Yes, this was intentionally changed recently. I also agree that it's misleading, would give the team this feedback.

I hadn't noticed this since I haven't used trial mode since the change happened. Very valid feedback. It's bad enough that the trial mode is without pilots and mods, but this makes it significantly worse. 

"It's bad enough that the trial mode is without pilots and mods"

I think trial mode does not have pilots and mods due to too much options for pilots, implants and mods. There are thousands of possible of pilot+implant combinations. And I think the exclusion of mods are not much of a problem, because there is ONLY 1 MAP available in trial mode where all bots would eventually group together. And mods would have little to no effect there.

The developers must add more maps, and add a "Customize Option" which enables the player to select the types of mods they want to install their mech and the selection will be copied to all mechs if the player wants to test a mech, and also all pilots paired or the mech test will be maxed legendary pilots having maxed legendary implants of the mech with the Legendary Ability Cooldown implant be equipped manadtorily to all mechs and also for the bots. And for weapons, there would be a maxed legendary pilot who will be paired to all mechs for that particular trial and they'll have maxed out legendary implants for the weapon to be tested

Actually it's not that hard. The game already has to decide how to allocate pilots, mods and implants for bots in every game. The same logic can be used in trial mode. A "customise" option would be nice, but it's not necessary.

im happy with trial mode, its better than nothing, asking them to rebalance trial mode matchmaking is already an anecdote comic book task.. I take trial mode as something to see how weapon works and not to determine its power, we see stats for weapon power.. it should realistically be enough. As for example i tried blitzfrost in trial mode and it helped me to come to conclusion that its totally useless. Doesnt matter the power, i wanted to see what ability does and in short it does nothing :)

Good to hear an opposing perspective. To be clear though, I was not suggesting making trial mode matchmaking perfect. I was just saying that the existing imperfect 5v5 matchmaking can be applied in trial mode as well. The idea is simple - it would let us see how the weapons and mechs perform in a scenario that would match an actual game.

Also, to be clear, such a change is not necessary to make trial mode usable. It is already usable and useful to a decent degree. The context behind my suggestion was the remark that the permutations of pilots and mods are too numerous and would make trial mode complicated. To address that, I pointed out that such permutations are already calculated in regular game modes.. it shouldn't be a monumental task to apply the same in trial mode.

...perhaps it would be easier to just add a pop up notification to ask the user to choose between no mods and pilots (current set up) and full mods with full pilots. The former lets low to midgame users test content in a scenario that is more relevant to where in the game progression they are, and the latter will make the trail mode relevant to those either at endgame or close. 

For me using the trial mode as is isn't relevant as my main hangar is fully modded up (even if not all are rank 6) so a weapon excelling with no mods does not equal the same with full mods.

Just my two penneth.

Yes they give very weak bots compared to normal 

it would certainly improve whatever you are suggesting.. especially with popup options to choose something.. no way I said current trial mode is perfect.. According to what you are saying it's tuned to promote any weapon you try.. good marketing strategy. 

Regarding fixing it in any way.. if they have not done key mapping options despite the option actually being there means that not much going to happen.. But staying hopeful is cool.. 

I assume every idea here has like triple filter layer... 

First one is we critisize it ourselves... buff it, nerf it.. want it don't want it..

The second one moderators pass on the idea if multiple people suggested it's a good idea, plus moderator's own belief (for example if moderator lives in north pole, he likes to get bots for hangar showdown as otherwise he can't play it at all and have his "dailys done", so if we suggests no bots, then such comment may never be passed on to the team :) it goes against filter #2 religion.

Third filter is whether they care about this idea once they get the message, whether it will be anywhere in top of the list of priorities, whether it's not going to be forgotten at all.

I see many things as very easy to implement, but it's not happening.

To their credit, Plarium do listen to user feedback and occasionally implement suggestions. The implants rework is one example, and making mods universally available again is another (to name just a couple). I think the main reason it doesn't appear that they listen is that the bulk of the complaints are about matchmaking and sadly it's in their interest not to fix matchmaking the way everyone wants.

That said, I suspect the user feedback on the forum has low weightage, partly because it has less traffic than discord, and partly because of the nature of traffic. Too many posts are repetitive (the same complaints about matchmaking in new posts) which sometimes masks other useful posts, and too many are nasty (which considering even I ignore them I'm sure mods do too, even if they make some valid points).

When I used Trial Mode initially it was "actually" helping me to check effectiveness of a mech/weapon in combat (without any additional equipment like pilots or mods) because all bots were using legendary mechs and legendary weapons. Also the Bots in the initial stages of "Trial Mode" were much "intelligent" than real-werld match bots (once I played trial mode to check Viper 16, and one of the bots was camping with a Redox and Howler 16 on a corner and defeated me easily) With the 12 and 16 weapon trials, it is almost like Hangar Showdown Division 3. After this current rebalance, trial mode looks more like a marketing strategy, because bots are very weak when they choose epic/rare class mechs and weapons whle we primarily check for Legendary mechs and weapons. Even with epic/rare class, I had gotten lots of kills with weaker gear (With Zephyr and Missile Racks, I alone got 12 kills and my team together got 18 kills, while the opponent team got 4 kills). Therefore I had to conclude that the "Trial mode" got downgraded :(

well i also think forum has less weight if any at all.. They are listening to feedback but not the one majority thinks, i have no idea who would want mods available for all mechs apart from them making money from it. The idea was bad to me straight away as soon as i heard about mod change.. and i still think it was one if the worst things happening to this game since i started playing. And i didnt see anyone saying they want mods for all mechs, so feels like feedback was from some small circles of people and it was not majority decision or idea.. So saying that they do listen, i dont know.. They listen to someone thats for sure, but im not sure that this someone is living in the same reality as others. 

