SeriousSmiley

This critique is from someone who had played Renegade at the highest level for 5 years, from 1v1s, clanwars, sniper 1v1s, sniper servers, community wars to just general public servers. I got really excited about Renegade X when people who I used to play with/against like the H2O guys co-signed it. I was actually somewhat worried my competitive drive and self-diagnosed gaming addiction syndrome could ruin my last year of postgrad studies. Now, I've always thought that pretty much everything about Renegade was flawed except for the core game mode and the balance, so this is not the typical salty "I just wanted Renegade HD" critique. Basically, I wanted C&C mode in a balanced arcade shooter without the W3D engine clunkyness...and I really thought this was it based on the previews. The bugs are certainly irritating. Random mapchange crashes, vehicles with Parkinson's, the terrible server browser...irritating, but I expected this from a beta. My main issue with this game and the reason I'm quitting after only 3 days and likely won't come back is that it feels like it's made by people who don't "get" multi player FPS. This game feels flawed at it's core. I've been awarded MVP in most of the games that I didn't spend trying out characters/vehicles or getting an overview of the map...but I have hardly experienced any really rewarding moments. The problem is that for a game that wants to be better than the dumbed-down modern console FPS, most of the guns are either a) spray-and-pray or b) splash damage or c) homing. The homing weapons are now a hard counter type weapon against certain vehicles, but you never feel like you did anything particularly skillful to deserve the kill. Using a light tank in Renegade to take out Orcas that got too close just made you feel special, as did taking out a Sakura with the Orca's MG from long range or ambushing an Orca with an Apache from above. Using splash damage to goad an expensive infantry unit into walking into a direct shell to the face with a Med Tank felt awesome, now you're better off with a few easy shots to their feet. The only infantry weapon I'm actually enjoying is the standard pistol, simply because it's accurate, the headshot animation is hilarious and it rewards good tactical movement and aim like no other. However, in the hands of a good player it's absolutely overpowered, it's like playing Renegade with host advantage due to the smoother movement in Renegade X. It would be overpowered even against the original Renegade weapons, but for some reason the devs thought it would be smart to add some extra bullet spread and longer reload times to a lot of those weapons. The only other gun that got a comparative buff is the SBH rifle, as if that unit needed to be any more effective. I'm confident that I can kill any player 1on1 with a SBH if I get the drop on them...taking 1000 credit characters down to half health before they can react is absolutely insane, how did this get past the closed beta? The low skill ceiling due to the spread and/or bullet travel mean that 2 regular free soldiers can now easily take down most of the more expensive anti-infantry units at close & medium range, what a great investment! My other main issue with this game's direction is the art. Don't get me wrong, it looks amazing, especially the environmental assets and people somehow created this in their spare time. The problem is, the art direction is fitting for a single player campaign, not an arcade multi player shooter. I remember Valve explaining how they made sure even the silhouettes of each class in TF2 were easily distinguishable, the Renegade X devs don't seem like the kind of people who could've thought of that. The classes are a little harder to distinguish than in Renegade, but that's only a minor issue. The major problem is going for eye candy over functionality. Frost on my screen? Seriously? Is this supposed to immerse me while I'm hopping about in my diabolical stormtrooper cosplay outfit? High grass that you can turn off in the settings to make it seem like you're cheating? Fog, dust and extreme lens flares obstructing your vision as if that somehow added depth to gameplay instead of merely annoyance? C'mon...the entire game looks like a talented artist was showing off for a vanity project. What this game needed was an artist adding his distinctive lines to a supercar designed by an engineer with a windtunnel in mind. Car analogies rule.. Here's a list of minor issues that can be fixed or I might be wrong about because I haven't played enough: - Nod has no way of dealing with Mammoths and Hotwires on maps without aircraft head on due to the Artillery's pitiful splash. It's easy for a good GDI team to defend against Nod's remaining tactics at that point. - Artillery has a weird auto aim that makes you shoot higher when aiming at a target. This might be easier for newbies, but it also leads to situations where it's actually impossible to hit a tank in your line of sight on close to level ground at specific ranges. - Field could be massively improved by putting the silo in the tunnels instead. It should be obvious why. - Airstrikes need to be a lot more expensive and/or have their massive radius nerfed. - Aircraft needs to descend/ascend quicker. - Vehicles in general feel so much clunkier than in UT3 and those feel hardly different than in UT200fucking4. I really thought we'd at least get an improvement in that area. With the current issue of vehicles getting stuck on objects and each other, it's actually a downgrade from Renegade. - Lakeside is too large, it just doesn't fit in with the rest of the mapcycle. - Countdown needs to reach 0 when the beacon has been fully activated, not the current 10. - Sprinting is retarded in a game where most weapons have bullet travel. - The bots have insane stealth detection. This is it, my longest and probably last post on a Renegade forum. At least the other class-based arcade shooter with 2 asymmetrical teams that was released this week is way better than expected. PvZ: Garden Warfare, motherfuckers! In loving memory of Spoony's fingers, this one's for you!

Erm... [10] -Tiresias- Current win percentages for Jelly Marathon (Small games are less than 30 players, big games are 30 and above): Jelly Marathon: The definite test for overall Renegade balance. There's no way Field was that one-sided with a time limit. Letting the WF die and racking up points with Havocs definitely lead to more than 30% wins. In small games GDI definitely had the advantage. The only other clearly unbalanced map according to those numbers is Hourglass, which everyone agrees is a bad map. Even then I can see GDI winning a lot more with a time limit based on Havocs sniping artilleries and unsuccessful Flamer/Stank rushes.

