Loadout Catch-All (F2P 3rd person shooter)

Loadout is a newly released F2P third person shooter, with a cartoony style, lots of customization, and what seems to be a halfway decent payment model. Some have compared it to a TF2 look, but it's a bit more irreverent and gory. It looks to have a ton of weapons customizations (like maybe Blacklight), as well as a bunch of goofy character customizations. It's been in closed beta for a long time, but has just been released to everybody, and it's on Steam.

The money economy seems to be mostly about cosmetic upgrades and earnings boosts. Most of the gun upgrades seem to be earned with the in game currency alone.

Haven't played much yet, but it seems like a fairly tight, silly, casual arena shooter. Seems to be making the rounds in the press and on Youtube. Polygon covered it in their new video show yesterday.

EDIT: Put a player list in the master GWJ games/platform user name spreadsheet. Here. Scroll right on the PC tab. Friend up.

I've put in a few hours over the past couple of days. I'm still not 100% sure I know how I feel about the game.

I kinda like the style, which I would describe as what you would get if TF2 had a baby with Saints Row and that baby grew up and got addicted to meth.

You can call it irreverent. I still get a kick out of hearing the Wilhelm scream when people die or having my character do the Goofy scream when I fall off the map.

You can also call it raunchy. One of the death animations is you falling down and, with your dying breath, giving your opponent the finger.

You can also call it downright dirty. You can have nude players complete with flopping and bouncing naughty bits. This is bad for the game's male character models and outright terrible for the game's sole female character model.

The gameplay is a bit on the twitchy side for me and the maps seem a bit too large for the number of players typically on them. I'm also not a huge fan of the third-person perspective. That, combined with the twitchiness, makes close quarters fights a little too crazy for an old man like me.

The gameplay modes I've played so far don't really seem to have the teamwork element that TF2 provides. That or the game's too new for people to have really figured out things. Or both.

The gun customization is pretty cool (think Borderlands, but with you doing the mixing and matching), but it does take a while to find a particular gun that both suits your style of play and that you can afford. It would be really nice if the game gave you an easier way to compare the stats of one gun vs another (or, more helpful, your base gun with some new attachments that you unlocked).

So far it seems that you can gather in game cash at a pretty decent pace and that allows you fairly quickly unlock new attachments/capabilities for your guns. However, once you do that it seems there's a pretty heavy FTP grind element to the tech tree.

I thought this review was cool...

AngryJoe on YouTube has a video showing off some of Helga's options and taunts that had me laughing like crazy. Looks kinda crazy, might be fun to try since its F2P.

I left a review on Steam. I love almost everything about this game, except the F2P stuff just about kills it for me. I want to pay $25 and not have to deal with it.

Tried a bit of the co-op, setting up my sentry buddy with a rocket launcher that fires healing rockets that lay down an AoE healing field was certainly a novel experience. I doubt I'll bother with the pvp side, facing off against pay2win and people with a year invested in their guns doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

LtWarhound wrote:

Tried a bit of the co-op, setting up my sentry buddy with a rocket launcher that fires healing rockets that lay down an AoE healing field was certainly a novel experience. I doubt I'll bother with the pvp side, facing off against pay2win and people with a year invested in their guns doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

This isn't really pay to win. The money is for cosmetics from what I can see. I don't see where I can spend real money on a gun at all.

If anything, it's grind to win, as that's how you earn gun upgrades. And you can assist the grind with XP boosts you buy with the real money currency. The balance is how much time it takes to get the blutes to buy the gun upgrades, and if the XP boosts become necessary. At least the early unlocks come quickly, though. I was able to buy three upgrades after my first round. And I won my first round (the kill confirmed clone) by a pretty good margin on a stock gun.

So no, I don't see this as pay to win at this point. Looks more "pay to look goofy".

*shrug* Buying XP&cash rewards boosts is the same as buying the rewards directly. Paying money means you advance faster, you unlock faster, you level up the items faster, so your gear hit harder. Take a pure F2P gamer (myself) and someone that is buying the boosts, for the same time invested, that boosted player will be significantly ahead.

