Global Agenda Catch-all

Edit never mind seperate section to input beta key.
Steam isnt going to issue regular keys until it launches right?

Nice montage, I love how the heavy weapons guy has a battleax for his melee weapon.

I'm still kind of iffy on how you can only use one item at a time. So no jetpacking while attacking.

Tamren wrote:

Nice montage, I love how the heavy weapons guy has a battleax for his melee weapon.

I'm still kind of iffy on how you can only use one item at a time. So no jetpacking while attacking.

I think this may slow the game down on what looks like a very fast game anyway - which imho for me is good. Certainly will stop guys pulling off crazy wtf stunts

OK couldn't wait so hit that purchase button - will post impressions from a liter gamers perspective once it comes off NDA

3rd person.....yuck!

Yes, it's 3rd person until you hit the right mouse button, at which point you go into zoom mode and it's fully 1st person. I was initially put off this as well, until I played it. You actually do more damage in zoom mode, but are then more vulnerable to cloaked enemies. If you're in 3rd person, it's like having a "sixth sense" for the recons. On balance, I like it more than I expected.

Yeah I like the zooming out to 3rd allows for better situational awareness.

I liked the system when I played it at PAX. 3rd person view can be explained as better situational awareness. It always seemed silly that people in FPS games never turned their heads.

Ok they had a problem where anyone using the agency functions would crash the servers. once they fixed it servers are up and stable, this sh*t runs like butter, i have yet to drop below 50fps and i steady 60fps 90% of the time on the highest settings.

I will post gameplay impressions tomorrow but oh yeah i love it.

Bear wrote:

3rd person.....yuck!

It does work well - coming from a person that would probably take your view point.

** for those champing at the bit to provide impressionsdon't forget their is currently an NDA still in place **

My steam id is talsworthy (though i'm uk based) if anyone fancies hooking up.

Here are my impressions of the game so far, I'll start with the bad.

Bad Stuff:

1. The whole entering the game process. (I.E. Loading Screens and such.) Now part of the problem was that with the servers so overloaded with people trying to connect, that you sometimes had long load times, or would even get kicked back out to the main menu while in the middle of loading. Most of this stuff I'm sure will disappear when the demand reduces a bit, but the biggest problem is that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO MOVING IMAGES ON THE LOADING SCREENS!! Sorry for the caps, but this is game programming 101 guys. I would sit at loading screens wondering if the game crashed or not. Sometimes it had, sometimes it hadn't. Come on HiRez, the least you could do is put little dots that flash on the "Loading..." text. Hell, you already have the text, now make it flash!

2. Dome City. I haven't seen a lot of it yet, but my only interaction with it is this: Load the City -> Run to mission queuing terminal and queue -> Run to a vendor, trainer, etc.. -> Get queue pop up as I reach the vendor -> Play Mission -> Load back into Dome City -> Run back to mission queuing terminal and queue -> Try to make it back to vendor -> Repeat ad nausea. Why can't a queue from anywhere? I desperately wanted to check out the things in Dome City but couldn't because of the travel time required to do that and queue for missions.

3. The matchmaking system. Every game I played last night with wired went one of two ways, either we kicked ass or the other team kicked ass. I'm talking roughly 800-150 scores. There were even a couple matches in which we didn't have any medics. Then I looked at the other teams roster and saw they had 3! Grrr....

Good Stuff:

1. The gameplay is pure win. Think Team Fortress 2 but with jetpacks and laser rifles. I mostly played as a Robotics and I could clearly see roles that each person was fulfilling. Tanks pushing into well defended locations, medics backing them up, robotics trying to set up defenses to repel enemies and recons picking off lone wolves.

2. Character customization. At first it is really confusing, but once you understand it the system is actually really good. So when setting up which items you are going to use each item is given a device points number. Equipping the item costs that many points and you only have a limited number of points (15). So you can equip the most powerful turret, but it's going to cost you 4 points. Plus you get skill points which act kind of like WoW's Talent Trees. Plus you can add armor enhancements that boost stats. Plus you can buy different armor looks and dyes.

3. The controls on the game are spot on. At first I was a little skeptical about the jumppacking and having to switch to it, but once you get used to it it works really well. The third person mode works great as well, especially because you can zoom into first person mode to fire if you want to.

So I know I put 3 good and 3 bad, but in my mind the good far out weigh the bad. Now I still have a lot of stuff in the game that I want to try out, but until then I am having a blast. Take that for what you will.

Tkyl wrote:

Here are my impressions of the game so far, I'll start with the bad.

