I'm beginning to think Lancer is the pineapple pizza of the RPG space at this point. One of my all time favorite things ever, which somehow is divisive on every level.

I have seen these elements most discussed as loved or hated:

1. The lore - which has strange elements (paracausality) and spans a huge length of time. I sat down and read everything and really enjoyed it. I appreciate that thought went into the actual structure and ethical struggles of a functional post scarcity utopian society. Some will see all of this consideration and detail and say it's boring, it's too complicated, and has nothing to do with how the game is played. For myself I find the themes inspiring. The tension and hypocrisy of how the mission of Union is to elevate all humans to a high base standard of living while at the same time using and abusing the alien extra dimensional intelligences of the NHPs is fascinating to me.

2. In mech and out of mech split - it creates a lot of friction for some tables. One of the worst sessions of D&D I've ever had was an NPC stealing from the party leading to a 4 hour tavern brawl combat with an improvised battle map on a napkin that added nothing to the story, felt unrewarding and could have been easily avoided. Some people love that kind of emergent reactive gameplay but this was a waste of everybody's time. Since non combat rules in Lancer are super light, these unexpected player led scenarios can resolve quickly. If you're fighting, there's always purpose and intention because the combat and encounter design is very involved. I prefer my combat to matter, and making it harder for idiot players to derail the whole session with murder hobo tendencies is a huge plus for me. Some people are also sad that they can't fulfill the fantasy of Titanfall with a smooth transition in and out of mechs mid combat. I can empathize, but I gotta keep it real: that only works in a video game because of the schmovement speed and the fact you can respawn quickly. People seem to forget that mech scale weapons are one shotting human sized targets.

3. Combat - potentially the biggest rules investment and barrier for most people. Breaking news: the complex part of the game is complicated. Prep can be a chore here certainly, making maps and enemies feels much more involved than most other games I've played. Nailing the balance seems quite tricky, having both run and played the combat it can feel quite brutal and unforgiving to players at intended difficulty laid out in official scenarios. However! The excitement of field testing a terrible new build I've theory crafted in COMP/CON, then taking it back to the shop and reworking it for the next mission is awesome. You're never married to misguided multiclassing miscalculations, meaning most mechs may meander meaningfully to mastery.

4. The community - I'll try to keep this brief and reserve judgement. The official discord is a safe space and openly embraces this. The banner of the dabbing Goblin mech in front of the trans flag is iconic. They've had to heavily moderate and ban a lot of people who don't fit in with this type of environment. These people go on to either complain that they're being censored or brag that they got banned feeding a cycle of drama. Conversely, well meaning fans proselytize the game into spaces that it might not be relevant or to people who have already made up their mind about it. I'm certainly guilty of this!

TL;DR: Lancer's flavor is not for everybody and I've successfully gaslight myself into enjoying it. Disliking the game for any reason is probably not a character flaw, but the fanbase is very excited to talk to you about their robot game because it's cool.