themime

This is after a few games, my initial observations. Obviously some of this may change after playing some more, but since people will judge a game within a very short amount of time, I thought it be good to get this down while I can. I'm aware its in alpha stages still, so everything I say is to help this game become a great one, which I think it can be. These aren't just frustrated complaints (in the sense of "bah, your game sucks, heres why..." They're meant to be constructive. I'm a game design hobbyist, I can appreciate how important user feedback is First of all, I'm playing on basically maxed settings (4g/3.25 (vista 32-bit) ram, quad core, 9800 GTX+) with no computer lag. I own the original Renegade and played it occasionally (I started late, was hard to find servers, so I didn't log as much time as I would have liked). I believe I was only on GDI, so that may have influenced my experience as some people were saying Nod vehicles were overpowered currently. So this is my play experience of GDI within the first 3 games or so. -After finally getting a kill, I was rewarded with the oh so fun boink sound. I would have been thoroughly disappointed had I not heard it. I'm very glad this is in the early version -Visual feedback It seems when I'm doing pretty much anything, there isn't enough visual confirmation. It's hard to describe this issue - basically, strong visual feedback reinforces actions taken, which improve the game experience. For example: when I shoot someone, it's hard to tell if I've actually hit them or not. Since it's a very much team based game, there are at times several people hitting a target at once, and it would be nice to know that I am making a difference. Another is when I die. It sucks. This is obvious, but again with the visual cues, it kinda hard to tell when I'm getting hit, and it seems like I suddenly die at times, which adds to the annoying fact I just died. -Slooowwww At the start of the game, it takes a longass time to get to the action on some maps. Maybe a sprint ability? Or cheap movement-only vehicles? I've seen worse in games, so this isn't a super big issue. -Underpowered infantry This relates to vs vehicles primarily. Either the vehicles have too much health, or the infantry just don't do enough damage, but it seems like a grenadier, within the first 5 minutes of the game, should be able to kill a freshly spawned light tank. Part of the issue was getting a launched grenade to actually *hit* the tank in the first place. This could have been because of the latency (right now I'm showing ~140ms response, which isn't absurd) but it didn't feel like the grenades went far enough to make a difference. In order to hit anything I'd have to get close enough to get squished, even if I'm hiding behind a building or rock, it was hard to get the grenade to go far enough or hit the target is some way. Perhaps a higher splash range? It was hard to tell the range since the visual cue on the grenade was low. Maybe they DO do enough damage, and I'm just awful at aiming right now. But I even bought the Gunner with his rocket gun and I felt like sometimes I just wasn't making a difference. Maybe I'm lagging too much. Any insight from people who have played longer are welcome, I'm curious to see how much of this is just me and my inexperience. I played the other 0 cost classes a bit, and it's just kind of hard to tell how effective I'm being, again mostly because of the visual cues. I'm not sure how far the spread of the shotgun is, or its range. I can't tell how often I'm hitting the target. The weapon effects seem lacking and ..jerky? Like the engineer repair gun, most of the blasts (the multi rocket vehicle seemed pretty good though). Ending on a good note, the player models and vehicles look pretty good, as do the outside buildings. *edit* Oh, one last thing. The general feel of the game does feel like the original. This is a great start! -Will