Initial Gut Feedback

(DarkangelUK) #1

Thought I’d post an initial 1st round feedback after a few games, just initial comments on the play etc.

General Feedback:

Initial Join: It wasn’t greatly obvious on initial join how to get into the action. I think the confusing part was that a char was picked before I chose myself. I thought I was speccing someone to hit respawn and this killed me.

Speed: I felt the medic movement was quite slow, but playing the engineer seemed a much more comfortable speed and didn’t feel like I was held back slightly.

Grenades: First of all… woohoo weaponbank nades! I miss the clicks as the grenade is being cooked, the clicks made it easier to time it. I’m sure I could get used to the timing if it’s not gonna be included.

Jump Height: I honestly don’t think this will be changed as more than likely the maps have been based on this but it felt a little low, there were parts it looked like I could (should?) be able to jump to but was just a smidge too high.

C4: We played the map where the final objectives had to be blown up, on defence I couldn’t see anything obvious that pointed out where the plant was to disarm, no flashing LED or AOR beeps etc. I’m all for this being the norm if that’s the case, just wanting clarification more than anything so I know to look harder next time.

FOV: 90 is plenty playable, but I would prefer to go to 100 at least. I’m just used to the higher fov so I guess I can get used to it.

Initial Bug Find: (ill post these in the bugs section as well)

Press ‘F’: I’ve rebound my keys, but going near a mounted gun etc. still says ‘Press F to use’.

Mouse5: I normally have mouse5 bound as my ‘use’, it wouldn’t let me bind it.

Now for a couple of ‘woohoos!’
Weapon banks for kit and grenades!
Vsays!
Set class models!

(Ashog) #2

Yeah, binding isn’t optimal yet. For example, when I was trying to bind a mousewheel button (mouse3) to “use” it was binding mouse1 instead. Also, though Locki mentioned something about being possible to use modifier binding (e.g. cltl+ins), I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Most mice nowadays use multiple side buttons and usually barely 2 of them are recognized in modern games (still!), so modifier binding is important (even more so for a tilt-wheel). Of couse one can use mouseware to bind these buttons to some useless letter buttons but, remembering how many vsays there are already in this game, I predict my whole keyboard bound, like in ETQW.

Don’t know if it was already mentioned, but the hitsounds, especially headshots could use more loudness or clearness, can’t remember hearing them at all.

From the bugs, probably mentioned by Tokamak already or just known, one can get stuck behind some garbage bins and sacks in a corner (maybe someone can specify the place more exactly).

I have noticed also that if someone injured is using a stationary MG, if you throw medkits at him, they will bounce off the person w/o healing him.

Quite inconvenient is that after the energy for throwing medkits is consumed, the bank changes automatically to next weapon which causes you to shoot at a person you were healing. Or is it adjustable in the options?

Visibility of the grenade explosion radius could be more obvious - imho hard to see where the explosion ends (but maybe I just need to get used to it).

I guess, it will be still changed of course, but the vsay menue was always on top of the chat lines (the top-left side) - was quite confusing.

The loc icons for objectives were not really obvious. I couldn’t figure out what they mean in most cases or how to distinguish them from player icons. Gonna try more to get used next time I play.

Otherwise was quite fun tonite! The airstrikes were really making me lol - a lot of mess, people dying everywhere around screaming, everything explodes with the juicy fat sound - really nice :slight_smile:
Stationary MG’s are finally good again, after the weaklings of Brink they will deseve some respect now.
Weapon change speed is fast and convenient imho.
Was fun to grenade around even w/o timer. My first 3-man grenade at enemy spawn was very satisfying :slight_smile:

P.S. Just remembered stalking Crytiqal unknowingly in game bumping him to gief me ammo multiple times because he had a bullet icon. Finally he stopped and tried to give ammo but of course it never worked. He said then: I can’t, I’m a soldier!
:))) Hahaha, I thought he was a field ops :stuck_out_tongue: Need to get used to new icons, kinda. Was epic.

ggames

(zenstar) #3

I agree on the initial join thing. I too killed myself choosing my first char and hitting respawn now. But once you realise what’s going on it’s fine.

Also agree on the jump height. I keep jumping a moment too soon thinking i’ll clear a low wall and then getting stuck on it only to try jump a couple of times to get over. Guess that may just take getting used to.

