Hello, just posting my impressions after a few hours/days of playing.
I won’t comment on the aspects of the game that are still very alpha, for ex, I still have a hard time figuring out what to do, but that’s not an issue since I assume the objs will be very clearly indicated in the final release.
I’ll start by saying that Enemy Territory has been my fav game of all time & the one I’ve played the most. Since then I’ve been searching for & never found the next ET. I’ve played ET:Quake Wars, Brink (& lots of others that aren’t worth mentioning).
My first impression is that DB is more the next Brink than the next ET. I kinda like Brink, well it looks gorgeous, I like the parkour gameplay (I don’t quite understand why no one does?), my only problem with it is that it’s slow (well, especially with heavy’s, but they’re tempting to use) & claustrophobic. DB is fast!, and its maps have more room, still not as much as I’d like (I’d like it like in ET), but that’s the ok mimimum IMHO. I also suppose that it has to do with the choice if taking place in London & it has to make a little sense. Lack of room in maps makes the use of snipers questionable btw.
I don’t know if SMART is planned for the game, I suppose not as it’s something the maps have to be ready for. But I hope that leaning will be featured, IMHO it’s something rather important that we all take for granted. I’ve always liked proning as well, but maybe it doesn’t fit here.
My biggest gripe with the alpha is that you die in half a second. I just don’t get it, it’s a trend that appeared some time after ET, probably for the sake of realism, but we’re in 2013, I hope that this wasn’t decided for the sake of realism. In ET a fight could last a couple of seconds, up to 10 seconds of dancing around & shooting. Here, you see, you die (or the other dies, but you still end up thinking you got luck), & it’s even worse than in Brink. And quite often you didn’t even see who killed you - problem that’s definitely not “solved” by the death ghost, which is rubbing it in even more.
In ET you could die immediately, from a sniper headshot, on a mine or from an aistrike (generally from an aistrike), but I don’t know, I never minded it, plus it’s very satisfying from the other side.
But ok, you respawn fast, and medics get you up quickly (except that it’s generally to die again within the next second…). That’s the only reason it’s bearable, you die all the time but you don’t have to wait 30sec all the time.
I’m not really ranting that “this isn’t the next ET”, and I’m also not assuming that SD wants to make “the next ET”. To start with, time has changed and I don’t think one can fill dozens of servers with 30vs30 players anymore (this said, I really wish today’s games were at least 15vs15).
However there are references/inheritances to ET in DB, the “kelly’s heroes” bank, tank escort, the 2 kinds of airstrikes (less satisfying, though), etc.
So I don’t know. To me the closest thing to ET we ever got was ET:Quake Wars, which wasn’t a bad game at all like some pretended (but then again, I don’t think that Brink deserved its fate either, it’s way above average out there). ET:QW had the same fighting problem but it was due to the 30 cycles PS I believe, however it wasn’t a big problem because ET:QW had a lot of variety, & things to drive. In fact, I believe that most of what we all hoped for in ET (I remember when we were dreaming of vehicles), we got it in ET:QW, only it was the dumb uninspired Quake background (which shouldn’t matter for gameplay, in fact it’s even better as it gives more freedom than a WWII game, but still…).
So I don’t know, the fact that it has more to do with Brink than ET or ET:QW is probably that it’s what today’s players prefer, maybe I’m getting old, or I remember ET better than it was (probably not as I enjoyed ET:QW). Or maybe it’s that a game with the depth of ET:QW takes way more time & is a higher risk.
Still, I think I’m gonna like Dirty Bomb if gunfights last a bit longer in the final release, as the good old Splash Damage gameplay & controls (except leaning) seems to be there already. And being F2P guarantees filled servers.
Some specific feedback about the alpha, for what it’s worth:
-the healing pod doesn’t look as useful as it could be, possibly because half of the time it explodes when you place it (wrong spots? alpha limitations? in any case it would be nice not to reset the timer when it got placed on a bad spot, or to simply prevent it). It could be useful if the healing pod had a negative effect on enemies nearby, just like it heals friends, to use it strategically.
-the third eye, does it explode? I thought I had read it did (& it’s a classic), but couldn’t find how. Maybe it’s already planned?
-I hope there will be icons over people a medic can revive, as the difference isn’t obvious enough (I mean they’re just desaturated, but the graphics aren’t very saturated to start with). A halo around bodies could do it too.
-I’d use a flamethrower :). Yeah I know it won’t fit in the game, it will never be in it, but one can dream. It’s just that I’ve never seen anything as fun as ET’s flamethrower in any game. And if you think of it, yeah it felt like cheating, but if you already die in half a second from gunshots, would a flamethrower do worse? I like flamethrowers as they’re quite nice to block a path and work as a smokescreen at the same time. It doesn’t really matter what kind of damage they do. And as for fitting in the game, it’s not like airstrikes do either, but no one minds it.
(edit: hadn’t seen the survey yet, I see my feedback matches some of the questions)
