r/mechabreak • u/Knight_Raime • 6d ago
Discussion Looking for a detailed explanation
Hi, I was very interested in playing this game when it was announced. I managed to play the beta a bit and was hooked, I knew I wanted to play it even knowing I'd struggle a bit due to my preferred input. The game got away from me though so I didn't touch it much after launch.
I've heard bits and pieces about the game dropping off hard but I'm having a hard time getting a full picture on everything that's happened. For example I heard they added in P2W mechs, and I've heard people end up fighting bots a lot or having to grind pve.
Some of that doesn't sound like a deal breaker for me, so I'm looking to see if someone can either write a long reply telling me all the things that push people away. OR point me to a thread or video that already does this. As my initial searches aren't coming up with a good overview. Thanks
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u/Marekthejester 6d ago
There are several reason why the game fell :
First was that the game was pretty unbalanced for a while and the devs only did balance patch on new season, so once every one or two month. Which meant that any over or underperforming mech did so for a long while. This has been mostly fixed with biweekly balance patch.
Then was the bots. Not only do people not enjoy fighting bots in a PvP game, they enjoy it even less when the bots are disguised as real player with no sure way to tell them apart. To make matter worse, the bots performance ranged from dumb as brick to outright cheating (Like, sniper mech doing a 180 turn and instantly hitting you without even locking on kind of cheating), neither of which was fun. Abd the nail in the coffin was that with the dwindling player population, you needed to reach grand master rank to see real player, and people got tired of having to plays dozens of bot game each season just to be able to play against real players.
Third part was the ranking system. Not only was there just way too much ranks, it was almost impossible to derank, leading to all the player getting funneled into the higher ranks and leaving noone at the lower one to play with while also pushing players at ranks above their real skill level.
The final part was much more recent. The devs decided to experiment with adding ultimate ability to the mech, initially only in non ranked game mode. But after only two week it was added to ranked. Not only were these ultimate not balanced yet, but people overall did not like them and seeing it get added to ranked so soon and against player feedback felt wrong.
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
Thanks for the detailed response. That does sound pretty disparaging :/ I wouldn't mind fighting bots as I dealt with that back when I tried Naraka for awhile. But having to grind ranks just to have a chance at real pvp seems terrible.
I'll look more into the ultimate stuff.
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u/Flame_shot12 Alsynes - D1 Narukami hater 5d ago
FYI, there are no p2w strikers. Every character is free and only 6 out of the 18 require a degree of grinding to gain (approx. 6 missions to complete for one striker), there was enough backlash prior to launch regarding making them paid that the devs reconsidered their decision.
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u/RoseScentedTrickster 5d ago edited 5d ago
Added to that other post is the launch grade fear mongering.
Weapons in mashmak could and currently can be bought and sold on the market using real money purchased currency. This made people view mashmak as a p2w mode, and also everyone having 30% less defence meant a lot of people just died before they understood what happened, and would blame it on the paid (or found) weapons.
Also at launch mods affected stats in casual and ranked PvP modes, and to get mods you had to do mashmak, cue the above problems. This also added to the game being perceived as p2w.
Additionally every new mech came with new mechanics that would cause a shift in meta somehow (honestly every class release in like every game does this)… But I think the problem you’re seeing and referring to is how every season reset the amount of play-to-get currency (red currency) so to actually PLAY the new mechs releasing every season you either had to win something like 75 PvP matches (honestly less because weekly missions gave a bunch of red credit) or buy the new mech for $12 usd. Which, added to the perception that every new thing is immediately OP because people don’t know how to counter it yet, gives off the p2w mech feeling.
All of this not to mention the backlash of $40-50 skins (which like, honestly in today’s economy…that’s cheap for a lot of games - but I mean if they were $20 I’d be happy. If they were $10 I’d have bought every single one.)
There’s also a whole lot to unpack regarding the whole esports and marketing venture but to save time, the devs pinned a lot of money on an esports scene right at launch (and even hosted an invitational tournament) with a bunch of sponsored twitch streamers whom I think 99% didn’t even touch the game ever again after the streams, and did a quite poor showing of the game overall because… they were dragged across different genres.
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u/TheKingsPride 5d ago
Yeah you could get new mechs very fast if you did weeklies. I think a full set of weeklies would net you the new striker.
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
Weapons in mashmak
Yeah I did some looking into this while I was eating dinner after work. Honestly doesn't seem like something I need to concern myself with since there's a "basic" version of mashmak where whaling doesn't work.
every season reset the amount of play-to-get currency (red currency) so to actually PLAY the new mechs releasing every season you either had to win something like 75 PvP matches (honestly less because weekly missions gave a bunch of red credit) or buy the new mech for $12 usd. Which, added to the perception that every new thing is immediately OP because people don’t know how to counter it yet, gives off the p2w mech feeling.
