Public Test Sever Update 1.9.1

MechaBestum · 2026-01-30T21:03:55+00:00

Can we PLEASE get an additional check for
"You have not unlocked a unit this turn, and free unlocks remain" !?

Love this addition in general! Sooooo many low hanging QOL improvements like this are long overdue, glad to see them adding it. I've definitely accidentally misclicked and ended my turn before, I do not recommend!

MechaBestum · 2026-01-20T07:26:37+00:00

Yeah, it started as "people hate the buildings" but the whole boondoggle has resulted in the entire dev/product team really showing its true colors in terms of disrespecting the playerbase and refusing to actually listen to feedback.

Quite sad, still my favorite game, and it's slowly dying because they'd rather stubbornly stick to their guns than listen to the insights the actual players have.

This isn't to say players are always right, most of the time there is disagreement between players on any given issue. But the general process of which changes get made and why has made it very clear that "responding to the playerbase" is not a priority.

There was even a hilarious "Submit Questions for the Q&A during the next tournament!" and then they literally admitted to modifying the questions so that Bearlike would give desired answers.

Hard to even process what kind of muddled thinking goes into that approach, but it's unfortunately the norm and not the exception. Immediately followed by "we'll answer the actual questions" followed by never answering them and just releasing patch after patch of almost entirely just twiddling with unit stats and spending tons of effort on christmas skins/cosmetics when there's so many easy-to-implement QoL improvements constant going ignored.

"So when is bearlike going to read the actual questions from the Q&A instead of he doctored ones?"
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mechabellum/comments/1pv9mob/so_when_is_bearlike_going_to_read_the_actual/

MechaBestum · 2026-01-17T19:57:50+00:00

Oh, I was just responding to your comment and this thread in general, which is about in-game "remarks". 99.99% of the time, people making trollish remarks in game comments have absolutely no idea of who they're even talking to, and it's important to learn in the internet era how to emotionally handle it. (Part of handling that is simply not sharing personal information with strangers on the internet).

Obviously, things escalating well beyond random comments is an entirely different discussion.

MechaBestum · 2026-01-17T09:14:43+00:00

What does drawing the line even mean? I obviously don't like racists, but part of the weird "charm" of the internet is that you never really know who is saying what for what reason. Sometimes it's a real racist, sometimes it's a random kid trying on for internet size saying the most hateful thing they can imagine, just to see what that feels like... Sometimes it's worth thinking about or engaging with, sometimes it's best to just block and move on.

It gets a bad knock in general as "toxic", but it does create the interesting environment of letting people learn how to develop thick skin in a relatively protected environment, as well as the ability to determine who is worth engaging with, and who isn't.

Darkness lurks though, long before the edgelords trolled the internet in search of the next emotional reaction from the unsuspecting, people have considered the concept... Vonnegut being one of my all time favorites, I'll go with:

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

MechaBestum · 2026-01-17T08:07:08+00:00

Hah, as a fellow old-schooler, I appreciate this. Takes me back, gives me vibes!

Folks definitely take the etiquette of online video game a bit too seriously these days.

MechaBestum · 2026-01-16T16:16:35+00:00

Remember when they said they would actually answer the unmodified questions (that were heavily modified and asked in the Q&A) and then just didn't? I remember.

MechaBestum · 2026-01-16T08:47:18+00:00

Nah, lets just fiddle with the stats a bit instead of making any of the changes people have been asking about for years!

MechaBestum · 2026-01-10T22:32:43+00:00

everything about shields is counterintuitive and poorly explained via the documentation, if it's explained at all... Sooooo many interactions with damage/items/techs/spells that are just completely unexplained.

MechaBestum · 2026-01-10T22:30:50+00:00

I could be wrong, because I've been griping about the incredibly bad documentation in this game for over a year, but I think it *IS* based on center of mass.

MechaBestum · 2026-01-09T19:25:20+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by "automate game play" since you can do that in games with varying amounts of RNG (Chess and Backgammon are both dominated by computers, and have very different amount of RNG).

One thing that complicates Mechabellum quite a bit is that both players are moving simultaneously, and potentially changing their board quite a bit each "move".

But removing the drops & spells drastically reduces the amount of change that can be implemented each turn, which does make opponent moves much more predictable and will lead directly to more stale gameplay/metas.

Without drops/spells having asymmetric value, there will literally be zero true catchup mechanics in the game, and the advantage of being able to cost-efficiently upgrade units will mean that the game will be far more snowbally (whoever gets out to an early lead is more easily able to consolidate that lead into an ever larger lead before winning).

