Quote to see. Its not like I'm doing anything illegal, only passing off hearsay and unfounded rumors and impressions from someone who may be lying about being in the beta.
All impressions below are copy-pasted from my friend
There are 4 short clips displayed at the beginning that I couldn't skip at all. 2 of them are from the dev and publisher and they look like they were made in MS Paint and then compressed using Bink for the xbox 360.
Once it launches, you have access to your Mech Lab and Pilot Lab where you can buy/configure your mechs and look at your pilot's XP unlock progression while the game constantly checks in the background if you're updated to the latest version/
If your client isn't up to date, the Launch button (for quick matchmaking) is colored differently and has a scrolling text message that indicates the client is patching.
The Pilot Lab shows your profile and it looks like there are placeholders for where you can have your avatar and possibly other logos/icons in the future but right now there is just a generic white head/shoulders phonebook contact silhoutte.
XP unlocks for "perks" look like they will take a while. The lowest level 1 unlock (i think it was Anchor Turn) costs 1000xp but from what i've seen in the only matchmaking mode so far you get around 15-20 XP in a loss and around 25-30 XP in a win.
There are 4 tiers of XP unlocks with some of them costing... I think around 5,000xp.
The Mech Lab is barebones so far and has several UI bugs, of which the most prominent is that a previous screen you've visited is overlayed onscreen after you've started navigating elsewhere.
No paint customizations that I've seen so far and I don't think I'm able to rename my mech after the initial naming when buying one.
Your mech's weight and total armor rating is shown and there are ratings for firepower and heat management but they are both currently not working and will always show 0 values regardless of what you throw on your mech.
The only relevant information displayed for equipment you can mount on your hardpoints are the number of slots they take, weight (in tons), and the cost in credits, and if a weapon is energy or requires ammo.
There are no weapon descriptions or anything else that you would expect like : damage, rate of fire, range, heat ratings... nothing of the sort that can actually help you decide what your loadout should be.
Only standard armor is available right now but it definitely seems like alternatives will be offered later on. The armor values can be tweaked for each hardpoint plus the rear for certain ones like your torso. I tried removing a lot of weapons and adding more armor but for some reason I couldn't really add much more than 2 points to one place despite having free weight. It looks like, at least for the 2 mechs I tried configuring in detail (Catapult and Atlas), the armor was already nearly maxed out.
Looking for matches is quick and easy, you just click the Launch button and then wait while browsing GAF. In my experience I've never waited more than 3 minutes to get a match. I have a relativey fast PC thats only a year old (2500k+6950) and I find myself loading the map first or second and waiting for all the other players to connect. Waiting for everyone can take up to 3 minutes or more if someone is a slow loader.
Most matches I've been in have been 7v8 or 8v8. I think they match by total weight. Unfortunately right now there seem to be a lot of people who AFK intentionally because I see them joining again in other matches but they are just standing still at the spawn point. Almost every match will have at least one person disconnected, sometimes up to 2 on each team.
It's just plain team deathmatch with the primitive concept of a "base" where each team spawns. No respawns on death, just a spec cam from a teammates perspective so you can enjoy the static view of the 2 AFK people on your team. There's a timer for when people don't kill the whole team and the game ends then. A prominent bar is on the center top of your screen that shows the swing in favor of either your team or the enemy's that's probably based on damage dealt.
Speaking of damage dealt, it looks to be the main basis for "score" in terms of credits/xp awarded at the end of each match. Credits are used to purchase weapons and mechs. A lot of weapons are around the 50k to 200k range. The cheapest Atlas variant (i think there are 4) is around 9.5 million, and I remember skimming through the light mechs and seeing what I think was the Jenner at around 3 million. The real money equivalent is MC, and mechs cost around 20k MC instead of millions in credits. I don't know what the conversion for MC to $ is right now though.
Combat is FUN! There is definitely incentive to playing lighter and faster mechs as the lightest Jenner will run 3x as fast as the Atlas I was piloting and they can defintely circle strafe or stay permanently behind me if the pilot is skilled. Watching a good Jenner pilot in spec cam after I died (which was often, even in an Atlas) was cool but quickly gave me nausea because of the speed and constant bobbing of the damn cockpit view.