LtWarhound wrote:

*shrug* Buying XP&cash rewards boosts is the same as buying the rewards directly. Paying money means you advance faster, you unlock faster, you level up the items faster, so your gear hit harder. Take a pure F2P gamer (myself) and someone that is buying the boosts, for the same time invested, that boosted player will be significantly ahead.

That's assuming that the things you buy are overpowering and you put the leveled up players against new players. If the balance is right, they're not. If the items give a lot of additional power, then a properly balanced game will offset that with matchmaking that keeps the low level players out of games with the higher level players. The free players will only face players with higher items once the free players also have played enough to earn those level things.

If you don't like these types of games, that's fine. You're always going to dislike F2P, because there's something in the back of your mind making you think they're unfair every time you die. But I so far on a free account haven't had problems winning rounds.

Yes, if I lose every round of a game, I'm not going to keep coming back. But this isn't one of those, and I'm not one to mini-max my loadout constantly anyway. I play how I want and to play how I enjoy games. This one seems to have one of the better economies I've seen in a shooter, so I'm going to continue playing around with it for a bit. I might even buy money for items if I enjoy it long enough, to give the devs something for my enjoyment.

I guess where I go is that if you're one of those people who always thinks the game is out to get them on F2P games, why even download them? Why take the stress?

OK, played more. Still like it. It's just big dumb goofy irreverent fun. We should get a group together and roll some rounds.

I sent everybody on my Steam friends that have played the game a friend request, but if anybody wants to send me one, please do.

Some F2P games have advantages that you can't get except by paying cash. Some of those games actually make it work despite that, such as World of Tanks - premium tanks offer advantages a F2P can't get, yet it still isn't going to unbalance the combat. 22 garage slots, btw, so the idea that I 'always think the game is out to get me' is odd at best, Mannish, not sure why you tossed that out. Once they changed the 'gold' ammo so it could be purchased for ingame cash, it balanced the game out nicely. Yes, paying for Premium gives exp and cash bonuses, but, it doesn't take that much more time to achieve the same level of gear with the tanks. I just don't have as many different max tanks as a player that pays for Premium.

Solforge, another F2P, the pay2win is pretty blatant with their card of the day sales. Again, its possible to play without a significant negative impact, due to private matches and tournaments, the bots, the matchmaking and the draft tournaments. I stay out of the constructed tournaments, since that is where I expect to run into pay2win decks, this allows me to avoid the problems with P2W here.

I do a lot of F2P games, my discretionary income is nonexistent, so free is my preferred price range these days. I've seen a lot of different F2P schemes, and the ones that don't work for me combine two things: Cash shops that sell boosts, and PvP where where the cash shop boosts give a direct advantage. Leveling PvP games are the worst off that way. So going into the PvP side of Loadout stacks the deck, thanks, pass.

The co-op side has some potential, much like Mass Effect 3. The guns are fairly limited right now, yes you can do a ton of different combinations, but most of them aren't useful. With time, I expect additional gun tech to open up new options, and new maps and game modes to flesh out the current limited selection. They do need to work on the bots' Z-axis pathing issues, the bot will run right to your location and stand above/below you, if they are on a different level.

*

You might want to log into Loadout.com, and check your account. It will give you a 'Bro-code', pass it out along with the Steam friend requests, you get a 10% earned exp boost if you are in a game (either team) with a 'Bro'.

I guess this comment gave me the impression:

I doubt I'll bother with the pvp side, facing off against pay2win and people with a year invested in their guns doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

I looked around a bit more in the menu, and you literally can't buy a gun or a gun upgrade. So what you're describing in WoT seems a much more "money affects combat" setup than this. Premium tanks that earn at higher rates combines both XP/earnings boost and gameplay items with things you can't get exact duplicates of by playing.

