Keep in mind, this is very much a beta client. Considering I heard they were play testing, I am surprised to see a public beta bug test like this.
Initial Issues:
Lag was horrendous. I was connected to a Dallas server and I had lag 90% of the time.
Resource usage was pretty bad. However, I don't think I've rebooted in a week or two, so I can't say it was all the games fault.
Alt/Tab is impossible. You can CTRL+ATL+DEL to break out of the game, then ALT+TAB from there, but I could never get a cursor, so it didn't matter anyway.
It does support wide screen! Yea!
Initial Gameplay Thoughts:
The 10% of the time it was lag free was actually rather fun. The rest of the time was a blur and I now have a headache from it.
This is not battlefield.
This is not even remotely close to battlefield, although I can see some resemblance to BF2142.
I never saw any bunny hopping, but then again, at 3 FPS, I'd probably miss if they did bunny hop.
The objectives are kind of interesting. I'm not so sure about focusing the action though. The problem is the way you spawn. Everyone who dies and chooses to respawn does so at the same exact time. You drop in via parachute.
The game browser seemed really good.
If I had to pick a game this closest resembles, I would say Unreal Tournament Onslaught, however, the vehicles really remind me of Halo. They are not as responsive as UT's vehicles. Then again, it could be the lag issue I was experiencing.
I am not sure what the rest of you will think, but it is a lot closer to Halo then Battlefield.
I'll try it again another day. I am thinking about downloading the 2142 demo again to compare it with.
On a side note, Clan Tags are seperate from your name and you can select whether or not you want to put them in front or behind your name. It supports |GRB| just fine.
There are a lot of keys in use and I can't fit them all on my Wolf King gamepad. I'll keep messing with it though.
I've got to go to a meeting, but I'll make sure I add my comments to this later. So all of you keep hitting refresh for the next couple of hours in anticipation 😉
At the end of each match, before the map would reload, my screen went white. The first time this happened, it locked me up totally. I had to reboot. After that, I got the white screen each time the map reloaded, but it would work through it and reload.
Also, I changed my gamma and brightness settings in the game, now my video settings are all jacked up. I haven't figured out how to reset it outside the game.
The gamma issue is a bug. If I changed mine at all I couldn't get the game to load and had to uninstall and reinstall it. I did that three times last night as well as updating video drivers twice 😈 In fact if I try to change any video settings at all it just kills the game, but I need to verify that with more testing.
the good.... - Aim seems to be less dependent on random variation than BF2.
- You can customize greatly your crosshairs, their opacity, and the information shown.
- you can select missions to complete for XP (experience points). Icons help show you were to go to complete the mission.
- I didn't have the lag issues that Atomm experienced. I didn't have any lag at all that I noticed and I was playing on servers in Chicago and Dallas.
- I like the kit and role selection setup that allow you to chose what you want to do and the primary weapon that you want to do it with.
- I did manage to gain an unlock during one round although I didn't use it.
- the end of round summary is pretty cool giving you the standard stats but also a lot of "Best" categories. One round I got "Best Battlesense" but I don't really know what that means.....
the bad.... - No VOIP makes it very difficult to communicate with your teammates - I thought maybe that this was just because it's a beta, but word is that this feature has been removed from the game completely and might return in a patch if the bugs get worked out. Splash Damage's explanation was that this was due to bugs and the fact that there are alternatives out there for the PC (ts and vent). This is almost a dealbreaker for me on this game. The basic fact is that with squad VOIP (and some luck) it is possible to get teamwork out of a random group of pubbers on a server in BF2. Without VOIP it is difficult to get anyone's attention, much less get them to work together.
-The browser is ok although it needs some big-time tweaking. I was getting false reports all evening of servers looking like they had open slots being full and full servers having open slots. I joined one server that was supposed to be empty only to find 10 people in it playing.
- Rockets are not very useful against the Stroog mechs. I put at least 4 into a mech without killing it. At the same time I had at least 3 other teammates that were attacking it with other means.
- Stroog have a jetpack kind of thing that they can use. This makes those that are using it into essentially mega-bunny hoppers that can drop grenade like things on you. Not sure if GDF have something similar or not - they don't on the beta map anyway.
- the dancing issue discussed in another thread is there. I had one guy I went against jitter back and forth real fast then get me with a headshot without me touching him as far as I can tell. A rocket to the feet might work, but to me this is just hitbox manipulation and exploiting.
and the ugly (otherwise known as stuff I need to get used to) - you often have to click/hold the "f" key to use items, arm explosives, and take control points. Took me a while to figure it out, but it is a workable method. There is a timer that counts up while you are doing something that takes time, like taking a flag so you know your status.
- I haven't figured out the keys that you need to communicate with your teammates either so all around I can't talk to anyone yet or let them know that an enemy has been spotted or anything like that.
- Grenades. I killed myself with them more than once. Not sure how the system for them works. I think you can hold them while live so that they go off as sooner once they reach the intended target, but I am still trying to figure out exactly how they work.
