A bold mechanical MMO with potentially questionable NFT plans

Metal core is a upcoming free-to-play online open-world mech game that takes inspiration from PlanetSide 2 and Battlefield. It offers a variety of customization options, from different classes to loadouts and of course giant mechs. Metal coremuch like Battle Royale games, takes place on a large open-world map, but instead of implementing elimination mechanics, it features live events around the world, encouraging players to move to specific locations at any given time. Metal core will also use NFTs in the final version, but at this point it is unclear if they will be fully integrated when the game is released. At PAX West 2022, Reverse went hands-on with metal core, and while the NFTs still seem a bit dubious and non-specific, the gameplay itself shows promise.

Ambition and promise

Metal core‘s overall gameplay loop is ambitious, dumping players into a vast open world to participate in various events that change on a regular basis. As part of the PAX West demo, players had access to a Domination-style event, which tasked them with capturing various points around the map. Throughout the event, players could use a large variety of mechanisms, from fast-moving vessels to massive tanks and even flying ships.

You start on foot and must manually enter one of the mechs, which spawn near your base. In the demo there were limited mechanics available to all players from a shared pool, but in the full version you’ll have access to your own set of what loadouts you create. It pays to have many different loadout types at your base to deal with all the different enemy mechs that can attack you.

While the demo only gave players access to the domination objective, developer Studio 369 told Reverse that other events will appear frequently in the full version, including those similar to raids from MMOs. These different events will come and go, encouraging players to jump in at certain times. But because everything is constantly changing, it feels like a living, breathing world.

Room for fine-tuning

While engaging in battles against AI bots and other players is certainly fun, there was a lot of downtime in our experience, especially when it came to waiting for restart timers to count down. Even the ride from the base to the action felt awful. For a large part of the demo, there was a disproportionate amount of waiting compared to fighting.

Sure, this is the kind of thing that could be cured by increased player counts and launch server stability, but still.

The weapons available in the demo did not use ammunition, but rather energy that recharges over time. You can fire your weapon as long as you have energy, but when it hits zero, you have to wait for it to recharge. I encountered many situations where I ran out of energy in the middle of a firefight, which was frustrating. The premise of constant ammo reloading is interesting, but some serious tweaking or another mechanic needs to be done to balance things out.

Cnext to Metal core is still in a pre-alpha state, many of these minor gripes can certainly be fixed, as the developer is still fine-tuning various mechanics before launch.

An obvious mistake

The minor gameplay issues are those that can be tweaked, but the game’s NFTs, which are fundamentally baked into Metal coreits DNA, may become problematic in the full version.

The PAX West demo didn’t show off the NFTs, so it’s unclear how they’ll work in practice, but based on what Studio 369 explained to Reverselooks like the developer is still figuring out how the monetization will come together.

Design director Jon Cooper tells Reverse The NFTs are “not just cosmetic” and will affect gameplay. NFTs include various infantry classes, tanks, aircraft and mechs.

But the team says they plan to keep things as fair as possible. The NFTs “will be balanced so that Metal core will definitely avoid “paying to win,” says Cooper.

Studio 369 also says that users will be able to earn NFTs by simply playing, without spending money. These in-game items can be transferred to other players and sold in-game – or at least, that’s the plan at the moment. Since Reverse didn’t get to see these NFTs or specific examples of them during the demo, it’s hard to say if they’ll actually be as balanced as Studio 369 says they will be.

Metal core aiming for a full release on PC in 2023.