Sadly the Uncharted 3 Beta has now ended, and it is time to reflect on the highs and lows of what was a taste to come. Here are my thoughts and opinions on what was, a great 3 weeks.
What I played
I’m mainly a competitive player, so I didn’t really play co-op at all. And by competitive, I mean I am pretty damn good at killing people, so I spent most of my time in Team Deathmatch, but I did play some Plunder, and a few games in 3 Team Deathmatch, and Team Objective.
Weapons
The weapon balance in the game is a bit off. Because players can now start with any weapon they want, ND have the hard job of making all weapons viable. Players should have to make a hard choice when picking a gun, like good blindfire vs good accuracy when shooting. Right now the M9 just kind of sucks when compared to the AK.
AK blindfire is still overpowered. This gun just dominates everything at close range. Please nerf the accuracy.
The M9 feels weak compared to the AK. Stock M9 is slightly better than AK when aiming, but because of the AK’s crazy blindfire and rate of fire mod, there was just no reason to use the M9 in the beta. I’m not sure what mods there will be for the M9 in the full version though.
Arm Micro got a blindfire accuracy and damage nerf as of 1.04. It’s still good, just not godlike anymore.
Para-9 has been buffed and feels much like the 92FS from Uncharted 2 now. Steel fisting with it works pretty well again. I think the damage should be increased so that it kills in 5 bullets instead of 6 right now though.
G-MAL is generally okay, but I would tweak the refire rate to make it slightly slower.
Dragon Sniper, if I had to make any changes, it would be to make the scope speed a little bit faster.
The general consensus is that U3 recoil is kind of weird and unrealistic. Bring back the U2 style recoil!
Maps
Maps are generally okay for the most part. Just fix those damn glitches!
Chateau
I think Chateau is a horrible Plunder map. There’s just not enough distance between the spawn and the goals. If the treasure spawns on the top floor, a good throw can easily put it one more throw distance away from the goal. There’s really no good way to make it better, because the house is really too small already and having too few spawn points is not good either.
I also think the room where the zipline starts should be fixed. People can really hole themselves up in the corner be fairly well protected. ND could fix this by making it so you can climb up the wall from outside the house into the hole where the zipline is.
Airstrip
There’s an weird invisible wall in the small corridor under the room where the SPAS-12 is. You can cover attach yourself to it, which is kind of annoying.
Also climbing the portable toilets/garbage bins near this corridor by the wall also feels a bit weird. It’s like you can only climb up on one of the portable toilets.
I think the plane sequence should be redone slightly. Here’s how I think it should work:
- The plane sequence should be at the end of the map, not the beginning. Maybe reduce the map time by 5 minutes and have the last 5 minutes as the plane sequence?
- The losing team should start on the plane. It’s much easier to defend the plane than it is to get on it.
- There should be some kind of bonus for being on the plane when it takes off, which I think makes it more interesting than having the higher score at the moment. How about a bunch of treasure chests when the plane closes up?
Yemen
Great map. I would remove one T-Bolt, and place the remaining one inside the building at the center of the map.
I think the Villians get gimped a bit on Plunder, because if they are close to scoring the Heroes can just throw the treasure off a cliff to reset it.
Boosters
Weapons Expert was the best booster in the beta by far. We’re talking like DTI/Fleet Foot and better here. Having 2 mod slots for both guns and quick weapon switching is just too good. I really think that this booster should have it’s abilities split over 2 boosters somehow.
This post on ND forums offers some excellent alternatives to what is available currently and I think some of them really make other boosters viable. Give this man a job!
Paid Boosters
I would remove Ping, SA was a horrible addition to U2 and please don’t ruin the U3 experience by having remnants of it around. Sure you have to pay for it, but after you play the game for a while you can easily afford it in almost every match. And it levels up. And you don’t have to stop to use it. Just get rid of it.
Kickbacks
I would make cluster bomb throw one less grenade when it explodes.
Traversal
Just like how you can hold circle if you don’t want to grab onto a ledge when rolling off, I think there should be seperate commands for rolling and getting into cover. This is especially annoying when trying to roll past those stairs with the archway near the Heroes tower in Yemen.
There seems to be a dead zone where if you jump at a ladder or ledge at a certain distance will cause you to bounce off the wall. You should at least be able to jump at a ladder and grab on.
Game Modes
Team Deathmatch
Power Plays have pretty much become second nature. Please don’t bring back Cursed, that was just horrible :S.
Team Objective
Get rid of deathmatch in Team Objective games, it feels really out of place.
Free for all
I think the kill cap should be raised to 20, 15 is just a bit low.
3 Team Deathmatch
I know it’s 2v2v2 because of the buddy system, but these maps are pretty big when there’s only 6 players. How about 3v3v3? Or 4 Teams of 2?
Other Stuff
I like the idea of Uncharted TV and Plays of the Week. Good for watching while waiting for matches 😛
Sometimes you can’t exit the matchmaking lobby after a game.
Grenade throwbacks are a bit useless right now. Pressing triangle should prioritise the throwback over picking up weapons. Timing is also insanely hard. Maybe this just needs more experimentation on when the full game comes out.
Weird graphical glitch, but on some occasions after switching weapons, my character would be running with their rifle in left hand and pistol in right hand (no gameplay impacts, just looks hella weird and awesome).
Overall
I think ND have done a fantastic job with the beta, though it’s sad to see that there are still wallhacking glitches. There are some questionable balance issues with weapons, but I would be quite happy if they at least fix the AK47.