Cockpit view only, and there doesn't seem to be a button to change that and get rid of it. You do get to a temporary 3rd person view for a few seconds in those fun situations where you trip over a smaller mech or weird geometery and then fall over each other. The cam goes to 3rd person and you get to see your mechs clamber to get up while they get shot repeatedly by both friends and enemies alike.
You get two targeting reticles: one for your torso mounted weapons and another for your arm-mounted weapons. I don't think anyone should ever use a joystick because your arm-mounted weapons will follow your mouse aim almost 1:1 up to a very wide range of motion and targeting that even nearly goes outside what you can see of your cockpit view. Meanwhile, your torso targeting has a limited range of motion and will take longer to follow your mouse aim.
This is where light or at least faster medium sized mechs can shine: while the mouse aiming is good, not all of an assault mech's weapons are on its arms and it's very hard to bring all your weapons to bear and alpha strike a lighter mech that's zipping around the map. A smaller mech that risks running into my Atlas point blank and slightly under me will have be easy to hit with my torso weapons but my arm weapons will likely overshoot him since he is too close. I really wish there was a melee option that sacrificed some damage to the arms in order to punch or at least shove off mechs that are right in front of you.
Weapon choice and mounting on-torso vs on-arms is very important because of the aforementioned aiming differences and how each weapon effectively deals damage. Here's a brief rundown:
LRMs - they seem cheesy because they lock-on but at long distances they all seem to exhibit the same terrain-avoiding pattern of gaining altitude first and then abruptly raining downward on a mech to hit its most well-armored parts. They're released in a buzzing insect swarm pattern that looks stupid and isn't as cool as we'd come to expect from Japanese games where guided missiles are like choreographed pinpoints of light. Here when you fire them you can actually see more then a few traveling forward while sideways which makes absolutely no sense (basically envision a rocket logo and thats how some of these LRMs seem to be moving FORWARD once you first fire them)
SRMs - meh, didn't try these at all myself but I've specced lot of people that use them. They seem to still be effective when shotgunned at close range (LRMs too).
Pulse Lasers - hot, heavy, and expensive but they deal good damage in a quick burst which is great in this game.
Normal Lasers - actually behave like how I'd expect real lasers to do damage. I think they are better arm-mounted if you have good aim since these don't deal damage immediately. Once you press the button to fire your lasers they shoout out instantly and then stay on for what seems like 2 seconds total and if you want to deal the most damage you have to keep your aim steady on the mech you're targeting. Trying to keep this targeted on fast mechs is hard to do from a distance so sniping with ER Large Lasers doesn't seem to efficient unless you're targeting a stationary LRM cheeser that just wants to aim from far away.
Machinegun - satisfying sound that actually doesn't seem to do any significant damage but is fun to just keep shooting while circle-strafing someone.
PPCs - amazing when they hit, but there is a noticeable delay for them to actually shoot after you press a button, and the projectile seems to travel slower than the AC and Gauss. I always feel like sure hits with PPCs when both myself and my target are stationary seem to miss half the time even though they should have been clean hits. It might be lag issues because there is some faint rubber-banding at times.
A/C - I have little experience with this so far
Gauss - it seems like it has great damage when it actually hits but it seems like it has the longest delay between button press and actual projectile firing so i basically have to shoot stationary mechs or lead my shot. Once it fires, the projectile is very fast though.
There are only 3 maps right now, and 2 of them are visually terrible because one is 90% snow/ice while the other is 99% in sepia tones. There is a lot of terrain, hills, and various obstacles to hide behind. Battles are nice and fun and even the lightest mechs can take a beating and still keep fighting. You can certainly turn things around if you zone in or get good positioning and going 1v5 isn't necessarily a bad thing. I once mistakenly left my team to solo 5 guys by myself and it took them around 5 minutes to finally kill me which gave the rest of my team more than enough time to pick off the opposide side's stragglers one by one and give us a decisive victory.
All in all its looking great so far and I have confidence that there will be enough complexity there for hardcore fans. I can't wait for more mechs and improvements to get patched in!
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