Bad Stuff:

1. The whole entering the game process. (I.E. Loading Screens and such.) Now part of the problem was that with the servers so overloaded with people trying to connect, that you sometimes had long load times, or would even get kicked back out to the main menu while in the middle of loading. Most of this stuff I'm sure will disappear when the demand reduces a bit, but the biggest problem is that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO MOVING IMAGES ON THE LOADING SCREENS!! Sorry for the caps, but this is game programming 101 guys. I would sit at loading screens wondering if the game crashed or not. Sometimes it had, sometimes it hadn't. Come on HiRez, the least you could do is put little dots that flash on the "Loading..." text. Hell, you already have the text, now make it flash!

2. Dome City. I haven't seen a lot of it yet, but my only interaction with it is this: Load the City -> Run to mission queuing terminal and queue -> Run to a vendor, trainer, etc.. -> Get queue pop up as I reach the vendor -> Play Mission -> Load back into Dome City -> Run back to mission queuing terminal and queue -> Try to make it back to vendor -> Repeat ad nausea. Why can't a queue from anywhere? I desperately wanted to check out the things in Dome City but couldn't because of the travel time required to do that and queue for missions.

3. The matchmaking system. Every game I played last night with wired went one of two ways, either we kicked ass or the other team kicked ass. I'm talking roughly 800-150 scores. There were even a couple matches in which we didn't have any medics. Then I looked at the other teams roster and saw they had 3! Grrr....

Good Stuff:

1. The gameplay is pure win. Think Team Fortress 2 but with jetpacks and laser rifles. I mostly played as a Robotics and I could clearly see roles that each person was fulfilling. Tanks pushing into well defended locations, medics backing them up, robotics trying to set up defenses to repel enemies and recons picking off lone wolves.

2. Character customization. At first it is really confusing, but once you understand it the system is actually really good. So when setting up which items you are going to use each item is given a device points number. Equipping the item costs that many points and you only have a limited number of points (15). So you can equip the most powerful turret, but it's going to cost you 4 points. Plus you get skill points which act kind of like WoW's Talent Trees. Plus you can add armor enhancements that boost stats. Plus you can buy different armor looks and dyes.

3. The controls on the game are spot on. At first I was a little skeptical about the jumppacking and having to switch to it, but once you get used to it it works really well. The third person mode works great as well, especially because you can zoom into first person mode to fire if you want to.

So I know I put 3 good and 3 bad, but in my mind the good far out weigh the bad. Now I still have a lot of stuff in the game that I want to try out, but until then I am having a blast. Take that for what you will.

#4 it is fun.

None of the below is protected under the current NDA for the open beta. It is a strange NDA when you look at what you are allowed to talk about and what you are not allowed to talk about.

Tkyl covered a lot of the general stuff I would talk about. Other then the UI, it is all really functional, just too big they desperately need a scale slider to the UI so you can shrink it all down a bit.

I love how easy it is swap weapons on the fly with zero lag between the two, you can really string some cool combos with gun, melee, and jet packs.

My impressions of the classes thus far; it is important to note this is only off 1 night of play and I am sure it will change as each character levels up.

Medic: I played a medic for a few round last night; I really enjoy how they implemented healing in this game. The medigun works well with normal fire being a lock on target steady stream that does decent healing @ lvl for not a ton of energy. The alt fire on the gun is a serious boost that will really bring back some one under heavy fire. The only caveat to this is it require communication when using it, because the medic is going to be out of energy real fast so either hit to finish off some one or use it to retreat quickly around a corner out of the line of fire.

Healing grenades… do I need to say more?

Assault: During the single player tutorial I hate this guy the minigun was terribad and the riffle didn’t feel right for this type of class. Let me say once you are in pvp with a good healer or 3 (like I had last night) you are a beast. The mini gun will tear through enemies. Primary fire is a typical tf2 heavy style gun, with alt fire same damage and bullet speed just uses a fraction of the energy but it locks you in place. Great if you can find an angle to cover you and still have a line of fire at a stream of enemies. Had a few times using myself as a turret on a cp took out a string of 7 enemies rushing into my meat grinder. His invulnerability shield is cool when used right and can be a real momentum turning tool.

This guy and the medic really are the most dependant on having competent teammate or at least a partner or 2.

Recon: Ok I hated this guy after my first couple matches and quickly switched to something else. Later in the evening I came back to him when I was solo and I got into a great grove with him. The mix of stealth and speed made Recon a beast! When you get to lvl 8 and unlock a real sniper rifle it only gets better. The starting riffle you get is not that hot even when zoomed in. But once you get a feel for him and staying mobile you can really be game changer. I fell in love with this class and this is what I will be playing at launch I am sure. A good team support is nice only because if the team is doing well coordinating attacks and pushing you can easily sneak around and do your thing unnoticed. More then once I was able to sneak to CP and take out 1 or 2 guys by myself and ninja the cap. Just need to be smart about when to melee and when to cut bait and stealth away to hit them again.

I did not play robotics other then 3 matches and quickly realized no amount of time with that class will make it work for me. I saw Tkyl and Jakeleg tear sh*t up as robotics last night; it is just not my cup o’ tea.