- Low video settings look like crap. I really need to experiment with this more, but if I have to run it on everything low, it's going to be tough to play. Overall impression after a couple hours of game time. Is that this is reminds me a lot of UT with some hints of BF2. I haven't played Halo so I can't compare it with that. The inability to easily communicate with teammates or even squad mates is tough. I even had trouble figuring out how to type in "sorry" so that a teammate would see it after I tked him by accident. Some of this is just figuring out the keys needed, but the lack of in game VOIP makes it extra difficult.
The infantry vs. infantry combat was pretty solid other than the dancing. One on one I felt I had a good change at taking anyone down. The vehicles change the dynamics and I need to figure out how to take them down still. The jetpacks are another issue as well.
In the end, I had fun while I was playing but there are many, many issues to resolve. This is clearly a beta and no where near ready for general release.
I just got finished attempting to play my first round of the beta. Aside from the horrendous lag, I couldn't see ANYTHING related to the font. Everything fontwise was a garbled mess.
And unfortunately, it looks bad. Just... bad. The weapon models and the rendering engine just don't fit well and the sounds are pretty screwy. And I hate to say this, but, Battlefield 2 had better lighting than ET:QW.
As for the gameplay? It really seems like they tried to shoehorn tactical elements in a fast paced game (Leaning, going prone). Unfortunately, during my time on the server I never saw any of these work. Dashing back and forth with your rifle blasting at full auto seemed to do just fine.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to try any vehicles or get into any large firefights - not being able to see anything combined with the lag just threw me off.
One other negative to go with the stuff I posted above is the ETQW community. Say anything remotely negative about the game and you get jumped by the fanboys and told to go "Back to BF then noob". Just. F*ckin. Lovely. The quakewars boards are just like the PBF/TotalBF2 one's now 😄
A positive about the game because I'm trying to take a balanced approach to this: People have been complaining about how fast the game plays. I honestly didn't notice much difference in speed between an urban BF game and QuakeWars. It didn't seem too fast to me at all.
I'm going to try and play tonight again. I'll be on TS this time if anyone cares to join me. Probably won't be until 10 EST or so though....
Sarge had some really good points. Keep in mind, that I never thought the game was too fast, but then again, I didn't realize how bad I was lagging until it cleared up for a little bit. Then all of a sudden, it was "like butta"!
I few things along the same lines as Sarge. I played the tank, the mech and the jumper. Keep in mind, it was very jumpy, but I was having my ass handed to me by the ground troops with rockets. In fact, I had more trouble with them than other vehicles. I could see vehicles across the map and map some really long shots at them. The shots did have a nice drop depending on how far I was, so it took 2-3 to hit them. However, I couldn't see soldiers 20 feet away because they could hide in the cover and take shots at me.
DocJohn will like the rockets IMHO.
The laser site was really cool. Even with it, I still couldn't hit the buggers aiming straight at me.
The jumper was fun, but not that great. I was handed my ass again in it.
The mech.... Well, I died faster in it than any other vehicle. It's slow and doesn't appear to have any more armor than the tank.
The objective stuff was cool once I figured it out, although I'm not sure what I was doing, so I guess I didn't totally figure it out.
Sarge, I can get the Como Rose but clicking Mouse 3 (wheel for me), then scrolling. It also has numbers you can hit instead of selecting, but I'm not sure how to use it without hitting mouse 3 first.
Atomm wrote: Sarge, I can get the Como Rose but clicking Mouse 3 (wheel for me), then scrolling. It also has numbers you can hit instead of selecting, but I'm not sure how to use it without hitting mouse 3 first.
I see potential, but this is not battlefield.
I clearly need to learn what all the buttons and keys do, but what you said is a big help in terms of me figuring some of this stuff out.
Played again last night and it was incredibly laggy even though I was playing on a server in Virginia with a ping in the 30s. I had to quit after about 15 minutes as it was giving me a headache. It could be my system can handle the approximately 20 players on the server but I think I played with that many people for a while on the first night without any lag.
Doc and I played on Sunday. I have all the graphics settings at the fullest and 4AA and it seemed to run fine.
We had lag on the first server but once we changed to another one the lag was gone and remained so.
The game itself was actually fun. It was better then I thought it was going to be. I did not notice any of the sliders or bunny hoppers, at least on that server. I tried various classes and it was not too bad.
I say the game is basically Team Fortress type play and UT 2004 onslaught vehicles mixed together running on UT2004 Assault mode.
Played again tonight for about half an hour. Didn't notice any difference from the patch but it wasn't laggy at all. Still gave me a headache though which concerns me.
Yeah, I think you're right Atomm. Frame drops are like setting your refresh rate too low on your monitor so that it flickers. I don't see any flickering, but my frame rates are pretty low.
Yea, it does Doc. It's not the only reason, but knowing what hadware Sarge has, along with the settings and the games he's complaining about, it sounds a lot like the problems I use to have.
Before I knew any better, I use to set my video settings as high as the game would let me. What I didn't realize at the time was my Video Card couldn't handle it, so I had a lot of frame drops. Once I figured that out and lowered my settings, to match the game and my video capabilities, things improved.