"A lot of players voted for pilots [...]"
Was it more than those who said hell no? Because I don't think so.
You think you did a good job of making it more f2p friendly. More f2p friendly than what? Than the competition? I don't really care. It's clearly less f2p friendly than mech arena was before pilots. In addition to consistently taking resources out of the economy, these pilots cost as much as whole mech and weapon combinations to upgrade in your two new currencies that you added that just complicate things more. I don't believe for a second you'll be letting enough resources into the economy for this. And the bonuses given to mechs and weapons are absurd. I mean these things completely shift the balance of the game. They're not a replacement for skill? Why do mechs only get like 25% bonus HP from the rare pilots but upwards of like 80% additional weapon damage with the base increase, weapon specialist bonus, and implant bonus all combined? It's not much better the 1 legendary pilot can only increase mech hp 40%. Weapons were already strong compared to mechs and their HP. This makes them even stronger in comparison. Some of the weapons are affected by this buff more than others because their bonus damage is the same but they already had more DPS such as the arc torrents. Plus their 66% range buff which makes their max range now 60M. Now arc torrents have near double damage, 66% more range
Why else don't I trust pilots? Why don't I want to give this a chance? You only let partners test it for a day before releasing it to the game. You never gave us the chance to review the pilots to see if we really wanted them as they are. That tells me these things are going to be in the game without any drastic changes, because the insane power creep was totally intentional. Because I don't want mech arena to be "not as bad as the competition" I want mech arena to be not the competition. Because as soon as I've give given the feature a "chance", I'm already playing a game that's totally different from how it was before and there isn't a chance it's going back to the way it was. This makes you much more like the competition than you think you are.
Give it a chance? Give us a chance to play with it before implementing it into the game so we can give you feedback and you can make adjustments THEN implement it. Giving it a chance when you've already added it means I'm giving a chance to what's effectively a completely different game. And when I play a new game I determine if I want to play it or not. Giving it a chance now means I'm deciding whether or not I even want to play mech arena anymore.
This shit better not stink. I was never gonna like pilots in the first place. It adds invisible factors to play. It's made worse that each of the buffs is so insane.