My Impressions

[HaTe]

I stopped playing for several months and just recently played again over the past few days. So I figured I'd put my impressions in as to how I am seeing the game evolve.

Balance: Excellently done. Sooo much better than it used to be. Snipers seem more reasonable with the longer reload, making them much less of a cqc threat. Units like the officer, shotgunner, and mcfarland seem to be in a very reasonable spot compared to what they used to be (either completely OP or useless depending on which patch it was back then it seemed). I believe that too many points are given for building kills (building health, in that regard) though now, and that the loss of a building makes comeback mechanics too difficult in AOW at times because of that. I do, however, like the way that the building health and armor is separate and how that works now. Overall, very impressed with the work done here.

UI: Still needs work. I've seen some slight improvements, but some things that any newcomer would notice are still clearly in "beta mode." Obviously not anyone's fault in particular considering the small dev team, but still worth pointing out. Just basic things like: Not having the player's in-game rank updated without expanding the scoreboard to show all players; The refresh button in the multiplayer screen still comes up with how many servers are online (just not necessary and makes refreshing a pain to do); refreshing the servers listing resets any categorization (I'd prefer it just remain as categorized by "Players" by default, as I'm sure would most others); FOV slider still not expanding to 140 (or 130, whatever the max is), even though it allows you to set it that far via command. Some others too. Just small things that add up to be a general nuisance.

Maps: Seen some improvements, but there are still some things that definitely need some more work as well. I like the Mesa II changes, but the map still has a lot of collision errors (at least with my settings), where I go through objects that should otherwise be solid. Tomb and Snow both seem very much like the original, which I personally enjoy. Though both maps did have a tendency to be either a massive "snowball effect" or a complete stretched out stalemate if the right buildings were destroyed, they were still 2 of my favorite fanmaps in the original, and look very good. Grassy_knoll is interesting and it's hard to give an impression thus far, but it does seem like a great map for snipers because of the openness of it, which is a nice change of pace. I think the tiberium field is too large on the one side though, which makes it so any team that has lost their vehicle purchasing building is in far too much of a disadvantage to comeback most times. Crash_site looks aesthetically very pleasing. The doors of the ship should probably go up and down rather than how they work now though, for gameplay purposes. There's also several areas that I frequently got stuck on as well. Overall though, looks very nice.

Other: Just wanted to thank everyone who has stuck with the game and continues to do so. Very much appreciated from a diehard original Renegade fan who invested heavily into this game for a long time as well.