MA - So many changes! New update discussion

The staggered EN increase was all I was sweating, because Nuzlocke, and a few weeks away from R6.

ALL mechs have recieved an HP boost for R6 and up.
Previously, R6 did not give a HP boost, instead granting a second copy.
Now, ranking up to 6 will grant a significant HP boost like previous ranks.

I don't mind the Jugg/Ares change. Remember that's coming from someone who is only running the three common mechs.
Juggernaut was too safe, too often. It's cooldown is still faster than Ares used to be from shield to shield.
It still has miles of base health over Ares.
All the change means is that Jugg has to use it's shield smarter, instead of just "Shield's back *boop*" for 20K extra HP every 10 seconds.
Ares is fine with a permanent shield because it can still get shot in the 「bum-bum」, and Javelins, and Mortars, and lower base health.

The staggered EN boosts makes investing in multiple mechs of the same energy type pretty difficult without second copies of 12EN+ weapons, which is a double edged sword.
Less players will be running around with true end-game ridiculousness,and players coming up the ranks will still have a difficult, yet fair time against 6.1-6.6 mechs using lower gear.
On the flip, the investment cost increase of late game is a hit.

Unless someone is a whale, there is more incentive to run 2, 2, 1 in terms of Lights, mediums, and heavies respectively. Getting over the hill of second copy weapons, which we all know, takes *forever* with how much late game items cost. That being said, more diverse loadouts are pretty much guaranteed up until the tippity top of max level.

bump above the unstickies

My experience of all the horrible new voice accompaniment

It may suck, BUT:
Changing the graphics to "good" will shut the announcer up without muting the other sounds.

He is way too hyped for my vibe. If everything was voiced by the woman that makes beacon announcements, it would have been way better

Hahaha, the voices are weird. I do appreciate the variety and the cute anime girl's voice and I do like that they have 2-3 different voices now. But, they should have kept the original deep voice for the game phrases like "get out of the way, humuliation, etc..." They could have just added the announcer and the girl voice on top instead of replacing the original deep voice guy.

These are the things that show the lack of playtesting... seriously, little details can change enjoyment levels and should have been implemented differently.  I mean, if I had been questioned about whether I wanted different/more voices, I would have said "no".  A survey would have done fine.

This and the "Open 10 crates" feature almost make up for all the other negatives.  lol

Glad to see the update this morning.

I actually am quite happy the way they chose to implement the energy limit change. For most players, this means that their bots now have 14/20/28 energy max because of the cost necessary to actually max out any individual bot. 16+12, 10+10, 12+8, 8+6, 10+4, and 12+2 are all interesting energy combos with the weapons currently available and will lead to a lot of cool experimentation I think. For players who play a lot or spend some money, they might have one bot at energy 32, which isn't too crazy. For players who spend literally insane amounts of money to get a fully maxed hanger, they will certainly have an advantage, but not crazy compared to normal rank 5 or 6 gear. And if they spend that much money to help keep MA servers running, I'm totally happy with them getting slightly better gear now.

The weekly rewards and the arachnos event are a big positive from my perspective. Adding more rewards for playing the game outside of tournament is nice to see, and I think the tasks (so far) are reasonable. Getting more players playing more often is a great way to improve matchmaking and bringing in more microtransactions. The more money MA can make off microtransactions, the less they will feel inclined to introduce pay to win features to make money from whales.

Finally, their crate opening quality-of-life improvements and balance change to Juggernaut and Ares are very nice to see. These little touches indicate to me that they are listening to player feedback even if the way they announce changes is still horrendous.

Overall, for me, lots of positive changes and quite a bit of faith in the game restored.

I have to say too, I like the new weekly rewards doling out an extra 200 A-Coins. That's assuming of course we'll still be able to get another 200 thru weekly Battlethon and Accolade Challenge tasks. The "accomplish 30 daily tasks" is a little much. They should dial it back to like 28 so it's 4 days worth.

Also is the tiered sorting display of weapons and mechs in Inventory new to this update? Feels like it's new (and a nice little touch) but I don't check that screen much...

The power gap is massive now. I was competitive w a mostly 6.1 hanger, now forget about it. The jump from 6.1 to 7 seems equivalent to 4-6 stars in terms of power, and costs 3 times as much. This sure smells like a pay-to-win to me.

And my Jug. Booooooooooooooo. All those resources I spent. Double booooo

Edit . Waves at Ogre....

If you tap the box with your pilot name and XP in the upper left corner to see your XP Progress Path, that will also show your tickets, keys, credits and a-coins. 

This game turned into a p2w 「dookie」show overnight. Not even greedy 「wee-wee」sonic managed to do that w/ War Robots, so I gotta tip my cap to plarium. Real 「fluffernutter」ing good job.

Ever since I hit ~3200 SP or so (pre-update), I've been able to go up against the Mayer's and Manish's of this game (100% fully maxed out players), and play them to a ~50/50 win-loss record, because by then, I had 2nd copies of the core bots and highly levelled core weapons. There wasn't a drastic difference between 6.2/6.3 and 6.7. When my 2nd copies go away, I'm gonna be left w/ three maxed bots, a 5.4 zephyr, and......a bunch of unlevelled stuff. I'm not gonna be able to keep up w/ the maxed players who've been playing way longer than me who can still field five 6.7 bots, AND have the maxed weapons to fill all the EN capacities. Don't forget, going from 6.6 to 6.7 is a massive upgrade. We're talking increased EN capacity and an additional 10k+ HP.

Yes, this update means I now have an increased advantage against the players out there who don't have any 6.7 stuff. But this transition to a p2w structure still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I think I don't wanna be a competitive player if this game is gonna go full-on p2w mode.

So where does that leave me? Either I quit, or become a pure casual player. No more playing tourney. Just play a few games everyday for fun.

Has anyone noticed there seems , at least to me, no way to know how many blue prints we have for weapons and mechs we haven’t purchased now?

I'm feeling that upgrade anxiety again and don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing. For a while now, I've been coasting with decently leveled stuff, my mechs were all at max EN and I was saving credits easily. But, yesterday, I blew it all with the SB16, and one of today's task was to upgrade something 3 times...DOH! Luckily, I still had a bunch of gold crates and I opened them for the credits and upgraded my AC4 3 times. Whew. But, what about tomorrow??

On the other hand, I feel like I have growth potential again. The game hasn't changed drastically for me. My mechs still have the same power as before. I just have room to grow again and I feel that old "twitch" of "when will I be able to run that?" I'm in no rush to level up my Shadow even though it's my fave mech. But, I do want to try dual RG16 and dual SB16.

Side note, SB12/SB16 is pretty fun so far. The kill rate is a bit faster than with dual SB12, and the freeze rate is faster too. That means that when I get dual SB16, it'll be a force to be reckoned with. Also, used it to do that Get 10 Assists task in like one game.