One of the (unintentionally) great things about Ren was how balanced all the maps were. You don't even have to expose yourself to deal massive damage at the base entrance with little mastery of the game itself...that's what I'd call the game doing handholding. I think the radius should be significantly decreased, but the aircraft should arrive even quicker. That would make it a surgical strike weapon to take out 1 or 2 important units to shift the balance in your favor instead of obliterating everything 3 out of 4 times.

welp,

sounds like ronnyyy, he's jus good long range

There needs to be a visual cue like in Renegade.

I expected both to have that problem, to be honest. Silos are so obviously a snowball feature and I really don't like them. Its actually incredibly obvious. Yeah, it's just too easy to keep that snowball rolling on a map like Field regardless of that other posters 1337 spec-op move. I thought it might spread the dominant team thinner, but nope.

It seems like direct hits on infantry don't count with the arty. It would be nice to be awarded for skillshots, especially since they're even harder now due to the arc.

Comebacks are much harder than in the original Ren. Silos and airstrikes are the main culprits imo...which is weird, because I thought both were a good idea before playing the game.

At some point the game goes to shit and vehicles start suffering from Parkinson's. 40 players should be the upper limit anyway, the maps weren't even designed for that many players. 32 is ideal imo..

Get a GTX 750 Ti (<$150 card) and you should be able to.

protip: jump and scope mid-air...quicker and doesn't make any noise pr0tip: just tap your crouch key lol if you ever even contemplated losing valuable milliseconds on the clock by crouching during a race to the campsite...total scrub detected

protip: jump and scope mid-air...quicker and doesn't make any noise

The amount of config scripting you can do in a Quake-derived engine like Source/idtech is much more expansive and nobody bats an eye. It's a piece of cake to recreate Renegade's instant 180 degree turn "x" key in TF2, which would probably be considered cheating by this community. I don't think that's possible through UDK .ini tweaks, but I just wanted to get dev approval before creating any sort of custom commands.

Single Mammy would get raped if both started attacking each other at close range. Rockets will fly right over a good Flamer driver constantly ramming into the Mammy, they were the ammo of choice for close, but not point blank range...I doubt the Mammy could even win a theoretical fight with all rockets hitting.

Hate uses free aim constantly and has to deal with the enemy changing direction. It's a preference thing, not a real advantage that way (imo it's a disadvantage on average). I used free aim situationally, but always at an angle to give me the aforementioned bigger target area...but this would make me an easier target as well because my side to side dodge covered less distance from the target's perspective. I could take movement out of the equation by hugging a wall, but as long as the RX crosshair stays the way it is now (static), this sort of free aim abuse wouldn't be as effective.

Am I allowed to play around with the .ini files like in UT3 or will I end up on some ominous blacklist for changing settings that aren't listed in the options menu?

It's not really a loss for the RenX community if those weirdos stay in Renegade's poorly textured tunnels...if free aim is no longer the issue, it's going to be lack of bright skins, the way the crosshair works, etc. I said in the other thread that I believe reliance on free aim is a slight disadvantage in the open and I would assume that the lack of the Renegade crosshair's sticky dot will make it much harder to accurately wallhug without shooting the wall on accident or overexposing yourself to counteract that. I'll probably only use it to target people around corners or to watch important angles during repair duty.

Flametank used to easily beat a Mammoth in Renegade at close range...hope that has changed solely because of the Mammy buff and not a slight Flamer nerf as well. Orca was too strong, Transport too weak, Mammoth too weak and Arty too strong based on the price, the rest of the vehicles were fine in terms of overall value.

I've noticed in the videos that there's no sticky crosshair in RenX, so I'm no longer worried about free aimers wallhumping. I doubt it'll be effective for more than keeping an eye on certain angles during repair duty. No doubt HaTe will foolishly look forward to the free aim update as he gets obliterated by my genetically superior hand-eye-coordination.

People who refer to upgrade griding systems as "advanced playability" typically benefit from their implementation financially. What we have here is a troll/genuinely crazy person.

A beta tester broke his neck while attempting a quick 180° turn with the Occulus Rift, something had to be done.

There's a difference between looking around walls and aiming around walls. One requires you to move past the wall and then line up your target, the other lets you line up your target even before moving past the wall. The latter is obviously more effective and denying objective advantages because you enjoy them doesn't help your credibility. Your target box suggestion doesn't change this fundamental difference btw.

"Highly unlikely" is not good enough given the enviable strength of my argument, we shall DISCUSS this even harder!

If the Deadeye at the end of your video can do it, I'm pretty sure I could as well. You only have to expose half of your model if the target is to right of the wall you're hugging because the shots originate from the gun (unless you're in 1st person); I'm not talking about invisi hugging. Hugging wouldn't be the same because right now you can't look AND aim around corners simultaneosly. That's what made this the dominant playstyle in Renegade, only exposing part of your model is just a minor bonus. Not going to get into a pointless dickmeasuring contest between clanwar players and professional tunnelsnipers.. I'm clearly not going to persuade you, but you will need to come up with a better argument than "I'm so used to it" when the other side has detailed how the feature would lead to static gameplay with single shot weapons primarily based on timing instead of movement/aim.