Why I am leaving the game. Not intended to be a rant. Not about "paytowin".
Let's get things straight.
The game is NOT dying. Believe me, only WR Wiki forum is. Old-school guys are leaving, but there are many more new players coming into the game, younger ones. Young kids find "forums" too complex to use and stupid to navigate, so they use Discord\Line\Facebook\GooglePlus to communicate. It is NOT expensive to play - if you keep looking at Pixonic FB page, MechSpectrum blog and in-game news (envelope icon) you will get plenty of opportunities to get all the latest and best stuff. It is NOT hard to play (more on that later). You can get into champs if you strive for ~6-9 months, and even faster if you use gold\real money to speed up upgrades (so far the only definite prerequisite for champs is having your hangar at about lvl9)
So, why am I leaving then? Some backstory. Currently, I got 510m+ Silver, 17K gold and every robot\weapon I need plus more. I started playing February 2017, made it quick to Diamond, Expert and touched champs (got to tier 64 out of 82 by that time) by September. Made it to Pixonic insiders community as a writer. Got a lot of posts and reputation on WR Wiki, WikiForum and Deplorables Discord (really fun one, I tell you!). Met a LOT of great people everywhere connected to the game. Got everything there was in the game (save for Fury, Lance, Rhino and Haechi), upgraded stuff to 9, and some Orkans to 12 even. Won every event save for current one - Hover bot event (by the time of writing I couldn't be bothered playing).
The game finally died for me with the introduction of Mk2 stuff. After trying to beat a dead horse with a stick, I finally letting it go. For me, the game becomes bad in so many ways, I just can't account all of them; but I'll at least try: 1) Infinite hangar upgrade. Prior to Mk2 you could max out two weapons or robots per month - not really fast - but pretty often it goes even slower (around 25 days for single Raijin or Ancile). Given the fact that you typical hangar consists at least of 5 robots (hello, hangar decks!) with 2~4 weapons each, you are looking forwards upgrading 15~25 items, which nets in about 1-2 years. By that time new stuff will be introduced, older got re-balanced, and you will crave for some diversity, too. Now to get to Mk2 it would take twice as much. I cannot commit myself into playing daily (you will need A LOT of silver to keep up with upgrades, which is possible only by daily playing) the game for several years.
2) Wasted\waited times. It looks like typical battle is 10 minutes long max, but in reality when you want to have a quick battle it is taking 5~20 seconds to load the game, then 5~30 seconds to match the battle, and then usually 5~15 seconds pre-battle wait (in-battle countdown). Prior to "Orkan\Taran buff" era usual battle was ~8 minutes, pretty often actual 10 minutes. Now most battles are done in ~4 minutes; and you can predict match outcome in 2 minutes really; so waiting two minutes to make a quickie is a bit frustrating, too.
3) Lack of diversity. Now this is one of the biggest issues for me. Long gone the times when different bots were needed to fulfill different roles - Sniper, Brawler, Support, Beacon capper, Main battle bot. Now snipers are gone (do not call 600m range warfare "sniping" please =) ) and every other task can be accomplished by single bot. Almost any of the new bot will do, actually. And same goes for weapons. You can (and will) win 70% of battles using one or two weapons (by now it is Shocktrain and Orkan, maybe Taran too). That makes gameplay a bit boring and repetitive.
4) Removal of Scissor-Rock-Paper mechanics. Plasma used to be good vs Ancile bots, but shields were SO tough you could barely break it with Taran. Splash was good vs shielded brawlers, but you couldn't hit fast-paced bots with it, and Ancile was regenerating too fast to be taken down with Orkans. After Orkan\Taran and kinetic weapons buff it is now really easy to break the shield, be it rocket, plasma or punisher. Use of fast small bots are now stupid move because you can't outrun the rockets, and beacons can be capped by more powerful big guys, who are at the same time fast ones.
5) New weapons (not all, but most part of it). This actually is kind of "lack of diversity part2". Thing is, Medium slot was always more of a close-range combat slot, Heavy slot was mostly medium to long range fighting, and the light slot was kind of supportive to both. Of course, there were exceptions (Molots, Hydra, Gekko, Thunder), but you could see a good player by his bot config. Novice would combine Thunder with Pins on Leo, because "indicated" range was 500 for both; while experienced brawler knew that Thunder goes with Pinata. Now almost every weapon got it's light, medium, heavy counterpart, taking away "combination" part out of the game. You don't need to think here.
6) Mailru (Pixonic?) ignorance. Dashes on TestServer, new UI on TestServer, casino, Mk2 - this stuff never got positive feedback from Pix. However, they ignored feedback and added functionality, which made me feel like community's opinion was asked just to make people feel like they are important. Time and time again Mail.Ru commercial plans were proved to be more important than community voice. Roundtables were a fiasco, and trying to get some ideas to Pix, although met with A LOT of enthusiasm from PR managers, never made an actual result.
But all of abovesaid could've been a small nuisance, if not for Pix. It is funny, but being in Pix's insiders group actually made my gameplay experience worse, because I have access to some of the future plans, and it doesn't look fun to me. Kids flowing into the game are craving for easier gameplay (removal of scissor-rock-paper, removal of beacons, removal of different combat roles), free stuff (roulettes, casinos, daily chests and stuff), and more flashy and pew-pew. And the future is dim (for me, and bright for younger players). There would be more skins, more flash, more free stuff, customisations, daily rewards, free rewards, casino rewards, simpler mechanics and gameplay - all of these are coming into the game next year.
And my sadness was amplified by Pix's insiders' developer's Q&A held just recently. Yes, they are moving towards more traditional shooter in terms of mechanics and gameplay, just "a bit", to satisfy larger players base. So for me, in the end, WR has slowly faded and disappeared in a new, different game, which I have no interest playing in. It is just my opinion, but there are a lot of PvP online shooters, both good and bad, and I am not interested in playing it.
However, if you, fellow pilot, looking into colorful, dynamic, good looking, best of its class online PvP mobile shooter - by any means start or continue playing WR, there are A LOT more to come, very fun and interesting stuff for you!
Thank you and goodbye!
P.s. there is a new Griffin design for you:
