word from a et:qw beta tester

not my words, and not from any mate of mine, found this info on some ramdom page (posted may 23rd) and thought i would share it. don't shoot the messenger ^_*

Aight well I've had a chance to play it, but I'm not realy sure what to think of it... The gameplay is kind of like unreal tournament style movement - a lot of bunny hopping and jumping about realy fast.... It's too fast-paced for me; I was hoping for an epic battle style game with maps that are expansive and require tactics, when in fact it is more like 'run at eachother and try and kill as many of the enemy as you can before you get killed yourself. That's fine if you like that type of thing, but I don't think that's the way that it has been marketed.

The other thing I wasn't impressed by were the vehicles. Their animation is shoddy as fuck, you don't feel like you're in a vehicle at all. the quad bikes seem to glide along a horizontal straight line and when you turn it immediately turns with no suspension and unrealistic resistance. Think of a game like bf2... You get in a humvee and it's springy and fast and it geta you from a to b quickly. Then you get in a tank and it is slow and sluggish. It has little suspension and rumbles along. when you start to move it takes a second to get up to speed.

In ET:QW beta, you jump in a quadbike and you go from A to B then you jump off and shoot people. Then you get in a tank and it zips along, albeit a little slower than the quadbike, and then you jump out and shoot people before you get blown up. In BF2 the gun turrets on the tank resist your mouse movements and grind around slowly and screech to a halt. In ET:QW Beta, you turn the tank turret round and it does what you tell it to. It reacts almost the same way as when you turn your gun whilst on foot.

So the bottom line for now: It's great if you like deathmatch style shoot-em-ups. If you wanted a tactical battlefield style FPS game, this probably isn't what you're expecting. HOWEVER, it is only in beta stages. A lot has to be fixed and a lot will be changed, so let's see how it is when it goes gold.


Another two days later:
I've played a little more - they're ironing out a lot of the problems but it is still a _very_ unstable beta. Last night they switched all the servers over to 'objective' mode which is more tactical and as the name suggests, involves completing objectives. This played well, but the objectives were completed far too quickly a lot of the time. This is an issue which is being addressed so it shouldn't be a problem when the game goes gold.

One very good point is that the helicopters are all VERY easy to fly. It won't be like bf2 where you all pile in to a transport heli and the noob flying it pitches it backwards off the aircraft carrier, turns it upside down and plunges it into the sea, killing all 6 passengers.

I'm working through a few tweaks of the config files with on of my clan members and finding big bugs. For instance, the setting for your monitor's refresh rate should set itself automaticaly, however it doesn't, which may be the cause of many people's framerate issues. Changing it definately gave us a performance boost and fixed a Vsync issue which was screwing with the mouse cursor and giving it latency.


And three more days later:
Bunny hopping is still alive and as annoying as ever, but no more so than any other games. I wasn't aware that covops was a *new* class? It's been there since I began testing.... Basicly it's the sniper/hacker class. One thing that's cool about the classes is that many share the same basic weapons (e.g. assault rifle, shotgun) which means that you can use the gun you like with several different kits, unless of course you want a rocket launcher/sniper. Some of the strogg weapons are AWESOME. one class has an automated flying drone which you control to dig into people and kill them. The same class also has a teleport gun which fires a little beacon. You then fire again and it teleports you to wherever the beacon is. This lets you reach high places or get behind people and stab them in the back!

I just played a game with only 4 people on each team, and my team were all my clan members - it was AWESOME fun. We worked together to finish objectives and instead of running blindly into a room we'd have one of us send a flying drone into the building to find out where the enemy was, and then we'd storm it together, taking everyone out. Also, I realy started to appreciate the graphics. I got to a place in a map which I hadn't been yet - a hugely intricate strogg tower covered in pipes and organic matter all shining and glinting in its normal-mapped greatness.

So, Perhaps there is hope yet for ET:QW? However, right now it doesn't look as if we will be seeing it on the shelves any time soon. The word going around is that release has been set back until August. This ISN'T a bad thing though. It shows that the publishers are willing to wait until the game is polished off and playing well before releasing it. We've seen too many titles go on the shelves prematurely recently, usualy due to pressure from publishers. to meet deadlines.

Right now the main issue with the game is server side - It is EXTREMELY unresourceful. We worked out that unless the developers do some serious work on improving the efficiency of the game server-side, it is going to cost upwards of £450 per month to run an ET:QW server. Don't dismiss it straight away though, there's definately work being done on the server app and they are addressing the problem. Hopefully we'll have enough time to test the game thoroughly and iron out all of the problems before it hits the shelves. If the current problems are fixed, this WILL be an awesome game. Not a battlefield replacement, but a nice change in gameplay style which in concept is a perfect blend of objective warfare and 'shoot-'em-up' scrapping.

so he ain't really that impressed. seems like he's an old bf2-player. and et:qw released in august? oh well. time will tell, once again - when it's done -.- and then again. i don't know how reliable the source is, but atleast i find it an interesting read even though this seems to be just a random player lucky enough to get a key. why didn't i get one, i'm random too!

source:
figvam's wigwam