Author Topic: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?  (Read 73425 times)

RL Nice

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Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« on: 04 March 2013, 20:11:06 »
I've seen a lot of criticism directed towards MechWarrior: Dark Age on other forums. Not so much this board, but then again, it's probably because it's a board dedicated to the game and coming here just to trash it is what's known as trolling.

Anyways, I'm rather curious as to what BattleTech fans didn't like about Dark Age back in 2003. I'm referring specifically to the game's story and background, since I'm sure the actual game itself had balance issues and stuff like that. Is it because of the jump in time frame with no explanation or lead up to the Inner Sphere's current state resulting in the setting becoming almost unrecognizable? And what do you all think of it now, when the original game's timeline has almost (already?) caught up to the Dark Age?
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Atlas3060

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #1 on: 04 March 2013, 23:49:13 »
It was a different time back then.
FASA was gone, the "Classic" line was hung up on the FedCom Civil War, and Endgame looked to be the last novel of the Classic line.
So when the new game was coming out people get anxious, hopeful, fearful, and other assorted emotions.

The fact that 80% of the HPGs shut down and we had no explanation so far, no novels, no sourcebooks factored into this at least for me.
Having the main focus on just the Republic, leaving the Houses unexplained during this time, also was a factor. There are some people who are just...dedicated to Houses and Clans to a scary degree.  :-\

The website's rosy outlook on the Republic, once again at least to me, smelled of a propoganda movement and I really wanted to see the other side to this faction. It was at Surrender Your Dreams when I finally saw how far the RoTS was willing to go.

It was a combination of many things: lack of immediate sourcebook information, a timejump to this new era and no extensive explanation at the time of release, and overall the game itself really was a big impact to some folks. This was a new game, new way of playing, and no way to port over our armies into it.

I guess some could look at it from a Star Trek ToS fan to first Season Next Generation. "Who are these people?" "Where are my favorite heroes and villans?" "What is this new ship?" "A group that we thought were evil now are friends?!" "Who are these new other races?" etc.

It was a lot of change at, to some, a very short time.

Now as things have caught up to the era some are excited, some aren't, and some just won't budge from their personal favorite eras.
We still have people who hate the Clans, hate the Blakists, even hate how Amaris took power for the short time he did.
This game has a passionate fan base and this era will serve it hopefully just as well as the other eras.
It's not about winning or losing, no it's all about how many chapters have you added to the rule books after your crazy antics.

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #2 on: 05 March 2013, 01:00:16 »
The collectible blind booster format also wasn't what many existing BT mini fanciers liked either. Basically, you could say it was a "new Coke" reaction, except MW:DA was far, far more successful (for a shorter period) than BattleTech has ever been. Millions of minis (literally) were produced - at least 10, and possibly more like 50 times as many minis as has ever been made for BT.
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Labyr

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #3 on: 05 March 2013, 08:50:14 »
A lot of people just hated how (some) of the mechs looked. Things like the Atlas having big spikes and exposed ammunition linkages irked them. Some people disliked it because it was different. Some who dug deeper really hated what the Jihad did to the universe and thought that the RotS was too mary sue. Some players didn't know about CBT continuing on with FanPro so they resented WizKids replacing the classic universe with what they considered a cheap reboot. Mind you not all Battletech veterans felt negatively about MWDA, but there was a vocal population who did. Very vocal in some cases.

Long story short MWDA had a different aesthetic than Battletech that made it unfamiliar and unwelcoming to some veterans.

wantec

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #4 on: 05 March 2013, 09:46:29 »
Lack of information & change.

That's basically what it all comes down to. There were a lot of changes in the universe between the end of the FedCom Civil War and the Republic. Herb has said a few times that the Jihad in some form had been a part of their future plans before WizKids took over, but because those future plans aren't published, the general public didn't know this and it looked like a huge change in the universe. One company FanPro was shutting down (or had shut down, I can't remember) and a new one was taking over the universe. There were new people in charge of the new company, although folks like Herb and Randall were some part of the new company. The game mechanics and the overall feel of the first few sets was much different than the games of BattleTech that most folks remembered, loved, and still played. There were new looks to some of the units, which a lot of folks didn't like (just look at the unseen issues).