And if this game is full of year long ace players with leveled up guns, the game has very fair early matchmaking, or these vets are not very good. I think out of the several matches I've played, I've not gone below a 2.0 K/D, and my team has won all but a game.

And I'm in my 40s, so it's not like my twitch reflexes are what they used to be I'm OK, but not much better than average at 3rd person shooters. (Now that I said that, I'm sure to get wrecked in my next round ;))

EDIT: Had a 7-8 round of Blitz finally

Of F2P games I've tried, this has to be one of the least "pay to win" I've seen. No reason to fear PvP

A level 1 slug/explosive launcher with a tri-barrel will give you 35.20 damage a load and a level 19 slug/explosive launcher with a tri-barrel will give you 37.14 damage a load. Similarly, someone using a level one sniper will get 49.35 damage a shot, compared to 51.23 for someone who has a maxed-out level 3 trigger, magazine, stock, sight, barrel and slug.

There is a loadout, (arf), difference between people who have been playing all the way through beta and those who started yesterday and don't pay a penny, but the advantage is very slight and mostly resides in map and mechanics familiarity.

I've been having a blast with this, literally, as I've been rocking a single shot large explosive rocket launcher and a cluster burst hexabarrel rocket launcher as backup. My world in game is just one continued massive explosion. Having two very similar weapons helps with leveling components, as you're using largely the same parts in both primary and secondary slots.

I enjoy playing the bots and the way they group together makes them actually really effective at this game, especially in blitz mode. But I'm also enjoying PVP, despite not being very good at PVP at all. I have seen some people rocking some pretty well developed weaponry, but it turns out they turn into a mist of blood and cartilage just the same when you bath them in rockets. The only time I felt out-gunned, rather than out-played, was when I ran into a team using a buff turret. He plopped down his turret then switched back to his main gun and all his teammates were stronger, faster, harder, better as a result. But after a few days and a few level-ups, I could afford that buff turret if I really wanted to go that way. Which I didn't. Because explosions.

My favourite thing so far is how team deathmatch PVP rounds often start with both teams forming a ring, roughly a foot apart, pointing at each other. The start of these rounds is utter carnage.

I've been enjoying the heck out of it over the last few days, still need around 15000 blue-coins for my ideal rocket launcher though. Anyone that is interested in forming a party, I'm JelloArchitect in game.

If this has bots I might give it a go, I like a game that lets you iron out the noobliness against opponents that aren't judgemental.

My main concern is the art style, it looks to have a grotesqueness to it that might put me off. Team Fortress has a cartoony art style that's exaggerated, violent and occasionally even childish (you do throw jars of urine at people), but it's very Pixar in presentation, it's still heroic, in the bold and dramatic sense of the word.

I'm concerned that this is more Ren and Stimpy, which doesn't appeal to me at all. I'm not saying that's a bad art style in the slightest, I've just never really been able to appreciate it personally. This is all from about 5 minutes worth of watching trailers though, so my concerns could be entirely fabricated!

You can turn off the gore. The gore is cartoony, but considerable.

GORE EXAMPLE:

Redwing wrote:

I'm concerned that this is more Ren and Stimpy, which doesn't appeal to me at all. I'm not saying that's a bad art style in the slightest, I've just never really been able to appreciate it personally. This is all from about 5 minutes worth of watching trailers though, so my concerns could be entirely fabricated!

The art is quite crude compared to TF2. From the gore to the skimpy outfit options on the not so attractive characters. There's even pubic hairs hanging out when you put some of the male underwear options on.

It's totally not to be taken seriously, but quite irreverent.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

You can turn off the gore. The gore is cartoony, but considerable.

GORE EXAMPLE:

Gore isn't a problem. TF2 is quite gory, and I love it!

It's sort of hard to define the style of art I'm talking about, but as usual, TV Tropes comes to the rescue. Grossout Show <- That's what I don't like.

I didn't realize daily rewards wouldn't just always be Blutes. I got a hat in mine just a minute ago.

