SMNCs staying power, and a brief update on Halo 4

Recently I was accepted on to the beta test of Super Monday Night Combat. So far the game has been enjoyable, and is certainly a very good attempt at bringing the DotA genre to a shooter perspective. The game has multiple maps, which is something the DotA genre never managed, which are all well made and each one has it's own completely different feel to it. The Pros, this games name for champions/heroes, are also fun to play with most been unique even though a couple are a little too similar. In this respect I can't praise the game enough, so what makes me think that it might not live around to tell the tale?

The casual market is certainly the biggest market right now, and while yes I strive for competitive aspects in each and every game, if the casual market is over looked then the game will rapidly decline. This is bound to be the case with SMNC. Being a DotA style game, it has the learning curve of running head first in to a brick wall. League of Legends countered this with a fantastic tutorial mode, and good in depth write ups of what champions did. They have now also added videos to all the characters so you can easily identify what is what.

SMNC doesn't do any of this. The practice mode it has is actually a custom game mode, with no practice to be found. Also finding information on characters is difficult as the option is a tiny little button not clearly marked. While they have moved it to a better location instead of being down in the bottom right hand corner on it's own, it still isn't clear what it does. This is all in the store page however, come match time when you choose a character I still haven't found a single way that tell you what each champion does. So you have no idea what you are going to be playing as, nor fighting against, if you didn't find it in the store before. With this being a free to play game I doubt peoples first reaction will be to jump in the store. The UI is also horribly clustered, and it force you in to a global chat room which takes up a huge chunk of the home page, something everyone I have played with has complained about. The other major issue I have with this game is the matchmaking system.

Matchmaking is something that is now rapidly growing in the PC market, and I no longer mind this as they are running on dedicated servers and it is used to make sure you get a good match. Sadly this isn't the case with SMNC. The matchmaking just slaps ten people in a game together. Which means that if a premade is going somewhere, as a single player you have a chance to end up fighting against it. I have been in many matches where the premade just destroys me, and I have no way of fighting back. The worst problem about this, is that you can feed champions like in any DotA style game. As you level up you can increase your skills and damage, as well as gaining a passive health and damage increase. Now when you hit level 8 you have already seen you damage increase, and you are also now doing 50% additional damage if you choose to spec into it from the offensive skill. 50% is far to big a number, as if you get fed early on it's not uncommon to be level 8 while the opponent is around level 4-5. As a premade you will most likely have a team of level 8s fighting a team of level 5s, which means the non-premade team has even less of a chance.

The game is a really solid game, with a few balance tweaks needed. This wasn't meant to be a game review saying that SMNC is a poor game, far from it in fact as I love playing it at the minute. However I am used to playing in competitive rule sets and against higher skilled opponents. As a casual player I can only see this game been hell right now until they tweak things and massively improve the matchmaking (Which is something they have actually attempted in Patch 27).  The game will be free to play so I recommend it to everyone upon release as I'm hoping these issues will be sorted out by then.

Halo 4


Just a brief update on Halo 4 folks. Frank O'Connor has come out and told us that "I’ve responded to it a couple of times. There aren’t ‘perks’ in the game as being described here. And classic Halo is still there."

This is good news as it means that CoD style perks won't be used. I didn't think this would be the case as such, and don't think I mentioned as such yesterday. He has also said that the engine isn't the same used for Anniversary, and more news will be out on the composer soon. 343i also asked for some questions which they were planning on answering in an update. Once that update is out I will dissect the information for you all.

The source for the Frank O'Connor quote is found here.

SMNC Rule Change 27 has gone live - Australian servers also implemented

The newest patch for SMNC has now gone live. I went over a few changes in a previous post, but I didn't include the new rotation. The rotation is as follows; Assassin, Assault, Combat Girl, Sniper, Tank, Veteran.

I have only played as the Sniper so far during this rotation, but the first thing that struck me was his scope. The curved glass effect on it makes it really awkward to aim at anything close to medium distance. This shouldn't really be a problem as he is meant to be a long range class, however on Bullet Gorge Arena during the early part of the game the majority of the combat is in medium range. Thankfully his close range kit is rather impressive. I enjoy using his Flak and find it a lot more useful than the Gunslingers Gun Flurry since you don't have to stand still to use it. His traps are also huge when used during an annihilator fight, and they can hold someone in place while your team destroys them. I found myself using his alternate weapon and fighting in close range a lot more than using my sniper.

The final update that wasn't in the original patch notes is that they are now hosting Australian servers. It's great to see a game finally support the Australian market as I believe it's a huge scene that is sadly largely ignored.

Super Monday Night Combat - Rule Change 27

So a new patch is upon us in SMNC. The patch is down on the forums as 3/1/12, so I would have expected it to be out by now however I haven't been asked to patch my game yet. Before I continue the patch notes can be read here on the official forums;

Rule Change 27

The first thing that I notice is introduction of a matchmaking system. This is certainly what the game is needing, as I have numerous times entered a match only be to placed against a premade team of 5. I also noticed that Downtown Spunky Arena is making a return with a few bug fixes to it. There has also been a change to help them detect idle players and they won't be rewarded with XP or Credits. It's a step in the right direction but I still feel that a temporary ban from matchmaking would be another step in the right direction.

In terms of balance there have been a few small changes that stand out to me. The use of reload on characters that lunge has been increased to 2 seconds between lunges instead of every 1.5 seconds. The Veteran Ka-Klaw move also will now throw the player to the Veteran even if it fails. This one I don't like so much as it's usually a guaranteed death if you get caught by it. However if this means it's a bug fix where it might randomly fail then I understand, but I liked the fact that you could avoid it. Also Megabeth has had a tweak on here Whirling Derbish and Disku Derby. The Whirling Derbish now deals a little less damage per tick, but deals damage and knocks back every 0.3 seconds instead of ever 0.35 seconds. Disku Derby will also knock back an enemy if it hits them.

The final major change is more of a cosmetic one. Instead of buying an entire uniform for a pro, you can now buy it in parts. They are now split into Head, Chest and Legs. So you can have any character in their Christmas outfit, but still wear the Heartbreaker hat!