Am I playing a game made by Respawn, or am I playing a game made by Activision and Infinity Ward? That is the question here today. I was hoping this game would be a return to the COD4 greatness, but sadly its MW2 all over again! Lets do the checklist of all things bad in this game; server/host browser, check; disgustingly crappy matchmaking, check; superbly outrageously bad hit detection, check; OP Titans and noobs to go with them, check; player loadouts and non balanced game play, check; what was once cool now completely useless for the maps its on jump mechanics, check. Now lets discuss all these points below shall we.
I said this in my beta analysis, this game rewards playtime and those who have lives and jobs will be drastically behind. I work for a living, as do many Americans and others around the world, and I just got home today on the release of the game and the first two check points were plainly obvious from the get go. I got into a match and already was playing against level 25 players, I should bold this statement, but that would be too dramatic. Granted in most games its easy to level up to higher levels but to have a match against players who are all either that level or within 2 or 3 levels of it is a telltale sign that not much effort was placed in balance, and this goes into my next statement my whole team were level 1 players. So not only do we have players that can probably use burn cards to access their titans early, the high level players, but we also have players who have no idea how these maps are designed and are starting to get used to the titans and the skills they have in their units. Wow what a wake up call this was. Its MW2 all over again.
Next we will discuss hit detection. I would shoot some players and receive instant hit and kill with the SMG, the starting weapon for the pilot class. At other times I would unload and unload and so on and only get a billion hit markers. Again we have the MW2 hit detection system. I say this because Infinity Ward designed and created MW2 and most of the designers of this game are from that Infinity Ward company. Im not sure if the SMG itself is weak but ADS and shooting at the targets head should constitute a faster death rate but its just as bad. I only played one game but this is a sure sign of things to come. With matchmaking, we will be assigned random players and those with outrageous ping will usually have an edge over the rest, and those who have played it from 12:00 am on release will have other advantages also.
I haven't really tested out the loadouts, but having players that can cloak and give them auto aim pistols sure gives the notion that nothing here is balanced. I see players sitting at entrances to hardpoints with these pistols and when an enemy approaches they cloak and have the auto aim ability on, when the players are in range all that is needed is to press the shoot button and it auto fires the needed rounds to kill the targets. The weapon may have a lower limit of bullets to the normal pistol, but it can take down 2 targets quickly and back that up with the C4 weapon can lead to one person noobing out a group of players going for the hardpoint.
Ill drop the subject of the Titans because for the most part the LMG weapon for the titans suck so bad. Its like shooting rice at Titans and the pilots in general. The other weapons ill need to try them out, when I try this game out next time and get into a decent match with equal level players. The jumping and wall running mechanic is cool on paper, not cool in practice. The walls in this game are almost non existent in most maps. They have very short running lengths so you can run far and if you try to jump down to a position below you if there is a wall near by your character will auto try to scale it even when you didn't want him to. So this leads to instances of trying to aim at targets and have your crosshairs going haywire because of your aim angles changing with your orientation. It becomes very annoying.
The game, I will say, has potential. Respawn needs to fix the matchmaking system all together. Player games with wide level of players needs to have server based hosting. Battlefield has a wide range of players with a wide range of player levels and its ok because new players can go into servers with no players and learn the maps, that's what I do in new games and BF4 has the test range to try out weapons and vehicles. Battlefield has its own issues but I will say its more player friendly for newbies. This game rewards continued play and is very harsh on new players. I don't mind playing higher level players and more skilled ones but to have one team of all high level players and playing against all level 1 players is really not indicative of a company that designed a matchmaking system that analysis player levels. If it was mixed with each team having the same numbers of leveled players then this argument would have no value. I had a feeling that I would receive a let down on this and I wont be buying the season pass any time soon.