MA - War Robots vs MA

I downloaded War Robots last night cause I needed a distraction from personal life and because I was kinda missing my old stuff. I couldn't even bring myself to play a game though. The UI was so cumbersome and that Drone thing so confusing. I still had about 4k gold save up and about 70M silver, but couldn't muster up any interest to spend it. I had a half baked idea of slapping together a FU hangar, but couldn't even do that. Granted, I was feeling really down last night, so that might have contributed to my overall mental state.

But.

The last time I played War Robots, I decided to quit for the same reasons. The UI is so cumbersome compared to War Robots. The game play so sluggish, and the OP'ness of some builds was just too obvious. There are some really powerful builds in MA, but heck, even the Zephyr can be dealt with as long as you keep your cool and identify it early. Heck, in one game, I killed 3 Zephyrs back to back with a RPG6 Panther no less. In some ways, the Zephyr is easier to kill than the Guardian. Its all rock paper scissors. On the flip side, I've had my Zephyr killed quite easily too. Seems high level Juggs are the bane of my existence!

One of the complaints I see about MA is the cartoony graphics. But, it's the simple graphics that really contribute to a smooth operating game. I just hope that the Devs don't screw up a good thing when they fully launch.

+1

I haven't touched War Robots for going on 4 years. Considered it before finding MA, and watched some Foggy and Islander vids.
The same people that said wait and see at the Dawn of components and $100-300 items have either all quit, or are still saying they'll wait and see, with hundreds to thousands of dollars pissed away since I left.

Yea. MA gets expensive at later levels, but I'll still hold that the items themselves are balanced at comparable levels.

I spent about 2 to 3 years playing War Robots, and i do miss my hanger a bit. Ithe wounds are still fresh....it has been about 2 weeks since i have played, but im still watching ads and leveling up weapons a bit. I should go back and play a game or two.

I had the same issues with War Robots as everyone else who has issues with War Robots, so I’m not going to keep beating that dead pig horse. I spent money on it when it was fun, stopped when it wasn’t, deleted when it got to be downright annoying just opening it.

MA is fun in its relative simplicity, but the real catch is, it isn’t really all that simple. You can go nuts analyzing best buildouts for different situations, or you can just swap weapons and mechs around until you find the combination you like best. And then change it all up on a whim just to keep things interesting and fresh without being majorly penalized for it.

I think my favorite feature of the game is that you can’t have more than one copy of a mech or weapon set (ok, two later on in the game), which forces you and everybody else to mix up your hangar. You won’t ever see somebody running 5 Shadows or 5 Brickhouses or 5 of whatever combo might rule the battlefield. Everybody is forced to diversify. 

In fact, you won’t likely find any one build that rules the battlefield - every mech and weapon has their Achilles heel, and you don’t have to have any special, magical abilities to find and exploit it. Pretty much every mech has its advantages, so you can find something in the collection that works well with your play style, whatever your play style is. The ‘meta’ is your meta, not the one the game designers dictate it to be. 

One of the hardest things i still struggle with on MA is that the weapons you set up on your bot do not follow the bot when you wswap them. Sometimes i come up with something i like and i want to put it back in my hangar but im not sure how i had that bot set up last time.

it took me the longest time to figure out the Current weapons issue. I didn't understand that the weapons didn't follow the bot. Itbis nice because you can easily share weapons packages between different bots assuming they both have the same energy levels.

  I have the lock button so it is set on horizontal.  You  can choose a target only  by putting the  aiming reticle over it.  I think if it is on a target and the target moves out of your reticle, any target right behind it will be your new target. Ummmm, I think. Lol.

Maps:

I prefer MA maps through and through. They're all built considering mech speed and revolve around the shorter match time of 5 minutes. Even on the largest control points map,the slowest mechs can get from one side to the other at a reasonable pace. No Yamataus or Springfields. Like War Robots though, the first Map of the game, "Mech Arena" is probably the worst one. It's a big square map with walls separating the center from the outer ring. The center beacon is dead center of the map with 0 cover, and the enemy/allied side beacons are too close to one another. That's really the only map that feels super swingy for the reasons mentioned.

The tournament Maps are on a rotation that is public information at tournament start. Every week there are 3 tournament maps that rotate daily throughout the 6 day tournament week, each one appearing 2 days out of the week. Every map has pros and cons, and promotes/restricts different loadouts with the mix of terrain. That's why I made a min-max loadout list. Most maps offer 2 distinct types of engagement distances.