And the universe was initially focused solely on the Republic. This created the avenue for a lot more bits of misinformation that seemed like more big changes to the casual observer. At the time of the HPG blackout, many members of the Republic Armed Forces break off to form their own militias, looking to seize resources and planets wherever they can, and increase their forces. These militias had allegiances to larger powers in the Inner Sphere (or a large company in the case of one faction) and were given unique names to tie themselves to these factions. Some casual observers took this as a change in those factions, that WizKids was giving up on the rest of the IS and only focusing on the Republic and these new mini-factions. The rise of these militias led to a temporary, a temporary use of industrial mechs forced into service as combat units by the militia forces and the RAF. It makes sense to those who stop and analyze it closely. At a time when there few factories and few mechs in service with the RAF, an industrial mech, even an unaltered one, can provide some benefits in combat. If nothing else, it provides one more unit for the enemy to consider & target. As time passed, and the focus shifted out from just the Republic, factories came online, mothballed units came out of storage, and the industrial units were slowly pulled from service. One more thing was the drawn down in military forces, which many thought would never happen. The Jihad devastated planets and economies across the IS as well as the military forces of those powers. When you stop to consider things, it is easy to see that the focus for most powers would be to repairing their economies and their planets, consolidating their battered military forces.
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Frabby

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #5 on: 05 March 2013, 10:29:21 »
MW:DA was far, far more successful (for a shorter period) than BattleTech has ever been. Millions of minis (literally) were produced - at least 10, and possibly more like 50 times as many minis as has ever been made for BT.
Sigh. To think that the huge marketing effort that has to be behind this could have gone into classic BattleTech instead...
But somewhere between the unseen situation and Roc shutting down the novel line, classic BattleTech as-is apparently wasn't promising enough to the financiers. No, we'll just take someting completely different and tack on the "BattleTech" logo to promote it and buy out the BT fanbase. I never understood that line of thinking.
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Atlas3060

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #6 on: 05 March 2013, 10:44:49 »
*Shrugs*
Ease of entry into a game is a selling point.
I remember some of the online videos praising the click dial as a way to play without "mountains of sourcebooks" which would promote fast and fun play.
I don't think that video was directed to Dark Age specifically, but rather WizKid's all around system for their products.
It's not about winning or losing, no it's all about how many chapters have you added to the rule books after your crazy antics.

wellspring

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #7 on: 05 March 2013, 11:05:31 »
I saw the point of a re-boot, but I didn't think it was handled very well.

I have to confess that I'm not a fan of the game mechanics as written, but I was horrified that they were jumping on the clicky-game bandwagon. It just didn't feel like it was worth playing. They figured out the problem, but it just wasn't the right solution.

They essentially wiped away the entire background so they could start over, but in doing so it felt artificial and childish. I mean that in several senses, especially in the sense that it felt like their target customer base was much younger than I. The HPG blackout seemed like one more annoying and arbitrary fiat.

Finally, as much as you say that fan loyalties to individual factions are irrational-- and they are-- that's kind of the point of having them. A good game developer wants to encourage this as much as possible, to get players invested in the game and its setting. So wipe all that away, and your customers are going to be offended and probably stop playing.

So it's a combination of things: the fact of the change itself, what they changed into, and how they handled the change process.

BTW, I didn't get angry, scoop up all my toys, and then stomp home. Honestly, if that had happened it would have been better for BT than what I did do-- at least I was still passionate about the setting in some form. Instead, I dabbled in 40k for a while, played a lot of FMA (a better BT than BT), and got back into roleplaying. I'd mostly forgotten about BT by then.

So what brought me back? I'd heard good things about CGL's handling of the property, mostly. On TMP they mentioned the Battleforce scale minis, which fit my dirtside collection better than standard BT minis. I got curious. I have to give a shout-out to Sarna on this. I hadn't bought a new BT supplement in over a decade, and having a free resource to pick apart to figure out if I wanted to get back into the game at all really made a difference.

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #8 on: 05 March 2013, 23:00:03 »
And the grognard prophets in the year of 2002 said, "Ye, when this Dark Age has passed and the Unseen returned to us shall Battletech enter a new golden age." And in the year of 2009 this came true, just not how people had expected. It's been an uphill ride ever since.

But really, it was the fact that a booster cost more than a metal mech of your choice and you never knew what you were getting for that price. The stats were bound to the minis instead of the sheet. So even if you had a Madcat, because it was Angus Drumstick instead of Seka Ward, you couldn't use it for her stats in your Rusty Puppy army.

