(MA) Not seeing maxed new gear these days

I’ve seen a few player Nomads and one Hemlock. Totally agree that players seem to have slowed down acquisitions and upgrades. 

Your OP could be a ‘Mech Arena 2023’ post: How it was. I don’t think the  Mech and Weapons ‘Update’ was a hit with everyone. I know my spending went way down afterwards. I didn’t appreciate the big push to acquire new gear and what felt like a nerf to my hanger. 

Agree that the removal of the implant discount may have affected players attitudes. Plarium’s got to remind themselves they’re dealing with a lot of mech fans jaded by Pix’s shenanigans and tomfoolery. If they were going to reimplement the implant  removal costs they should have a least lowered those costs to reasonable levels. May have blunted some of the misgivings.

A couple other observations:

I don’t understand implant acquisitions. There’s plenty of implants I’d still pay for, 🤑 or A-Coins, but I don’t want to buy three at a time or rarely have the opportunity to consider purchasing them. Plarium’s missing out.  Then something new and shiny appears and I’ve moved on. Opportunities lost for Plarium.

My hanger is full of gear I’m not using cause I can’t get the BPs fast enough to get it ready for Prime-Time and I don’t want to spend the 🤑 Plarium’s asking for BP packs. Especially after the mech and weapon rebalancing. 

The AI and matchmaking make me feel like I’m being played. Far too frequent matches that have that made-to-lose feeling where most my hanger is gone by mid-match. AI mechs with weapons that make my mechs disappear. Especially snipers. I miss the days where mechs had some durability and made engagements within a match more meaningful.

Also, I’m starting to find other things to do when I get three beatdowns in a row.

Why does some content seem so similar to past content? Sheesh, there’s a lot of history and content to mech games and plenty of ideas that could get a MA wash. 

Experience is subjective though and other players may not get the vibes I’m getting from MA2023. Obviously, I’m still playing and occasionally paying, so some things are still working Plarium’s way. I just think they’ve got some built in bottlenecks that could be reconsidered.

I agree that MA is still nowhere near as bad as War Robots. But I think Plarium failed to understand how much of its player base was made up of War Robots refugees. Everyone who could tolerate that bs is still playing War Robots but MA players seem way pricklier. I was in one of the top clans and the implant discount removal basically got like 2/3rds of them to quit the game for good. I was kind of surprised at how strong their feelings were since I always expected it to disappear, but there was definitely a theme of "this game is going down the War Robots drain, so let's get out now." I think for endgame players, especially the competitive squad players, implant discount was the final straw. The Gear Hub economy changes seem to be the bigger issue for others though. Between the two, it's wiped out enough long-time players that it's thrown off the whole "keep up with the Joneses" dynamic these companies thrive on.

I definitely find AI smarts engineering my losses/wins to be the biggest downside to playing. I don't know if it was just mellower when I was a mid-game player or they have cranked it up more now (both probably). But at endgame it is just so blatantly obvious it really takes the joy out of 1v1 matches. Again, spending is all driven by human v. human competition, which is why War Robots can be so much more brazen. Being a game where players mostly fight AI limits what Plarium can charge to begin with. Being one where AI determines who wins regardless of what people spend, is practically insane. It's weird that Plarium hasn't really figured that out.

I faced a maxed Vortex and I barely scratched it....wow...

How are people tanking in TTDM? Are they just putting out low SP hangars? Does that really impact the MM much these days?

Ahh...well that's technically legit since tanking isn't really a thing in this game. I've thought about trying that out too but I like playing my mechs at their full potential too much to really do it seriously. Plus, I really don't care about the TTDM rankings or rewards cause no matter how much I grind, someone somewhere will grind harder and I'm just too busy for that poop.

I did check with Plarium to figure out if it was legit and they said it wasn't penalized. I do try to grind Grandmaster on Sundays for the A-Coins and this has been killing my earnings. Going to finally try it out this week. I'd much prefer to play my regular hangar and I will for FFA, but 5v5 has just gotten too nuts.

Guys, don't forget the removal of the monthly 400 A-Coins chest (I even forgot the name of that event, given I've essentially quit playing... you know the one where we mostly get skins and sometimes A-Coins).

That, and the continuous drama/lies about implant removal costs, plus the new forced tiered upgrades of course, have rally disgusted me from the game.