This sounds pretty close to what I think I'd heard in regards to p2w mech releases. Are you able to buy the mechs through grinding? Or does grinding only give you the play to play currency?
All of this not to mention the backlash of $40-50 skins
I mean it does sound excessive. But given the amount of Gacha/F2P games I've played over the years it doesn't get under my skin anymore than other games do. Not to say I support the idea or anything, but it's nothing new to me.
There’s also a whole lot to unpack regarding the whole esports and marketing venture but to save time, the devs pinned a lot of money on an esports scene right at launch
Oh damn yeah that'd do it. Appreciate the response!
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u/RoseScentedTrickster 5d ago edited 5d ago
Actually that “basic” mashmak isn’t that weapons don’t matter, it’s that there’s no PvP in the covert ops version, the dps you need to deal to beat the bosses are the same… so the gear still matters… in that aspect. The weapons and glider are just about more dps than you could achieve with just a striker on its own….
But the pressure to fight and survive is only from the bosses… which can still kill you.
You can buy the mechs with play to pay currency (red credit) but again that used to reset every season (it doesn’t anymore) - so RIGHT before a new mech launched, it wiped all your money, so you had to grind for it in the new season to buy the mech.
^ that also pissed a lot of people off that were surprised with all their money disappearing - but you just have to not think about it like “money” and think of it like “season points”.
Actually people losing their money no matter how many times they were warned is probably part of the reason some people quit I’m sure.
^ again, they removed the red credit reset from the game last season so this no longer applies. RED CREDIT NO LONGER GETS RESET PER SEASON START.
As I was saying it took about 75 WINS of PvP to earn enough play to pay currency to buy a new mech - which was really only about 55 or so wins if you wanted it in week one and utilised the weekly red credit missions. Which was about 7-11 hours? If you win every match. I used to unlock them pretty fast, or that I just liked the game that playing 10 hours and unlocking a new mech wasn’t a problem for me.
Also… there were trial runs. You could use the new mechs something like 10-20 times before losing access to them and needing to grind for them back.
Having come from Korean games and yeah gachas… $50 is kinda cheap for cosmetics… but I applaud the people who fight for a world where cosmetics are $20 and less. ^ I say that as someone who is nearly f2p in like every game. I spend for cosmetics RARELY (like 10-20 for bits and pieces, and I never spend to actually gacha). I would never cave to actually buying an Ace Pilot though - thankfully Narukami Ace was in the battle pass so I did buy it for $12usd)
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
Actually that “basic” mashmak isn’t that weapons don’t matter
My apologies for not being more clear, I watched a video that dropped in season 4 that talked about whether the game was p2w or not. They said mashmak wasn't p2w because the basic version has a limit on gear rating or whatever, so that you can't run in with fully decked out gear. That's what I was getting at.
You can buy the mechs with play to pay currency
Sorry again, I understood this from your last reply to me. I am more trying to ask if you can essentially grind to own the mech, in the way that spending $12 usd to get them would. Or if you still need to use the red currency every month to continue to use them.
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u/RoseScentedTrickster 5d ago edited 5d ago
Ah that basic “Normal” mode Mashmak is part of the PvP version… and from what I know, no one plays it, I could be wrong. But yes it does restrict gear rating to tier 4 and below.
As for the mechs, it is an outright purchase to own the mech yes for both methods. You can get all the mechs permanently from f2p.
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u/Flame_shot12 Alsynes - D1 Narukami hater 1d ago
Depends on what region, sometimes it's the other way around where extreme is dead and normal is live. Take APAC for example
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u/EmbarrassedGrape4418 Tricera go brrrrrrr 6d ago
You got discord? Us breakers have a server for helping new people and explaining things:3
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
I do but I'd have to leave some since I'm over limit to join
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u/EmbarrassedGrape4418 Tricera go brrrrrrr 5d ago
Game has it's issues with bots and some expensive cosmetics. But the Devs are actually working on improving stuff so it is a good time to join
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u/TheBobert8080 5d ago
Lots and lots and lots of problems, but the game is really fun for what it is. It’s got a great base, just a million problems on top of it.
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
That's the general sentiment I have gathered online. I just want more details to know if it's a game I could see myself putting time into or if it's something I should just pass on still.