One thing that got me at first was distinguishing enemies from friends. It takes a little getting used to but once I started spotting the boxes over friends it got to be mostly ok (although I still shoot at friends when they pop around a corner). I’m still of the opinion that a red uniform / blue uniform for the 2 teams would be great. We don’t need glows but a different skin with a distinct uniform colour would help identify a lot.

Small bugs: I noticed on a couple of deaths that my body rolled through some solid obstacles (such as the floor of the lift that lowers the EV and a barricade wall a little further past that). This obviously makes it a little hard for a medic to get to you sometimes.
I also used the iron sights on the soldier and saw double sights at one point, as if 2 gun models were spawned and swaying slightly out of sync. I was killed shortly thereafter and next time I used them they were back to normal though.

I like the art style and the general feel of the game is very good though. I like that we’re back to dropping supplies but also that with the medic I could select the pads to revive someone or I could look at them and hit F.

My K/D is terrible (which is normal for me - sorry if I end up on your team) and I’m still learning the maps (which makes it feel like real London, getting lost in the back alleys) but so far I’ve had fun.

(shirosae) #4

Pretty much +1 to everything DAUK said.

The movement speed is slower than I’m used to, but with the density of the maps Eng1 felt about right, especially with the SMG. I did find myself trying to climb boxes/bins/cars and not getting up many. Also kinda wish I could quarter-circle-jump to ramp across open streets more quickly, but I was surprised at how much the lack of it didn’t bother me. Maps have loads of flanking opportunities; I was usually able to get behind the other team when they were dug in with a slight detour. I’m expecting that will push the pace of the game up higher. This is a -really- good thing.

Also very happy at how smooth the game is; I can’t detect anything like the old stuttering from ETQW (not that you’d expect it, but it’s -really- nice to not see it).

Really impressed at how vertical the maps are in places without feeling awkward. They’re also unique enough that it was taking less than a map for me to find my way around.

I’ll need to practice a bit to get my aim back, but gunplay feels on the loose side of okay (but still playable). This might be down to me playing support classes, though. Aiming was a little too slow for my liking (could do with ~75% of what it is now), but wasn’t too bad. Found ironsights a little tricky to aim with quickly, I’ll probably get used to them, but a g_showsightedmodel 0 option would be handy. Also felt like there was some mouse-smoothing still active when it was set to off, but I got used to that pretty quickly.

REALLY liked having the option of weapon bank and hotkeys for items/weapons. Having a keypress to bring out a weapon (like in Q3A) was really neat, alongside being able to preselect tools.

Didn’t have an issue distinguishing foe from friend, or enemy classes. Found the red/blue tints on the outfits combined with friendly boxes enough that I really didn’t get confused except in the heat of the moment, which I’m almost sure is me being rusty. Using the female model to distinguish Eng1 is a really neat idea. Also liking that the character art style has been toned down from Brink. It’s cartoony, but less Liefeld.

The HUD objective elements were unobtrusive enough that when I wasn’t looking for them I didn’t notice them, which is good. I was able to locate objectives when I paid attention, though I think some of the secondary objectives were missing from the list.

Pacing of the gunfights is very nice; the density of the maps was bringing it pretty much up to ETQWpro speeds at times. I also really liked the alternate class option. It’s not a fussy as a loadout, but knowing that I had two class options which could fulfil the engineer role was very cool.

I did find myself shooting people after running out of med/ammo packs a few times. I also hit the class-select thing on first play too.

I’m very impressed.

(tangoliber) #5

I’m very pleased with the direction you guys are taking the game.

  • I really love the hip-fire accuracy. Thank you so much. Once the game goes into open beta or is released, there will be a lot of people very accustomed to modern shooter mechanics who will complain about the hipfire being too good. I hope they won’t persuade you guys to change. :slight_smile:

  • I was really surprised to see the 1st person spectating in this engine, since other developers have said it needed to be hacked in. I’m sure it was difficult to implement, so I really appreciate that.

-The visual style is very pleasant. Setting and characters are perfect for this style of game.

-It’s also somewhat frustrating not being able to reload while sprinting. (I’m guess this will be some sort of unlock eventually, like in Brink. I think it would be nice to have by default.) Also, it might feel more comfortable if you could instantly shoot out of a sprint, instead of the short delay that is in place. That’s a decision to make based on whether you want the game to be more tactical, or more movement-based though.

-Great to see Vsays in the game.

