What Features/Mechanics do you miss...

[Piderman]

...that where present in earlier generations of AC?
For example Weapon Arms, destructible AC parts and so on.

I personally miss the more tactical approach of gen V and how many of its missions were way longer, including spots to call a helicopter for resupply which would cost you money and where usable as much as you wanted.
Also the uber-Weapons from Verdict Day, i really liked that concept.
Other than that Weapon Arms aswell as Parts with unique features. For example, AC 2 had a head part with Bio Scanner that made organic enemies visible on the Radar.

[Leoscar]

I only played AC3 and Last Raven before playing AC6. I definitely miss in terms of building ACs :
-Having shoulder extensions and more utilitarian back mounted options like the one that increased ammo capacity.
-More unique cores, some come with abilities like laser orbiters and have missile countermeasures of varied effevtiveness.
-More meaningful, tactical extensions like mines, rockets or missile counter measures instead of shield 1,2 and 3.
-Having more part slots also means you could choose to not equip stuff to save weight and energy, which, in AC6, is only possible with weapons.
-Another type of part I miss is hover legs, they are just fun to use and the ability to hover over liquids surfaces made a difference in that one map in AC3.

Regarding combat :
-I miss how energy weapons are actually unique in previous games, ammo is free, but firing them depletes your energy and they tend to be more expensive to buy.
-That's kind of related to my next point, I really feel like AC6 is too generous with ammo, the game gives you too much to work with and it's too cheap. I remember how in AC3 finishing missions with a neutral / negative income is a real possibility depending on what the player uses. Choosing a weaker but cheaper weapon to fire is a smart thing to do in the early game when missions don't give a ton of money.

[Seweryn Najemny]

I miss melee weapons not being complete garbage that puts you at more disadvantage than the enemy being hit.

[Blackmage]

I never finished AC5 because I hated how it leaned into online co-op. Unless you had friends who were also interested, it was nearly impossible to play and enjoy. Armored Core had been exclusively a single-player experience with optional PvP up until then. It wasn't a welcome change to a lot of us old players. And expecting to find market success in the already flooded online co-op scene with a niche mecha franchise wasn't the most competent decision on FromSoftware's part.
So I don't miss anything from AC5.

I miss just about everything from the classic games (gen1-3), except for localized damage.
Localized damage is hard to get right. The mechanic is usually either too debilitating or meaningless. Mechwarrior 4 actually got it pretty good though.

Heat: I think it adds more depth than stagger. Stagger is just primal armor, which nobody liked then, and nobody likes it now as stagger. All it serves is to add an unnecessary extra step rather than providing an alternate route to victory, like using flamethrowers to build towards heat damage.

Turning Speed: it's a great way to distinguish light and heavy builds. Heavy builds actually feel heavy with slow turning speeds. You had to adopt a very unique style of play since you couldn't rely on turning your head. Also makes quick-turning options actually meaningful.

EN weapons using your EN bar. Like heat management, it adds actual depth to combat. Waiting for a cooldown feels like baby mode.

Cohesion: Parts in the classic games had more cohesion. You could build a heavy mech with light arms and it'd still look good. Ever since AC4, parts started to be designed with a specific mech blueprint in mind. This means parts can look so different from each other they can make your AC look stupid when you mix them.

Debt: I cannot stress enough how important this mechanic is for establishing a tone and atmosphere. AC6 is basically a rising hero story. It's not even remotely like a mercenary sim, which was one of my favorite things about the classic games.

A key component to debt was progressing the game even when you lost a mission. It has to work in conjunction with debt. it's a great means of making sure a player doesn't get stuck. I absolutely loathe ever feeling stuck in a game. The drawback is you have to take harder missions with less money - and potentially, sub-par gear. A fair trade off, IMO.
It would have been great if AC6 was full ironman mode in this sense.

More niche part variables: ECM, Night Vision, Radar parts, and organic targeting. Having these variables provides greater incentive to changing up your AC prior to each mission - and allowed for a greater mission variety in general.

Shoulder extensions, inside parts, ACTUAL TUNING, hover legs...
Point on the hover legs, you'd sink in water without them. In other words, environmental hazards actually existed the in classic games, unlike AC6.

Seriously, AC6 is even more bare bones than the original game.

[Getsu Fuma]

I miss the Over Boost the most and no the Assault Boost is not the same thing. The reason why I miss it so much is the movement options it gave and the speed it granted to any AC that used it. Sure it was hard to learn to use properly but it was insanely fun once mastered.

