Love this group. Great voices, instruments, tempos and mix of music styles. So long not to listen to them and watch their original videos from my youth. Silly videos but gold to me. 👍
Hey there,
My name is RaTkiNg, though some of you oldheads here might know me by some other names, such as IGNs including but not limited to: I AM LEGEND, Aron the Night, Aegir - Lord of Waves (you can tell my 10-12 year old self was thriving here), or forum names such as tobereborn3015 and dragonmasterq. I’m an old legacy player that’s just now revisiting the game before I head off to college. If you’re willing to sit through a long post with me, I’d like to tell my story.
I discovered Supermechs in mid 2014 on a public library computer when I was 10 years old. Given that it was one of the few online games I had access to at the time, I became instantly enthralled and created my first account shortly after that. For the first year of my active lifespan, I would only ever play on and off because I didn’t have access to a computer at home, limiting my ability to play to just a couple days a week.
However, that changed in 2015, when my school district handed out laptops to students so they could keep up with their work more easily. Of course, I had other plans with this technology besides doing homework, and I ended up playing this little flash game for hours on end every single day. I grinded for months and months trying to get the best items and rank, and I ended up becoming rank 1 across multiple accounts that belonged to both me and some friends from school. Eventually all my friends started to drift away from the game, leaving me alone with several accounts that I now had access to freely. This is the point where I would like to say that I was smart with those accounts and kept them safe, but alas that’s not how this story goes.
In early 2016, I began delving into the world of account trading, exchanging passwords and information with other online users for no other reason than to see what items I could get from boxes. I started off by trading inactive accounts that belonged to my friends. When those ran out, I began trading my own accounts. This eventually led to me giving the password of my main account to someone I thought I could trust. Unfortunately, this person had other plans, and after an argument that occurred between the two of us, he changed both the password and email of the account to his own, effectively stealing it from me. This was utterly devastating to 11 year old me, as I had worked for months to get that account to the point it was at before it was stolen. However, this was not where my journey ended. I had other accounts that I hadn’t given away information from, and I defaulted to the one with the best items as my new main one.
However, the loss of my original account marked the beginning of the end for my in-game activity, as the growing imbalance of the game pushed me further away from ladder battles than ever before. Here’s a bit of a Supermechs history lesson before we continue. Around mid 2016 (I think), the game saw a huge spike in popularity thanks to SSundee, who uploaded a video to his channel of him playing different games on Kongregate (one of which happened to be Supermechs). This was followed by another video to his channel that exclusively featured Supermechs and the rewards that were sent to him by the developers. These two back to back videos garnered millions of views, and caused a massive wave of new players to flock to the game. Normally you would think that this type of sudden growth would be great for a game like Supermechs, but what ended up happening was a noticeable shift in how the game was updated. My personal head cannon is that the developers saw this spike as an opportunity to earn more money by releasing new items in the game and selling them via loot boxes, a trend which would unfortunately continue for years. Over the course of 2016 and 2017, more and more unbalanced items were added to the game, and each update made them more and more difficult to access. Eventually, no matter what account I played on, I was utterly locked out from all the new items that were being released frequently, and my interest in playing ladder battles fell to zero. Simply put, I felt there was no reason for me to play the game anymore, outside of hangin out and roleplaying in the German global chat.
However, as my activity decreased in game, it rose dramatically on the forums. I began making post after post under different usernames, the two of which I used the most being tobereborn3015 and dragonmasterq. While I would like to say that I was a productive contributor to the community, the truth is I was just like any other 12 year old on the internet: very toxic, annoying, and downright cringe. I remember one post I made where I baselessly accused a top player of collaborating with the lead developer and cheating due to the player DMing me such info, which in hindsight is probably the greatest troll I’ve ever fell victim too. In certain posts, I would use the two accounts to interact with each other in replies in order to support each other’s arguments, which is a classic debate tactic that I’m surprised A) wasn’t called out publicly, and B) didn’t get me banned sooner. What finally ended my career as a keyboard warrior on the forums was a post I made that announced I was leaving the game (the nth of its kind from me), where I used some tricks with the text editors to bypass the swear filter, leaving poor Alexander no choice but to temporarily ban me from the forums. While I was never banned in-game, the punishment caused me to stop logging into all of my accounts entirely, bringing an abrupt end to my active lifespan in supermechs.
