Why is Mechwarrior 5 " badly received " by series veterans?

[Matt [Reckless Boi]]

I'm relatively new to mechwarrior and battletech in general. Only mech game inspired by the series that I ever played was Mechassault 2. Game seems nice, but the AI is utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I give you that. I would like to know why the game is so despised by veterans of the series, and if you don't mind do you know where I can buy mechwarrior 3 and 4?

[Solon]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von owen8964:

A lot of the moaning is because of the Company that made the game and how they over-promised and under-delivered. The game was very basic when released, too. Not remotely optimised. It worked, and that's about all you can say for it. It has improved a lot since then :)

Sums it up nicely.

[Midas]

Probably because the maps are mediocre. Honestly most of the game is okay, but the missions are boring and repetitive, and most of it is because of the incredibly bland multiplayer-style maps that offer no narrative or 'journey' to make them interesting or stand out.

I remember I randomly got a VonBiomes map one time that basically was all forests and valleys, and the structure of the map essentially forced the game into a slow treacherous hunt through dense woodlands and cramped valleys, and it was easily the most interesting mission I ever played in MW5. The objectives weren't anything fancy (I honestly don't even remember what it was), but the route I had to take through the map and the conditions I had to fight in made it memorable and interesting, closer to the hand-map maps of older games.

If they'd just crafted the maps a bit better to be less just a bland open space with obvious randomized 'cells' containing a random object/structure of some kind, that alone would have made the game so much more engaging to people used to the older mechwarrior games.

People wanted a mechwarrior campaign, and what we got was basically multiplayer skirmishes with single-player objectives and a rudimentary campaign progression system.

[drlsword]

A torso twist button, hard to explain it but it was in all games before mechwarrior online. It is hard to control the mech for me, no problem in other games, other games can play on hard no problem, wish this game had a easy mode. The sound, feel, joy and fun are missing. I am playing a game but not the fun or personality of the other games. The look, still prefer the look of mech 4 mercs. M4 fun, m3 story, m2 atmosphere, m5 feels souless. Just a game, hard to explain like with the torso twist button. M online 1st game in battletech franchise I hated. This is ok, but I still wish it played, sounded like and felt like 4. Give me my torso twist button left or right or game difficulty mode damn it.

[Empukris]

Very basic mission type compared to mech 4. Not balanced difficulty, some mission is too easy and others are just nuts especially early pre patch raid mission if you bring a few assault get prepared to sacrifice 1 or 2. Very badly received mech customisation option, there is barely anything to customised.
Basically the developer need to bother too much with optimisation as it is cross platform and open for bigger audience. For example they can easily make the customisation closer to MWO but they decide not too and leave it to modding community instead as it will be overwhleming to casual player. They can make warzone far more crazy but they limit the spawn to 5-6 max each wave. They can make you deploy 8 mechs but that will drop the fps of many console version. It is what it is. They can probably do more things if it is pc only but in 2023 it will not print enough numbers.

[Psylent]

I don't despise it.. but there is definitely too much mech-manager play and not enough mech-warrior play.

[-=EDF=- Kouta Seto]

"Why is Mechwarrior 5 " badly received " by series veterans?"

No Claner war, thats why. Most mechs missing that where AROUND in that timeperiod the game play's mainly(Yes, Variants ARE mechs! Like for example IJN's Post Fubuki DD's where basicaly all JUST AN FUBUKI with modern features on them! The base design stayed the same!), stupid implementation of SWORDS FFS! They dont belong into Battletech universe. Shure the Hatchetman was funny having an axe on its hand but that was ONLY COSMETICAL! And not ALL of them had it!

Mods did improve that, then the DLC hit and BROKE the game for not just some but MANY people, even after mods where updated it STILL crashes constantly.

Also their Beloved MWO is still around and features to fast gameplay for what mechs truly are, soooo series veterans is the wrong term. Rather "not able to adopt to the new stuff people"

[Riptor]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Cyrix:

There's a reason why we haven't seen many campaign-driven first-person mech games in the last 20 years.

The mech simulator genre is a niche genre. The genre had a golden age in the 90s and early 2000s, when it was perhaps more mainstream, and development costs were much lower. Since then, we've seen enormous advances in real-time graphics, which means a massive increase in costs in the art pipeline.

Make a good game and the people will come..

