u/Ah_fudge

Find me a character in either Mercs or Clans that isn’t wearing some type of gloves, either full or finger-less gloves. Potential pitfall: the Smoked Jags are wearing thin beige-coloured leather gloves with rectangular pads on the back of the knuckles.

One wonders if it’s related to chirophobia or glomming-coded cheirophillia

One has to appreciate the level of detail the various artists (like Mark) put into the games. They put in a lot of hard work to make scenes like this feel real. It’s a park, with a rooftop patio across the street, bike racks… it could be an environment for a human-scale game. It’s entirely likely that many or most players will never actually notice these things as they smash through them, attention placed as appropriate on some enemy mech. But stuff like this makes a game world feel lived-in.

I have plenty of criticism for the games precisely because of how lovingly crafted some parts of these games are. But one experience that put a big smile on my face was wading through an urban environment, buildings collapsing, cars crushed under foot. For one furtive moment it felt exactly like it should and I could almost suspend all disbelief. Perhaps one day there’ll be a mod to place furniture inside of buildings, so that as you literally stroll through a building at cockpit level it’s like you’re looking at a real place.

What’s especially funny to me is that I’m about 95% sure this is canon and in a source book somewhere, given the attention to detail they put in with all the other costuming in Clans.

A bit passé that it’s coincidentally only the ladies standing with their backs 45 to the camera, poor Samuel only gets a quarter turn 😂

Share your experiences. What stopped you, what would have convinced you to keep going? Given Clans is a relatively short linear story game with limited replayability these numbers seem lower than one would hope. This far out from launch one can assume that most of that >64% aren't new players who just bought the game either.

I'm using >64% as it's the most charitable interpretation of the data by assuming each player only chose one ending and then stopped. In reality I'm sure others like myself played both endings which would inflate the numbers. So the reality could be that a much higher proportion didn't finish the campaign. I'm making the assumption that these ratios would hold across platforms, as I see no reason to assume someone who made their purchase on GOG (for example) would be more or less likely to finish the game.

I also found the Flash Storm achievement stat to be interesting. I'm a bit unclear whether it's indicating that only 18% of the people who purchased Flash Storm made it past the first 3 or 4 levels, or if it's implying that only 18% of the entire player base for Clans both purchased Flash Storm and made it through the first 3-4 missions. The former is depressing if true and the latter speaks to a low conversion rate to the DLC.

Which is a shame, because so many people would miss out on discovering that Ghost Bear standard issue uniforms include assless chaps.

Don’t recognize the character, it’s some of the Battletech work from Jarrod Owen

And if he is, think they’ll do a cutscene of his last moments? Would certainly be shocking! And perhaps more importantly: if he does make an appearance, since he’s about Mason’s age and a good bit younger than Ryana, will they hit him with the Yassification ray 🤔

Art by the talented Jarrod Owen, who‘s done a lot of official portraits of Battletech characters. This one is a more detailed version of the portrait he did for Era Report: 3062 and can be found on his website, along with a bunch of handsome Allard-Liaos.

edit: it’s Elias Crichell of the Jade Falcons. I don’t want to spoil too much of his story for those who aren’t in the know.

I’m a dirty Clanner, have been since Christmas ‘95, and I much prefer story-driven games. In theory, this game should be my catnip. Now, I’m about to talk about gameplay. Not the cinematics or the story or the lore-accuracy or graphics or any of the other set dressing. Please keep that in mind.

I know from Mercs to Clans they went from UE4 to UE5 so that might have some part to play, but there’s always been something different about gameplay in Clans and I can’t put my finger on it. Different in a way that feels “less good” for lack of a better term. I don’t know if it’s something with how mechs handle, if it’s an emergent property of the changes to the UI and its cluttered nature in Clans compared to Mercs, the changes to the visuals, the feeling of being led through the missions by the nose, all of the above. Playing it kinda feels like work to me personally and I’ve got no desire to replay any of it.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Can you name what it is that I’m not jiving with?

P.S.: if you love it I’m happy for you, no need to tell me I’m wrong and it’s the best thing ever, etc. I’m purely interested in how widespread my experience is and in finding out what it is specifically about the game that I don’t personally vibe with.

Edit: thanks to everyone who chimed in, a lot of good points were brought up and I think it was hard to pin down because it’s not any one thing but a gestalt of a lot of little differences. Hopefully the modding community has or will be able to address some of the flavour differences over the greater span of time.