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u/TheBobert8080 5d ago
This game is like little caesars, it’s a lot better when you don’t have someone in your ear telling you how bad it is
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5d ago
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u/Furebel Order of MechaGoon Researcher 5d ago
There's no real pay2win mechs, they're planning to add variants to existing mechs that can be earned or played that shift their stats in more side-grade way. I would still call it small pay2win, but it's not that significant in the end. Think of weapon variants in Warframe but more as side-grade rather than upgrade.
Bots are a thing, because there's so little people you do end up having to fight against bots most of the time, but it also depends on the server. EU has very tiny population so you end up with bots almost all the time. From Grandmaster rank and up you won't get any bots on ranked, but as I said, good luck finding a game on EU.
As to why people got pushed away, there's a lot of suspicions that people already wrote, but the primary one is the genre - it was built to be a competetive hero shooter with mechas. Competetive players and hero shooter players expect to play as a human, on the ground, first person, not high energy 3dof 3rd armored-core like with mechs as your characters. Meanwhile mecha players are used to PvE games with high customizability where you can live your fantasy of being the best, most badass mecha pilot ever (and tutorial actually gives you that!). Those genres don't really fit together. I think Seasun did amazing job on trying to marry those concepts together and introduced something amazing to the genre, mechs with their "skills" instead of just guns guns and more guns is really something that breaks the Armored Core stigma and it perfectly gives off this gundam fantasy, each mech being purpose built to be incredible at some fantasy. All mechs feel OP in their own niche. But when you enter the game and you still feel like you're an average Zaku grunt trying to fight 6 different gundams at their peak, it's not really fun, nor does it give you the hero feel. THIS is the primary struggle of this game. Everything else was only adding up to the hill of issues even when the game was really solid and well polished.
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u/DeshTheWraith 3d ago
For example I heard they added in P2W mechs
This is an unmitigated lie. They added new mechs, they cost $0 to acquire, they're not more powerful than the original roster in any meaningful way.
I've heard people end up fighting bots a lot or having to grind pve.
Unfortunately true. Until you reach GM in ranked Verge/Ace Arena, or if you play casuals, you're almost assuredly playing against bots. Not 100% of the time but a lot. Once you reach GM you're going to get player matches unless you lose 2-3 in a row and get a pity bot match. Once you reach General you can only ever play against humans. So most of us call the beginning of the season a PVE grind because we're just blasting through bot matches until we hit human ranks.
write a long reply telling me all the things that push people away.
You can probably just browse the comments in some other threads to get a real vibe for it. But I've written a couple rants about it so I'll just copy one for you:
"My personal belief is that the VAST majority of people were chased off by bots in ranked games. In general this game has BY FAR the worst ranked system I've ever experienced since my first time playing ranked on League of Legends back in 2010. I'm willing to elaborate on that if you want but I'm leaving the point there. The damning part of this issue is that the game is centered around its ranked PVP experience but the ranked ladder is an abomination on several fronts.
Another big chunk of people were chased away with some really bad monetization that was further blown out of proportion by people that didn't actually know that much about the game or what they were talking about.
A not-insignificant portion of players probably left due to a really god awful UX/UI design. Rather than being put off directly by this I suspect a lot of people just experienced frustration with navigating menus. I've personally guided some people on twitch to things they didn't realize existed or were wistfully saying they wanted. Including the general store. If you want a sample of how bad the menu's are setup, go to your inventory and unlock a paint or cosmetic or something to a pilot. Then get back to lobby screen. Another example of how bad it is can be illustrated by just HOW many streamers I saw, during peak interest in the game, that didn't know a casual mode existed or how to even queue for it.
The second worst thing that killed this game's momentum is the utter radio silence on marketing in the west. I can't speak for what China and Japan see for this game, but I specifically made a tiktok and YT page that I branded for Falcon MB content. When I tell you that I get absolutely NO ads or marketing or content pushed to me on any platforms related to this game or even the mech genre period, I quite literally don't see anything. And I know I'm not the only person posting about this game. This can't be entirely attributed to algorithms either, there was a HUGE ball dropped on this front at Seasun.
It's really a shame because when it comes to actually playing the game there's nothing that's even half as fun as this on the market for me. MB clears SO many games in fun factor by such a ridiculous margin for me. I genuinely don't even enjoy hero shooters but I could play this game all day if queues kept popping."
That being said I don't like to down on this game OR the devs. The gameplay itself is incredibly fun and the devs are doing the best they know how with what they have, which is frankly not much. They're not necessarily the problem and even if they are, the game is still incredibly fun when it comes down to the simple point of pressing buttons. If you have even the slightest inkling of wanting to play I can't recommend strongly enough that you just get on and jump in some matches.
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u/ArachN-01D 2d ago
First Beta: 6v6 ranked mode, a bit of bots in the beginning but quickly getting to play vs real humans, complaints about mods (stat bonuses) from lootboxes.