I wonder how many people remember how pricey Btech unseens got in that time too? I remember the highlight being that I thought $90 was a good deal for a Marauder in 2004 and Stinger LAM's went for around $55. Eesh.

Dark times, but DA makes a great corpse to pick over for N-scale gaming I tell you what! Nothing better than watching people clear out armies they spent thousands on and getting them for less than 10% of what they paid originally. You get to see what you're getting as well, and almost all the units have modern stats for use in current era btech. And if you do feel like grabbing some boosters, you can get them for about 20% retail nowadays.

Truly a glorious time we live in.

Oh, and a lot of that DA CG art was terrible. Not that it was a halcyon time for TRO art but man that stuff was beyond terrible.

As to the fluff, because of a lot of the people forget what it's like, remember this. Endgame was on bookstore shelves at the same time as Ghost War. Do you know what it's like to be wandering through BAM and the universe you've been following since you were 7 that just had it's last major war end with the hope for a new prosperity and continued Star League for all and then get slammed by Ghost War?

2nd Star League? Hah! That didn't even last a month after Endgame. By the way, a bunch of homeworld clans have moved into the Sphere for some reason and a couple combined with existing states. Oh, and the Terran Hegemony was reborn even though we're not going to explain it. They're also super awesome and all we're going to talk about. Something to do with Stone and those crazy techwizards. Mechs are really rare again, and most of your favorite designs are extinct. Those that are not, resemble nothing to their namesakes. Only CGL taking 6 full years to cover the Jihad actually worked things into something recognizable and create a decent bridge between the two timelines.


cavingjan

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #9 on: 06 March 2013, 10:13:23 »
Sigh. To think that the huge marketing effort that has to be behind this could have gone into classic BattleTech instead...
But somewhere between the unseen situation and Roc shutting down the novel line, classic BattleTech as-is apparently wasn't promising enough to the financiers. No, we'll just take someting completely different and tack on the "BattleTech" logo to promote it and buy out the BT fanbase. I never understood that line of thinking.
Not all that much marketing went into it. Mage Knight followed by HeroClix got the bulk of the marketing. MW was riding the coat tails of those two games. Most of the marketing seemed to be tied to the conventions (which WK goes to) and the weekly tournament series which was very effective for a collectible game but not so for a non collectible game.

wellspring

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #10 on: 06 March 2013, 12:21:58 »
And the grognard prophets in the year of 2002 said, "Ye, when this Dark Age has passed and the Unseen returned to us shall Battletech enter a new golden age." And in the year of 2009 this came true, just not how people had expected. It's been an uphill ride ever since.

(...)

Only CGL taking 6 full years to cover the Jihad actually worked things into something recognizable and create a decent bridge between the two timelines.

Some of the creators of BattleTech's greatest triumphs and worst gaffes come from their oft-tortured efforts to preserve continuity. Wars of Reaving is an incredible supplement just on its own merits-- how much moreso when you realize the constraints GhostBear was working under.

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #11 on: 06 March 2013, 16:26:54 »
I think part of the need, yes need, for clicky'mech was that actual RPGers were getting old, dieing off, and not being replaced by a new generation. Gaming was going PC/console and away from the table. Clicky'mech filled a niche for fast gaming without the need to drop major bucks and time into reading. It gave the kids their miniature giant robot fetish fulfillment, yet introduced them to the BT world.

For my part I can say I got into it because I had a serious full time job and no time for the extended time commitment that the metal minis required. Then kids came into it and the clix game is serving to get them into gaming. But there were mistakes made. BT was in flux, people were annoyed that WK brought the clix out.

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #12 on: 11 March 2013, 01:16:54 »
Another factor -- for some reason, not fully explained at the time, BattleMechs had become exceedingly rare, making combined arms a much bigger deal.  This was a key component of the early novels, where famously some planets were said to have two or three 'Mechs defending them in total.  In the Clix game itself, common wisdom in the early days was that 'Mechs were useless, and competitive armies would be comprised only of infantry and vehicles -- no 'Mechs.  For many BattleTech players who were into it for the big, stompy robots, they were left cold.

Unfortunately, like a lot of things with MWDA, it appeared that by the time these issues were identified and rectified, a lot of potential players had gotten fed up and moved on to other things.

Stingray

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #13 on: 11 March 2013, 09:50:07 »
At first it looked like that MWDA was going to replaced Battletech for good, and that rubbed people the wrong way, then you have the story changed, and then the Mechs.... No mech from the original expansion looked like their counterpart from Battletech... many had these spikes, or weird piston things, or other various things on them that looked silly. This was to many BT fans another punch in the face.

