IMO it's not that bad. For starters, per my understanding, new players don't get all these mechs. They get one of them depending on which promo code is used first. And they get it only at rank 3.

Secondly, with the ongoing ECRs these past few months all these mechs are now available to old players as well. If you haven't been saving up your acoins and credits for them, you should start. And you'll definitely have an edge over new players here. 

Third, they released a daily login rewards change which is giving out free stuff (over time) and they recently started doing that in the battle pass also. 

Finally, if you're losing games to such players, I assume it's because you are in early game and your hangar only has lower tier gear. That's honestly a matchmaking problem that might never get fixed. The good thing is that a lot of good legendary weapons start to become available in the gear hub fairly fast, and you can progress quickly with just credits to unlock them. 

I didn't consider blizzfrost META when they gave the promo code for new players but my opinion on that has changed. Blizzfrost definitely is META. And Lacewing, a contender for the best mech in the game. I've not agreed with a thread like this before but that's because they never really handed out anything as good las Lacewing.

I do understand why people might feel cheated in this aspect. My point is that the rest of the game balances it out. Just look at the ECRs these past few months. New f2p players can't dream of accessing those items, but if you're a "veteran" player (esp. one who has learned that managing resources is important) it opens up a big number or items that are otherwise only available for real money. 

It's not the same as getting it for free obviously. And obviously it would be nice if everyone had the same options. But the difference in options is not huge.

Btw, slightly related, these days I try and avoid any event that gives me a mech at 3 stars or a weapon at 3 or 4 stars. I'd prefer not to have it so that I don't have to spend thousands of acoins to upgrade it to something useful. That's actually one reason I don't mind that I don't have the option.

Small correction regarding ECRs - new players can dream of it.. luck can be on their side :-). But veteran players have a better chance of making it a reality.

Agreed with you Tar but 5% is anything from 50x to 100x better odds in CREs (exl. the ones with infinite rewards) than they used to be at anything from 0.05% to 0.1% for the main prize. THat's what made it out of reach to f2p players, new or old. 

Today's CREs, well most of them, have 5% for all items including the main prize, and just doing the quest for free tokens (1 on mobile and 2 on PC) is enough to secure you some of those goodies, mechs or weapons.

You're right. New and old players have the same odds per spin so no advantage there. But old players understand the system and should be saving enough resources to guarantee the final prize. That's how I have played for a while now - save resources, avoid early temptation, spend when ready. It took patience initially but I am now reaping the rewards. That's how I got my blizzfrost and lacewing (at rank 4 each) and many others.

Yes getting one leg mech right in the beginning gives a huge boost. Good for those players. But it's just one.. and at rank 3. I can live with that :-).

this bit: 

"hat's how I have played for a while now - save resources, avoid early temptation, spend when ready. It took patience initially but I am now reaping the rewards. That's how I got my blizzfrost and lacewing (at rank 4 each) and many others. "

...is exactly what I have done recently, skipped some items not worth the risk, and saved up acoins (the first variant of the tourney helped immensely) for the items i do want. Currently saving up for DW, need 7k to be safe, well minus two free tokens would be 6.3k. Definitely the way to go! 

Can new players not enter 3 new player promo codes anymore? Well either way a couple of the other promo codes are soon to expire. And hey at least at 3-5k sp we can still use lancer as it's not much worse

I also personally feel the same. Newer mechs with stronger abilities and weapons with higher damage and adaptability are better than the previously-released ones. And when we play with players who have better options as time passes. We get easily defeated because all players get almost the same amount of resources from playing the game. But for new players, They have better options to choose with. For example take me who is playing the game for the past 3.5 yrs, at the initial stages of gear hub there's no legendary weapon which can be bought using credits and there are very limited weapons available at that time. So I saved up credits (to buy Pod Gun 8 with credits, coz it was META at that time) and successfully bought it at the time when revokers were available for in-game currency. From Event Crate rushes I bought some more weapons (which were quite useful in some encounters but have mediocer performance) and still better weapons (at the time when Reaver was introduced) like Overdriver 8, Viper 8 were very costly and grinding was difficult due to poor matchmaking process. Better weapons are released but are not available for in-game currency. But a friend of mine who started 2 yrs ago had bought weapons like Savant 8, EMR 8, Quasher 8, Burrow Beam 6 and had got mechs like Surge, Hemlock, etc (through Event Crate Rush). How is that supposed to be 'nice' when I'm saving credits for a way lot of time but due to option constraints I buy weaker weapons but newr players take advantage of the release and buy the best easily, while we try and try but fail with all our attempts to get good mechs and weapons. VERY UNFAIR