Ok so I was a bit harsh with my first impressions of the v1.3 patch. I guess that was to be expected, coming from a quick stint in Killing Floor (a more 'proper' FPS... you know, where headshots count for something). Now that I've had a few days to settle into it, let's a have another go at it.
The Good
- Solo mode is available. This is not to say you can solo, but at least the option is there. In reality, soloing in Global Agenda isn't a feasible/practical option. Sure there may be fewer baddies and they may be squishier but it's just has too much of a ugh, slow feel to it. It's nice that it's at least an option.
- What I do love is the ability to launch with limited team size - no longer do we have to wait for three other people to be ready (which is, for reasons unknown, much more challenging than you might think). The upside is that it is feasible to play with teams of two and three and the loot/experience is boosted to reflect the handicap of not having the fourth player.
- The revamp of the device handling is awesome. No longer do I have to juggle 20 device points worth of items (five devices each ranging in tier 1-4) into an available 15 points. With this patch, all the devices (i.e., weapons and such) automatically are upgraded to tier4 and we can carry all five. The differentiating factor is now handled by suffixes that give micro stat boosts etc. Different/better devices/items are acquired as loot now. Awesome! I should disclaim that by opinions might be a bit biased because I already have pretty much the best gear I can for my class... if I had to grind for it, it might not be so favorable. That being said, the difference between plain and uber isn't really all that big.
- Game/Map tweaks: always a good thing. Generally speaking, they've fixed all the major map exploits and such. In-town, to accommodate the new inventory/loot system, there are class specific stores where players can buy gear for that specific class.
- The new uncommon baddie: a robotics guy! This is absolutely awesome: he's got a sweet (read: very annoying) gun, he puts down buff stations (50% damage reduction) and spawns lockdown drones (slows your movement + causes minor damage). If you're busy with a boss/mob it's absolutely lethal. It'd be even more challenging if, on the harder difficulties, instead of the drone, he put up a gun turret
- All the special gear they added for each class is a very nice touch!
- Connectivity, stability and performance are atrocious still. Whenever a window pops up (i.e. you want to go to the in-town store to buy something ... a good chunk of the time the window will pop up empty -- leaving you to wonder if [a] you've been disconnected or [b] it's just loading the store really slowly).
- There still needs to be balance fixes (IMO). While none of these are absolutely critical fixes, they fall under the "this should really probably be done" category (Support spiders/guardian does ridiculous amounts of damage for the amount of skittering/health they have)
- I guess there's the growing pains of the massive content release -- so many players have no clue how all the new toys work and what can be done with them.
- You still have to queue up. Seriously. Even if you have a premade team (hell, even if you solo), you still have to wait for a mission slot to be available. In 2010, this is ridiculous. Maybe I was spoiled by Hellgate's "get up and go" system where everyone was individually instanced (and when you grouped up the instances just merged) . While one could say "well they need to manage server load", I would counter with "this isn't a console game -- so don't give me console-esque limitations).
- They still kick you for idling in town after say 20 minutes. Which again comes down to a "we dont have enough computing power to handle so many idlers" versus "get a bigger server". For something so trivial, it's pretty annoying to be kicked (after all, I *could* buy the game *just* to sit in town, sure it's not normal, but it's a legitimate activity - sit in town and read the intown chat or something). For consoles it makes sense, with limited server capacity etc, but for serious PC gaming, this is silly. Get a bigger server (lol it'd be like Google search denying you a search if you took too long typing out what you wanted to search for)
- For a game that is so PVP-centric, to not have headshots... (especially running on UnrealEngine3) is kind of pathetic. I think the bottom line for these last three points are: get a better server - you expect players to run with relatively decent machines, you (as the gameserver) should run a datacenter capable of supporting your playerbase.
All in all I'm happy with the update (although I wish they would change it so that headshots matter and get the stability/performance down pat). As a patch: it's a definite 9.5/10 (a few additional balance bugs were introduced) but the game as a whole needs to be more. There are simply too many ugh moments for it to be a blockbuster.
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