:( I tried. But hey, I'm not the only one you all should hate!

[The Sweetie Man]

I played mechwarrior 4 with all the mektek stuff and it was very fun with the mechlab and variety.  The only problem is, as a neutral player I noticed that there was an abundance, perhaps even the majority of players in any populated server I played in used long ranged weaponry/missiles to get kills.  Always had a lot of mechs standing behind something usually with jump jets to peek out fire something and repeat. It's obviously a great way to minimize damage to yourself and reach out and touch the enemy but is that how it is in the battletech universe?  I don't expect the people to play like they are from that universe but it just seems like it would be more fun if there were only 1 or 2 artillery mechs to back up the mid/close ranged ones instead of mostly artillery.  Turns into trench warfare a la mech.  I haven't read any books so I honestly don't know how battles usually are.  Just hope this doesn't happen to this game, but as they improve upon the non mech vehicles maybe they can find ways to balance things out.

[Crash_411]

I played mechwarrior 4 with all the mektek stuff and it was very fun with the mechlab and variety.  The only problem is, as a neutral player I noticed that there was an abundance, perhaps even the majority of players in any populated server I played in used long ranged weaponry/missiles to get kills.  Always had a lot of mechs standing behind something usually with jump jets to peek out fire something and repeat. It's obviously a great way to minimize damage to yourself and reach out and touch the enemy but is that how it is in the battletech universe?  I don't expect the people to play like they are from that universe but it just seems like it would be more fun if there were only 1 or 2 artillery mechs to back up the mid/close ranged ones instead of mostly artillery.  Turns into trench warfare a la mech.  I haven't read any books so I honestly don't know how battles usually are.  Just hope this doesn't happen to this game, but as they improve upon the non mech vehicles maybe they can find ways to balance things out.

Most battles that have anything to do with landforces usually are "trench warfare". its just the nature of the beast.

[=Outlaw=]

You've "seen" it? What the hell does that mean? Did you even play in HC? Because HC was designed to completely counter what the Nova Cat "represented".

Yes, I've played HC. But even if you can no longer build a laser boat in HC, you can build viable PPC/Gauss sniping mechs that take it's place. And then, it's monotone trench warfare all over again. That is the core of MW4. That's not what I prefer. Still, I've had good times with that game, it isn't boring every time, I wouldn't call it awful at all, but it does have faults.

PPC/Gauss boats were ok in HC, but since you have played HC you would know that it was actually UAC rushing that were all the rage....which is goes back to Barbaric Soul's original point. The game was constantly changing as far as how the game was played thx in large part to the mechlab. For instance, there was a period of time that the dominant tactic was taking 4 infighters and 4 snipers and coordinating a rush while the snipers cherry picked. But that got supplanted by players who built super fast snipers that could always maintain range and could strike at you at their choosing. Keep in mind I played exclusively in a NR FFP environment. I have no idea how it was in respawn thrid person servers.

[Uranium - 235]

You've "seen" it? What the hell does that mean? Did you even play in HC? Because HC was designed to completely counter what the Nova Cat "represented".

Yes, I've played HC. But even if you can no longer build a laser boat in HC, you can build viable PPC/Gauss sniping mechs that take it's place. And then, it's monotone trench warfare all over again. That is the core of MW4. That's not what I prefer. Still, I've had good times with that game, it isn't boring every time, I wouldn't call it awful at all, but it does have faults.

PPC/Gauss boats were ok in HC, but since you have played HC you would know that it was actually UAC rushing that were all the rage....which is goes back to Barbaric Soul's original point. The game was constantly changing as far as how the game was played thx in large part to the mechlab. For instance, there was a period of time that the dominant tactic was taking 4 infighters and 4 snipers and coordinating a rush while the snipers cherry picked. But that got supplanted by players who built super fast snipers that could always maintain range and could strike at you at their choosing. Keep in mind I played exclusively in a NR FFP environment. I have no idea how it was in respawn thrid person servers.

"Flavour of the month" gameplay and balancing isn't really a 'good' thing, you know. That behavior is precisely the kind of min-maxing forced tactics I was talking about.

[Skydance]

The "mechlab" didn't work in P&P either. Actually it was far, far worse with min-maxing, and just resulted in jumping pulse boats with targetting computers.

