t
- Quickdraw - 60t
- Catapult - 65t
- Jägermech - 65t
- Thunderbolt - 65t
- Cataphract - 70t
- Orion - 75t
Heavy Mechs Clan- Mad Dog - 60t
- Summoner - 70t
- Timber Wolf - 75t
Assault Mechs IS- Awesome - 80t
- Victor - 80t
- Battlemaster - 85t
- Stalker - 85t
- Highlander - 90t
- Banshee - 95t
- Atlas - 100t
- King Crab - 100t
Assault Mechs Clan- Warhawk - 85t
- Dire Wolf - 100t
As you can see, a few of the previously Unseen mechs have made a comeback and they look, IMO, very fine indeed.
Since PGI has left their publisher IGP, the game has evolved quicker and better, and there's a very solid playerbase, judging from a few numbers in regularly held contests.
For those folks who haven't played in a while: Matches are available now on 15 different maps (2 of which are variants of others) in 3 different game modes. In each match two companies (12 mechs) fight against each other in different ways. You can win matches by killing all enemy mechs in every mode, but apart from Skirmish mode there are other ways to win available.
In Conquest mode there are five strategic points to capture. Once you hold at least one of these points, tickets count up and you win when they reach 750. The more points captured, the quicker the tickets accumulate.
In Assault mode, you can attack the enemy base, which is protected by LRM/Med-laser turrets that have a bit of a kick but are stationary. Once you've killed those (or avoided their lines of fire) you can capture the base.
In the higher mech count per map lies a problem, though: 12 mechs on small maps like River City make these maps, IMO, too small and they often quickly devolve into a brawl. In practice, most matches end with one side wiped out, but still, the strategic option is available and shouldn't be discounted.
There is now the option to form player units, and community warfare is implemented but still in beta.
CW requires you to commit to a house or clan and you gain loyalty points for this faction while you're running missions for them. Contracts are available in various lengths, such as 7 days, 30 days, or forever (if you want to play a faction-bound unit). The longer you commit to a contract, the more loyalty points are gained. For milestones, you gain extra C-Bills.
After choosing a faction, you cannot run CW matches (but still normal drops) in IS mechs if your faction is clan, or clan mechs if your faction is IS. You also need to have at least 4 different mechs (but you can fill up with trial mechs) between 160 to 240t.
CW matches are currently identical in game mode, on one of two different maps.
You need to either protect or destroy an orbital cannon after choosing a planet to fight on.
The cannon is protected by turrets with heavy lasers, gates that need to be opened by the attacker and generators. The attacker cannot enter the cannon area without having opened a gate first, by shooting a generator that's located behind the gates. Once the cannon generators are disabled, they can then start shooting the cannon itself.
In each match you define a drop of exactly 4 mechs, with at least 160t and up to 240t.
So, e.g. your unit is locked in a contract to Davion.
You cannot run missions for house Davion in a clan mech.
You decide to drop a Raven, an Atlas, a Shadow Hawk and a Centurion, totalling 240t.
You cannot drop 2 King Crabs (200t) and 1 Cicada, because you're below the required number of mechs.
You cannot drop 4 King Crabs, because you're over the weight limit.
You also cannot drop 4 Jenners, because then you're under the weight limit.
Paradoxically, Clan opponents are far better at defending with their ER lasers than they are at attacking. There's still a need to finetune this game mode.
To actually conquer a planet, you need to win a number of matches. On each attack cycle, there are 15 matches available. If the attacking team wins more matches, the planet falls to their faction, if the defenders win more matches, the planet stays with its faction. To make it easier to see where the action is at, there's a number displayed behind the planet's name, e.g. 20/34. This number signifies the number of attackers (20) and defenders (34) in matches or in queues on this planet.
Yes, the Mechlab-GUI is still bad, but it's getting better.
Overall, I'm still satisfied with my monetary value, and I still enjoy the game, even though there are recognizable flaws. At the moment far more than during beta. It's getting towards being grown up and it's still not P2W.