After months of anticipation, an aggressive marketingcampaign (which, by all indications, has actually worked quite well), a
haphazard last minute test that turned up some hilariously crippling bugs, and
a launch that left game servers unusable (in a manner that ironically
paralleled the communications blackout from Battletech
lore), the Clans have at long last arrived in Mechwarrior: Online. Setting
aside the aforementioned technical issues, particularly those related to
connectivity and matchmaking, there's much ado in MWO as the metagame adjusts to not one or two or four but eight new
mechs, each with at least three variants, most of them dramatically different
from one another. The end result, though
largely overshadowed by the discussion of technical issues that interfere with
one's ability to actually play a motherfucking game of Mechwarrior, has proven more fruitful than I'd hoped: the metagame
of MWO is chaotic again for the first
time in a long time. Not chaotic in the
brief, furtive way that the a new mech's release makes it chaotic, in a manner
that stabilizes after a week or so of play.
Chaotic in a manner that it seems won't be normalizing any time soon, a
sort of chaos that reminds me of the days when I first started playing, the era
when players were still uncovering the mechanics of the game, and the means by
which to use them.
The greatest fear that the player base voiced, the
justifiable fear that MWO would
suddenly transform into a "pay to win" structure for the intervening
five months before all the Clan mechs become available for public consumption,
has not come to pass. Clan mechs aren't
destroying the balance of the game overall, which is a bit of a surprise. In Battletech
lore the appearance of the Clans revolutionized warfare, and nearly every initial
battle against the Clans was hilariously lopsided, with genetically engineered
supermen in vastly technologically superior robots laying waste to planets
faster than their supply lines could keep up.
According to the Battletech history
books, supply issues were a greater threat to success of the invasion than the
military might of the Inner Sphere. The
Clan mechs in MWO aren't the fearsome
behemoths this lore might lead one to expect, not by a long shot.
Not to say that Clan mechs aren't fearsome: their LRMs fire
much, much faster projectiles that hit just as hard as vanilla LRMs, making
them terrifying artillery pieces, all the more potent under the current LRM
heavy metagame. And, while they're
relatively underutilized at present, Clan Streaks are a fearsome force when
they're brought to bear. Clan MGs,
likewise, are simply superior in every way to their Inner Sphere equivalents:
no increased heat output to balance them out the way other weapons are balanced,
weighing in at a quarter ton with no downsides whatsoever. Just a harder hitting version of an already
sleek, highly functional weapon. There
are other advantages, too: U/ACs and LBXs in every size make for some tense
engagements that resolve very, very quickly in one direction. In one game I poked my head out briefly, just
for a moment, and ended up catching one volley from a firing line, largely
unfocused. The volley took off the
entire right side of my Stalker, which meant that a few hundred points of
damage spread were spread over three critical slots in a matter of seconds. The Clan mechs have a brutal damage output, laying
down withering firepower with ubiquitous ease.
Nearly every Clan chassis is capable of dishing out DPS at a rate
equivalent to any of the "broken" or "overpowered" mechs of
the current meta, and some, like the Direwolf, take the hurt to a whole new
level: a Direwolf, properly configured, can carry four AC 20s, twice the load
of the already absurdly overpowered Jagermech.
That's enough firepower to potentially do 160 damage in a single volley
to a single component, enough hurt to knock out nearly any mech in the game out
in a single blow.
These additions have certainly changed the pace and flow of
the game, but less than you might think, if my experience so far has proven any
guide. While Clan mechs do sport some
insane damage output, I seem to still be doing fine against them in my old
tried and true Inner Sphere designs. It
could be that people are still working out just how to optimize Clan tech for
maximum cheese, but I get the sense that's not the whole truth. At least a little bit of credit is owed to
some wonky new hitboxing. Many of the
most powerful clan Assault mechs have generously large center torso hitbox
registers. That means that firing
anywhere near the giant conical nose of a Direwolf will likely land you a hit
on the most vulnerable spot on the mech which, in turn, will drop the Direwolf
more quickly than wearing it down with delicate love taps on either side of its
torso. Not every Clan mech has this
issue: the Timberwolf's giant Mickey Mouse ears make its side torsos
distracting targets, for example, but for whatever reason firing at the center
of mass seems to be a perfectly effective strategy when fighting Clan mechs,
even more so than when fighting Inner Sphere mechs. Hell, sometimes it's even more expedient than
removing legs one at a time, arguably the most effective way to kill anything
in this new era of uncertain hitboxing.
