I've played this game off and on. Started in beta, but been more off than on. Thinking about coming back. It's been a few years, though. Is there a low-tier player pool, or are the only players left all experienced tryhards? What's changed over the last few years? I see a bunch of new weapons. How is the feel of the game? I remember in Beta it felt like you could do a real good job of mitigating damage. But with the bump to 12 players per team, stronger mechs/weapons, and better hit registry, it started to feel really easy to pop components or even entire mechs. Have they struck a balance or gone further into the bursty direction?
There are players of all skill levels still playing but the population is low enough that you're going to find them all in your matches almost regardless of skill level. Some new weapons were introduced a few months ago. More variety is always good I think Time to kill has been going steadily down for years. In my opinion, game balance is heavily skewed towards poke and hide gameplay. High alpha damage is heavily incentivized over sustainable damage over time.
High mobility (speed/jumps jets) with quick hits (PPC, short burn times lasers) seems to be beating all out high alpha. Especially if you are relying on HAGs for part of the alpha. Too easy for enemy mechs to fire and duck back into cover before the first of the charged up rounds are halfway to the target. Good luck getting missile locks against fast quick hitters. Now if you stand still for 2 seconds or are too slow to get back into cover, expect to get wrecked. Hard. ******** That being said, I think the biggest thing affecting game balance is premade teams in the soup (single and group together) queue. The match maker seems unable to balance with preforms. Four very good or very bad players working together will make 100 times more difference to a game than weapon balance, hardpoint inflation, or even uber-legendary quirks.
