Before anyone disagrees with me, let me make some acknowledgements and present some numbers.
First off, hats off to all of the guys (and gals?) in the Unofficial HBS Discord channel. They have made it a great place to find people to play multiplayer. The tournaments they organize and the community there is fantastic. If your first go around in multiplayer left a bad taste in your mouth, I encourage you to join us on the discord and give it a second try.
https://discord.gg/k4rgbsq
And now some grim numbers.
Looking at steam data: 6,023 players logged into BATTLETECH today. Now if I compare that to some Steam multiplayer achievements such has "Good Start" which only requires that you win one Multiplayer match; only 2.5% of steam players have that achievement. Which means only around 150 of the players online today have tried multiplayer long enough to win one time.
Worse, "Rookie" which is the achievement of merely playing 5 multiplayer matches, has been unlocked by only 0.6%. Or 36 of the people who were online today. So once someone wins, they are done with multiplayer. Some apparently give up entirely before trying 5 times.
The achievement "Eck's gonna give it two you" which is a viral achievement in which you must play Eck himself, or someone who has played Eck, or someone who has played someone who has played Eck has been unlocked by 1.1% of steam players. Or ~66 of the players who logged in today.
If you play one multiplayer match you are almost guaranteed to get "Eck's gonna give it to you." Hell, you don't even have to stick around for the whole match as you get the achievement the instant the game starts. You can just Esc out and achievement is earned.
Which brings us to the next issue. All of these numbers aside, the multiplayer experience is abysmal. Connecting to a match is never as easy as pressing the Join button. You may try three or four times before you restart your client in the hopes the Word of Blake is appeased and COMSTAR lets the connection through. Once in the match, Your opponent can just bail. Which doesn't count as a match for any achievements. I had a hard time even getting the "Lose Ten Matches" achievement because I had to have the match COMPLETE. COMSTAR or an impatient opponent canceled that show before I could lose with honor.
And this is heartbreaking to me. The longevity of BATTLETECH has always been a multiplayer experience. I've never known anyone who plays TT alone in their Mother's basement. Once the single player content has been played out, what are the other 5,700ish players who logged in today going to do?
They are going to play another game.
This community can keep the small fire of multiplayer alive but unless HBS improves multiplayer, it's going to go away. And HBS isn't going to do that. These tiny numbers are not going to convince HBS to put any time into improvements for multiplayer. Any promise of a Solaris VII experience is empty. Gone because less than HALF of ONE percent of players continue to play each other. I mean why bother to keep the servers up? The hassle they cause and the money spent on them isn't worth it from a business standpoint.
This game had potential. It could have revitalized the multiplayer experience of Battletech.
Now the best hope is that they add a direct client connection so that the few of us who enjoy playing online can continue to do so once they shut down the servers.
I played a ton of Multiplayer Mechwarrior and Mech Commander but, gotta be honest, not interested in multiplayer for this game. I don't play multiplayer XCOM either.
For me it really comes down to the time commitment. Playing multi-player is a commitment to your opponent to stick with the game to the end (assuming you're not a jerk). With Real-Time games the speed ensures that there is a fixed duration, and you have something to do the whole time. With a Turn Based game it's like chess, you spend a lot of time waiting for your opponent to move.
I know there are timers and such, but the reason I play a turned based strategy game, other than it being awesome, is that I can get up and walk away whenever I need to. Like when my wife needs me to do something or I have to help the kid with homework, or we have a Scout meeting, or whatever. I can save, get up , and leave for an indefinite period without inconveniencing anyone or losing anything. So yeah, not interested, but modders adding custom campaigns I'm all in for.