So I’ve been playing this game only since open beta started, but I’m already up to about 130 hours played in this game. I absolutely love this game, it fills the hole in my heart that ET left, and that TF2 left when it became too terrible to play.
So far there are a couple of things that seem just completely broken, or just seem poorly thought out, but then again what do I know.
The Menus
This is by far my biggest issue with the game. No matter whether I run the game windowed or full screen, every single click takes at least 3 seconds to register, not to mention the fact that, the longer you play in a session, the slower the menus seem to get. I really hope they fix this quick, because not only does it make looking at your loadouts/trading up/ and looking for servers the pinnacle of suffering, but it also makes the 3 character selection system in public games very annoying. 90% of the time I don’t want to bother switching my squad out because the menus are so garbage that navigating through them between maps is just a chore.
The Mercs
At first I hated the merc system, and the squad system, and I thought there were too many mercs that were too similar, or that some of them were just overpowered. After playing for a while it’s all grown on me, but I still can’t stand Bushwacka, Rhino, and Vasili. I am aware that everybody is complaining about them already, but I don’t think they’re doing it for the right reasons. As it stands these 3 characters really do nothing but slow down the game, which is really terrible in such a fast paced game.
Let’s start with Bushwacka. First off turrets are terrible in pretty much every game. It sort of breaks the entire flow of the game, especially a game where movement is so important in combat, when one character has a turret with autoaim, and such fast targeting times. I am aware there are certain mercs meant to counter nests and such like Fragger and Nader. That doesn’t stop them from slowing down the game, and making it just a boring camp fest.
I think Vasili is terrible for the same reason. He slows down the game by promoting camping. Other than that I think Vasili is just broken because of every scrub just wanting to play sniper and get frags, while not helping the team at all.
Finally Rhino. I have no problems with a high health close range powerhouse like the Heavy was in TF2. My issue with him, aside from the fact that he promotes camping, and slows down the game, is that his minigun is capable of scoring headshots. At close range this isn’t that much of an issue, You’ll usually be dead in the blink of an eye anyway. Where this bothers me is at range. I can’t even count the amount of times, in these past few days alone, where I’ll be running across the map from a rhino as a light class, and he starts to spray at me. All of a sudden one of his rounds slaps me in the head, and I’m either dead, or down to like 10-20 health. That just doesn’t seem right for rhino to have that kind of damage capability at range, based entirely on luck.
The Maps
I don’t really have many problems with the maps, overall they’re pretty well designed and have decent objectives. My issue is that they decided, that for what ever reason, that every map had to be the exact same length, with pretty much the same objectives. I miss the maps for ET with interesting visual design and objectives, extensive maps where you felt like something was going on, instead of playing something that feels like a cheap videogame. It just feels too much like the maps cater to casuals/ “e-sports” players.
The Servers
This is my other least favorite thing about this game. The servers are garbage, and with the lack of maps/game modes (I understand it’s still beta), and the constant steam rolling, servers never stay full. People leave as soon as a match is over, there’s absolutely no sense of community, because there’s no reason to stay, or to play, on one specific server. The same maps are just going to played again, and you don’ get to play with the same people because everyone just leaves. I have no idea how they would fix this, especially with the way the game is set up, but it has a big affect on the actual appeal of consistently playing this game. Similarly the videos, and the 15 second deploy time, among other things are obnoxious. I just want to play the game, why do I spend so much time in DB not actually playing, and just waiting, or looking for a good server.
Overall great game, I hope it continues to thrive, and that the devs actually look at fixing some of the glaring flaws this game has. This is one of the few games released nowadays where the great things outshine the bad, keep up the good work Splash Damage.