If I said that I'm not excited about MechWarrior Online, it would be a quite evident lie. I've been a Mechwarrior and Battletech (including most of it's spinoffs like Aerotech) player longer than I can remember, and I consider the IP one of the best examples of sci-fi ever written.

That said, I have to admit that I was a bit turned off by how previous news described the use of loyalty points in the game and how they decayed with time, possibly punishing players that don't have too much time on their hands.

Luckily today Matt Craig (Technical Director), Bryan Ekman (Creative Director), Paul Inouye (Lead Designer) and Matt Newman (Producer), released a new developer Q&A, that made me feel much better about it.

Not only Loyalty points will start decaying only after a player has been inactive for a sizable amount of time, but even then ranks won't be lost, and most benefits won't be voided. The way the system has been explained today looks much less draconian than it initially did.

In addition to this quite a few more details have been given about faction affiliation, mercenary work and the way matches will work. You can read them all in the Q&A itself here.