I don't really get why FASA has bothered to include the mechlab in the original release of MW4. They should have just put a 6ERL Nova Cat in there as the only mech and be done with it. I doubt many would notice.

Real players take 7.

[Salvatoris]

I don't see why everyone is scared of the mechlab either. Even if they do screw it up because for some reason they decide to stop doing things right then I'm sure pre-set varient servers will pop up and then we can just go back to how it is now. It seems like your friend is trying not to like it, considering one thing made him write off a free game like you said.

I have to admit that I don't look forward to the mechlab either.  I don't know how it can lead to anything other than limiting the number of weapons people actually use down to three or four... like every single Mechwarrior game since Mechwarrior 2.  That is just the way it works.  I hope there will be an option for stock mechs only, and I hope people will run servers set to it.

[=Outlaw=]

You've "seen" it? What the hell does that mean? Did you even play in HC? Because HC was designed to completely counter what the Nova Cat "represented".

Yes, I've played HC. But even if you can no longer build a laser boat in HC, you can build viable PPC/Gauss sniping mechs that take it's place. And then, it's monotone trench warfare all over again. That is the core of MW4. That's not what I prefer. Still, I've had good times with that game, it isn't boring every time, I wouldn't call it awful at all, but it does have faults.

PPC/Gauss boats were ok in HC, but since you have played HC you would know that it was actually UAC rushing that were all the rage....which is goes back to Barbaric Soul's original point. The game was constantly changing as far as how the game was played thx in large part to the mechlab. For instance, there was a period of time that the dominant tactic was taking 4 infighters and 4 snipers and coordinating a rush while the snipers cherry picked. But that got supplanted by players who built super fast snipers that could always maintain range and could strike at you at their choosing. Keep in mind I played exclusively in a NR FFP environment. I have no idea how it was in respawn thrid person servers.

"Flavour of the month" gameplay and balancing isn't really a 'good' thing, you know. That behavior is precisely the kind of min-maxing forced tactics I was talking about.

Both these tactics lasted each for much longer than a month...closer to a year ...the latter more. Though I don't see a problem with dynamic, evolving tactics. Maybe you could explain what you mean better and not resort to simply labeling it with knee jerk meme phrases

[Mekabuser=12thVR=]

Truth be told, there are people who are gonna take 6erl , be on a team with 5 more players than the other, and spawn rape , AND THINK THATS TEH BEST!!!
unfortunately , thats the mentality of 20% of the people who play.
secondly, if crysis had a better net code, native JS, and SOUND, we would ALL be jerkin ourselves with what the DEVS came up with . think about it.
look how many people just roll with that partisan all the time. Looks kinda like a nova cat to me without the vulnerable arms.
or vtol pilots who hover atop the sky. <sry , i dont have the ten hours to invest in learning how to fly those things yet>, not complaining, just sayin, have almost nothing to counter them, except vehicles, or other aero.
I bring them up because I for one am exploring the variants, and LOVING the fact that i am being forced to use weapons and loadouts I would NEVER use given my own devices. So already there are TONS of options for mechs, with the mechlab, its endless. Thats not a bad thing.
Sound issues are becoming a major . It really blows not hearing missle warnings, not hearing you are being fired upon and hearing the ambient noise. I know its so much damn work , but if anything over 10 % of the sounds generated are ambient, It would be great to have an option to turn them off.

[Manfromx]

Actually if it was truly min/maxing there would only be one answer to every problem. For every problem it would most likely be the same answer.

There is a difference between outfitting the best mech you can to counter an enemies most likely strategy and having only one or two mechs and variant applicable to most situations.

If everyone was only running around in 2 different mechs and they all had the same variant I'd be on your side with this one.

I do think a lot of the mechwarrior 4 stuff though was people just following the group. Hey this tactic works well, let's all use this. Everyone does that until someone else finds a weakness.
That sounds a lot like war to me.

Plus if 3/4 of your team is using one strategy it makes it hard for anyone else to break away and do something different. You'll most likely just get blasted if you decide to sneak around and hit them from behind if you're the only one going. Though you may cause enough mayhem for your team to win. Sacrifice is way overpowered sometimes .