Done with Mech Arena, too. Here is why.

I do find the AI to be overpowered from time to time. Usually, when I get the ones that one shot you, I take a break for a few minutes. Then the AI seem to chill out a bit more.

-Strategic play: It's actually more important than anything. The only time anyone actually faces death squad AI at an unreasonable level advantage is by constantly improving strategic play. The AI I face are usually 5-7 levels above me(which includes a rank up) and I'll only see ridiculously leveled bots if I've won 9/10 matches for more than a day. Part of strategy is counterplay and knowing what is likely to happen at any given moment on any given map. If you refuse to adjust to actually counterplay what's happening, it's only going to lead to bad times, AI or not. No strategy ever works 100% of the time, knowing how the execution of a strategy flows into a change of plans is the key to actually keeping advantage on the battlefield.

-AI: Yes, they can be a problem, but only because they actually play smart. The AI with a squad of death bots made specifically to kill human players is the exception, not the rule. Even squadding with forumites well below the enemy AI team, we've done well. Hell Deadeye topped two MVP slots in our last battle together, and ALL of the enemy AI had 1000 power on him, and were playing for keeps(as I saw through fighting 1v2 trying to re-take a home beacon)

-Tournament: I made a farming guide man. My 500 power alt account has gotten 700 premium currency this week, and my main(rank 3) account has gotten the same using that guide. If you're breaking your balls grinding, you're pushing too hard in the wrong places. The path I laid out for rank 1-2 hangars has seen ~both~ of my accounts top every bracket I actually played in this week, without even using all of my free tickets.

I spelled out every possible way I could to avoid hitting the walls I faced and had to adapt to when I came into this game blind. Is building blueprints really any worse than having to wait 2 days for a single weapon, on a bot carrying 4 weapons, to finish upgrading?

I literally made a F2P account after posting all of the guides I had in mind to verify that they work.
After 4 days it's:
Killshot(Rank 2): 2x RPG4(Rank 2)
Panther(Rank 2): 2x Plasma Cannon 6(rank 2)
Juggernaut(Rank 2): 2x Plasma Cannon 4(rank 2)
With about 700 premium currency remaining in the bank(though I'll probably rank up Lancer tomorrow for giggles), and no Blueprints to spare.

It's a free to play game. The only way to skip to the end is to dole out dough. To get to the end without said money means putting in the grind to get good, and the time to get there.

Like veteran players say about Warframe, which is the best F2P PC MMO I've come across by a longshot, if the grind of the game isn't fun, then the game simply isn't for you. The gameplay that leads to the endgame is where fun is to be found. The experience of the game is where the fun is to be found. If you're not cool with that, then it's just not a game for you, no harm, no foul ??

Are you a Plarion representative? Just wondering. Whenever somebody says he doesn't like something, you jump in and praise the game as if it was the second coming. Your input is certainly valuable, but you also might as well accept that someone has issues with the game.

I think I wrote in very much detail what I dislike about the game. Posted in the official discord, too. The devs can take it or leave it. But don't tell me what I have to like or dislike. I'll determine this for myself, thank you very much.



Completely, utterly wrong. BTW, if you had read my post, you would know that I simply don't have the option to buy something as the game is not released in my playstore yet.

What you're parroting is the arguments of the game developers, squeezing out ludicrous amounts of money out of players that typically can't afford it. I can play games like Auto Chess without grinding, where purchases are purely cosmetic and won't affect playing strength.
See, the original War Robots was almost perfect: With hangar based matchmaking, players could stay with a hangar forever if they wanted, and play balanced games. Players still spent money and made the game profitable, simply because they liked it.

Those "f2p" games you mention make the games worse than they could be, always putting in arbitrary barriers where players have to grind for an eternity, with the nudge that players can shell out money to make up for the difference. Sure, it's a business model, it appears to be profitable, but unless you're a whale you'll never have the best experience. And I will choose to stay away from these games.

There is a fine line between progressing in a game and having to put in an unreasonable amount of grinding. Good games see a player progress as he plays. You can play, and you'll progress organically. With that, the difficulty will grow while you have access to a wider range of stuff.
Bad games ask players to play 800 games to acquire the resources to max out a single robot or weapon, or in case of Star Wars Battlefront, 40 hours gameplay to unlock single hero that would be expected to be included in the game bought.
Mech Arena is not a good game by these standards. Playing for months to unlock a single weapon or mech isn't growing organically. Perhaps it's not as greedy as other games, granted. But don't tell anyone there has to be grinding.

frunobulax
Nope, not a representative of anything but myself. I'm getting a lot of fun out of the game, and others here have seen the watered down versions of what I'm actually playing against on the regular, so I'm sure anyone that's squadded with me, or against me, would be able to have a word or two about that.

I made a bunch of mistakes when I first started, and went for everything as fast as possible. Started a brand new account in this past week and got to where I spent my first three weeks playing the game in four days. Just four days. That's why I took the time to actually write all of this stuff out for everyone else.

You may not know or remember me, but I was once this passionate and vehement about War Robots, and made quite the few guides and breakdowns HERE Pre-Dash bot era.

It's not as bad as you're making it out to be, and I've put a lot of effort into spelling out how to make it easier for everyone here, when I could have just laughed off my good memories of the Walking War Robots WIKI clan and kept on keeping on with my life.

It's not straightforward, no, nothing is. That was the whole point of me coming here and writing all of what I did. There's only 12 bots in the game, and a handful of weapons that are each highly specialized and balanced against each other. Is it perfect? No, nothing ever is, nor will it ever be. That's just life.

If you want a game that's a-la-carte, never changes, and every item is easily obtainable after a week or so, Dark Souls 3 is still populated on PC, Counterstrike is still live, Team fortress 2 is still live, Unreal Tournament and Quake have communities to compete in, and there's always the repetitive yearly COD to jump into.