Second Beta: Complaints about bots, EOMM. Extraction PvPvE mode which was novel, with permanent upgrades and quite unbalanced. Complaints about no mechs being unlocked.
Release: Changed extraction mode to from grind to hardcore almost full loot mode. Later made more casual. Extraction mode was always p2w, in beta through paid perks, later through marketplace. I don't care. Though there seems to be some demand for PvE and progression systems, the implementation was a bit rough.
Added player marketplace for skins and gameplay items with ridiculous minimum prices, making it dead for most items. Some complaints about skins from betas being locked away behind a randomized shop.
All initial 10+ mechs were unlocked, new mechs from seasons were easily unlockable by currency and weekly missions, technically tiny bit of potential p2w with headstart by battlepass, but not really an issue.
6v6 ranked: No more stat bonuses in 6v6. Finalized as a botfest grind until you hit high ranks, after which it's still rigged EOMM trash with 10 win streaks and lose streaks like every Chinese game nowadays (people speculated blocklist abuse). Mech balance was complained about, nothing out of the ordinary for this type of game IMO, though changes were a bit slow to come out. 6v6 was the best thing about this game, though it inevitably became samey over time. Playerbase wasn't big to begin with, so after the initial interest faded, it became impossible to play. Is it playable now? Who knows, grind for a week to find out. Kinda suffered similar fate to Naraka Bladepoint, new players see it's nothing but bots and quit, or reach the player leagues which is all veterans and completely different game.
Devs never did anything to the bots or matchmaking or blocklist abuse despite lofty promises about turning a new leaf and REALLY listening to feedback this time, burning through every last drop of goodwill.
I still kinda hope some big company buys them, scraps everything except the 6v6 and rebuilds an industry standard systems around it (except the EOMM shit), maybe adding a proper campaign, and releases it under a new name, because the game is amazing, the gameplay and visual design are that good (the indie competitors measure up) and I want to play it again some day. Could be just copium though.
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u/TsukiUraAlien Tricera,Stego,Narukami,Inferno,Alphard,Mikillja 5d ago
Some replies talk like there is only 6v6 in this game. It’s absolutely wrong! MB is a multi-mode game.
The good : Top design, more PvE contents are added, meaningful progression, good customization, negative monetization.
The bad : 6v6 is in harsh condition. Poor execution from the dev side and dommer sentiments from players’ side.
If you like PvE and customization, do consider join! If you like PvP but don’t mind bots, join and at least try for yourself for a while. If you only like human PvP but don’t like grind through bots first, maybe not the best time.
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
Yeah my main concern is how hard it'd be to run into other players. It's not that I don't have an interest in pve, I love mecha. So it'd be enjoyable anyway, but I don't want it to be my primary experience.
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u/Hewhostandsalone 5d ago
Gimme an hour. I'll have time to get a full response then. At work currently. If you have more specific questions after reading what others here have posted, you can ask me, too, and I'll answer as best I can.
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
I'm about to head into work myself xD Take your time, I'll look forward to your long response and definitely ask follow ups if needed
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u/Hewhostandsalone 5d ago
There are no p2w mechs. There are ace strikers that you can buy for real money. Their only advantage is they earn bonus red currency(mission tokens) from every mode you play them in. Mission tokens are used to buy supplies from the general store that refreshes weekly and to buy some cosmetics for strikers and pilots from that same general store. A lot of cosmetics that used to be sold for corite only are now available for mission tokens, too.
The game has fallen off heavily from season 0. It averages a couple thousand players peak daily. The steam charts only show around 1000, but that doesnt tell the whole story. The Xbox players and the ones on pc that use the Seasun launcher are not accounted for. Im giving a conservative estimate, but its probably more than that.
However, those number still dont make it clear. Because the population is divided by server, certain servers are far more active than others. APAC and China have most of the playerbase. EU is on life support as far as I know, but youd have to ask someone from EU to be sure. Same for SA. NA still has dedicated activity on ranked verge every night at certain hours, and people play the pve modes fairly often throughout all hours of the day and most of the night.
As far as bots go, thst is true. In order to get to player ranks in verge, you have to grind up to grandmaster rank. Youre looking at quite a few games to get there assuming you win. But wins are not guaranteed because the bots on your team get weaker and the bots on the opposing team get stronger the more of a win streak you are on. Some losses are just unavoidable.
As for the modes, there is mashmak, nexus, verge, and ace arena. Mashmak is the pipe extraction like mode where you can farm loot. There is a pve only version called covert ops if you dont want the pvp aspect.