Over the next couple years, I completely forgot about this game. I moved towns, went through an important transitional phase, and ultimately became more confident with being who I really was as a person. 3 years after my catastrophic downfall from the game, I decided to pop back into some of my old accounts to see how the game had changed, only to find that all but one of them had legacy items remaining. This was when I learned about all the changes that had happened (Liran leaving, old forum being killed, legacy being left behind, etc.), and since I didn’t feel like grinding like I used to, I did some 1v1s against other legacy players and quickly left again. I wouldn’t come back until nearly 3 years later today, when I decided to pop back in and revisit some childhood memories before I left for college.
So here I am, nearly 6 years after I originally stopped being an active player, and over 9 years since I first found the game altogether. I’m not normally the type to become sentimental enough to revisit old games and forum pages, let alone make a whole post about it, but I guess I’ve just gotten sappy as I’ve gotten older. Anyways, that’s my own little story. If you did in fact read the whole thing, I am grateful for taking the time to listen to me in this little corner of the internet. I probably won’t ever really play this game ever again, but I hope it brings you the fondness it brought me all those years ago.
Happy battling,
RaTkiNg (or other aliases)
P.S I attached some legacy mechs from an old account of mine that survived the item wipe. As of now, it’s the only relic I have of the old legacy days.
Intro: “Hi (Again)”
Oh, Hi there. It’s your favourite (or least favourite) narcissist, Misfit, here. You may know me by the names socialmisfit1, BAZINGA or “that weirdo from the discord”. I quit this game dramatically (to myself, anyway) some months ago, but there’s still a persistent itch for it in a way I can’t fully articulate. I think it’s because there’s a deep sense of betrayal, not only to me but to the people I came to love, that I’ve never fully addressed. So I think to finally close the door I need to vomit up the full contents of the venom I’ve held in about the game and its direction for the past decade. You heard me right. Decade. I joined this game from the beginning (the socialmisfit1 account predates SM in fact being created November 2011). But enough about me. Here’s a comprehensive guide to everything wrong with SuperMechs. I’ve decided to segment this rant-essay. Wether that helped or was warranted is up to the reader, I’m drunk and bored, and looking at an old toy and calling it stupid. Am I crazy? Are you?? You decide.
Arena: “Rock Paper Scissors Mechs”
When I joined super mechs I remember the Bain of the community was the “Jugglers”. These were mechs used what’s now known as “Grenade launchers” and “Orb Cannons” the most contemporary survival of which is the desert snake. You pushed you pulled, you pushed you pulled. As the time went by I saw it fall out of use and several push then pulls replaced it along with several “huggers”, “pushers” and “jumpers”. Hell, in late legacy, we saw a “healers” meta based on the healer drone. My gripe is not and never has been with a chosen play style. My gripe is and always has been with the counter roulette.
This to an extent is a result of power creep, sliding one slider to the max has served music engineers well more and more the more we develop new ways to make “more” sound. likewise, the more its been made accessible to deal more damage in any direction the more its seemed a logical choice to slide one slider to the max at the expense of others. But I don’t think that’s why Arena is shet now. I think it’s one of the reasons sure but it wasn’t this bad at the start of reloaded and I don’t think we reached some kind of organic critical mass in this way. Let’s go back.
Some of you may not know the story of how “arena 2v2” was born. Allow me to enlighten you. Before reloaded we were told legacy items would “still be powerful".
Reloaded: was released.
Tacticsoft: “whoops we lied. Why are you complaining idiot? Get over it… can I have some money?”.
So at the beginning of reloaded very few players could even field one complete mech. The way it used to work is you picked 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 every battle regardless of rank. Late legacy 3v3 was prefferred, at beginning of reloaded all anyone could afford was 1v1, so 2v2 and 3v3 were empty. Everyone played 1v1. Even as 2v2 and 3v3 filled up early reloaded was defined by the 1v1 arena where late legacy had been defined by 3v3.
To counter this a genius, protégée, son of the bright sun, Mohadib decided the game wasn’t “competitive” enough in arena and the solution was to kill battle type choice and replace all battles with “arena 2v2” which is the style of 2v2 everyone knows today. You build 3. You pick two. I maintain to this day, that while reloaded had definite problems, this is the moment super mechs “died”.
Suddenly building wildcards and “picking right” became a viable Strat whereas in old 1v1 an unrounded mech would be punished more than rewarded and in 3v3 switching would dismantle “no en gays”. A combination of power creep and mohadib’s enablement of a “rock paper scissors” matchup opened up a pandora’s box in sm. theoretically if the community had always been committed to running hard counters and rolling dice against each other this would have been viable in the old system, but the consensus was that it was not only not fair play, but suicidally impractical, prevented a critical mass in this style of play.