[Sabaithal]

Shoulder weapons. Namely flares. Because missiles are a common issue in this game.

[Nine-Ball]

The locked camera. Makes you feel more like a pilot.

[hollow]

wall jumps from 5th gen.

[Kinshorin]

The lock box (not the reticle from ACV and Verdict Day), customizable HUD (even just the colors), turning speed (to an extent), and part tuning.

[Zany Fish]

Turning speed on legs. -already covered in prior responses.

Energy weapons didn't have charge attacks. If you wanted more power or a different attack behavior you ran a different part that had it. Attack behavior variability is one of the reasons the laser weapons are abused in PvP, aside from how hit detection works. If missile rats were solved, it would be the next thing to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about.

If you wanted to fire a missile barrage, you needed to wait for all missiles to individually lock-on. There were exceptions, but it helped for ammo costs to be able to single fire one missile at a time.

FCS controlled the maximum missile lock count, which allowed the player to turn a 12 lock missile launcher with higher ammo into a long duration launcher by equipping an FCS to reduce the launch count as to not waste too much ammo to down an enemy. It makes a difference in missions.

VS MG (anti-missile system) was a great core feature. I miss it. Gave some cores a reason to be picked when otherwise there may not have been and was fair because it didn't guarantee protection form missiles.

Hangers used to hold extra weapons inside the core without sacrificing back slots. OST weapon jettisoning would be required as a default -FYI, the jettison feature was default accessible in older titles when it was implemented back in 3rd Gen. It didn't make much sense because of how big ACs are and where the pilot is supposed to be, but you'll see in DxM that Tsukuda invented a solution to the gap which was Pylons off the back for any gun you want to carry to be held.

Extension and Inside parts added variety -sometimes also aesthetics in the case of extensions.

MT variety was wider.

Legit hover only legs. They set the game apart from others IMO.

Weapon arms. There is an AC in Project Phantasma's intro that has two different weapon arms. DxM made it possible to actually have something similar, but it never existed in AC that one could mix and match weapon arms. Now that AC has full analog stick controls, having two different weapon arms could work. The point to weapon arms is aesthetics. Sometimes weapon arms had unique attack behaviors or qualities over running a gun on the arms. What would be sacrificed is secondary firing modes on the solid firing weapons and possibly melee punching once ammo is depleted. Weapon arms are the only energy weapons where I'd personally consider agreeing with the implementation of charged mode to replace 2ndary firing modes.

[vk^4@]

The very simple round/square MINI Radar in the corner.

[Lannach]

Unless it was poorly balanced like overheating in Nexus... Literally everything (but stagger system, f*** this s***).
If you look at the lore, every generations talked about human+/augmented human etc... So i would say the more mechanics we have to deal with, the more options we have, the more issues we have to solve and the more operations we have to process while fighting the more skill ceiling will show the better AC franchise becomes.
To pilot such warmachines isn't supposed to be cakewalk and to build a proficient one of those should be much harder.

[ROAD TO VALHALLA]

I miss guns actually being guns, not the airsoft drives with hillariously low firing speed, impact and effective distance we have in AC6

[Kain]

Debt
True Human Plus
Heat

[GB EX]

Originally posted by Kain:

True Human Plus

What is "True Human Plus"?

[Zany Fish]

Originally posted by GB EX:

Originally posted by Kain:

True Human Plus

What is "True Human Plus"?

I can only assume that they mean how at -50,000 in debt you were forced into augmentation against your will. There was never any mention that going into debt would trigger the Human Plus enhancements being forced upon your player -or it simply never made it through translation.

You gained only 1 ability each time you hit the debt thresh-hold, were reset to 0 credits, and your game progress reset but you'd keep all your parts (kind of a rougelite way of doing things)

+ Default radar that provided a basic radar if running a head unit that lacked radar
+ Cannons without kneeling and mi-air with any leg set
+ Improved generator output
+ Improved cooling (AC2 and AC2:AA Only)
+ Wave blade attack with any laser blade (became a default function in NX/NB/LR)
+ Improved missile interception capabilities (effected VS MG equipped cores)
+ booster usage drain halved

When you beat the game you'd be additionally permitted to overweight your AC build(s) without speed penalties for being over the weight limit.


You'll notice how many of the abilities wouldn't even fit in AC6 due to the reworking of mechanics. Human Plus got removed as of 3rd Gen and mainly because of the feedback from the PvP player-base (feedback that was mainly collected at the LAN tournaments in Japan during the PS2 era).