Initial Gut Feedback

tokamak · 2012-11-22 22:46:38 UTC

The Drone Strike is especially ambiguous in when and how it lands.

Violator · 2012-11-22 23:16:47 UTC

First of all this rocks! This is going back to what was great about the original W:ET - close objective-based infantry combat

Here’s my £0.02 -

Soldier’s AR is great to use, both hip-fired & sighted.
Sniper rifle is good and doesn’t seem too OP. The shift to steady is a nice touch along with the wobble if you hold it down too long which should stop excessive camping. Didn’t seem to be any nasty camping spots as you could always be flanked. Silenced MP was also good.
Good level design on the two maps I played. Lots of routes, cover but always clearly led to the objective. Some nice choke points (esp. the church building!).
This spawn / next spawn is a nice touch, though it was a bit confusing at first as I seemed to have to kill myself to change class then have to wait another 10 seconds to spawn in.
JSON for configs - nice

nades could do with a tick sound for cooking, was hard to time them without it.
soldier’s MG could have packed some more punch maybe, I was unloading at point blank range and it didn’t seem to do nearly as much damage as the AR.
movement speed is a bit slow, made it hard to side-strafe when caught in a 1-on-1 out in the open. Was relying on cover to make up for the slow speed, however the amount of cover made this fun tbh.
didn’t really try the other classes, except field ops in the last round but the airstrike seemed a bit weird, no indication on the direction it was going to go and it didn’t seem to do much damage.
capping the forward spawn wasn’t clear, I think we just had to stand near it but wasn’t sure.
max FOV of 90 seems a bit low? Could do with at least 100.

A couple of issues -
When waiting to start match (after everyone rups) you are unable to move but can still switch weapons and tbag
Had some weird issues with ragdoll after dying, it would get stuck in the wall and flip out.
Had an ‘out of video memory’ error about 10 mins into the session (the rest of the 2 hrs or so I played was ok though). I have a GTX 460 and have never had any probs like this before.
I died when reloading the MG (as soldier) then got rezzed. The gun stuck in the open position until I changed weapons.

shirosae · 2012-11-22 23:21:20 UTC

I’m on the fence with it. Spent a few rounds earlier trying out soldier1 and soldier2:

Soldier1 is kinda unwieldy. I’ve been finding the heavier guns kinda sucky at close quarters combat because the spread rises so quickly, so I’ve been using them at mid-long range for snipery stuff. Both of Soldier1’s weapons are a bit like this. Also, I really hate the random recoil on the Soldier1 HMG.

Soldier2 is much better. The HMG is slower firing and its spread seems to bloom much slower, so overall the gun feels much more stable. It’s still not great up close, but it feels much more reliable then the other HMG. It probably has the same random recoil, but I really didn’t notice it because I had the SMG for CQC. Soldier2’s primary SMG is really effective even up to midrange because it throws bullets out so quickly. I ended up using the HMG for camping/suppression at a distance with cover, and the SMG for rushing through lines.

Not sure if it was intended that the heavy guns are for camping, and light guns for assault, but that’s what’s been working the best for me so far.

Dancing is kinda tough. It works well up close, but a little further out it’s edging towards who-shoots-first. I’m not finding it terrible, though.

tokamak · 2012-11-22 23:34:04 UTC

I think the Soldier’s fire rate is too slow. That way there’s less fidelity in your burst fire. Lower damage per hit and higher fire rate would be appreciated.

Dancing is kinda tough. It works well up close, but a little further out it’s edging towards who-shoots-first. I’m not finding it terrible, though.

Definitely a problem. This was great in both ET’s. Could be the FoV though.

FROST1 · 2012-11-23 00:49:23 UTC

Tomorrow I’ll post a more detailed “feedback”, but for now I want to point out something, that really gave me a hard time. And that is the movement system. And I’m not talking about the lack of good ol’ SMART, but about the behaviour of the basic WASD+SHIFT system. At first I thought there was a little bit of ingame head-bobbing going on, until I’ve realized, that the movement itself responded somehow delayed, especially when I started to sprint.

I may sound like a complete pu$$y, but I’m getting motion sick pretty fast when my own (mouse or key)movement doesn’t match the actual movement of the ingame char; even when we are talking about tenths of seconds. I know that I’m especially prone to that reaction since I was a kid and allways got sick when I had to travel long distances in a car. But since over 13 years now I allways had jobs wich incorporated extensive hours behind the wheel and I haven’t experienced this once. Wich means, when my actions and the reactions of my environment do match I have no problems whatsoever.