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The mechs:

All of the Mechs in MA have a purpose. The ones that accel at one aspect of play have soft and hard counters, some of which are weapon selections, some of which are mech selections.
The only Mech that currently feels slightly unbalanced is Killshot, because it has the base speed of a light mech and the firepower of a medium mech. It has relatively low health, but it's speed and firepower have it outshine most of the other quick mechs in terms of "ease of use".
Light, medium and Heavy only refer to weapon capacity. The actual roles the mechs have are determined by their listed role, and other stat spread, not their weight class.
So, Tanks aren't heavy mechs. They have medium firepower to offset their larger health pools. Heavy firepower mechs have mediocre armor and speed.
It creates an actual "rock paper scissors" scenario among the mechs, where Faster mechs can shrek heavy firepower mechs, but have a hard time with heavily armored Tanks, Tanks win most engagements with faster mechs, but Heavy firepower mechs can chew through them in a damage race, and Heavy firepower mechs are average against the other categories on a case by case scenario.

War Robots abandoned any sort of real Mech identity in favor of the magical pixie powers that started with the Pantheon bots, and did away with any sort of role identity among weight classes since the dawn of the Dash.

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Weapons:
Once again, this one goes to MA. Most of the new weapons to debut in the recent years of War Robots have been direct upgrades to previous weapons for monetization reasons. The status afflicting weapons have damage profiles similar to the pure damage variants of their weapon class.

With MA, all mechs only have 2 weapon slots. Their EN capacity is what determines what they can carry. Every weapon has at least 2 variants with different Energy costs except for the last weapon unlocked.
The damage profile differences between a 4, 6 and 8 cost variant of the same weapon, are actually directly proportional to those energy costs. No arbitrary "light, Medium, Heavy" weapon translation, where the medium and heavy versions of a weapon scale in ways that don't make much sense.

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Clans:
War Robots has this one. MA has it in the pipeline, and many of the players that have been in MA for a few months have already started to factionalize and self impose Clan tags.


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Pay to win:
This is a question without a simple answer because of how the game is laid out.
Progression gets expensive resource wise. The only significant resources that can be obtained for free are from the tournament.

CPC, which barely has any rewards, actually becomes the more difficult of the two game modes. The majority of matches are filled with AI to guarantee fast matches, the AI can become punishing once reaching the top of the CPC ranking system. Their aim isn't constrained to phone controls, and their hangar progression doesn't really care about how long the actual players need to reach the same numbers.

Tournament has it's fair share of problems as well. It's not a tournament of skill, but a grind-fest. Ranking cards are determined by proximity of tournament start, but you're not required to face the players you are trying to out-score to rank in tournament. Most times you won't ever fight anyone on your ranking card. There's no limit to how many games someone can play in tournament either, so if you start a tournament card early in the day, there are people that will potato and play for 10 hours to secure the top positions.

Players rarely face other players with gear that chumps their own, but the AI can reach that point instead. The end game progression (Rank 4 to rank 6) is very resource intensive. With the only path to resources being Tournament and RM, it can be a slog.

The upside is, there is a limited inventory on EVERYTHING. The most any one person can have of any one item is 2 copies.
Players only get one of each bot, and one of each Heavy(10 cost+) weapon until that item reaches rank 6.
Weapons that cost 2-8 energy come in pairs.
Upgrades upgrade both copies, so when you get an item to rank 6, the second copy obtained is also rank 6.

This makes every item in the game an eventuality. No matter which path a player takes, everything having a definitive end-point means grind is never objectively wasted.
The main monetization is late game upgrades and skins. The items that seem ridiculously expensive, are only such because they are prorated for their starting level. A rank 1 or 2 item is cheap, but expensive in terms of upgrade resources to get to rank 6. An item starting at rank 5 seems almost prohibitively expensive, but they have the shortest way to go to get to max level. The items themselves are well balanced when at comparable upgrade levels. Every item has pros and cons

The MM bullies everyone, without exception. Getting bigger guns/mechs only makes the game temporarily easier until the MM catches up. There are few instances of running into players stronger than you, but you'll be screaming at the AI for the same reason once the MM catches up to you.

The *only* thing I like better about War Robots than Mech Arena is the firing mechanic of the hydra versus the mechanic of javelins. While not strictly overpowered, I think javelins would be more skill-testing if the enemy had a chance to escape to cover before they are hit with the entire volley. This is especially true for people just starting the game where javelins can be one-shot-kills, which is quite frustrating for any beginner who dies without knowing what hit them.

Personally I think Mortars are fine since they are effective at what they do, but there are many counters – including walking away from the anticipated blast site if you see them coming – and you can't easily capture control points with mortar-wielding mechs in cpc or maintain a high dps needed to do well in tournament.

However, Javs can be effective from short range so have fewer shortcomings. I have trouble countering them with Killshot or Lancer because it usually only takes two volleys to die. Occasionally if I time it right I can escape the rockets by dashing forward or jumping backwards but this is very difficult for me. So making the rockets either fly slightly slower or have them not all fire at once would make these low-health mechs have more ability to escape while not changing their performance against slower mechs.

Anyways, I don't want to derail this thread any more than I already have. The fact that we can even have this conversation about these weapons is a testament to how much better the MA team has done to create skillful gameplay than the War Robots team.