Okay, so yesterday I could play for like, four or five games. The last update rose pretty much a lot of changes, and like a good beta tester I’ll make an early feedback about it. There’s good, there’s bad, and there’s very bad…
Proxy :
When I saw the patch note, this was my main concern. Proxy was shown as pretty harshly nerfed. Speed nerf, mines nerfs, addition of a potential hard counter (if you played scout vs engineers in TF2 you know the struggle)… When I logged on the game I was however slightly nicely surprised to state that the nerf was slightly less big than I though. 450 speed. I expected 445. 445 would have pretty much been killing Proxy IMO, 450 is borderline. I still wish to see that speed at least raised to 455-460 though, but at least she still felt playable.
Arty :
With the introduction of Arty in the free merc rotation, the game felt a bit… Spammy. I also tried Arty myself, and I was really surprised : I actually love that guy, really (I love the Dreiss AR btw) ! But I don’t think CD reduction was the best thing to do for the artillery call. When Arties are stacked, artillery strikes are extremely frequents. While I don’t find it especially game breaking, some player seemed to find it annoying. And in my opinion the problem with the artillery call is more that I feel like I can’t hit poop with. The area of effect feels short, especially since the ability take some time before being fired, so I feel like my enemies can go out of the radius too easly. I’d maybe revert the precedent buff and buff AoE instead.
Aura :
Since her nerf, I feel like health stations are less a pain to get rid. Logic… I’d say when Stoker or Nader will be released she’ll be in a pretty good spot.
Bushwhacker :
Couldn’t try him : insane release price, insane cash price. Ten euros for one merc ? No thanks. I was however surprised to see already see a kinda big amount of Bushwhackers in game (I usually found one on each team on 8vs8 servers). That merc really scared me, because he was basically introducing the “defensive aimbot bullpoop” in the game. If you played TF2 you probably know the struggle of servers with 6 or more engineers in a team, all camping at the last point of the map, creating stalemates and taking out all the fun. And once again I was also nicely surprised : the sentry didn’t felt overpowered. You can take it down easly, I felt like it can still mow down things, and you can’t just dump it, go away and spam them like the common engineer players do with the unfamous mini sentry from TF2. The merc is not the insane fun sucking mass I expected him to be, and that’s pretty cool. Some players says that the sentry is underpowered, I’d wait a bit before tweaking it though, because introducing an aimbot in a shooter game is not something to take lightly.
Quality of life changes :
This is hands down the best part ! The possibility to equip cards outside of the lobby, red lightings for enemy installations (who didn’t notice the red enemy Aura’s stations ?), easier missions for easier credits… Those changes were really needed (missions were already okay before IMO, but those changes make us able to grab money by an easier way, so it’s also nice) ! Nothing more to add, it’s a great job. 
Servers :
Now we’re in the bad part of the feedback : what happened to 66% of our servers ? The server list feels so empty, it’s sad ! We have only like, two stopwatch server per region. This is way too few. How I am supposed to finish that stopwatch mission if I can’t play any because there’s only two stopwatch servers and they are always full ? I really hope this is not intended and we’ll have our servers back.
Merc price :
As I stated in the BushWhacker paragraph : why are mercs so expensive ? Even with the credit buff, even with the easier mission, 30k mercs are a pain to get. At the end the game may end with idlers, or games only done to grab as much cash as possible with farming techniques, and this is really something you guys really want to avoid. I don’t want to see “farm rooms” in that game, what I saw in a lot of game with a simmilar currency system, because when there’s one, there’s usually plenty of them, and you can’t find a server where people are playing the classic way. It’s understandable to make new mercs more expensive, but I really think that allowing people to try the new merc before (ie : put him in free rotation) will have a much more positive impact than this. Also, why is Fragger more expensive than the others ? Is it because he’s meant to be overall better than the others ? In that case this is not acceptable. All mercs should have the same price, no merc should be overall superior.
Fragger :
While we’re at it, I was really disappoint to state that no Fragger nerfs happened in that update. With little practice, nades can become atrocious, unavoidable balls of destruction : emphasis on unavoidable, because this is exactly the problem. You can’t avoid a grenade cooked at the last second at least up to mid range. And more of it, the K-121 just totally wrecks. That gun is insane, when I use Proxy and I find a Fragger it almost always feel like the fact that I looked at Fragger made me die, and I really doubt that this is because Fragger is ugly… Because he’s not that ugly… I mean, from a model point of view… The K-121/nades combo is ugly. Not the model… Whatever, you get it ! We desperately need a nerf of his ability, but the point is that I have no idea of what could be done, since a lot of players actually state that we shouldn’t remove cooking. I’m all for removing cooking in my case, I’d just make the nades slightly faster to explode, and make the nades less visible, to nades can be used in a more stealthy was without being totally OP. For the K-121, damage + lots of ammo + rate of fire make it a vicious combo. I’d suggest to tune down the rate of fire.
That’s all. Overall I’d say I’m rather disappoint with that update. The fact that I can’t try the new content makes it extremely frustrating, nerfs and buffs may not be the best things done, and a lot of point largely despicted by the community are not adressed. I really hope more work at listening the community will be done for the next update.