Fault lies with the risk averse and trend chasing big publishers of the western market... and the track record shows that these industry giants are blind idiot gods:

The big publishers all wanted their MMOs after World of warcrafts success.. they all failed miserably even thought it was mainstream

Then everyone made MOBAS... only to realize that LoL had allready cornered the market and there wasnt anything left... even thought it was mainstream

Then everyone wanted to do battle royales... most failed miserably once Fortnight took the crown... even thought it was mainstream

Then everyone wanted hero shooter due to overwatch... to the point that EA tried to turn battlefield into one and we all know how that song and dance ended... also once more: it was mainstream

Then everyone wanted Live service games.... and they are failing miserably... and they to are mainstream...

Then there was the issue of No one wanting to make single player experiences anymore because singleplayer games are over... only for Eldenring to kick in the door and taking names!

Fact is that the big western publishers really have no friggin clue what people want, and its easy to say "game Type X wont sell because its niche" when no body is doing a good game of type X.

What have we gotten for mech games in the last 20 years? MWO? PGIs absolutely blundered that project.. Hawken? Was given up by its Devs only half a year to a year after initial release cause they couldnt figure out balancing... Titanfall 1 and 2? A franchise that suffered from EA shooting it in the leg themselves before it could get off the ground?

Meanwhile we have "niche" titles like Star citizen getting stupid amounts of money just on promises and Elden Ring taking everyone to school and taking their lunch money despite the souls series being notoriously niche itselfe in todays gaming climate...

"Genre X is niche so it wont sell" is nonsense. All it takes is an actual GOOD and high quality game and people will buy it.

But if all you get is half assed, lazy, minimal viable products as quick cash grabs.. ofcourse it wont sell... thats a self fullfilling prophecy if i ever saw one...

[Riptor]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von -=EDF=- Kouta Seto:

"Why is Mechwarrior 5 " badly received " by series veterans?"

No Claner war, thats why. Most mechs missing that where AROUND in that timeperiod the game play's mainly(Yes, Variants ARE mechs! Like for example IJN's Post Fubuki DD's where basicaly all JUST AN FUBUKI with modern features on them! The base design stayed the same!), stupid implementation of SWORDS FFS! They dont belong into Battletech universe. Shure the Hatchetman was funny having an axe on its hand but that was ONLY COSMETICAL! And not ALL of them had it!

Mods did improve that, then the DLC hit and BROKE the game for not just some but MANY people, even after mods where updated it STILL crashes constantly.

Also their Beloved MWO is still around and features to fast gameplay for what mechs truly are, soooo series veterans is the wrong term. Rather "not able to adopt to the new stuff people"

Im sorry but what are you talking about with melee weapons dont belonging and being mostly cosmetic? Melee combat and melee weapons are a core feature of the battletech game and universe.

The hatchetmans axe was NOT cosmetical. Infact there are dozens of mechs that have melee weapons, the Draconis combine even has them with mech sized katanas! Solaris mechs have a whole range of specialized melee weapons, TSM (Tripple strength myomer) turns even the weepiest light mech into a melee monster... the jade falcon clan even developed mechs with talons... the ghost bears had their totem mechs equipped with claws! And Clans think melee combat is "shamefur dispray!"

Mechs can kick, punch, ram, jump on and shove other mechs. They can even pick up trees or severed limbs and use them as bludgeons! All that has allways been part of the battletech universe and lore from the getgo...


As for MWO being the better of the two:

MWO is an absolute disater of an arena shooter where most chassis are garbage that no one ever uses simply because of weapon hardpoint layout and everyone is simply chasing the latest meta to insta gib the enemy. MWO has nothing to do with mechwarrior or battletech and should hardly ever be used as an example of what a mechgame should be like.

They should have made MWO non customizable and MW5 fully customizable.. atleast that way the online arena shooter would have some semblance of balance...

[Floombolio]

The writing is atrocious and they dumped an entire build of the game and lost all their progress just to use unreal only for them to likely have already lost the money they got from it. This means the current game isnt as fleshed out as if the original game would have been. From the trailers where the original engine was used they already were at this games progress in terms of mission layout on base game release, 2-3 years before it was released. Also the A.I. is somehow less reliable than mechwarrior 3's. Also you can be a mercenary for the draconis combine without consequence (they will eventually murder your mercenary company). Also they lied repeatedly about features they were going to add into the base game only to memory hole them out of laziness or add it to a dlc in community streams.

The games fun its just not as fun or immersive in terms of story compared to the previous titles. Something you would think is mandatory for games centered around a universe with several books of lore.

[Seva]

Because they live 200 years in the past i am just happy we have DLC content being released.

[Bovril Brigadier]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Riptor:

As for MWO being the better of the two:

MWO is an absolute disater of an arena shooter where most chassis are garbage that no one ever uses simply because of weapon hardpoint layout and everyone is simply chasing the latest meta to insta gib the enemy. MWO has nothing to do with mechwarrior or battletech and should hardly ever be used as an example of what a mechgame should be like.