(amazinglarry) #6
  • Movement felt really smooth… a few small hitches aside.
  • Hip firing accuracy.
  • Sound / Visuals. Love the kid riding the bomb.
  • Downloader showing available servers. Nice to not have to actually be in the game to look. I know it sounds pretty trivial but I think people playing the game would be more inclined to play with a quick reference instead of having to launch to check.
  • No player collision (Came back to edit: It drives me insane. Ask Lyndon :P)
  • Jump height seemed a little low. There were a few times I wanted to jump over a railing to cut somebody off and either hitched a bit or had apparently jumped too early.
  • Ironsighting seemed a little too loose to me at times. (For the record, I’ll take hip-firing over ironsighting any day) but if people are going to sacrifice mobility for some accuracy then it needs to be a bit tighter / less obstructed. Hard to explain, I guess…
  • When playing classes with 1 grenade, after throwing it it’d switch back to your last weapon (if memory serves), but classes with multiple grenades / flashbangs, after throwing it you’d load up your other nade. Now, before everyone kills me for this, I’m just suggesting that in a firefight it can be tough to juggle.
  • Health bar is a bit unintuitive. I had no idea it was the blue bar for a few matches haha.

So that was my initial gut feedback. I’m well aware a lot of things will end up changing as the development continues, so take anything I’ve said with a grain of salt. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in QA for over 7 years is that devs can sometimes take things personally :stuck_out_tongue:

(tangoliber) #7

Oh yea…the launch program is really nice. I hope it will continue to be used as the server browser in the future.

(Thundermuffin) #8

On my first install I had to restart my computer, because it would never actually launch the downloader; after my restart, it launched the first time and no problems since then!

The weaponbank not scrolling through every item by default really confused me; since you can’t change any of your controls in the launcher while it downloads, when it finished downloading I had to rush and change all my controls fast. I ended up overlooking the weaponbank setting and that threw me for a loop that there was only a gun and a pistol as a medic. I really feel that either the option needs to be more prominent in the final version or that it should be set to scroll through everything by default. I do like that you can change what you scroll through and I’m sure when I finally bind everything to keys that I’ll probably set it back to just scroll weapons.

Even though I was playing at 160 ping, the accuracy didn’t feel that bad. The shots that were landing appeared to feel right and not some random spread which is really nice; hopefully when the US servers pick up I can see if that is still true or if it was just the lag making me think that.

Like someone said above, you can get stuck on the trash. I remember getting stuck near the end of the map where that parking garage is on the outside in a corner, but luckily it would allow me to slowly slide myself off.

Agree with everyone on the jumping height; at one point there were barrels that looked like they were set up to get on top of trains, but I couldn’t actually jump on them. Just a few feet ahead, though, were the same exact barrels and I could jump on top of them and use them for cover. It seems like something needs to be done to alert the player that they can’t use those as a way to get a height advantage.

I can’t wait to see what the game feels like with a normal ping if it feels this nice at 160ping.

(BR1GAND) #9

Ok played my 1st maps tonight, great job on the install program btw. Very much a back to basics build. I like the maps and the use of the UnReal engine looks nice. I wonder if there are any enhanced movement plans? Will this engine support quake style movement, or even W:ET style movement? I don’t want to get negative on the onset here, but 2 things I really would love to see don’t seem to be part of the initial game concept and that’s vehicles and asymmetric teams… Is that because it’s a pre-alpha? I hope so.

(Seanza) #10

I’ve had limited time to test this evening. Got as far as changing my in-game settings. I think the launcher is fantastic and love how the server browse has been implemented into it. Makes so much sense. One thing I would like to see added is the ability to set game settings in the launcher. Perhaps it’s possible and I just struggled to find it. The only settings under options seemed to be download & upload speeds for updates/seeding and also the option to use DX11.

Really looking forward to going through this with a fine tooth comb :stuck_out_tongue:

(mortis) #11

I also had trouble binding actions to the numpad keys, specifically “talk” to numpad 0…

I also got some artifacting, I need to bind a screenshot key and upload it…

(LyndonL) #12

Left a really good first impression with me. Even as Pre-Alpha the game looks and feels really nice. I’ve left some comments in the bugs thread so I won’t bother going over them again, but on the whole I’m really looking forward to this progressing.

If I may, can I ask why Unreal Engine was chosen in lieu of IDTech? And as such, is Brink’s freedom of movement something that you will want to bring in to it later, or is that too much of an undertaking in a new engine? I miss it already!

