The NDA officially dropped with the switch from “beta” to “Invitational.” A name change only really. Steam store page is up now with launch set for “Spring 2012.”
I’d have to agree this is MOBA more than shooter and that was a conscious design decision on their part. This issue is very common especially among original MNC players. I don’t know when you checked it out Snark, but lethality was moved up around patch 13 and then it was just increased again with patch 19 (1/19/12). So if you played after Patch 13 the change is basically lvl 1 is = to what lvl 4 used to be with lvl 15 remaining the same. Flattening out the lvl curve basically. This has moved the game closer to a shooter, but it’s definitely more MOBA. The original MNC is much more shooter and honestly there was no way left to do any balancing in Uber’s opinion. Sniper is just always going to be OP in the right hands (on PC).
This week Update 20 brought the addition of the Products system, a new map, and a whole host of balance changes. IMO the new map is really interesting. It again features parallel lanes, but it takes some time to traverse between them unlike the other 2 maps. The jungle is also located below rather than above the map with the Annihilator down there as well. Plus it’s a new version of the original Spunky Cola arena, which was my favorite OMNC map.
@Suj8 add me on Steam and we can get some games in. You can also hit me up through here, pm, my forum, w/e. There’s plenty of ways to find me in my sig.