They should have made MWO non customizable and MW5 fully customizable.. atleast that way the online arena shooter would have some semblance of balance...

Oh hey someone else who can actually get why MWO is flawed and why it's a fundamentally badly designed game.

[Caruwr Eirin Gwlanus]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Riptor:

Well, where do i begin?

At the base game perhaps

TL:DR version:

When the game released it was a utter disaster. The story? Garbage. The AI? Garbage. The spawn system? Insultingly garbage. The missions? Garbage.

Now let me go into detail:

The story of the base game is insultingly clichee. Your daddy (who ofcourse has a mysterious past shrouded in darkness) gets killed during the tutorial by an unknown force and now youre out for revenge! But first your mercenary unit needs a new name... not a new emblem.. we are keeping the old one, cause that makes sense if you dont want to be found by your enemy. Then you treck across the inner sphere doing oddjobs and random gen missions till you grind up enough Rep to unlock the next story mission. All the while the story gets told by the same 2 NPCs on your dropship you can interact with, and with badly done voiceovers during missions wich SURPRISE: you mostly have to ignore cause the enemy sure as hell doesnt stop firing at you while the voiceovers play.. so good luck actually catching most of what is being said while youre hammered by missles, autocannon fire and laserbeams...

The AI:

The AI in the base game was utterly pathetic. They would march through buildings you are suposed to protect, they would repeatedly shoot each other and you in the back. Wich if they hit you wasnt much an issue.. they couldnt damage you.. but they could damage each other! Resulting in your own lancemates killing each other or heavily damaging each others mechs on the regular! Funnily enough though when fighting the enemy they where utterly incompetent. They couldnt even take on damaged enemies in a decent fashion if you told them to gang up on an them 3 vs 1. And issue that plagued the game up till the latest DLC! 4 YEARS after release and they still had to fix the allied AI! The player would usually end the mission with having a damage done score that was 5 to 6 times higher then any of his AI lancemates.

The enemy spawning system:

An absolute catastrophe. Enemy reinforcements regularly spawned either directly infront, or even worse, directly behind you! You cleared the canyon leading to the enemy base of hostiles? Well magically teleporting demolisher tank just ripped your backtorso up with a salvo of those double AC20s, apearing directly behind you from the direction of the canyon you just had cleared... oh and dont forget that your OWN leopard dropship would bring in enemy reinforcements (they used the player dropships model, including the units emblem, for pirate and independant forces XD) That made tactical aproaches completly pointless since the enemy could pop up out of the ground from any direction and at any distance... wich bogged the missions down to a glorified round of whackamole... only that the moles had guns... and could teleport

It was so bad that a "better enemy spawn mod" was one of the first mods ever released for the game, and PGI only semi fixed the issue with the release of the kestrel lancer DLC! Allmost 2 years after release! (notice a trend here?)

The mission types:

The random gen missions where uninspired drivel. But that is to be expected from a random gen system.. i didnt expect anything else.. its filler and busywork to grind out that sweet sweet marauder mech you want but couldnt get during a story mission. I get that... but instead of giving us unique and engaging handcrafted campaign missions... most of the story missions are clearly made using the same random map generator, given some additional voice overs, and then shoved out of the door to pad the story out (a tactic they even used in the kestrel lancer DLC). And they never go beyond "destroy all enemies/enemy structures" or "protect X for Y waves of enemies"

Mechwarrior 2 mercenaries had more engaging story missions....

Thing is the tutorial levels that are suposed to teach you the game tought you some interesting stuff: Repair bays (wich where completly absent from the base game kept for the tutorial and the final mission), ECM jammers that screwed with your HUD, Collecting Salvage boxes (later added in heroes of the inner sphere DLC... yeah you had to pay for a feature that was allready in the base game... charming), in one tutorial mission you even got to interact with turret generators to power up turrets in order to help you defend a position....

All of this was missing from the rest of the game. (And in case of the turret generators... missing even today)

And finaly the presentation:

The base game had NO lore to be found anywhere... that was all added later. Again: Mechwarrior mercenaries 2 did a better job at conveying to you what was going on in the inner sphere.. or hell even inbetween story missions! They spent so much time creating the interior of the leopard dropship... and put an entire TWO NPCs in it that you could interact with... but only before or after storymissions.. oh and you had a table that would talk to you sometimes if a third person was calling in from across the universe... did i mention that the voice acting was absolute amateur hour? That could ofcourse be forgiven if the rest of the game was quality work... but see above entries.

All in all the base game just reeked of uninspired, lazy "minimal viable product" (if you dont remember that quote i guess you live on an island :P) from PGI...