The other change i seen in my lifetime was tournaments and i could see how they made it great and then broke it the right next month. And its still broken. 

Then the nerfing of specific mechs for SP dropping.. who were they listening to about it? certainly not us.. 

the hangar showdown was changed from 5 games to 10.. at first i didnt like it, now i like it, that was a positive change i think, there is not much changed but there are much more rewards now. 

So thats a summary for 5-6 months i been playing. 

So Plarium is removing trial mode based on usage data and "your feedback" (meaning player feedback).

Plarium, you might have your reasons for removing trial mode, but don't gaslight your customers :-). Nobody asked for trial mode to removed. Everyone likes the concept. We just wanted it improved. Nobody (relatively speaking) said bots were too strong. In fact most players were saying that it's either great or (as a possible improvement) to make bot loadouts more realistic.

Despite that feedback you inexplicably made the bots super weak instead (what this topic covers). As a result it often doesn't matter what weapons you test.. you will massacre the enemy bots. I have in fact stopped using trial mode for that very reason. It doesn't give me any useful information except maybe to test the mechanics of a weapon / ability. I wouldn't be surprised if other people are reducing usage for the same reason.

Trial mode is a great idea. Don't remove it. Improve it.

Thanks for voicing it out, why should they remove Trial Mode when it performed really well until they screwed it by making bots weaker as compared to how it actually was!

I think the "Trial mode" affects the sales of the weaker mechs and weapons and so they are removing it entirely. Literally why would players complain against strong bots, when it does not even count toward your win/lose streak. It's not even a real game mode, why would someone care if they lose in a trial match?? The Devs are definitely fooling us. Please stop scamming players by providing false reasons, or at least try to give believable reasons if you wanna remove something useful. 

AFAIK all players asked for pilots and mods addition so that the game looks realistic. The enemy bots were performing good (they would ambush you and time their abiities also) and we asked for further improvement. You Plarium guys downgraded it, and now you ban the trial feature itself. It's like amputating an injured part when you have a safer medical surgeries to cure it!

I HATE PLARIUM FOR THEIR MESSED UP THINKING!!! 

i actually liked weak trial bots because i had more time playing with weapon than dying and hiding. they removing it because it probably requires separate dedicated server and updating things when they update main thing, etc, lot of work and it probably didnt give them sales they wanted from it.

your moaning about things just gave them reason to write "we removing it because of negative feedback", realistically it was just not profitable which they hoped for. Nobody will bring it back for you, the usefulness of it was never the intention.

Purely out of curiosity :-), what separates ThunderTechno's "moaning" from your kind of feedback and complaints?

I do agree with you that they are just using player's "feedback" as an excuse (which is what I mentioned in my comment as well). They did the same thing when they released round 2 of the latest tournament format (as if people asked for OP bots and non-existent rewards). But are you suggesting that that is a good reason to not give feedback?

i dont even know what im suggesting at this point, because it seems like they manage to cut through all what we write in forum and always find something negative to make it even more negative.. while positive ideas are purely ignored.. or im being so naive thinking that forum makes even 1% impact on their decisions and not some channel in discord.. where they have their own moaning people... and for what makes my feedback different from your moaning, the answer is nothing, im also moaning :) i dont even know if the dictionary difference would be something like "moaning - giving feedback that nobody cares about" and "giving feedback - providing valuable opinion" :D we all here moaning, because nobody gives a damn :)

Not only here, they won't consider feedback from players on any platform :) Though, it'd be much better if we could stay united and provide constructive feedback, than to fight amongst ourselves and chat about something that makes no sense at all, cuz they won't care ;)

To be fair, Plarium does implement suggestions. They are certainly guilty of ignoring feedback and twisting feedback, but it's false to say they don't listen at all.

As regards to the forum, there are far too few people here compared to discord and sometimes far too much negativity for even the good feedback to poke through clearly. But I don't use discord, so I use the only platform I can.

I never said that Plarium does not implement suggestions, I said that Plarium would not bother if I and Papa were fighting with each other in a digital platform. It's not their buisness to solve conflicts among fellow players (though they'd intervene if conflicts escalate between two players) and I'm not here to fight with anyone 😀

Though, I got really furious when the Devs claim that the reason for removimg trial mode is just because of having strong bots and providing limited mech and weapon combinations to try on. The latter is true (there were only 5 possible combinations for any mech/weapon we wanna try) but AFAIK nobody would've complained about a strong bot, because that's how real matches work. When you try a maxed out stuff, bots would also bring maxed out stuff and make it more realistic. That's how trial works, we check an item with a realistic situation, not with an imaginary situation (nobody in Mech Arena would fight against a maxed out Legendary mech and weapon with a base level rare/epic mech and weapon).

tar. You pointed out the right thing, there are a lot of ppl in discord, but nobody ever voices out issues like we're doing here. They are just eager to know about new mechs/weapon releases, upcoming ECR predictions, and they mostly speak about recent stuff (many criticized the Bouncecritter 8 promocode, saying that it's weak and unusable) and do not invoke a meaning like we do here. It's very fast-paced, so contacting a mod/CM is way too harder there. I saw night fury (our mod) yesterday in Discord, and he seems to passively defend the game, and when I asked about Trial mode, he didn't reply for my question.