I have absolutely no clue about how the movement system in a computer game works, but I can only play games over a longer period of time wich have not the slightest bit of delay. Motion-sickness does’t only let me feel ill, it also leads to a point where I’m getting very tired and can’t concentrate on anything anymore.

Maybe I can get used to it, maybe I was just a little tired allready, and maybe the MHz is to high. I don’t know, but nevertheless, everything around sprinting feels a little bit strange since you can’t control it exactly. The only thing I can say so far is, that the mere “WASD+SHIFT” in Brink was just like one would excpect it and I never got sick then. It was direct and responsive.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I’m fresh and rested. Will try to focus on the objectives this time.

tokamak · 2012-11-23 01:59:45 UTC

I experienced the exact same thing you were talking about Frost that’s what I meant with ‘clunky’

INF3RN0 · 2012-11-23 04:24:59 UTC

I’ve already shared some thoughts in other threads, but I’ll go ahead and post my first-impressions here as well. I haven’t had the chance to really get my hands into everything the game has to offer quite yet, but as my first night of play progressed I was really feeling the nostalgia of the ole etqw days.

Weapons:

Why do I feel like most of the weapons should fire slightly slower? It just seems like you can burn through your clip faster than you intend because all the rifles unload so quickly. I was consistently killing around 3 players with one clip, but a lot of the time I noticed that I was wasting bullets into thin air just because I couldn’t stop my gun from firing fast enough. The pistol of course is there for a reason, but I think an overall slower RoF on the rifles would help to sustain ammo and lead to more consistent aiming requirements in a fire fight.
Hipfire was all I was ever doing and it was working fine. I think the only times I ever iron-sighted was very very long distances where the spread reduction actually mattered. I also noticed that burst firing sometimes felt more accurate at a distance, but I was not entirely sure if it was placebo.
The pistol is perfect.
The knife is perfect (but you can’t sprint with it?).
I like the sniper rifle design tbh. I was testing some quickscoping techniques and found that I could usually land a hit at close range by hitting RMB+LMB simultaneously, although the bullet would land randomly in the spread circle. It also worked at other ranges just the same, but of course was less dependable the further away you were from a target. I still think that being able to instantaneous fire your first shot (like ETQW) and then adding a delay (that couldn’t be bugged by a weapon swap) would be a better means of going about it, but this design isn’t too bad either.
Is shotgun supposed to one-hit kill? I like it a lot, but in some situations I saw it one-hit kill full HP players.
How many guns are planned? I tried some of the ‘alternative weapon loadouts’ and saw some new guns.
Are there smgs or just rifles? I felt like the medic’s gun was an smg, but I found it difficult to find any significant distinction between it and the assualt’s rifle.
I really like the fact that it takes a lot of body shots vs headshots to kill, makes the reward for aiming there all the better.
Overall I think that it’s very easy to kill people with all the weapons thus far, and the low spread makes aim skill feel important- which was quite noticeable during a few matches I played. I am very impressed in the design direction in the weapons department.

Movement:

Faster strafing in general maybe? Doesn’t feel as smooth as I’m used to (clunk).
It’s not bad, but it’s not great… I’d like to see something more done with it.
No proning or sliding please. I don’t think that either belong in the style of map environments your going for and that they will only become a nuisance.
Crouching should have a more noticeable advantage, especially at a range. I also think that it should have some special effect on the sniper rifle especially.

Map Design:

Very refreshing to have all sorts of alleys, corridors, bridges, etc.
I think that spawn camping is going to be an issue in certain places. Having at least 3+ exits from spawn varying in height positions is a necessity in my opinion (already there in a lot of places, but some exits felt too close together to make a difference). Also offense could use more biased cover in some spawn points too.
How many sub-obj alternate routes are actually available? I didn’t really notice many, and thought they were always a nice feature.
Trick jumps ploz. Some jumping puzzles to get onto balconies, over obstacles, etc would be great.

Classes:

Assault seem to be tough guys, but are they also slower? It may be my imagination, but they seemed to move slower than everyone else. I wish there was two loadout styles for the class though; one being the current big guns/nades guy and another that offered larger ammo clip bonuses without the 2 main weapons and extra grenades. I’m thinking along the lines of a purely aggressive and fast-paced playstyle with the most accurate rifle, where you can just dedicate your time to cleaning house- but of course relying on medics for survivability.
Medic was my preferred class during the time I played. I felt like I was most effective at sustaining my team and getting kills with it. I only wish that downed players had flashing icons to make them stand out.
I didn’t play much Engineer, but their turrets and mines served their purpose well. Maybe turrets should be a bit less accurate? I’d have to play more to comment there. I also like how the engineer is the bomb planter too, which goes well with it’s team support capabilities.
Field ops airstrikes puzzled me a bit. I think they could use some work in that department.
Covert Ops could use a scoped rifle as well, to encourage them to participate closer to the action.