Mohadib turned this consensus. In trying to make arena more competitive, he killed all intelligence, honour and cunning in arena. As time went on no moves were made by Tacticsoft (or to date, Gato) to undo this critical misfire. Nay, as time went on there was only doubling down with HP stackers like the claw and damage packers like frantic brute and non heat scopes, and literal posts made by TS staff on the old forum saying they’re fine with players who rely entirely on RNG.
Arena took a nose dive, and has never stopped diving into the abyss since. Players who blame individual builds, please consider that TS killed arena, not the players necessarily. They forced mutually assured gambling. If I don’t play counters, then my ENEMY will, so I MUST. It’s the prisoners dilemma. Mohadib made humanity’s natural suspicion of each other destroy the competitiveness of what he tried to save. Because he’s stupid. It COULD have been reversed but it never was. Now, it’s institutionalised.
I’m not going to get into blatant cheating, but boosting is a natural consequence of this mindset shift. People don’t play arena to have fun or show skill any more for the most part. They play to make pixel number go up. Its shameful. Its frustrating. And Gato simply watches and cashes in after years since the TS exodus.
Campaign: “Chores, but for fun!”
Hey, buddy, just get off from work/school? Oh you look tired. Long day? Ah I get it. Hey, I know! What you need is to watch an autopilot fight dumb robots for 2 hours! You still have to click like 3 times every 2 minutes but it’s mostly automated now at least! And hey, we added double speed (while reducing base speed by half) to make it go quicker champ.
Seriously. Does ANYONE honestly enjoy this game’s “campaign”. Chores, chores, chores.
The solution to a boring campaign? Asked tacticsoft. More chores! Said they.
Titan, clan wars, raid battles. Same every time. OD 6, Titan, clan wars setup, clan wars attacks, raid, raid, OD6, raid, tian battle, OD 6, same every time, Clan war setup, titan tickets, raid, OD6, raid, Clan war Attack, same every time, OD6, Titan attack, raid, titan tickets, clan war, titan, raid, OD 6, clan war AAAAAAAAAAA
Who likes this sheet? It’s not entertaining.
And the amount of time investment, if you really consider it, per Max item is simply a scandal. Really think about how much time you’re putting into every jet black item. Really. You may disagree now, but think about it. Value yourselves, value your time, my friends.
Don’t get me started on upgrading. If you enjoy that sheet you’re on the spectrum.
Management: “A Tale of Two Heads in Ancient Sand”
Don’t we all love Tacticsoft? What a story, man. Small Israeli startup, starts with battle dawn then finds success with the spinoff SuperMechs based off the BD mini game. Nah, we don’t.
Let’s not get into the angel investors wich propped the company up, after they started pulling in from super mechs the fundamental issue always was they never understood the game they managed. They grew increasingly out of touch with how it was played, what was enjoyable about it and the opinions of the players who paid their wages. At the start of reloaded TS got a shock when a consumer revolt lost a majority of the existing base. I don’t think they expected that. They expected the majority to be okay with them betraying their word that their items would “still be powerful”. And it was a lie. It was a betrayal. There’s no other way to put it. Converting it for the chance of a valiant isn’t the same as it still being valuable. We all put a lot into that stuff. Real money even from many (myself included).
So they lost a lot but the game was going g well they created something fresh eh? Sure to draw in new blood. And at first I agreed, I thought that the ability to get a guaranteed epic and a chance at a leggy from the big boy mission made it the first truly free to play game (that didn’t require ridiculous time investment). That went away. Everything defensible about reloaded went away. They doubled down on the betrayal. Every time they were challenged they almost said hold my beer watch me piss you guys off more. Slowly it became more and more obvious the whole thing was about paying back investors more than honouring the old guard. The players who cared and stuck around for along time.
As they leaned more and more into new item releases and rock paper scissors mecs, it was obvious - they had no loyalty to us. So we cheered when they left. TS didn’t fizzle out, they went out like Saddam, to the cheers of their own subjects.
Hey, Gato owns the game now. Great. They’ll undo the bad decisions of TS and reform the game right? Right?
Wrong.
Okay, what will they do then?
…nothing. Gato has done pretty much nothing. They did one balance change which changed nothing in arena. They released a lot of new offers but not much else. They have ignored calls from the players. They ignore the staleness of the game. They don’t care that it’s boring and frustrating. Why though? They are of the players for the players?
