So now that I've had some time to settle into the nuances of 0.5, I see a lot of improvements and a lot of smoothing across the project, and the new game mode is both hilarious and delightful. I come away from each successive path with the strong impression that things are getting better and better with every hour our loving devs put into this monster, and with my other hobbies having all become whirlwinds of hatred and spite in the last year, that's a refreshing change.
BUT, as always, there are some things that bother me. Most of them are "meh" moments, but there are five standouts that I'm having trouble coming to terms with. I'm either bringing these to the attention of the powers that be, or I'm looking for explanations for why they are as they are. Either one works.
First off,
Jump Jets feel like they've lost power across the board in this patch. Their response feels sluggish and I get the distinct impression that I've lost height and distance on all chassis that have them. I'm having trouble clearing obstacles that I've typically been able to vault easily (walls in TC Mirage, for example), and the response time of the 'Mech on both takeoff and landing is noticeably slower than it was. The jump capable Mk IIs feel like they're barely clearing their own height if I'm moving forward at all. Additionally, JJ thrust will not recharge if the 'Mech is doing anything but standing still or moving forward on a flat surface. If I land on a hillside and begin sliding down it, the game appears to still think I'm "jumping" and won't begin to recharge them.
Second,
base turrets are waaaaayy too accurate right now, and it feels like their range has been increased. I'm fine with the range increase (they needed it), but I'm tired of rolling up on a base in an Owens at full throttle and getting pegged in the head by a turret the moment I hit the 500 meter mark. Players aren't that accurate, so why should turrets be? The northernmost base on DV is the worst offender here, with that LBL turret on the east side. Conversely, however, the flak guns at those same bases seem to be incapable of hitting the broad side of a Shiva.
Next is the gorram
rocks and other small-but-physical ground cover, particularly on Death Valley and Kagoshima. Those need to be made non-physical objects, or the way things interact with them needs to be changed. I actually hit one wrong in a Huit the other day on DV and
rolled the tank. I've also lost more than a few firefights because my Warhammer stubs a toe one of them and immediately drops to zero throttle. Maybe this is intended design -I dunno. If it is, it's
dumb intended design.
Point the fourth is
Vultures. There's exactly one of them that's worth using right now -the SSRM boat- and it's stupidly OP again. It feels like all the balance issues it had in 0.3 are back again. The screen shake, the better damage, and now the improved contrails are blinding if it's firing at you in the front. I feel more and more that the Vulture is a case where baby-with-the-bathwater is necessary. The 'Mech needs to be rebalanced from the ground up and the dedicated boating configs need to be thrown out completely. Improve the armor values globally by about 15% and add half again as many heatsinks as it has now and it would be a perfectly viable mid-game Clan Heavy asset that would sit in the current pricing pocket just under the Thor and Loki.
The final one may actually be a bug, and that is
the Uller's throttle drops to half seemingly at random. I suspect this is a terrain issue, as it doesn't occur as long as I'm running along a straight, flat, level surface -but the moment it hits any kind of terrain, it drops to half speed. This is most pronounced on Kagoshima and SA Jungle with their prevalent ground cover and uneven terrain. The Uller C seems to be slightly worse about this than the other models, but all of them have done it to me.
Oh, and also: I posted a bug report in the last patch about the game client disconnecting me every time I opened the menu from in-game. It's buried in the archives now, but the problem is still occurring in exactly the same manner as I described in that thread. I would STILL like a dev's thoughts on what might be causing the problem and how it might be solved. If it's something on my end, it's specific to either Crysis Wars or patch 0.4.0+, since those are the things that changed immediately before the issue began. I've done full reinstalls of everything (and updated from 0.4.x to 0.5.1 in the interim) relevant -the only thing I haven't checked yet is a network issue, but Crysis Wars alone does not have this problem.
EDIT: found the thread:
http://forum.mechlivinglegends.net/index.php/topic,12849.0.htmlEXACTLY the same problem I described there, still occuring in 0.5.1
