Recap of the last week

I haven't been posting a lot lately and not because I've lost interest but because of real life issues that prevented me from writing focused articles(Grad College and all the stressful stuff bundled). I actually started writing two big articles during last week; first is about the mental workload of a mechwarrior(and why it is brutal on starters) and the other one is a Battlemaster review. The first one got delayed because I felt I was drifting away from the points I intended to make and the other one is on hold until I elite my last Battlemaster. You have to understand it takes a lot of time and effort to put out a well thought/entertaining article.

Weapon Modules

Though, I can talk a bit about recent developments, since the developer communication seems to have picked up. The first one is obviously the weapons modules that are set to release on Feb 4th. These modules give small buffs to your weapon attributes with equally small drawbacks. Supposedly there will be many tiers of these modules which have to be unlocked one after another. They will also change the appearance of the said weapon.

I understand PGI wanting to include more GXP sinks, since the modules department is generally lackluster(I'm sitting on a pile of ~100K GXP at this point). It is fine, but leaving the weapon attributes into players' hands without properly balancing the weapons first is very dangerous. You can be sure that as soon as tier 5 modules are released people are going to be walking around in min-maxed builds, further unbalancing the game.

Cockpit Glass

All mechs received cockpit class with the Battlemaster patch released last week. Which honestly is not a feature that makes you "Cool!". Your brain filters it out mostly, but on some maps it really gets on nerves, especially on those with intense lighting(Frozen City, Tourmaline etc.).

user.cfgGate

Another, but rather controversial development is the usage of user.cfg. For those who don't know, you can directly interact with the underlying Cryengine with this file. Innocent usage varies from FOV tweaks to minor fps tweaks. Though, recently, people have figured out how to disable cockpit class and the cockpit itself. Leading to outcries from the community, since your view is greatly enhanced vertically by removing it. There are also more controversial usages like removing objects from the map and disabling the post processing effects which makes mechs stand out from environments.

PGI's response? They allow any modification to the user.cfg, since they don't want to deal with a possible "support nightmare". Meaning the disabled commands crashing the game of users who are using those commands in their user.cfg files. This does not make sense, since anyone "tech savvy" to be using that file should know that it's that file crashing them. I'm also pretty sure 99% percent of the user base doesn't even use that file. They're(PGI) even interested in benefits of disabling the cockpit. Needless to say the competitive community isn't thrilled with this, where every bit of advantage is exploited to no end.

I'd say user.cfg needs to be disabled ASAP before it gets out of hand.

February 4th Patch

The next big thing for MWO is the Feb 4th patch, which will bring the infamous UI 2.0, weapon modules and a new "controversial" hero mech. It's supposedly a humanoid light, many are certain that it's going to be the Firestarter.

What's up on the video/image front? Well, MWO Youtube channel just released a "Quickstart" training video, explaining the very basics to get new players going. I really find it amusing it took them 6 months after the launch to do that.

That's it for now folks. Until next time!
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About Rak

I'm an engineer who likes to write extremely long articles about games that border simulation and mainstream.
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