The grinding in MA isn't unreasonable if you do it right. Hell, it's not too far from Y1 Walking War Robots except instead of grinding for days to wait for days, or just using the same 2 year old meta to beat up on newbies, you actually earn your upgrades to get them right away.
The only reason Y1-2 War Robots was glorious was because Gepards and Rogs could be used to steamroll everyone and everything until the resources were built up to get to max, or near max, and then continue to steamroll weaker players.
I don't play games like this to shoot fish in a barrel. If I wanted that I'd go back to playing Destiny 2, with it's melon head hitboxes and a meta so stale, that the devs have to neuter the old items with a power delta, just to sell them back with a higher power delta, just to keep the game "changing".
To each their own man.

This is a run squading this morning, just wish had an option to get Tricky48 on our side, gg Tricky

i go through my recommended friends and add anyone that is over 250K damage, your list grows fast. when you squad with these guys you might only use one or two bots, so pick your best ones and run with it.

Redfiend I have to say your guides have been invaluable in helping me navigate the economy and upgrades for this game. I think you're saving a lot of people a lot of money and really helping out f2p folks as well. Been playing for less than a week and am pretty happy with my current hangar and how it's set to evolve thanks to your guides. Also getting the hang of tournaments and finally got the top slot yesterday. I hadn't realized they keep offering free Steel Crates in the Store with 2 tickets each, without which it's pretty hard to snag the top rank (didn't actually notice that til after the heat ended, lol). I did the 100 A-Coins for 20 tickets deal to put myself over yesterday, but that's a very worthwhile trade since you net more A-Coins for first anyway (and I only used 3 of them so I have the rest now in reserve).

Related to the tournament issues you're having frunobulax, I am actually wondering if it might be better to take a strong position out of the gate rather than wait til the end to try and one up your top competitor. Combine the free tickets hoarded over the 2 days of the demote/promote tournament strategy with some golden tickets, then really leap ahead of everyone with a few extra games and make them think "why bother?" and save their tickets for another heat. I too have noticed that the matches get harder as you get closer to the deadline, and playing earlier nets you more points per match. So even though you're deliberately playing some extra matches and burning some A-Coins it could be that this would end up being the most economically-efficient strategy overall. It's speculative though, I have only been playing a week so I still have to test this out. And it would take a lot of rounds to see how often competitors give up on the chase, but playing mornings might not be such a bad thing, idk...

I missed the part about the shop earlier. Thought it was all RM offers and hadn't really looked through it in-game.

What's "If you're at the midway point of a hangar milestone" mean exactly, in a quantified sense? Like your bots are L4, halfway between ranks or

Also, unrelatedly, do keys carry over from one Loot Rush to the next. I saw you said there is a one week off period between rushes and it looks like I'll have some keys leftover from this one. Wondering what happens to them (and if it is ok to hoard even more for a future rush rather than spend them on this one).

If you have a desktop, or laptop check out Delta Wars, Island Force or River Combat.

Deadeye I'm in the EST and rarely play tournament beyond mid day. I made the tourney guide specifically around being able to get the most out of being in a spot where just playing the free tickets available is enough to rank first. I've found the AI is extra janky if I try to play tournament close to daily deadline, because ~everyone~ is grinding at that time, trying to outpace everyone else in a short window with the deadline as leverage.

I updated the tournament guide with screenshots of my last run of tournament with both my 500 power hangar and a 1400 power hangar, showing at least 5 free tickets remaining on both, with a comfortable lead on both cards. The only reason the screenshots were right before tournament ended, was because that was when I had the time to take and swap screenshots to desktop to put them up here. I hadn't played since early afternoon.
Your ranking card is created ~when you play your first game~ so if you're starting tournament literally an hour before it closes, it's fighting ~only~ players that are trying to fix the card with the deadline, as I've said to frunobulax before.
Just sticking to the proper tournament brackets makes topping the list, at your most convenient times, as easy as just playing your tickets. Can't win them all, but just playing your tickets instead of trying to game the timer will put you at a comfortable spot on your card with minimal effort.

There was server maintenence earlier today, I'm going to see if anyone else has been running into anything outrageous. I ran into a Zephyr with Carbines earlier today, which, as you can imagine, is not the norm.

Maybe I miss these 'can't win' times since I don't get to play much during the day... evening (Central Standard) may have more players online? Or because I don't play too many games at once? IDK... I've definitely had a blowout or 5 where I was the bits on the bottom of a shoe... but I don't get that many. I also totally switch up my tactics when the folk are strong. Like, running a Cossie in War Robots META type of tactics. Hide, run, corner shoot... run some more... etc. I will say when I met that group that was running a squad with mechtout and friends the other day, they took over and just claimed that battle as their own... but mostly I can't say I have had experiences where changing up tactics didn't fix it. I hope I don't run into that problem.

Danny Linguini ... are you on their Discord? I saw where Fruno left a link in there to this thread and either the Dev or whomever the orange person is there was pretty positive to taking the feedback... maybe join it and voice your issues... they seem to be receptive.

Just a thought...  since it's beta they should still be looking for input.

16 GAMES to get THREE wins. Pretty f’n pathetic.

I dunno. I'm hovering at Division 1: 11000 points, so I fight nothing but rank 4 hangars (1800-2400 hangar power) while I'm still only at 1390 hangar power. The only time I feel like I get washed is when the AI gets a serious hate boner for me, and me specifically.
Matches started going significantly better when I accepted that the AI aren't going to play by what I'm doing, and I started focusing on either filling the gaps in friendly formations or breaking the enemy formation with a flank or distraction. Can't be the MVP of every match. Got loads easier when I stopped trying to be.