Every once in a while you get told you’ve been promoted, but you’re never given a reason why, so you don’t know what you’re doing that’s so good. The game apparently wants to encourage you to improve, but doesn’t explain itself so the whole thing is a bust.

I agree with this. They do explain it vaguely via the persistent stats screen, but some proper explanation would be welcome. Through both Betas 1 and 2 it was only very recently that I learnt how to tech up in ‘Battlesense’, and even then I only know it’s something to do with staying alive and getting a good K:D ratio.

While I generally like the game, it’s got some faults. The hud is scattershot full of text and alerts. They really should have streamlined it. To add to the pain, they allow players to insert color changes into their names, which destorys any readability they had from color coding things.

The GDF voices are wierd. Voice responses like “Thanks” and “You’re welcome” are done in this annoying sarcastic tone that detracts from the mood.

The biggest problem of all, though, is that 90% of the time you have no idea what killed you. Just suddenly your dead and hope you can read your deathmessage in time to figure out who killed you. Since the map is this wide open terrain, you’re often sniped from a guy a mile away with no chance of avoiding it, or responding to it by taking him out. Maybe that’s “realistic”, but this isn’t a realistic shooter, and dying for no apparent reason isn’t fun.

Every once in a while you get told you’ve been promoted, but you’re never given a reason why, so you don’t know what you’re doing that’s so good. The game apparently wants to encourage you to improve, but doesn’t explain itself so the whole thing is a bust.

The statistics are kind of nice, but they’re not very usefull. Knowing who the best was at heavy weapons versus light weapons seems like a banal distinction, while knowing the “least accurate” player is simply kicking someone when they’re down (and most likely to quit).

…which should crop up in a sub-100ms filter listing). I’d avoid the bot servers unless you’re looking for a quick tutorial, in which case they’re actually quite good, but generally the bots are rubbish at attacking (which the Stroggs have to do on the first objective of valley to defend the bridge). It’s probably worth working out how to fly the air vehicles too against bots, because crashing a crew-laden Bumblebee will have you sticky-labelled from head to toe in distasteful descriptors.

I strongly suggest joining a sub-100ms latency server and making sure it’s not server-client lag that’s ruining your experience because through both the Betas the game has been running fine. If you’re in the UK check out the Rackage servers (which should crop up in a latency