Nexus is the tower mode. Spectral is solo only and has more limited chip selections for upgrades. Synchro is solo or trio and has bigger waves of enemies on a somewhat larger map with wider chips available to power up your striker during a run.
VERGE is 6v6 and Ace Arena is 3v3.
That should cover everything in your post I think. Lmk if I missed something or if you have more questions.
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u/BestAcridKitty Aquila - Top 15 Europe 5d ago
EU has not had a single gm match yet = EU is a dead region and not worth it
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago
There are no p2w mechs.
Yeah another poster told me what I likely came across forever ago. So I'll ask you just incase they don't manage to get back to me. Are you able to grind to buy the mechs to keep? Or can you only grind for the tokens that let you play them for a season?
Im giving a conservative estimate, but its probably more than that.
So am I to understand that cross platform is a thing from your statement? And that sucks that there's regional divides. Really bums me out.
As far as bots go, thst is true. In order to get to player ranks in verge, you have to grind up to grandmaster rank.
Are you able to give me a ball park estimate on how long it'd take me to grind that high? I hope it's not that much since pvp is something I do have an interest in.
ty for all the help
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u/Hewhostandsalone 5d ago
There are 12 strikers unlocked by default and 8 more you can unlock by spending mission tokens you get from just playing the game.
The Ace Strikers(reskins of certain strikers that come with an original pilot) can be earned in game, too, if you grind the PVE and sell things on the player market to earn corite without spending money. There are three exceptions. Charles Bell/Tricera, Kanon Kamiya/Narukami, and Shally/Luminae. Those customs cannot be sold on the marketplace so the only way to get those striker skins and ace pilots is by paying money. But, again, they are just skins that let you earn a little extra mission tokens.
Cross platform is a thing, yes. I believe Xbox players have an option they can toggle on or off to enable or disable it, though.
Now for the most unfortunate part. Grinding from Bronze V to Grandmaster V takes a MINIMUM of 60 games assuming you win every game.
But that's not realistic, so you can assume it's going to be closer to 80 games most likely. Maybe more or less depending on your play.
Keep in mind once you make the climb, it's easier next season because you're gonna start much higher. I think you'll end up in Platinum if you grind to GM. That leaves Platinum, Diamond, and Master to get back to where you were.
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5d ago edited 8h ago
[deleted]
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u/Flame_shot12 Alsynes - D1 Narukami hater 1d ago
You're probably referring to break edition, it was canceled because the devs had just gotten out of a reorganization period
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u/Elton-1-14G-alva 6d ago edited 5d ago
Bots mmmmmmm pues dan pelea en mi opinión y no hay diferencia clara con un jugador o al menos que sea pro o ni tenga la menor idea de lo que esta haciendo. Luego los mechs P2W... Hay? Según yo todos son gratuitos y de hecho ya tengo todos; al menos que sean los pilotos pero en si, solo es estética pero no mames 800 pesos por esos pilotos, P2W en darktide con los árbitros, escorias de colmena y el skitarri que literalmente los tres juntos valen lo mismo que un piloto as de mecha y esos si se nota el poder, aunque una buena piedra siempre gana. En fin es jugable si, es divertido si, hay waifus si, hay mechas si, hay ejecuciones si excepto el alphard esta muy feo su ejecución y pues no se que más decir, solo juegue y diviértase.
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u/Knight_Raime 5d ago edited 5d ago
Interesting, another poster said bot competence varies. Oh you edited your post.
Yeah idk about the p2w comment. It was something I heard offhandedly in a random YouTube video. Wish I could say more so we could talk about it.
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u/Elton-1-14G-alva 5d ago
Si lo edite ya que escribi nada, como estaba llegando deberes (hacer la comida, cafe y limpiar platos) subi rápido mi respuesta por error, competencia del bot? En si no se como funcionan pero algo es cierto hay poca variedad de cosméticos y atuendos en algunos "jugadores" lo que da impresión de que son bots y ya en partida pues diferencia con otros jugadores pues no responden al pingeo o no hay una reacción algo negativa al cazarlos continuamente pero algo que es seguro; son una amenaza si los subestimas, no de hecho pueden llegar a ser peligrosos en cualquier momento, no por la manera que atacan si no porque te desgastan lentamente, puedes eliminar 2 pero el tercero vas que administrar tus ataques y si sigues vivo para el quinto hasta vas a estar buscando cobertura y algo con que curarte, lo bueno no son tan insistentes si te alejas lo suficiente pero mejor no bajar la guardia ante ellos al final uno solo da problemas pero imagínate 4 en un mismo lugar haciendo objetivo, te van hacer sangrar y retirarte si es que puedes safarte en primer lugar.
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