Graphics:

It might have just been some settings on my PC, but I felt like the environments could use more vibrant colors. There was a grey haze that washed out most of the color for me.
Sometimes player model colors became greyed out in different lighting atmospheres, which I think should be a bit more clear if possible.

Other:

Adding some animation to incapacitated bodies would make it more clear, but I liked the loss of color on gibbed bodies.
Ammo packs from kills should perhaps give 20 bullets instead of 15. Ammo drops in general are a bit buggy as well.

mortis · 2012-11-23 04:45:23 UTC

I noticed some odd clipping (blocking volumes?) in certain areas where it looks like you should be able to jump, but they are blocked (yes, I know it’s pre-alpha). I still see plenty of placeholder textures, but I don’t know if you’re ready for the reporting of minor texturing issues that I see in a few places.

I see that you can shoot right through glass, that’s nice.

Foot speed reminds me of ETQW, it might be a bit fast on such small maps.

Mines can only be placed on horizontal surfaces, as far as I can tell, as can’t be disarmed. Is this by design?

Overall gameplay seems very close to ET1. What a surprising place to find myself in, playing modern ET on the Unreal Engine. I may need to dust off my unrealed and start blocking out some custom maps (gonna have to wait on placing actors, I guess).

Will custom maps be supported?

tangoliber · 2012-11-23 06:48:32 UTC

I’d like to “vote” yes or no to a few things… These aren’t things that I think we definitely must have a certain way…but since so many of us want different things, I’d like to just express my views for the record. And I’m a little nervous about expressing some of my views.

I vote no on prone
I vote no on vehicles
Having hipfire and iron sights equally accessible at an entry level makes sense…but I think that eventually you have decide which one is going to dominate at the highest level of play. One fear of trying to make both equally viable is that the combat might lack personality… But there might be other unintended effects… For example, I think that because hipfire feels so good, the lethality of iron sights has to be increased so much to compare. Some people like this, but I prefer the health model of something like Brink, where if you walk into a well-positioned player’s line of fire, you still have time to hop behind cover before your health is completely depleted. (I believe that Brink had similar health and bullet damage values to Dirty Bomb…The spread on the guns decreased lethality, so the health would need to be increased in Dirty Bomb to achieve the same time-to-kill.) I think a decision should be made on whether this is meant to be a “strafe duel in the open field” sort of game, or a more tactical, slower-paced game. Neither is wrong… I personally prefer the first kind, and there are people here who would prefer the second kind.

-A supplement to the above: I personally would prefer even more health. I think it would make it easier to make hipfire and iron sights equally viable that way as well. But I know many people here wouldn’t agree with that. So, it’s just one guy’s vote for the record. I’m already thankful that we have as much health as we do have in this game. I’m just being greedy.

-I vote for custom rules for custom servers. (Hi-Rez allowed players to rent server space for custom games with Tribes: Ascend.) Custom rules could include: Hipfire only, 1.5x health, 2x health gameplay, 2x speed, no grenades, etc.

-I vote for a more noticeable advantage to crouching on more guns. Not just the starting accuracy, but the spread bloom rate as well. Particularly the HMG. The starting accuracy is great. I’d like to see the bloom rate noticeably improved when crouching.

I’d like to have a bolt-action rifle that can be crouch-fired from the hip with pinpoint precision. Or, it could be done to the sniper rifle. After all, doesn’t crouching mostly have the same penalty as using the sight? The only advantage is that you have a better field of vision.

This game is FUN. I really enjoyed some of the 2v2s and 3v3s I played on the US server. I love the escorting, the barricades, the data core relaying. I look forward to how the teamwork develops, and the different strategies that evolve, as you guys start to add more deployables and abilities to the classes (which I assume will be necessary, given the f2p model.)

Also, I’m cool with playing maps that lack graphics.

Humate · 2012-11-23 07:18:22 UTC

[QUOTE=shirosae;409146]I’m on the fence with it.

Dancing is kinda tough. It works well up close, but a little further out it’s edging towards who-shoots-first. I’m not finding it terrible, though.[/QUOTE]

The dancing limitations are understandable if the combat is based on an all carrot no stick philosophy. But yeh you will end up with who-shoots-first-wins situations as a result, which is what I’d imagine the target playerbase is used to.

