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SirFozzie
Mar 28, 2004
Goombatta!
That's also true. I've also just been exposed (like measels) to people yelling "how Disney won't make beautiful women in Star Wars anymore because they've succumbed to the woke mind virus" (about the new Star Wars Outlaws trailer), so maybe it's just aversion to seeing MORE of their screeching, no matter how hard I try to filter it out.

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ilmucche
Mar 16, 2016

SirFozzie posted:

I'd actually half want a game where you're an elemental (or a team of elementals) trying to fight and survive amongst the big Mechs (and trying to take them down). Then I realized that it would just get "No female waifus? Just ugly big woke women clanners?" and that certain class of gamer would be screaming their fool heads off.

Attack on Grand Titan

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

ilmucche posted:

i haven't reached a part where he's ok with yet. he's still horrified that the wobbies are going a mudering and tallying things up like a convenience store audit

It feels like he's going to put a stop to the insane cruelty murder spree that's going on

God everything just went to poo poo with Jihad. That's the point that even an early 20s me just tapped right the gently caress out.

ilmucche
Mar 16, 2016

Cyrano4747 posted:

God everything just went to poo poo with Jihad. That's the point that even an early 20s me just tapped right the gently caress out.

i went back to it to catch up on jade falcon and the other clan wrecking each other, then get through twilight of the clans.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

ilmucche posted:

i went back to it to catch up on jade falcon and the other clan wrecking each other, then get through twilight of the clans.

Yeah, I've been diving right back into a deep BT hole (lol) in the last few months. Did a big playthrough of MW5 plus all the DLC modded to the gills, now I'm doing BT again with the same, and I'm cracking a few of the older novels that I never read. I could see myself doing the same but ugh, man, it's almost depressing having to grind through the jihad stuff. Even reading wikis gets exhausting.

It's just all so very this_was_edgy_in_2005.txt

GD_American
Jul 21, 2004

LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AS IT'S INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT!
I've been poring through the Humble Bundle stuff and am quite pleased at the quality of the fiction in Shrapnel. They seriously oughta pull new novelists from this crop and put the old grognards out to pasture.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Oh sweet, I missed that there was a humble bundle with all the new novels. Already had the old ones so $18 tier it is.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

Cyrano4747 posted:

God everything just went to poo poo with Jihad. That's the point that even an early 20s me just tapped right the gently caress out.

There’s a reason most Battletech content anyone enjoys is on an endless loop between Succession Wars/Clan Invasion/FedCom Civil War.

Everything after that is largely trash!

Crazy Joe Wilson
Jul 4, 2007

Justifiably Mad!

Captain Oblivious posted:

There’s a reason most Battletech content anyone enjoys is on an endless loop between Succession Wars/Clan Invasion/FedCom Civil War.

Everything after that is largely trash!

Dark Age/IlClan offers more for virtually every faction with way cooler toys.

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

SirFozzie posted:

I'd actually half want a game where you're an elemental (or a team of elementals) trying to fight and survive amongst the big Mechs (and trying to take them down). Then I realized that it would just get "No female waifus? Just ugly big woke women clanners?" and that certain class of gamer would be screaming their fool heads off.

That ship sailed a while ago. That class of people poo poo their pants and cried a river all the way back when HBS Battletech came out because it allowed you to choose your pronouns when making your commander.

Captain Oblivious posted:

There’s a reason most Battletech content anyone enjoys is on an endless loop between Succession Wars/Clan Invasion/FedCom Civil War.

Everything after that is largely trash!

It's pretty similar to Star Wars where the new/non-classic eras have a fair amount of good stuff in them but the initial rollout of stuff pushing the timeline beyond the comfort zone was bungled badly enough that a lot of old time fans developed a reflexive aversion to the new stuff simply because it's not set in the "good" era.

This is mostly the jihad's fault.

NihilCredo
Jun 6, 2011

iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

What went wrong with Jihad? The basic concept (what if ComStar turned EEEEVIIL) seemed solid.

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

9/11 happened and they went oh gently caress we can't have this plot line happening now and abandoned it mid stride to get to dark age asap

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

NihilCredo posted:

What went wrong with Jihad? The basic concept (what if ComStar turned EEEEVIIL) seemed solid.

There's a lot of things wrong with the Jihad, honestly. In generalities, Word of Blake went from "lurking threat that is slowly subverting and manipulating events in their favor in order to extend their influence"(i.e. old Evil Comstar) to "they're now the Brotherhood of Nod from Command and Conquer and have an invincible all-conquering army of super cyborg soldiers and fleets of warships and infinite weapons of mass destruction and can credibly fight the entire Inner Sphere + the Invasion Clans combined" basically overnight in a way that felt like they had nothing planned for the setting after the FedCom civil war so they needed to cook something up real fast.

A lot of the setting and characters that people were invested in got blown up, killed, or destroyed extremely quickly and seemingly perfunctorily, which is always going to rub fans the wrong way.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Kanos posted:


A lot of the setting and characters that people were invested in got blown up, killed, or destroyed extremely quickly and seemingly perfunctorily, which is always going to rub fans the wrong way.

This was the big thing that turned me off. I'm fine with characters, units, etc dying but the way they did it was very much "and then rocks fall now buy our new poo poo."

anakha
Sep 16, 2009


Is there a link to the novel humble bundle? Thanks!

Cyrano4747 posted:

This was the big thing that turned me off. I'm fine with characters, units, etc dying but the way they did it was very much "and then rocks fall now buy our new poo poo."

Yeah, the way the setting was reset for Dark Age was hamfisted as gently caress which is why I stopped giving a poo poo after the FedCom Civil War.

