Mechwarrior Online’s finally launched after a year of beta testing. The 1.0 also addresses one of the key complaints thrown at the game, the presence of a 3rd person camera. The exterior camera has been disabled for competition play in 6v6 matches.
The launch trailer shows why this is one of the best Mechwarrior games yet released.
The addition of a 3rd person camera caused a lot of anger in the community because it gave an advantage over players using the in-cockpit view. While many would have been hoping for the new viewpoint to be scrapped entirely, disabling it for premade group matches is a step in the right direction. Hopefully Piranha Games will add 1st person only to server search filters.
We’ll be reviewing Mechwarrior Online within an inch of its chassis soon enough but we’d been asked to hold off till today’s patch.
I fell a little in love with the game when I was playing in the closed beta last year so, until our review goes up, you can read my impressions piece.
You can play the game for free over here.
Here are the full patch notes:
Content
– Users can purchase skins for the Orion ‘Mechs.
– Orion ‘Mechs can be purchased with CBills.
– New Premium Skin Apple Jack is available for purchase.
– New Trial ‘Mechs.
– Jenner JR7-F
– Centurion CN9-A
– Dragon DRG-5N
– Atlas AS7-RS
Gameplay
– 12 players pre-made group launch is 1st Person View only.
– Match making ELO and Weight Class thresholds narrowed down. NB: These changes will not affect 12 player groups.
– The longer a match took to kick off, the broader the range the MM uses in terms of matching ELO and weight class.
– This reduction means that the MM will no longer search as broad a spectrum over time (still increases but in a narrower range). It will be much more refined in terms of how much variance will be given in matching players and ‘Mechs.
– Match making timeout increased to 3 minutes.
– This allows the MM more time to find players before terminating its search.
Weapons
– AC/2
– Heat scale multiplier reduced from 1.0 to 0.6.
– UAC/5
– CD changed to 1.5 (same as AC/5).
– Jam rate increased to 20% (up from 15% but still down from 25%).
– Flamer
– Range increased to 90m (up from 64m).
– Heat impulse balance so target takes more heat than player (heat generated on target increased and self generation decreased).
Front End
– Added a credits button to the login screen.
Bug Fixes
– Fixed an issue where users are experiencing severe heat from the center volcano area in Terra Therma.
– Fixed an issue where the lava in Terra Therma is causing unintentional damage to ‘Mechs.
– Fixed a number of stuck bugs in Forest Colony, Frozen City, and Terra Therma.
– Fixed an issue where the 3rd Person drone appears to have weapon collision to the user firing.
– Fixed an issue where the spectator will remain in 1st person view when spectating a ‘Mech in 3rd person view.
– 3rd Person drone will no longer spawn in Testing Grounds for the dummy ‘Mechs.
– UAV should no longer interfere with the 3rd Person camera by snapping camera back and forth when launching an UAV.
– Fixed an issue where PPC is still colored yellow when aiming at a ‘Mech below 90m.
– Gauss Rifle will no longer charge when out of ammo.
– Fixed key hold repeat issue for Backspace in chat windows.
– Fixed chat messages being cut off in chat windows.
– Fixed the Hunchback Founder ‘Mech colour.
– Fixed an issue where users could not colour all three channels on the Hunchback Founder ‘Mech.
– Fixed an issue where shooting a specific point on the destroyed actuator of a Blackjack’s side torso will damage the opposite side torso.
– Fixed an issue where certain users were seeing blue tree sprites in the Forest Colony maps.
– Fixed an issue where shadows would flicker depending on the angle of the camera.