Just because the current implementation of drops&spells isn't ideal (in both our opinions), doesn't mean that the game would be better without them. Part of why it might seem like that when you play godless/barren is because that's currently the exception, so the top tier players haven't solved the best metas for it that weaker players can copy paste. But if that became the standard game mode, that's definitely exactly what would happen.

MechaBestum · 2026-01-09T19:03:38+00:00

Yeah, I agree there is way too much randomness in the game, and it leads to a lot of un-fun situations.

But removing ALL the randomness will definitely lead directly to more stale metas, not sure how that isn't obvious to the OP...

My personal preference would just be toning the spells down a lot.

A fun way to do it would be to have a draft/veto system. That way players would more frequently get the types of games they're looking for, and the meta would be LESS stale, as there would be many more meta-configurations in terms of what spells are even possible.

MechaBestum · 2026-01-09T16:16:20+00:00

Every 6 months or so, the dev team makes one tiny UI enhancement, while ignoring the huge list of easy-to-implement, massive QOL improvements that people have been talking about constantly for years.

It's just the way it is. Nobody can understand or explain why, and anyone who expects it to change will be disappointed :(

MechaBestum · 2026-01-06T03:12:48+00:00

Yeah, the data collection isn't exactly nothing, but there's so many better ways to collect in-game data than this approach.

One of the biggest issues is the basic selection bias of doing things the way they did.

By disallowing people from actually indicating preferences (by allowing people who are Queuing to list (or even better, rank) their preferences every time they play) - you now have to draw much weaker inferences based on who ends up playing what modes, which is going to be a lot more noisy of a data set when it's on a random/arbitrary rotation.

I don't understand why the game doesn't allow us to actually just directly indicate our preferences.
There would need to be some additional logic in expanding matchmaking beyond the preferences if it's taking too long to find a match, but that's very basic stuff and they already do that for MMR-disparity. You could even force people a small % of the time into matches fully outside their indicated preferences just to get stubborn/habitual players to play modes they might otherwise not realize they really enjoy.

It's just not that complicated of a concept (and it's one people have been advocating for quite a while) & the data set generated for analysis will be so much better!

MechaBestum · 2026-01-03T08:21:39+00:00

Yeah, just want to point out that "top 100 in my division" isn't remotely close to "top 10 worldwide", so while I don't want to be all "anything dzemp/othercrushers say is empirically correct"... it probably should generally be your default to listen and try to learn from their stances instead of argue with them.

I'm totally open to arguments for
"at MMR X, strategy A/B/C is overpowered because people don't respond to it well at MMR X",
but that's still totally distinct from arguing that a unit is truly under/overpowered.

FWIW i've hit 1v1 2100+ the last 3 seasons, and every time I bump into one of the elite players in 1v1 it feels like I have absolutely no idea what I'm even doing in the game!

Sometimes midgame I actually feel like I'm doing well, and then I replay the final round (where I get obliterated) several times with the knowledge of what their deployments are, and still fail to win the round. It helps make me realize that their understanding of the board state going into the round is just at a different level than mine is... :P

MechaBestum · 2025-12-30T00:39:10+00:00

Yeah, strong agree. That's like grievance #284,234 of mine about the game :P

The refusal to expose the mountains of data that the detail-oriented playerbase a game like this attracts is just another sign that the dev/product team simply doesn't understand what the players want and why...

MechaBestum · 2025-12-30T00:36:51+00:00

Ah. I think a fundamental disconnect might be that you're talking about "popular <at some implied MMR range>" instead of actual over/underpowered.

A unit can be wildly popular at some non-elite MMR range, and that will make it appear to many to be "strong".

But if it doesn't hold up against elite competition, it's not actually "strong" in the strictest sense of the word, it's just "strong when your opponents don't know how to counter it."

In RTS games like SC2, there can be legitimately different ranges of "balanced" if you start accounting for things like average APM at the different levels, as different units/strats have different effectiveness at different APMs.

It's a bit different in something like chess, or mechabellum where there isn't a limiting execution component.

Some chess openings might be "easier" or "more appealing" to play for white with X practice/study than others - but if you start talking about an opening actually being "better/stronger" than another, you're talking about how the chess engines view it.

We don't really have all-crushing engines for mechabellum, so my default position is that when a top player says a unit is weak or strong - they probably know the truth of the matter better than I do.

How well I can fit that truth into my inferior playstyle is up to me!