The end result is that that 100 ton Direwolf that scared the living shit
out of you with its four U/AC 20s will receive most of its damage right where
it doesn't want to, regardless of what its pilot does, which will seriously
interfere with its effort to use those big cannons.
This is mitigated somewhat by the mobility of most Clan
mechs: while the lights might seem a little underpowered, just breaking 100 kph
with speed tweak, the heavier mechs tend to be as fast or much faster than
their Inner Sphere counterparts, and they're all nearly all surprisingly
dexterous for their size. Even the
heavier mechs, thanks partially to the ready availability of jump jets on most
chasses, can outrun and outmaneuver an Inner Sphere mech of equal tonnage. The Timber Wolf will redline near 90 kph and
jump jet up a hill doing it, which would make it an ideal flanker under a
different metagame. Therein lies the
rub: at present, everyone and their uncle wants to employ Clan mechs as an LRM
boats, which often means the mobility and maneuverability they bring to the
table isn't being fully utilized. In the
future, there could be a number of terribly tough Clan mechs using their
oversized Streak SRMs and pulse lasers to lay waste to mechs at close range,
but right now they're in the minority.
The Clan mechs are also surprisingly small. Like, really small. It's kind of an advantage, smaller targets
being harder to hit and all, but it also makes some of the chasses, especially
the heavier ones, a little less intimidating than they might otherwise. There's something to be said for the raw
scope of an Atlas or a Highlander, the manner in which their profiles
discourage direct engagement. Fighting a
Warhawk, on the other hand, feels like taking aim at a toy. Despite the damage they can do, I'm not
afraid of Clan mechs in the least when I see them on the battlefield, and at
least part of that is owed to the fact that I feel like I'm towering over them,
even when I'm in a Cicada.
That said, I am scared of how their weapons sound. The Clan ER PPC is fucking terrifying. Clan missiles scream in, and Clan MGs make my
cockpit rattle when they hit. If Clan
mechs look like toys, Clan tech sounds like a set of god damn nightmares. Given the damage output that Clan mechs are
capable of when they're used well, the shoe seems to fit. The influence of the Clans so far seems to
drive the meta towards brief, furtive combats that end quickly and decisively,
often with the bulk of shots hitting the center torso. There's something to be said for the
directness of the conflicts that this structure generates, but it also erodes
the methodical take that Mechwarrior brings to the first person shooter genre. When I'm fighting a Clan mech, I'm not taking
it down piece by piece, I'm firing every weapon I can into its center of
mass. Some mechs change that meta: the
Stormcrow and the Kitfox, most notably, have hitboxing that strongly encourages
"sweeping the leg," a la the Centurion or the Jagermech, but these
are the exceptions, not the rule, and the brutality of Clan weapons, even in
their adorable packaging, makes for brief "oh shit" moments followed
by lengthy spectation.
The odd thing is that the LRM meta seems to be less
prominent in the games I've been fortunate enough to play post-release, despite
the advantageous nature of Clan LRM tech. Perhaps it's the fact that Clan mechs have
such brutally satisfying direct fire weapons at their disposal, or perhaps it's
that increased speed and maneuverability.
Maybe it's the way that hardpoint schemes exist, often limiting LRM
schemes to "all or nothing" variants, forcing players to choose
between mechs that have only missiles or direct fire weapons available to
them. This might change as people get
more comfortable swapping omni pods between mechs to mix and match
variants. It's tough to say, and it's
tough to care. For now, it's just nice
to see MWO feeling strange again,
like unexpected things can happen on the battlefield. Perhaps the game will stabilize quickly, and
ruin the lovely chaos swirling as people both learn to play and learn to play
against Clan mechs, but I hope it doesn't.
There's something refreshing about the infusion of Clan mechs into MWO, something that makes the game feel
alive again, like a moving, growing organism, one that is still taking shape,
the way the game felt in the old days.
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