Been playing for a long time with my kids. I buy the kids more stuff than I buy myself but I do make purchases when there are good deals on something I want, and I grind for upgrades. The game was really fun for all of us for years. I didn’t mind the pilots, I like implants. I like how they improve the offense and bump up your hit points a reasonable amount. I have never been bothered enough to speak up about changes before and I am trying to adjust to Mods, but It isn’t going so well. Most of the negative reactions on mods are focused on money and greed, but I’m not complaining about the cost and f2p vs p2p etc. I do prefer games that are pay to advance and don’t paywall being able to get everything in the game, but I also think game developers deserve and need the money to keep a great game going. This isn’t a charity. The Mods seemed like they could be cool and I was excited to see what they brought to the game, but they were nothing like expected. I can say after a few days, the update is a major downer. Sadly, money aside, the real issue is that the battles are not very fun for the last few days, and maxing out my mods would not solve the way the pace of the game was changed.

Most battles have very few real people against each other and are loaded with bots, but you could play well and take out enough bots to win with skill. You could go after control points to win with skill. The most fun part of the game is not the win/loss, the fun part is racking up kills, especially great shots from long range, or skilled use of a mechs ability to stun or surprise and playing multiple fast battles to build up your hanger. It was fun to try to survive with the relatively fragile mechs against powerful weapons.  The fast pace of the game was great. It was fun to get snipped or taken out by guided missiles, and get to spawn a new mech with a new setup to seek revenge. The battles were mostly very fast, wrapping up before the timer. Often all the bots were killed off and it was a final one on one with a real player. Most matches I was in both teams had very few bots or mechs left when It was over. It was awesome to use a few mechs and play at a high pace and get in a lot of battles in a short amount of time and have your play skill impact the results of the battle.

After the Mod update I find myself not wanting to start a battle because the battles are now won and lost by the bots and the game play is painfully slow and boring.  Some bots die easily sure, but a lot take a few magazines to get rid of.  The weapons I have built up fit what I like to play, and they aren’t effective anymore. I don’t really want to play the way the game forces you to play, I wasn’t a fan of mini-guns, storm racks and chain guns to begin with. I like high power fast reload weapons so the game is face paced. Now it’s a game of surviving to reload your magazine while you chip away at endless shields, and it’s rare to get half as many kills as you could before. Yes I still have the occasional high teens match where things go my way, but now way more often I have half or less the kill count and I spend way to much time trying to survive, reloading and seeing which team's bots were more stacked, if I haven’t lost all my mechs and left the battle before it is over. Sure, I can start focusing on getting new weapons and trying to adapt, but I find I don’t really enjoy the new play enough to do so. I also have started putting the mods on to better compete, but having more hit points and tons of shields doesn’t solve anything for me. It is still a more boring game whether I survive longer or not. To be clear, I don’t find the game significantly harder, not complaining about getting overpowered by bots or the high cost to add mods, It is purely that I now find the game a lot less fun and I stopped opening it up to play. It is also annoying that my play has little impact on the battle results as it is now a bots battle. I’m struggling to find a new game that was as exciting as Mech arena but when I do, I imagine I won’t be playing too often. The last couple days, I hoped on and collected my free stuff, watched a couple ads and looked at the shop, then closed the app not feeling any desire to click the battle button.

I don’t know if anyone read this far, sorry for the long post, but this is my suggestion list to fix it assuming just removing it entirely is not an option:

• Set the number of mod slots to the level of the mech like pilots, legendary gets more mod slots, starting with 1 slot for a common or rare. Max 3 or 4 on legendary.
• Mods need to provide a much lower level of help, similar to pilots maxing out the benefit at 30% on legendary, mods should be similar. They should not rule the game, they should be a nice adjustment to the game. Follow the mechanics that mechs, weapons, pilots and implants do with start levels and small percentage jumps.
• All the mods are just shields, I would change them to be HP buffs instead and I would consolidate them down to 1 single type. As an HP buff they don’t ruin all the high damage low round weapons. Same style as the HP buff a pilot gives you. When they are shields they are way harder to remove and that is what slows the game and ruins the fun. It is crazy it went from shields being a special ability of a few mechs, and choosing to use a shield over a different type of ability is now just everyone can have 4 multi-layered shields. So - 1 single HP buff mod. And reasonable, maybe 30% maxed. A 1.1 million HP layer shielded tank is just silly. A little buff that makes a mech harder to kill with 1 magazine would be great. If your goal is to have 1 mech survive an entire battle taking 1.1 mil of damage, that just doesn’t sound fun, its a much different game than I enjoyed before. I’d much rather get punished for bad play and spawn a new mech than shield up and run around with no consequence. 
• Limit the mods to 1 HP enhancing mod equipped at a time. (said it above, but to make sure its not lost).
• Add other type of mods. Speed increases, weapon increases, ability cooldown, ability duration, higher double hit chance or overheat, chrio effect etc. I know it’s a bit of a repeat from implants, but assigning those to mechs and having 2 ways to buff your mech or weapons is fun and cool. If it is too much overlap - shift some of the implants over to mods and find a good mix of what makes sense for a mech and what makes sense for a pilot, like HP and ability buff on mech mods, weapon buffs on pilots. Even if they do overlap - that is still cool. Having double 30% HP buffs from a mod and a pilot - that sounds great.
• This is more general and together with implants, but it would be much better if you could freely move them around. I know you probably make good money on removal, but I suspect you might make more selling more stuff if you could freely move them. As is - after you get to a certain point in the game, trying new Mechs and new weapons is difficult. I have skipped out on many purchases because of the headache it would be to try the new item. You have to tear down something at a high cost to be able to properly equip a new mech or weapon to see how it really works and if you like it. Diversity is super fun, and I would love to swap my mechs around to keep the game fresh and fun, but every time I think about making changes I realize i’m just delaying the next upgrade of a mech or weapon for what I know works for me, and I end up just enhancing what I have. 
• Adding 2 different currencies for mods is silly. Just make it one and set the prices on mods accordingly. Really pilot and implant currencies being separate are a bit odd as well, but that is different enough to justify it. 
• Mods should have common, epic and legendary, match the implant model for game consistency.
• Have the match making dynamically equip mods on the bots to fit better with the level of mods the human players have. So far all the battles I have seen, the bots are stacked with 2, 3 or 4 high level mods. Doesn’t seem like it would be all that difficult to equip the bots more in-line with the players level.

And Some General non-mod requests:

• Add a battle mode that strips everything down to equal, similar to Clash Royal, where most battles are based on your gear and match making, but they have tournament style battles where everyone has the same level items so its purely a skill on skill match.
• Skins are way to prominent in the game, they fill up the fortune chests, shops and rewards and battle pass, and I have 0 interest in them so that entire facet of the game is a waste. I don’t really care what my mechs look like, I know some people do, but i'd rather take a spin for useful resources.
• Give people 1 free chance at all the fortune things. Having a 1 in 10000 chance at a weapon or mech is crazy odds, it’s almost predatory to sell tokens to kids for those low odds. I do like how some have let you spend some credits for a spin at a low odd reward. Having a real shot at occasionally getting something cool for free without buying 150 bucks worth of coins to win it would be way more exciting. As is I just ignore that entire section of the app.
• Give players more choice of start level to buy things in the armory. After you buy some stuff the armory goes up to insane prices that I would never pay, but I would buy more stuff to try out at a lower star rating and if I like it upgrade it over time or with an upgrade purchase. It is impossible to justify 100+ dollars for something that you may dislike, and would require pilot and implant changes at a cost to properly equip, only to find you regret it and have to spend more to put things back the way they were. I also notice that if you buy a low star item and you like it - you often buy the upgrades as well, probably spending just as much or more over time, so might actually create more revenue.
• Have more things in the deals section, it’s so formulaic now, I know once a week we are gonna get a pilot offer, it’s going to be super expensive. Im going to get the combo offer in my face for 2 days, im going to see occasional weapons that sit there for days. It would be nice to see more deals swapping in and out. It would be more enticing to spend money if something I want shows up vs. something I have or don’t want sitting there for up to 3 days.