Because battledawn 2. Okay fine
Battledawn2: gets released
Gato:…
So are you gonna work on sm now?
Gato:…
The only thing Gato achieved was destroying the old forum. Say what you will about TS, they atleased let their critics have fun. Gato has been defined as negligent and the “no fun allowed” owners. Honestly, it was better under TS. At least they did…. Something. Ya know?
Quality of Life: “All the Small Things”
Gonna make this one bullet points.
Inviting people to battles in chat still doesnt work
Mech order changing is still limited (whereas it previously wasn’t)
Quad Core Booster should be called Quad Core Engine as it is an ENGINE module
The game frequently loses connection and needs to restart (sometimes mid battle)
The mass select function is poorly designed and therefore useless
Replay codes often don’t work
The chat often censors words which aren’t obscene because they contain a string which is on its own obscene (think Pass being made P***)
The battle starts zoomed in when everyone prefers zoomed out adding an extra button click
It won’t let you change parts in a convenient order because “X requires jump” or mech is overweight
The outcomes of battles are often dictated by pads
There are no reminders for the many chores
You get a ridiculously restrictive inventory limit as well as a box limit that leads to a death spiral of stagnation
The game is really ugly
Constant popups
Ever present ! If you didn’t enable base
Its formatted upside down on mobile
It scrolls far left when you enter campaign and you have to manually drag to the right
Worskshop stats don’t reflect actual arena stats
You can accidentally buy arena slots when opening boxes
The animations are uninteresting and too long
Given the massive growth in player base its hard to believe that inv limit is necessary
It takes a long time for reports or help requests to be actioned if at all
Community: “Passive, lame, guardians of the Rot”
I love you all, I really do. But a lot of you make me so annoyed. So many are happy to see fellow classmates cheat lie and steal for a start. So many were happy to support the game direction when it suited themselves instead of confront the behemoth. We let TS divide and conquer when it could have been stopped. I am a shamed to say I’m included in that. So many of the people reading this even will without quad commit to dice mechs because “its how it is” this same attitude allowed the TS rot to set in. If we had decided to act in an appropriate way with etiquette the rot would not have spread half as far as it has.
I myself am proud of my clan HTK and what we achieved and what I personally achieved for them but I also agree the clan politics became “toxic” along the way. One upmanship allowed too many cheaters to thrive. rivalry has destroyed too many genuine friendships.
But is this my main issue with this community? No. Not by far,
My main issue is that super mechs used to be a community of vibrant, creative, free thinking, unique, incredible people… and now it’s lame.
The forum is boring, its boring, its so offing boring. My God its boring. Im bored through my teeth here. We used to be funny. We used to be creative. We used to be interesting. Yes, I know, Gato holds a lot of that blood on their hands, but man, I never realised how willing we were as a diverse and interesting group to roll over and take it.
Final Note: “Misfit’s Postscript”
I’ve been here a long time. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before if we’ve spoken for 5 minutes or longer. But it MEANS something. Or at least it should, to the developers of the game at least. I didn’t quit on the mass exodus. I haven’t quit through most of the rot. I quit recently for personal reasons. And I can honestly say if it weren’t for this place I wouldn’t be the man I am today. The people Ive met on battle dawn and super mechs are some of the funniest most interesting, genuine and incredible people I’ve met. I still remember staying up till 4 am on school nights with Iggy and Conner on bd servers. I still remember meeting maxx and fluffeh on sm. I remember meeting G and E. I remember the night I thought about ending it all and the late Michelle staying up to talk to me. I remember laughing as I talked to Alexander. I remember Carter. I remember Zelly and Fluxeon. I remember trolling Sarah’s comics competition. I remember so many things. And this place is filled with people so much better than what it’s become. And its owned by creators so much better than those which would be proud of it. Just take it back man. I know it’s been a long time and it’s hard to undo it all, but what’s even the point now? Just take it back. You took a beautiful thing and made it ugly. Just take it back. At the very least, apologise.
Burn Baby Burn got a reaction from Ace Red Baron in Everything Wrong With Supermechs
Burn Baby Burn got a reaction from Monke King in Everything Wrong With Supermechs
Burn Baby Burn got a reaction from hasn in Everything Wrong With Supermechs
Burn Baby Burn got a reaction from A Happy F4ce in Everything Wrong With Supermechs
Burn Baby Burn got a reaction from bestplayeroftheworld in Everything Wrong With Supermechs