And the DLCs didnt change much over the years, all bearing the same hallmark of mini addons being sold at bethesda level DLC prices. You cant tell me that the kestrel lancer or the melee weapon DLC is worth the same amount as Nuka world or Dark harbor...

Im not even going to go into the scummy way PGI implemented their Epic game store exclusive after promising people steam keys during pre orders since that is a business decision and had little to do with the quality of the game itselfe.. but needless to say it left a sour taste in alot of peoples mouths.

So there you have it: The reasons why Mechwarrior 5 was so "badly" received by most of those that can still remember the glory days of mechwarrior games. Its a loveless, lazy, uninspired minimal viable product.. and as such it was received.

Its not that the game is completly without merits.. blowing stuff up in a 100 ton atlas never gets old.. but the rest of the game was just disapointing.

Without the hard work of modders MW5 would have quickly disapeared into the shovelware bin of gaming history. The modding scene really saved MW5s bacon.

That was both a lovely read, and one which made the face turn from neutral to disappointment. All I can go off is my experience with Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries, which was a VERY good one. However, I got into Mechwarrior 5 very late, about four years late, with a sale, so I didn't have to put up with the majority of issues that you went into such wonderful detail about.

I will agree though, that the friendly AI has always been appalling from day one. I put a full on rant about that sh*te in my review of it. And the campaign is ok, mainly because the gameplay is fun. But it's definitely stuff of cliche.
But sort of paraphrasing what you said, you can overlook a bit of cheese if the gameplay is engaging and tidy like, and for the most part, it is.

But compare it to Mechwarrior 4, and I don't mean the bloody graphics, - when are people gonna take a step back and realise it's not all about the looks FFS - I mean, everything else, and Mechwarrior 4 trumps it EVERY SINGLE time.

I had a bit of a rant recently about the mods being broken by the new patch, but now I feel like it was just rather dumb of me, considering how Piranha Games are indeed still supporting a game that's about half a decade old. Many game developers and publishers neglect their games after a couple of years nowadays, especially if they have the amount of issues that you described previously, so kudos to them.

I'm learning how to get to grips with the mod adjuster / loader tool, because without all of the truly wonderful mods that I've been playing with the last couple of months, I genuinely don't want to go back to playing the unmodded version anymore. It's rather bland without the mods. As with many other games, the mods do indeed keep a game alive and make it so much better like...

[themovingfinger]

hmmm. full disclosure -- I've been rolling dice and wrecking mechs since before the Unseen 13 were common threads in USENET gaming forums. for most of the 90s and 2000s, my collegues and I had campaigns that lasted years in real time, and spanned every aspect of the BT universe, on elaborately laid out hexmaps with cheesy terrain and buildings.
The computerized versions are, for a vet like me, a poor substitute for a hexmap, some friends, a shoebox full of miniatures and a bag of dice.

But with that said, the studios are pushing in the right direction. The two current incarnations of the franchise, Piranha's shooter and Pardadox Interactive's turn-based-tactics game have their high and low points, but they are both inadequate substitutions for what will always be a better game on the tabletop. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread neither offers the 3060 Clan Invasion/Word of Blake campaigns unless you want to arm wrestle with a bunch of kludged mods that break with every patch update. Not my idea of a fun time when I want to just wreck some mechs. The shooter doesn't even have DFA, and the turn based game introduced a bunch of very un-Battletech like variants to canonical mechs, along with some decidedly non-canonical mech loadouts. Nobody who has played the tabletop game is going to like games that take that kind of liberty with canon.

But -- like Star Trek fans -- we will take what we can get, and hope that the next iteration will be a little closer to what attracted us to the game in the first place.

[[CULT] Siren]

IDk why.

iv played just about every mechwarrior game you can get your hands on. ofc over time a lot of the older ones i cant play now cause i dont have the knowledge to get them working on windows 11

but i very much enjoy this game. even though it has its flaws from the more popular ones like 4 i think this game is pretty solid

[Flower Power]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Bort:

Sadly, I'm old enough to count as a series veteran. My biggest disappointment is that the game has regressed since 2002.

In MW4, you could command two lances with four mechs each. You could customize their formation patterns (put them in front of you if you were in a more fragile mech...

Hi, I played MW4 Vengeance and MW4 Merc and this feature wasn't there. There was additional Lance in MW4 Mecrc so totally 8 mech on battlefield on your side, but only 4 mechs in Vengeance. And formations? Really no. There was only order "form on me" to following you but no special tactics, formations etc. AI was worst, they were slower in faster mechs, they stuck in cities and they killed own convoy very often (especially in MW4 Black Knight during convoy escort after ambush).