Will we? Cause I have my doubts...
While we can only speculate on changes being made based on videos released/recorded at E3 and the few statements that Reloaded has bothered to make us don't paint a very pretty picture for what is to come in terms of balance and general perception that Hawken will have with the public after spending four years flopping about on the market not doing much except not living up the massive promised potential.
Personally I'm more burned by being left in the dark than the changes that are coming and I think it is quite telling for how we can expect the PC version of the game to progress and where that version stands in terms of importance.
You see I get that we aren't the audience anymore and haven't been since Reloaded purchased Hawken and we had our first interaction with Cap N' Josh. It makes sense too, Hawken came out and failed, we're only a few hundred people at best, and there's really no reason to focus on us. However the flat out ignoring us and not including us in anything is what really gets me.
Go back to when Reloaded first purchased Hawken and things seemed grand, we had a team that wanted to communicate with us and include us in a variety things. They made it seem like we mattered, that our understanding of the game would be a treasure trove of knowledge for them, and that they wouldn't make the same repeated mistakes Adhesive did by not including us in the game's development discussion.
Then everything went dark.
Now we've discovered none of our advice and feedback has been taken into account. In fact in many ways it seems like we're heading in the opposite direction and doing things we as a community already know don't work, won't be received well, and leaves a bad taste in players' mouths driving them away from the game. Nothing we've said seems to have been heard by Reloaded who has forged ahead with their ideas of what Hawken should be and where it should be heading. Now they do have every right to do this, they own Hawken after all and we're nothing in the grand scheme of things. This is no different than if I bought a new car and decided to paint it a different color and switch out some parts for those with less performance but I like how it makes my car look, sound, and handle. Sure others might not like it but it's my car at the end of the day.
However I can't help but feel like Reloaded's ignoring our feedback and experience is going to ultimately hurt Hawken and the experience new players are walking into. Needless changes have seemingly been made without any hint as to why beyond Reloaded thought it would be best. While there are a few who have been involved with Hawken before at Reloaded throughout various stages of Reloaded's development on the IP I don't think they've had a big enough skill pool to proper test the numerous changes they've made and that's before we start thinking about this supposed 12 new mechs coming to the game when we only know of about two or three that was in development.
So we've got a completely inexperienced team with the game making numerous changes to existing weapons, mechs, stats, and load outs on top of nearly doubling the current mech count all while completely excluding the community which knows the mechanics, advantages, and disadvantages of most everything better than the development team does when it comes to actual gameplay.
Time will tell if Reloaded made the right call but I'd by lying if I said I wasn't swimming in doubt and already expecting the day where I finally uninstall Hawken to arrive. It feels like we were jettisoned in favor of a massive gamble which in all likelihood won't pay out the way Reloaded is hoping it will. I hope I'm wrong in my concerns but when someone seems to take every tool they could use to help them succeed and proceeds to ignore them I don't think it's too much of a stretch to anticipate failure.
And all of this is before we even consider the negative image Hawken has around it and the fact that it is a failed four year old F2P PC game being ported to consoles that weren't even around when Hawken first released.