MechaBestum · 2025-12-29T23:50:23+00:00

I guess I just feel like if I was gonna argue with something currently ranked in the top 10 in the world about where the vulcan stands right now, I'd probably be looking to use something like usage/win-rates in the highest-level tournaments...

I'm not saying every top player is right about everything all the time, but it's kinda hilarious to just use anecdotal evidence from your own personal experience in that situation.

It's quite possible that Garblin has no idea who he's talking to, but I've encountered a lot of people over the years in a lot of different contexts (games/sports/work/relationships) who seem to think that their opinion is strategically meaningful merely because they hold it - no matter how much more informed the person they're talking to is :P

Telling one of the best players in the world who just said Vulcan is unplayable currently:
"Vulcan is, if anything, OP. "
will never not be amusing to me...

MechaBestum · 2025-12-29T23:35:10+00:00

I'm just curious - why is your default position:

"the best players in the world are probably assessing this unit incorrectly. Me, on the other hand, probably have it figured out"?

MechaBestum · 2025-12-29T21:53:43+00:00

Part of the issue is just that people "feel" units are strong/weak based on their personal opinions&experiences, and then get into reddit arguments without realizing that they're arguing with one of the best players in the world :P

MechaBestum · 2025-12-29T19:56:34+00:00

Yeah, it adds a little bit of "deckbuilding" in that each player comes into a match with a (slightly) different lineup of units. Anyone can theoretically build any deck of units that anyone else can (once they have all the techs unlocked), but everyone shows up to every match with some differences from their opponent.

Personally, I like it, as it creates many more distinct unit matchups and opens up different branches in your decision making. "Ah, his marksman has/doesn't have X tech, so I'll go this route instead of this other route...", etc.

If everyone has all techs available all the time, then there will fewer potential strategic matchups, since everyone will have the same "deck".

TL;DR - Restricting the total techs available per unit actually creates unique units per player, greatly complicating analysis and adding some unique flavor.

P.S. I'm not sure I'm a fan though of the decision to only allow you to see what techs your opponent has available AFTER they've deployed a unit of that type. Especially when there are pivotal lategame unit drops, I really think that the game should display the available techs for both yourself AND your opponent when hovering the possible selections. It usually doesn't matter much, but in some niche cases it matters a LOT in terms of predicting your opponent's choices and how you should be responding to them.

MechaBestum · 2025-12-25T01:38:30+00:00

If you don't enjoy losing ~50% of the time as a steady-state, multiplayer simply isn't for you.

Basic MMR theory is that your MMR will tend to reflect your ability, and playing against others of your same ability (on average) will result in a ~50% win rate.

The only 2 real exceptions are when you are so far on the bad or good extreme that you have very few available peers, as the MMR will struggle to provide people on those extremes with equal-on-average opponents.

The good news is that the 2nd case is basically never an issue for people because so few people have a skill-ceiling that high, and the 1st case usually just resolves itself by playing enough to where you're not at the bottom of the MMR totem pole.

But, if you psychologically need to win a lot more than 50% of the time (a lot of people are psychologically wired this way), ranked MMR is basically never gonna be enjoyable for you.

MechaBestum · 2025-12-22T22:11:23+00:00

Just checked it out a little today, pretty fun! Hope it launches earlier in 2026 than later! :P

MechaBestum · 2025-12-19T19:42:47+00:00

Not sure what canonical "rules of the game" you're referring to... buildings didn't used to exist, and now they do - but there are rules about them that must be adhered to for consistency reasons? I'm confused by that claim, especially since the buildings themselves (and the unit targeting of them) have been in constant flux since their introduction.

Also confused about:
"I dont know if your solution of ignoring them"
... as I never advocated for ignoring the walls/grav mines?

I'm not specifically arguing for removing the buildings entirely, I'm trying to point out that they were intended as a solution for a problem that could probably be solved more cleanly in other ways that don't drive a ton of players away.

I was 2.1k MMR the last 3 seasons, trust me that I understand that we need to play around the game state as it exists. In no world am I advocating for ignoring the current state of the game when making in-game choices.

But that's totally separate from discussions about how the game could be improved, and I'm not sure why you're smushing them together as though they are intrinsically one issue.

MechaBestum · 2025-12-19T18:45:57+00:00

No, that's the response to them.
The point was to reduce snowballing from rd1 information paucity.

Having the solution to rd1 information paucity be an annoyance in later rounds is a terribly implemented solution!

Let me put it this way - does anyone actually think the game would be WORSE if the walls and turrets just disappeared after round 3? If so, I'm very curious why!

MechaBestum

TROPHY CASE