Along with what was mentioned above I think MWDA/AoD also caught flak because of some actions taken by WizKids themselves and how they handled the game. For instance it seemed like every set had that one or two overpowered units that was obviously broken, but wouldn't get fixed until 4 months after the expansion released. Also they were very rare even if they were not the unique from the set, and many times they were rarer than the unique from the game. Along with some funky rules (that made charging the best attack ever so Mech battles were often who could charge the other first) it seemed a little broken at times. Granted they would fix the rules, but it did make the game seem like it was constantly changing.


However the game was fun and MUCH more accessible than Battletech (mainly because you can play a game in a hour), and was good for simple fun.
« Last Edit: 11 March 2013, 10:14:59 by Stingray »

wellspring

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #14 on: 11 March 2013, 10:09:40 »
At first it looked like that MWDA was going to replaced Battletech for good, and that rubbed people the wrong way, then you have the story changed, and then the Mechs.... No mech from the original expansion looked like their counterpart from Battletech... many had these spikes, or weird piston things, or other various things on them that looked silly. This was to many BT fans another punch in the face.

Anytime a game world changes hands, the fans take it with some trepidation. The game developers almost always say "trust us", and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But the worst time to ask someone to trust you is when you first meet, so to speak. I know several writers for some very well known RPGs, and they often gripe in private about petulant and whining fans. And it's hard to blame them, considering that the fans rake them over the coals whenever a new book comes out. On the other hand, I've see franchises badly damaged by mismanagement and bad creative decisions. There's a long list of RPG settings where a failed reboot caused long-term damage to the game's viability.

In the BT space, if Ben Rome said, "trust me" with a major setting change, I'd trust him. If joe shmo the fresh-out-of-starbucks artiste asked me to trust him, that level of trust would be significantly lower, even with Herb watching him. If BT was acquired by Comcast and the new creative team announced some exciting new changes, they wouldn't get an ounce of trust. Trust comes from a track record, and most of the wild changes to a setting come when a new team takes over (or old team, new management).

To me, CGLWiz Kids's wacky new setting was some guy in creative had gotten into the steampunk subculture and decided to make the game about that instead. That's not exactly what happened, but on this end (being a fan) it's hard to get the whole story when developers are close-mouthed and sometimes misleading about where they're going.

update: Fixed typo, with apologies.
« Last Edit: 12 March 2013, 09:58:04 by wellspring »

The Hawk

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #15 on: 11 March 2013, 22:24:47 »
To me, CGL's wacky new setting was some guy in creative had gotten into the steampunk subculture and decided to make the game about that instead. That's not exactly what happened, but on this end (being a fan) it's hard to get the whole story when developers are close-mouthed and sometimes misleading about where they're going.

ITYM WizKids, not CGL.

YingJanshi

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #16 on: 11 March 2013, 22:45:12 »
For me it was mostly the randomness of the boosters. I have a very strong dislike to games that use this to sell (so CCG, Hero Clix). Also the art was just...horrible. Still don't like it but I can live with it.
I didn't mind the clix bases, I really liked how they worked in the Crimson Skies game.

One thing to remember is that WizKids (and the Clix bases) was created by Jordan Weisman.

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worktroll

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #17 on: 11 March 2013, 23:40:49 »
Who also created BattleTech, Crimson Skies, IIRC the Rogue Legion games, and did a lot of Traveller supplements in the Freedonian Air and Space Administration era. The man gets around!
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wellspring

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #18 on: 12 March 2013, 09:58:54 »
ITYM WizKids, not CGL.

You're right. Thanks, fixed it.

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #19 on: 12 March 2013, 12:01:20 »
Personally, it just wasn't battletech as I knew it. I'm not all that bright and pretty conservative so i like things that i know. I tried the game. It was ok. I just had a problem with the whole collectable thing. The first 20 boxes i bought had nothing but industrial mechs and vees and infantry that i wasn't used to. Then i got a spider that didn't look like a spider. Things were just too different for me and the minis were odd and i couldn't bend things straight without breaking it...
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mike19k

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #20 on: 12 March 2013, 15:19:31 »
I thought that it was OK, but to me it was not the "real" battletech more an a watered down game with the basic flavor or battletech. The issue bigest issue I had with it besides the collectible was that you could not play faction pure and have a army that could win at least not at the start and I did not play for long due to that. Factions are important to the background and the way it was being played just did not have it as far as I saw.

