MAG

[PumpkinEater]

Here are my opinons of the third beta so far.

Good things that have changed since the last one which I have noticed:

• The bombs are not defusable from the other side anymore

• The graphics on the vehicles have been changed to the better.

• Spawn times when the game starts are considerably shorter.

Changes I would like to see for the finished game:

• Some way to make sure the squads do what the squad leader say. Some button to enforce some ”out of mission boundary” like you get when you are heading outside the game area.

• A marker how many mines you still can plant or have planted.

• At least double the loadouts you can have, there are so many different settings you would like to have, especially defending in aquisition and let us name the different loadouts.

• A chance to enter how many grenades, mines etc you want to carry depending on how much you could carry. I'd prefer to be able to carry one grenade if I have 100c to still spend than just to let that be unused.

• Healed people should start in prone position. Don't let them be revived immediately as they are sprayed but when their hit points reaches above bleeding just as when you are healing.

• If knives can kill you with one slash you should be able to slay a bleeding enemy with one slash also.

• Instead of using every medical treatment with the R1, let me use R1 for healing myself and L1 to heal others. Right now I have healed others or sprayed in the air when I tried to heal myself and healed myself when I tried to heal others. Very annoying.

• A small thumbnail of the loading picture when you are waiting for the game to start where you are seeing the whole platoon so you know which map and if it's attacking or defending. Very often I don't pay attention and will have to either ask or wait until we are spawning to know which loadout I should use.

• It would also be nice to be able to access the map before spawning so you know where you will be spawned.

• Be able to look at the map while you are waiting to be spawned after being killed.

• Change the bleedout button to O(or square)+X so you don't bleed out by accident trying to jump at the same time you are shut down.

• Be able to choose more ammo for your primary weapon as a selection for the loadout.

• If it turns out that the attackers always win when the teams are equal in skill and rank, make the bomb a selectable item like repair kit and grenades so people have to choose if they can place bombs or not, and make so they can only carry a few until refilled.

• Arms when you are climbing ladders not just a levitating body.

• A way to slide down a ladder instead of climbing very slowly.

• The grenade markers are confusing. I rather just see the grenade marker when a grenade is lying on the ground. Now you don't know if it's arriving or going away or what is happening and the markers don't look so good either.

• The mine sound is very annoying, please remove it.

• There are plenty of invisible walls; slopes that you think you really should be able to climb or walls you should be able to go over, etc. Let me go over please.

• Still want to be able to break some obstacles on the maps when grenading them and driving on them with the APC. A small wooden fence should not be able to stand against an APC ramming it at full speed.
• Different crosses (colours?) for the different medics on the field so you know if a person can revive you or not.
• Some kind of animation of the gates being blown open or being more and more closed the more you have repaired them. The same goes for road blocks. It looks very odd with digital items like that.

Annoying bugs:

• Game freezes the PS3 a lot so I have to use the power button on the front to restart it.

• Names don't show on all people so you have to shoot at them to see if they are friends or foes.

• Vehicles have a tendency to get stuck when going over obstacles and then blow up with you in it.

• You are sometimes killed (run over) by a tank when exiting that tank even though the tank isn't moving or moving very slowly.

• Very rarely you just die and it says you killed yourself just when lying on the ground doing nothing in particular.

The balancing on the maps are really hard to say anything about. A lot depends on how good team mates you have and how good the enemies are. Some people are running around like headless chickens playing rambo and make it hard to accomplish anything but when the squads are co-operating there's nothing stopping them.  A game can easily be won within 5 minutes under the right circumstances or the attacking team can't get past the first line of defence during the whole game. It happens.

With that I would like to thank you for the fish. After the weekend I guess I won't be able to play anymore so good luck with the game. I hope you put out a demo when it's finished so I can check it out and see how far you got it.

[Siufuuu]

After breaking away from MAG for a few days, I tried to play it again. I admited that I had a certain mindset of how MAG should be, and since the patch changed the game a lot and I couldn't adapt the change. So I tried to open my mind and play it again.

It is definately a lot fast paced. Everything is now happening very fast. Some equipments become less important (RPG - maybe they could lessen the movement penalty now?, suppressor), some become much more important (anti-personnel mines, tank mines, grenade launcher, explosives detector).

It is still possible to defend the bunker, but it is harder than before. You need members with a certain skills and mindset. Plant a lot of anti-personnel mines around the bunker, protect the anti aircraft battery to prevent enemy using artillery, take out the APC as fast as you can, and someone need to stand farther away in case your team is wiped and enemy tried to plant the C4. Before the patch, you can relax and only focus on certain points. Now enemies can attack from every direction because  it is so easy to break the gate and charge in with the APC.

SVER map is still a bit imbalance to the other maps. SVER can destroy the bridge easily with shorter C4 timer. But once you repaired the bridge, you could make up a plan to attack those bunkers. It is possible to park the APC right behind the bunker such that all three bunkers cannot shoot at you, or just lucky that the other 2 bunkers are too busy minding their own enemies. So your APC act as a spawn point and your goal is to plant C4 as fast as you could. Once you did that, you have very high chance to destroy it. The skill "Advanced Explosives" will even shorten the planting time here which is very useful for attack. It will help if both APC squads work together on one bunker at the same time. But it is still much harder than the other 2 maps, so I wonder what will the developers do about it.

I think this is a very different game than before. Faster paced, more actions everywhere, and you need to adapt the situations quickly. I hope they can fix the freezing problem as soon as possible, otherwise it is hard to test it when my PS3 freeze once every hour.