One general tip to everyone jumping in. Remember to block with your melee weapon. So many people right now especially recon guys do not realize when you block not only do you ignore damage but you reflect it back on the attacker. I had at least half a dozen kills where people killed themselves on my shield and I saw Tkyl get a string of these at one point. If you are meleeing some one and they shield shoot them you will be able to get a decent amount of damage before they are able to close the gap and hit you again, in which time just swap back to melee and block again.

WiredAsylum wrote:

One general tip to everyone jumping in. Remember to block with your melee weapon. So many people right now especially recon guys do not realize when you block not only do you ignore damage but you reflect it back on the attacker. I had at least half a dozen kills where people killed themselves on my shield and I saw Tkyl get a string of these at one point. If you are meleeing some one and they shield shoot them you will be able to get a decent amount of damage before they are able to close the gap and hit you again, in which time just swap back to melee and block again.

I can't stress this enough. So many times a recon guy would ambush me and get me down to about 150 health before I was able to pull out my melee weapon. Then I just blocked and watched him whittle down his own health and eventually kill himself. I guess the only downside to it is that it makes you feel sorry for the human race as a whole. The fact that people could be that stupid just astounds me.

By the way, you can join the queue from anywhere in Dome City. Simply hit Escape and choose the Missions. I did that the whole time. Also, you can fight in the VR chamber and have fun while you are waiting to enter a queue.

Any public posting or commentary of the Game based on your participation as a Alpha/Beta tester.

Doesn't seem ambiguous to me. I'm dieing to talk about my experiences but it's not fair on the developers imho till they want the information released.

Talsworthy,

Thanks for reminding me of this. I will now shut up until it's live. I don't want to jeopardize my status in the game world or with HiRezStudios.

docbadwrench wrote:

Talsworthy,

Thanks for reminding me of this. I will now shut up until it's live. I don't want to jeopardize my status in the game world or with HiRezStudios.

I'm hoping they will release the NDA before that At the moment strange as it may seem with what we would see as a fairly low key release, I think the game is proving more popular than they had anticipated at this stage - if they open the NDA I expect that would go to a new level which they aren't ready for.

Cant link to it here from work, but HiRezJeff i think was his name, posted that you can talk about anything they have talked about publically.
I will dig up the link at home.

Either way any NDA is ridiculous at this point when all you have to do is purchase the game to get access. All they are trying to do is keep people from posting negatives to prevent other purchases of the game.

Well, given that bit of info, I'm probably on safe ground since I realize that I come off as a complete fanboy. In truth, I'm just very excited. The same thing happened at the start of Planetside. Let's hope these people can do better than SOE did, right?

Wired post the link when you have it, all the information from the beta forums is the game very much is still NDA - regardless of their reasons we should respect that

talsworthy wrote:

Wired post the link when you have it, all the information from the beta forums is the game very much is still NDA - regardless of their reasons we should respect that

Well no one here is posting anything from the beta forums. Either way I really dont care to much about it.

After a game has been released, an NDA is not meant to cover the state of the game, as it is publicly. What it is meant to do is to keep you from talking about the beta versions of the game. Changes that were made, bugs that were found and then fixed (or not). Just because the game has been released does not mean that an NDA is no longer applicable.

Filthy enablers!

That is all.

I haven't been watching this game at all but you guys are sparking my interest. Though I fear this may not be the game for me, due to my tendency for soloing. Also, did someone mention a free to play option earlier or did I misread that?

Kehama wrote:

I haven't been watching this game at all but you guys are sparking my interest. Though I fear this may not be the game for me, due to my tendency for soloing. Also, did someone mention a free to play option earlier or did I misread that?

Sorta a free to play, you still buy the game but you can play with out a subscription.

WiredAsylum wrote:
Kehama wrote:

I haven't been watching this game at all but you guys are sparking my interest. Though I fear this may not be the game for me, due to my tendency for soloing. Also, did someone mention a free to play option earlier or did I misread that?

Sorta a free to play, you still buy the game but you can play with out a subscription.

To get into the beta right now you have to pre-order.

But when the game comes out, there are two payment structures:

1) Pay once - Buy the game and don't pay a dime afterwards. You get all the PvP matches, PvE matches, Dome City, etc...

2) Pay Subscription - Buy the game and then pay a subscription. You get everything from (1) plus the Alliance vs Alliance they have built which includes capturing and defending territories. Plus access to the auction house and some other little things.

I don't remember the whole list, but that's the gist of it.

What's the Bunny Hopping Factor?

I'm really tempted to check it out, but not if it's multiplayer rabbit land.

BadKen wrote:

What's the Bunny Hopping Factor?

I'm really tempted to check it out, but not if it's multiplayer rabbit land.

It must not be bad because it didnt even cross my mind.

I'm in.