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #21 on: 14 March 2013, 15:22:50 »
I dislike the ClickTech games mechanism - too simplistic for me.  I have yet to see a ClickTech mech that I thought looked good at all, although I admit I stopped looking well before seeing even half of them.  I intensely disliked the increase in miniature size, preferring the old, old smaller scale from the late 1980s.  Having to buy something without knowing exactly what I was getting beforehand is a deal-breaker for me.  I hated collectible games, and refused to have anything to do with them.

With all this going against it, there is no surprise I didn't like WizKids and the direction they took.  And when I found out how they planned to change the universe, I gave up on them in disgust.  A completely new setting would have been okay.  A reboot to 3025 with some of FASAnomics fixed and a more cohesive setting would have been acceptable.  Instead, the setting had large changes made to it, very few of which I expected, and even fewer of which I liked.  It's not that the changes were badly done, they just went so far in a direction I didn't like that it isn't my Battletech any more.  Any change will be loved by some, and hated by others, and I unfortunately was not part of their target audience.  To my view, they didn't fix anything that was broken, but did break a lot of stuff that was working fine.  It's not that they went from Star Trek: TOS to Star Trek: NG, it's that they started doing Babylon 5 while claiming it was Star Trek, just better. 

The company came across at times as if they disliked or hated classic Battletech, wanted a completely different setting, but had to keep the old one around in order to keep the trademark going, or to score a purchase from the old fans.  We want your money, but we don't want anything to do with your game sort of feel.  Some of them still come off that way, unfortunately.
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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #22 on: 17 March 2013, 17:48:23 »
I'll give an opposite vote.
I like Dark Age, AoD clicky tech thingy, its simple and effective. While some might have different opinion, it did
represent story line quite well, there was a power creep, but if you play pre AoD mech with pilots and gear cards,
you do get mostly equal mechs to new ones and some broken combos. Optimizing a army does take more time then
in classic battletech, because you use wider range of units. I might not field much of ICE mech any more, but with pilots/gear
upgrades you get a lot of fun swarm armies that can beat living crap out of most front line design.
Im a mechcomander/warrior,Dark Age, AoD and classic battletech player, and still enjoy all of them, when time gives
me a chance.
Plastic creck still hits, opening a boosters is a bliss, getting rare still puts a smile, just like double six does...

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #23 on: 28 March 2013, 16:27:03 »
My overwhelming impression was that the primary source of dislike was simply Collectible Vs. Custom.  Battletech had a long tradition of providing a very customizable experience -- building your own individual mech designs, etc.  Whereas MW:DA was the blind collectible purchase model.

I remember being a RPG'er back in 1994 looking with distain (UTTER DISTAIN) at this new crop of gamers playing this "Magic The Gathering" thing at conventions.  And thinking, surely this scourge will play itself out in a year.  (*ahem* A year later I got my own cards... *sheepish*)


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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #24 on: 28 March 2013, 18:05:03 »
The collectible blind booster format also wasn't what many existing BT mini fanciers liked either. Basically, you could say it was a "new Coke" reaction, except MW:DA was far, far more successful (for a shorter period) than BattleTech has ever been. Millions of minis (literally) were produced - at least 10, and possibly more like 50 times as many minis as has ever been made for BT.

Largely agree although I didn't like getting random things in each box I did like the ease on which to get them.  I picked up dozens of booster packs - wasn't even a massive fan of game but I've used the minis for dozens of stuff - pre painted and built easy to use.

One thing my local shop said - MWDA was easy to get the "classic" stuff is a lot harder.

For me its largely what everyone said I didn't massively like the time jump past a massive war that shaped the future into tiny armies without much explanation.  MWDA website did go through lots of things but it's format felt a bit "wooden" not the rich universe I was used to with BattleTech.

If the "classic" line had stopped and MWDA had been the only format I'd have likely drifted away completely from BT purely because the fiction side had dried up - the DA novels were a nice touch and easy to get hold of but even they slowed and eventually stopped.  For me the fiction and the universe sells it always has probably always will.
My three main Alternate Timeline with Thanks fan-fiction threads are in the links below. I'm always open to suggestions or additions to be incorporated so if you feel you wish to add something feel free. There's non-canon units, equipment, people, events, erm... Solar Systems spread throughout so please enjoy

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,20515.0.html - Part 1

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,52013.0.html - Part 2

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,79196.0.html - Part 3

Bergie

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #25 on: 10 April 2013, 13:09:23 »
I personally loved the game, though not all aspects of the game.