Played a bit today. I'm sold, it's fun. Not sure if it'll keep me interested in the long term, but for now it's a blast. Looks like it has a separate friends list, so I'm Rothving in game if'n you want to play with me. I'm on Australian servers though, so there's that...

MannishBoy wrote:

I didn't realize daily rewards wouldn't just always be Blutes. I got a hat in mine just a minute ago.

My first reward was a pair of pants and my second was a gas mask, so I was quite disappointed to find out that 99% of the time the rewards are Blutes.

Giant Bomb:

Are there many different modes? I played the capture the hammer one last night. Had a good k/d ratio and won the round but it sure could have been 5 minutes shorter.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

Are there many different modes? I played the capture the hammer one last night. Had a good k/d ratio and won the round but it sure could have been 5 minutes shorter.

There's that one, there's a kill confirmed mode, there's a conquest point capture mode, there's a resource collection mode, and I think there may be at least one more I saw them testing last night in ranked mode.

I see that Annihilation mode has become available. I'm not sure what it is yet, as I haven't found enough people to make a competent party (Part of which is the inability to communicate quickly with one another). Occasionally I get lucky with teammates though... I've found I enjoy the healer's role the most in each mode except for Blitz (Point Capture) in which explosives are the superior choice :D.
Favorite Guns (So far):
IMAGE(http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/433773032273864857/7C672A6655A73F7CD7DA5D7A4B1BAAC5BFE8F3F2/)
IMAGE(http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/433773032273849569/1BFF70F14461CD84D945B87EEA8C8AB091CF0DCD/)
IMAGE(http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/433773032273858644/F30EDE5B8BE5E21721ACB0D3D966B22E385D2102/)

Any chance of setting up a night to play this with fellow GWJrs? Timezones permitting of course ;).

I feel that this should be a separate post...
Annihilation is certainly the most interesting game type I've seen so far. It is a combination of Death Snatch, Blitz, and Jackhammer(?). On the map I played, each team would go after the hammer of the opposing team with various control points to capture in between. Each point captured grants the persons capturing it a damage boost. Each hammer captured and death confirmed fills a meter that, when full, disables the shield around spawn (not in the other game types) and exposes a core that must be destroyed to succeed overall. I've only played one match, and most people quit before the finish so I didn't really get to figure out the class boost system (Attackers, Deffenders, and Healers) perks nor was a able to figure out the blue crystals that displayed on my HUD identical to those in the Extraction game type.
The only way to participate in Annihilation at this time is in unranked matches and only at one location (I think). Super interesting game type, never have seen so much stuff piled into one mode. I could get used to this :).

I don't like the hammer capture stuff. I'm rarely a fan of CTF game modes. So Annihilation sounds like something I won't like in the first place. And all the other stuff sounds like it's just a bunch of stuff they throw into game mode and tried to make work together.

Maybe it's more fun than the video made it sound to me and I'm wrong, but I doubt I'll be playing it much.

Eldon, what's your in game name? I was going to send you a friend request. Mine's just mannishboy.

Maybe it was Annihilation I was playing last night.
There was the hammer but also a control point on either side and a message toward the end about the enemy base being vulnerable.
Still hoping rounds are generally shorter than the one I played though.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

Maybe it was Annihilation I was playing last night.
There was the hammer but also a control point on either side and a message toward the end about the enemy base being vulnerable.
Still hoping rounds are generally shorter than the one I played though.

Annihilation is the only mode not under "Casual" I think.

Most rounds of blitz, kill confirmed, and extraction are not that long. The Hammer mode can take awhile.

If anything is going to drive me out of this game, it's forcing me to play the hammer mode. Hate. So much.

I'm generally not a huge fan of CTF style play either, but being able to explode your enemies by whacking them with the "flag" does help it go down better.

In general, when I'm playing CTF style games and don't want to engage in the crazy flag back-and-forth, I just insert myself into the middle ground and cause trouble. It's generally still beneficial to my team since I'm helping to control the middle while keeping the opposition busy, and I can just pretend it's TDM at that point.