E: This thread summarizes the consensus thoughts on how things were handled quite well.

anakha fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Apr 13, 2024

Stravag
Jun 7, 2009

anakha posted:

Is there a link to the novel humble bundle? Thanks!

Yeah, the way the setting was reset for Dark Age was hamfisted as gently caress which is why I stopped giving a poo poo after the FedCom Civil War.

E: This thread summarizes the consensus thoughts on how things were handled quite well.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/...labs_bookbundle

Crazy Joe Wilson
Jul 4, 2007

Justifiably Mad!

Stravag posted:

9/11 happened and they went oh gently caress we can't have this plot line happening now and abandoned it mid stride to get to dark age asap

Actually FASA, the company at the time that owned BattleTech, was going under and was trying to sell off its IPs. Jordan Weisman, the original creator of BattleTech had moved on and started Wizkids, and wanted to get his hands on the BattleTech IP to make a new more streamlined game (Mechwarrior: Dark Age). Weisman jumped the timeline ahead 60 years so he could more easily get BattleTech back to a Succession Wars feel, but then talked with Randall Bills about letting BattleTech continue as Classic BattleTech. The Jihad storyline actually slowly advanced under Wizkids, once they got their own story going in the Dark Age. I mean the first Dark Age novels came out in 2002 (?) and talked a lot about the Jihad and how horrible the Blakists were.

NihilCredo posted:

What went wrong with Jihad? The basic concept (what if ComStar turned EEEEVIIL) seemed solid.

That's the thing though, Comstar was always evil, the Word of Blake sects were the real Comstar, Comstar under Focht and Victor was an aberration. When the split happened, the majority of ROM and other high-ranking personnel went and joined the Wobbies.

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled
ComStar built up its strength and resources for 300 years and at the height of their power and authority the best "overthrow the Inner Sphere" plan they had was Operation Scorpion, which was supposed to be a comm blackout -> blackmail operation and a physical uprising in Clan space, whereas the WoB were cast out of ComStar in 3052 with absolutely nothing and their primary military was formed of individual ComStar dudes defecting with their 'mechs and by 3067 they had infinite doom legions like Cobra.

GD_American
Jul 21, 2004

LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AS IT'S INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT!
Your mother? Secret Blakist.
Your postman? ROM assassin.
The best man at your wedding? Manei Domanei wearing a skinsuit.
That lake you fish in? Coolant pool for an underground WoB cyborg manufacturing facility.
This post? Secret WoB code instructions for THAT MAN STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters
My favorite creation myth. It’s Blakists all the way down.

PoptartsNinja
May 9, 2008

He is still almost definitely not a spy


Soiled Meat

Kanos posted:

ComStar built up its strength and resources for 300 years and at the height of their power and authority the best "overthrow the Inner Sphere" plan they had was Operation Scorpion, which was supposed to be a comm blackout -> blackmail operation and a physical uprising in Clan space, whereas the WoB were cast out of ComStar in 3052 with absolutely nothing and their primary military was formed of individual ComStar dudes defecting with their 'mechs and by 3067 they had infinite doom legions like Cobra.

ComStar built up its strength and resources for 300 years until Myndo Waterley got impatient and hosed everything up with Operation Scorpion, revealing ComStar's hand too early (rather than helping the Clans get to Terra, politely "turning it over" to them in a way that would leave them unsatisfied, and committing the IlClan to a hellwar with all of its neighbors then picking up the pieces after). The Word of Blake were cast out of ComStar in 3052 with apparently nothing save for the 85% of ComStar that secretly still supported them. They parlayed their sob story (and a top-level sleeper agent) into assuming direct control of the entire Free Worlds League, whose economic resources they turned towards producing Cobra-esque legions of doom with the intent of wiping out a Clan by themselves to secure their position in the newly-reformed Star League.

They then hosed everything up by throwing a tantrum when Sun Tzu dissolved the second Star League, and said "If you won't let us unite you as your leader; we'll unite you against us!" leaving their very obvious Not A Sleeper Agent Devlin Stone (whichever brainwashed Davion he was) to do the acutal uniting while their extremely tough, durable troops with severely limited lifespans (Manei Domini only live for 5-10 years due to all the cyber surgery) started self-destructing.

GD_American
Jul 21, 2004

LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AS IT'S INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT!

Captain Oblivious posted:

My favorite creation myth. It’s Blakists all the way down.

I'd seriously love to write a story about a planet administrator discovering to his horror that his entire psyche and memory is a shell for a vicious Blakist agent, just to highlight the absurdity of the Jihad

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DeepThrobble
Sep 18, 2006
ComStar should not have survived to the Dark Age, but that's water under the bridge.

The conflict was originally supposed to be largely between Comstar and the Word, but MWDA dropped some apocalyptic scale stuff they had to kludge into shape. Stone showed up on a Word prison camp on Kittery, which is down near St. Ives, with no indication that the Word didn't conquer everything between there and Terra. A Ghost Bear cluster got wiped out on Cebalrai, with no indication it was the first Blakist world the Bears hit or the furthest the Blakists had reached from Terra. The initial tenor was, at least to me, that Stone was closer to John Connor as the one man saving humanity from certain doom than the convenient head of a military coalition he eventually became. Suddenly the Word ballooned from ten divisions to over fifty, albeit not all at once or anywhere near full strength.

PoptartsNinja posted:

leaving their very obvious Not A Sleeper Agent Devlin Stone (whichever brainwashed Davion he was)
On a recent convention stream someone asked a writer about what Arthur Steiner-Davion was up to in the current timeline, and they said he was with the rest of the Blakists out in the deep periphery. Not that anyone figured out Stone was supposed to be Arthur twenty years ago or anything.

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