MA - New progress path unveiled (sort of)

Interesting. So you have to buy stuff - or buy the resources to obtain stuff - in order for more stuff to become available in a never ending cycle of buying more stuff. Just a new set of incentives to buy in-game currencies, as if they’re weren’t enough already.

Has there been any mention of costings for items in the new tiers,same or more ? (I know what my money's on ).

Looks like credits will become more rare than A coins with all the updating of crap needed to keep unlocking tiers.

Really? It is only 5 Stars total to unlock Tier 2. Remember the amount of stars an item has when you get it counts. It's not only stars spent upgrading stuff. So if you have 5 items from that list at 1 star, then you're set.

Crunched my numbers and overall I'm good. Admittedly I am a grinder who also does spend some, including new weapons and mechs, which because they have been real $$ only for so long, means I now have a lot of gear that I got at 3 Stars to begin with, that f2p won't have. Still, as I was looking through the list I also kind of noticed all the gear I had won from events like SG8 and VRPG14, and even if I didn't ever use them, the stars added on.

I am only short by 2 Stars on the final tier and that is about to change as I am taking up my Bastion a couple ranks during this playoff event.

Thanks much for this break down, S1E1 .



Looks like I'll be stuck in Tier 4 (where I currently got 7/24 stars), having to upgrade items in order to progress to Tier 5. And I have a hunch that many F2P players will find themselves in the same situation as me.

I did plan on getting Stalker, so upgrading it to 6 stars would be fine by me... but I'd still have to acquire/rank up other mechs or weapons in that tier... yuck. Total waste (edit : okay, except for the LA12 which is still potent when leveled up).


Sigh... Guess I'll have to buy Surge and DL12 (actually aimed for DL16 but oh well) with my saved up A-coins at the end of this event. Otherwise there's no way I could eventually get them in a timely manner and without wasting lots of resources 

Newcomers will once again be thoroughly shafted 


Now for some WZF moments :

- Arachnos in Tier 4 ?! That's a tier above the well respected Guardian and Ares, FFS !!!

- Redeemer in Tier 5... it was supposed to be some end game invincible mech. Yet not even in the same tier as Panther.
I'm guessing that its tier positioning may eventually be revised upwards.

By what he shows tier 1 is auto unlocked?

Also to clarify my restart was years ago, but I didn't fall down the rabbit hole of investing in mechs/weapons that weren't long term on that go. I'm over 10k matches now.

salvia, you're right on the stars needed to unlock (5 Stars on Tier 1 items to unlock T2). I actually was thinking about that wrong but I looked at the beginning of India Waale's vid and it is clear that is how it works. I think the vid I used already had a couple tiers unlocked so I didn't realize.

I think you'll have plenty of company on the Tier 4 problem. That is the most problematic tier. I think that is also why Redeemer for instance is only T5. They're mainly grouping mechs by rarity type, but they need some good endgame mechs in each tier. Tier 4 is a problem because Stalker is the only good mech on the list. But imagine if that had a tier where it was just Arachnos, Aegis, M.D. (⁠ꏿ⁠﹏⁠ꏿ⁠)

DL12s are totally worth getting FYI. I think they might actually be a higher priority than DL16s, because even though they don't hit as hard they are useful on so many mechs.

Dude, that sucks. I figured some of those guys who just instantly jump to a maxed meta hangar would hit problems, but not regular players. Yikes.

That said, AC2, RPG2 & TL2 all cost only 825 credits for a 1 Star. And I think you get an AC4 and Paragon for free when you start (??) So that would be 5 Stars right there. If not, a couple of the 4 weapons are only 1675 credits. I'd snap them up now before this goes live while they still are available for credits. We don't know how acquisition costs will change once the new system hits.

Anyone who has bottlenecks on the lower tiers should definitely do the math and then scan the list for cheap buys now. True they could still tweak this list, but I'm super doubtful they will. Taking weapons from 1 Star to 2 costs only 15, 25, or 50 A-Coins depending on it's EN level, so there are a lot of cheap ways to get this done fast. Also, remember heavy mechs are currently cheaper to upgrade now, so if any of those are going to be part of your tier advancement plan, now is the time to push it through.

This would make a lot of sense. The pill is hard to swallow as it is, Plarium couldn't justify forcing players into a tier where 100% of the offering would be crappy 😅

Still, if I were a Redeemer owner I wouldn't be pleased to see it relegated in Tier 5.

And I still can't believe how deeply shafted the new players are going to be... Panther and KS used to be basic mechs, staples in everyone's hangar... then they were removed and replaced by ersatz, and now we learn that they're being placed way up the ladder, hidden above a "resource wall" of mostly useless items 😰

These definitely won't be a waste of resources. It's just that I had hoped to get the DL16s and pair them with DL8s, thereby obtaining two 24EN setups - and bypassing the need to acquire DL12s in the process.

But two DL12+8 combos will prove useful for the time being.

salvia:
DLs have different firing rates by energy level. While I actually kind of like that DL16+8 leaves you with an extra shot or two of the more powerful DL16s, it can be problematic and a bunch of players don't like that combo at all. And if I am only playing one DL24 mech than I'll choose 2x12 every time. Hopefully that's a bit of silver lining there, but I see what you were planning to do and it's more than annoying you can't.

I'll be interested to see if you're right on LA12s. I think you would be but I never got to upgrade mine enough before the rebalance. MR8s are a sure thing and I'd also imagine Jav 8s might make a comeback.

The other strategy, and I bet we'll see this, could be to ignore most of the weapons and just focus on getting the mechs up there. On Tier 3 in particular this makes sense. Also because I think folks will still be able to buy higher tier weapons outright for $$. So folks will work on maxing their Guardian while upgrading their paid EMRs, same as now. Hopefully there will still be enough low cost weapon options that folks can cobble together the rest of the stars they need buying cheap junk and taking it up to just 2 or 3 Stars. I actually have a ton of 3 Star garbage gear that I only leveled because of old event tasks.

I'm really curious to see how this will play out in practice. I'm probably being way too optimistic, but I would like to see people still have the experience of enjoying lower level gear like RPGs for a while and being strategically able to slow walk their hangars up the ranks.

Yes, everything under 5 should then open. But I don't think there is any advantage to rushing it before the system launches for Tier 4. Maybe I missed something scanning your spreadsheet, but it looks like almost every item of gear you're missing on that list is real money only right now. Admittedly Arachnos would be cheaper to upgrade now but it is not worth it. I wouldn't spend money now to advance a tier, especially since I think they'll still sell you higher tier items for real $ regardless.

Wait, I see what you're asking now. You don't land on Tier 3, you land on Tier 4. You are 3 stars short of unlocking Tier 5. While the 2 stars worth of upgrades you're proposing (Zephyr and CB8) would make it possible to unlock Tier 6, that would not go into effect until you first took care of the missing 3 stars in T4. You can have enough stars already taken care of in higher tiers, but all their items won't be unlocked until all the tiers below them have been.

Ummm... Did I accidentally zero out your data? I was trying to make a copy for sharing with folks. I don't normally use this Google Sheets. Did I mess you up?

I didn't like the implementation of the new system. It's better than the current one (that is just ridiculous) but not by far. It doesn't affect me at all, because I already maxed the content from the last tier that I think is useful, but that's not the point.
With the amount of resources that the game provides, it will take forever just to have access to the content in the last tiers.
This is just a "let's make a system that creates the illusion that the content is accessible to everyone, but without making it accessible to everyone"