My concern with this pack is that the Skill Tree "improvement" is to be released at the same time.
With that, there is no point in having any mechpaks as the rule of three is gone (a good thing). But it could be worse due to the time/cost it will take to grind them out. Not to mention that every new mech you have will be a target on any battlefield since you have to earn "radar dep" on each one, rather than being able to equip a "radar dep" module before you step foot on a battlefield.
So why the hell did I buy the Assassin standard, plus the expansion? I don't have the kind of time required to grind/suffer through 5 new mechs nor do I feel its worth the money spent now on potentially "wasted" variants. With the current system I could at least buff my mechs a bit from the get-go, making the grind to Mastered a bit more enjoyable.
Add to that I will have to spend time to respec all the mechs I previously Mastered. I only have 46 mechs, and some of those I will be selling anyways, but the amount of time that is going to take respec-ing vs playing the game is wasted. Management Warrior Online before I can play Mech Warrior Online...yay. It is not the GXP, XP or CBills, I'm good there (or so I think), it is the time that will have been for nothing and the time I will have to spend getting back to where I was, let alone going forward...
I hope PGI reconsiders the release date on this and pushes it off a bit to work on the concerns more.
On a related note... While I don't believe this is what is going on at PGI, google "Shocking Interview with a Piranha Employee" at CaptionGenerator and ensure you have the captions on before hitting play. It is how a lot of folks feel, and pretty damn funny/clever overall.
I was laughing so hard I was crying.
I don't want to cancel my Assassin and Roughneck, but I'm not sure the game is worth my time/money at this point.
If the new Skill Tree is coming in March, I think it only fair that PGI remove the "mechpack" model and allowed a la carte for the Assassin, Roughneck and Javelin. I would not get 5 Assassins and 5 Roughnecks, but I would definitely get at least one, maybe 2 or 3 of each.
All that being said, I'm still looking forward to more images, and the updates leading to the release date.