It was easy to pick up, I personally like MOST of the mini's (not all by any means), and it made battletech fun to play for me again.

That being said, there were some simply BROKEN mechanics, such as "Tank Drop" that broke the game for many people.
Returns from the Dead to be a Taurian and Shark/Fox Fanboy

GhostCat

  • Lieutenant
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  • If A, then B, The Evil Genius Argument
Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #26 on: 10 April 2013, 13:56:42 »
I personally loved the game, though not all aspects of the game.

It was easy to pick up, I personally like MOST of the mini's (not all by any means), and it made battletech fun to play for me again.

That being said, there were some simply BROKEN mechanics, such as "Tank Drop" that broke the game for many people.

I remember lots of complaints about tank drop, but it was easy enough to defeat.  Base the transport's loading arc so the passenger(s) can't escape, then salvage or destroy the vehicle.  The passengers are then eliminated if they can not touch the transport when they exit.

Worse than that was the Base-Break Attack, which was eventually cured by the Friendly Fire and Called Shot rules.  Nothing gives pain to a 300 point mech like a 13 point infantry on a hoverbike basing it and making whole formations safe from ranged attacks while they set up brutally close to the Big Mech.

I still love the Game and the Spirit Cat Black Hawk that made "Alpha Strike!" such an easy thing to Fear.

GC
"Spirit Cats are just pirates basically." --- Quote from Herb


Maelwys

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #27 on: 11 April 2013, 03:45:05 »
I think part of the problem (for BT players) was that there were just a lots of little things that someone would eventually dislike.

If you didn't mind the time jump, you hated the fact that the early stories were focused on the Republic and the mini-factions instead of the Houses you were used to.

If you didn't mind the Republic then you hated the fact that you couldn't just buy the faction that you wanted to play.

If you didn't mind the random boosters, then you disliked that you couldn't customize something as part of the game. If you didn't mind the lack of customization, then you disliked the fact that`Mechs you were used to suddenly looked completely different.

If you didn't mind the `Mechs you were used to looking different then you had an issue with the early novels.

It wasn't really one big thing. I think it was just lots of little things that were all different for everyone.

MOrab46019

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #28 on: 11 April 2013, 04:24:58 »
I just could not warm up to it. A buddy of mine got into DA. Showed me minis. They looked ok. Im a fan of the unseen and TROs art. Just did not feel right to me. Merc units I love. when it looked like being a merc unit in DA was not going to be in the game just turned me off. When I heard that classic was coming out I was happy and supported  that line. I still do. Glad this game did not end up like others dead.

StCptMara

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Re: Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?
« Reply #29 on: 11 April 2013, 04:36:09 »
I played MW:DA/AoD. I liked the game, more or less.

But, I can understand where people could end up disliking it. Alot of those reasons got addressed in the updates
from DA to AoD, mind you.

First, 'mechs were no longer the kings of the battlefield. An all Infantry army would take down an all or mostly 'mech
army most of the time. In fact, you could take a 'mech out of the fight with an infantry unit with Reactive armour most of the
time. This was because those ballistic weapons that did not have a minimum range either had low damage values, or nothing
that could get through the armour, and 'mechs could not do close combat attacks without a melee weapon in the original
rules.

Second, was the fluff that we were getting. I mean, we had the Stackpole short story about the kid trying to mount a weapon
on his agro mech, and then it being revealed that in his farms silo was a Victor, and it being made to sound like actual BattleMechs
were rare, and had to be hidden away. Then you got the initial round of INN stories, all talking about the golden age of peace,
how the Inner Sphere did not practice war anymore because of Devlin Stone's Republic making all the Houses beat their swords
into plowshares.   Sure, we know now that was just propaganda, but at the time, this was what was forming people's information
about the setting.

Third, 'Mechs just didn't seem like 'mechs. They couldn't do close combat unless they had special equipment, they couldn't move
and fire, they couldn't protect themselves from infantry.
"Victory or Debt!"- The Battlecry of Mercenaries everywhere

"Greetings, Mechwarrior! You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against---Oops, wrong universe" - Unknown SLDF Recruiter

Reality and Battletech go hand in hand like a drug induced hallucination and engineering a fusion reactor ;-)