DarkangelUK · 2012-11-23 08:19:17 UTC

I’m gonna be honest, I’m quite happy with the damage model and the gun play. I have no issues with hitting at distance or up close and I’ve never felt robbed of a kill. Again I think people are thinking the movement is slow or restrictive due to the fov, are there many of us here that would normally play as low as 90 fov in ET or ETQW?

stealth6 · 2012-11-23 10:55:13 UTC

I play at 90 and the movement is fast (unmimited sprint?), It’s that or the maps are disproportionate you fly everywhere. The only counter to this is that you seem to die quite quickly.

light_sh4v0r · 2012-11-23 11:45:16 UTC

I always play at 90 too, but then my screen is 3:4 so it looks odd if I go higher.

Octobinz · 2012-11-23 11:47:40 UTC

[QUOTE=INF3RN0;409166]
Graphics:

It might have just been some settings on my PC, but I felt like the environments could use more vibrant colors. There was a grey haze that washed out most of the color for me.
Sometimes player model colors became greyed out in different lighting atmospheres, which I think should be a bit more clear if possible.[/QUOTE]

Which map are you talking about ?

Runeforce · 2012-11-23 13:16:37 UTC

I have only experienced this while initiating a sprint. The char takes a split second to get up on speed. I quite like it…it makes you extra vunerable right when starting a sprint (because your weapon penalty kicks in immidiatly/longer draw, but the actual sprinting is delayed very slightly.)

(Classic trickjumping aside) I think the movement schemes (speed and behavior) are spot on.

And I am in favor of reduced sprint while reloading (like it works currently.)

Ashog · 2012-11-23 16:28:31 UTC

I would decrease damage of assault rifles. Killing is too quick which reminds me the dreaded CoD / BF gameplay…

Heavy MG of soldier if fine as is imho, but AR…

Also spawn times might be too short, which decreases the value of life and makes game less tactical. If the AR damage gets decreased it also probably requires longer spawn times, since 1vs1 fights will last longer (which is great!) - so these things come along neatly imho.

FROST1 · 2012-11-23 16:59:17 UTC

Ok, just played a couple minutes and I think I can really determine now what made me feel motion sick yesterday; it’s not necessarily the delayed sprint, but the way your char floats a little when you press WASD. I think that’s really it. Your char does not immediately change the direction when you hit the respective button. It reminds me a little bit of Gotham City Impostors, when you got rollerskates on; though not nearly as extreme, but enough to be annoying.

But with all my ranting about the movement system I want to also point out the good things in DB. Wich are of course the look. I’m very, very happy SD didn’t abondoned the Brink look entirely. And the game takes place in London, wich is really great too(Europe is cool enough to have its own shooter). I can’t say much about the weapons, but they look very good* and the shooting feels ok; no problems so far. There are not many weapons as of yet, but other than that I can’t say very much about them.

Since the vehicle thingy has a pretty useful turret, the ofense/defense problems, from wich Brink suffered quite greately, are a thing of the past now I hope.

I don’t want to crank up the old, old “k/d, yes/no” discussion again, but I’m glad they put it it in. My ego needs that, even though DB is an objective driven game.

My wishes for DB’s future are;
more maps, more weapons and some kind of slider for the WASD movement delay. The first two will definitely come, but I’m realy hoping for the later one; no delay in WASD.

*though, to be totally honest, not as awesome as Brink’s weapons, wich I really love. Imho Brink’s weapons are the best that I’ve seen in a computer game so far. Only ME’s weapons are almost as cool, but ME is a totally different sub-genre anyways.

light_sh4v0r · 2012-11-23 17:05:18 UTC

In my honest opinion I really wouldn’t want more weapons than those available now, unless they’re an actual addition like a grenade launcher, flamethrower etc. All the basic guns are in already, anything else will just be more of the same with some guns never seeing any use because they will be inferior. I do realise we can expect just that though, with the game going ftp.

FROST1 · 2012-11-23 17:16:19 UTC

You are right, I’m no gun psycho either and I’m also of the opinion, Brink had just enough weapons for every taste and purpose. You wouldn’t need one more. Actually I think Brink could’ve worked with 20weapons just as well as it did with 24. 15-20 fully customizeable weapons, including sidearms would be enough.

DarkangelUK · 2012-11-23 18:18:33 UTC

I’ve noticed that as well, there’s just a slight delay between pressing the key and the char actually moving… not fond of it myself.