One thing I will comment on is that I am always impressed with the way Unreal Engine handles its netcode. I was playing on the US servers from Australia, and even with a ping of 180-190 I was still able to be relatively competitive. Everything was running smoothly, with only a glitch once every 20-30 seconds, and only when navigating complex environments (ie scaling baggage etc). I don’t think I was causing issues with local players either - they didn’t mention it anyway.

(amazinglarry) #13

Yeah there were no real noticeable issues in firefights with Lyndon when I was playing. I felt like I hit when I should have etc.

(Locki) #14

Thanks for all your feedback… I’ve read through everything in this thread. I want to avoid discussing major future plans too much as part of this test is to get your objectivity (we’re subjective because we know what’s coming!) Of course I am comfortable with the development team sharing planned fixes and changes with you though! But if they seem secretive about bigger issues, its just because we don’t want to ruin it :slight_smile:

Our production testing and QA team are making a note of every issues raised here.

We’re also going to let you to test everything (with very few restrictions), but as we near the next phase we’ll start turning certain things off because they’re part of player progression. In the mean time, we may even run totally blocked out/no art maps - if that’s something you’re all comfortable with playing? You’d be surprised how much fun they are, even without any art!

(amazinglarry) #15

I had mentioned in the chat earlier that it would be nice to have the ability to play some maps with some restrictions, but I don’t know how easily they’d be controlled.

For example, it would be nice to see where it’s possible to plant C4 on objectives etc (sneaky/efficient/common plants). I know I tried putting one high on a rod, and it dropped straight to the ground :confused:

Again, I don’t know how easily you’d be able to direct certain ‘playtests’ but it’d be nice to have sort of a cease-fire / non-objective progressing sort of map, where people were still able to ACT as though they were progressing through the objectives. If that doesn’t make enough sense, please contact my therapist.

(Smooth) #16

I’m just going to quickly address as many points as I can:

[ol]
[li]The auto-switch away from items when they are out of energy will be a user-option eventually
[/li][li] The jump height is locked down, but we will be doing passes on the maps to make annoying areas easier to navigate. You guys could even be pointing out the awkward areas to us in the bug forum now.
[/li][li] We want hip-fire and ironsight usefulness to be as close to each other as we can make it. So users can use what they prefer at most ranges. Since ironsights slow you down and obscure more of the screen they obviously need to be more accurate but I think we’re very close to having these balanced out.
[/li][li] The controls menu is a very recent addition and needs quite a bit of bug fixing and polish, so please be patient with us on this :slight_smile:
[/li][/ol]

(Runeforce) #17

I hope you will not do as in Brink. The character progression in that game was horrible and a real grind (in a bad way). I was hoping for no such thing, but having it all available from start. But if you do that thing (and from the sounds of it, you will do,) please do it like in ETQW (with resets at the end of a campaign.)

The worst things about the system in Brink, was that you would have to grind your character to max level, before the game started to become fun. (Just let us have all the fun from the start!) And besides the fact that you had to grind the character (which sucked), there was extra insult to injury added by making the most effective way to grind it, doing it off-line, running all the maps through, in what seemed end-less repetition.

(DarkangelUK) #18

I don’t really see a way around making money from a f2p shooter unless there is a progression system in place… unless they plan to sell hats!

(Seanza) #19

As long as it’s not pay to win, then it’s all good. That’s the worst kind of f2p model there is.

(Humate) #20

First off, I havent read anyone’s responses yet… so you know its straight up.

To start with the positives:

[ul]
[li]the defib sound is freaking awesome[/li][li]switching from primary to secondary feels good… eg sniper 2 mp[/li][li]banks[/li][li]the ability to blow yourself up by shooting your own mine[/li][li]hitmarkers[/li][li]overall accuracy of the weapons[/li][li]walk function[/li][li]RMB knife stab[/li][/ul]

Could do some work:

[ul]
[li]Strafe speed - feel and combat pov[/li][li]Jump height - feel and combat pov[/li][li]Forward movement speed - feel pov only [/li][li]Padding feel when crouching [/li][li]Escort missions [/li][li]/kill = death [/li][li]diagonal recoil[/li][li]footsteps are a bit too obvious[/li][li]HMG = spray and pray… GPMG or Hyper plz.[/li][/ul]

Overall its great!