For those that don't know, MNC is basically a very simplified DoTA/3rd person shooter hybrid with 6 classes, each with 3 abilities and 2 weapons. The goal is to destroy the enemies money ball (nexus) by first escorting your teams bots (creeps) to take out it's shields and then anything can take down it's health.
It came out for Xbox 360 this past summer but it was just recently announced for PC and a beta is starting tomorrow (12/16) for anyone who pre-orders through Steam.
The game's $13.49 on Steam for pre-orders, full price will be $15.00.
Just bought it, gonna check it out later tonight probably. Reasons why I bought it:
1. I love TF2, and this seems to fit that style of balanced class-based, goofy multiplayer game.
2. It's only $15. They didn't add some shitty single player and charge $50-$60 for it like so many other games do. Just pure multiplayer, although I think there is a single player and co-op mode, but clearly meant to be a mainly multiplayer game.
3. While it was originally developed for console, this doesn't seem to be some generic PC port. They actually balanced it for PC given the superiority of PC over consoles for First Person Shooters. See this Penny Arcade post for a detailed explanation.
4. It's on Steam. I like Steam. You might not, and I'm not sure if it's available outside steam.
5. ZOMG TF2 Items!!! I don't care that much about TF2 items, but a nice bonus (only good until February 1st)
I may post again after I've played it, but just wanted to let others know some of the nice things about this game.
Ya, i like how they had a whole beta just for PC to balance it for keyboard and mouse instead of just making it the same like all other games do. And for $15 its easy to get your money worth and you cant really go wrong
I actually bought this yesterday and kind of have fun its like TF2 feel to it but servers are just toooo far from where im located wish they could get servers where im located at. Anybody know if this is gonna be cross-platform?
If your playing it on the PC do you play off against people on the xbox?
How is the mouse/keyboard support? I've played some other console ports and the control you have with the mouse is very terrible, it lags and is just overall sluggish.
On January 25 2011 12:38 killanator wrote: Ya, i like how they had a whole beta just for PC to balance it for keyboard and mouse instead of just making it the same like all other games do. And for $15 its easy to get your money worth and you cant really go wrong
<john.comes from Uber Entertainment> Moving a shooter from the console to the PC has had some interesting challenges. Monday Night Combat is still the same game from a gameplay mechanics point of view. However, since the input mechanism has changed I have found some challenges in getting the game to a balanced state. Now, ask any gamer who has played a shooter on both the PC and a console and they will tell you that mouse and keyboard is infinitely better than a console controller. PC players long for a game that they can play on a PC versus people playing on a console just for the pwnage of console newbie meat. We accept this as a universal truth. But why? Why is a mouse and keyboard so much better than a controller? Here’s my theory and analysis. It all comes down to how each input mechanism affects your ability to turn. On a console, the angle in which a player can turn is a function of both time and displacement of the thumb stick. No matter how far players want to turn, they have to pay a time cost. Even at the highest controller sensitivity, there is a time cost to be paid. On a PC the angle of turn is a direct mapping of how far you move the mouse. The time cost is variable and the better players get that time cost to approach zero. Now, on consoles we use an array of aim helping mechanisms all in an attempt to help with this time cost. View acceleration allows that time cost to not be linear from distance the thumb stick is moved. It’s an attempt to guess that if players jam their thumb stick to one side and hold it they want to spin quickly, but if they slam it to one side and release they want to make a fast minor adjustment. So at the beginning of the time cost the rate of turn is slower and it speeds up exponentially, to a cap, as time goes by. View friction slows down the player’s turn speed when an enemy passes in front of their cursor. This makes it so they can shortcut that time cost by allowing players to turn up the sensitivity, thus lowering the time cost, but make it so that the turn rate slows down when you have an enemy in their sights. Hopefully, this makes it easier to get a target in the crosshairs. View adhesion, which will cause the player’s cursor to adhere to enemies passing in front of the player, is an attempt at taking the time cost away. This mechanic tries to match the player’s turn rate to a target moving in front of the player. Thus trying to remove the time cost for moving targets that should be easily hit. Aim attraction is the last console helping mechanism. This is a system that takes a shot you make, sees if it’s going to be close to a target, and adjust that shot ever so slightly so that it hits. This doesn’t directly affect the time cost but does give some perceived precision to shooting on a console. Now, all these systems sound like cheating but they all revolve around the same concept; make the time to aim as small as possible. None of these systems are needed on the PC because that time can get to be nearly zero by sheer player skill. With all that said, how does this affect Monday Night Combat from console to PC? Well, I take all the skills and abilities that are very aim dependent and look at them. The sniper is the most obvious example: a one shot, one kill class that is very powerful if their time to aim can be nearly zero. The first thing I did was drop the clip size of the sniper rifle by 60% (from 10 to 4). Why? Because now I’m forcing the sniper to be more accurate. On console I allowed for a little ‘slop’ and gave some extra ammo. But on PC the shots have to count or the player will find themselves vulnerable again while reloading. This may even get lower, since there is no kickback on our sniper rifle there’s even been talk of making it a bolt-action rifle. The sniper was the first fix. The Tank charge was not as obvious at first. The skill is a one second forward run that damages, knocks back, and stuns anything it hits. On the console it works fine. Good players can use it to kill one other player. But now that there is a near-zero cost of aiming I found that good tanks can zig-zag to hit players or even easily charge around corners. So I dropped the damage of the level 3 Tank charge, which also does the stun, because I found that when players can aim that fast it becomes nearly impossible to avoid. With the damage so high it assured multiple kills. With the high damage the Tank Charge best use case on the console would be one kill but the best use case on the PC would be two or three kills. Another subtle PC induced nerf was the Firebase. When a support player throws one out other players have three seconds to destroy it before it deployed and started attacking them. On the PC Firebases were dying much more often simply because players can focus on them so much faster. So to counter act this effect I reduced the amount of bonus damage they take while deploying. This forced players to focus on the Firebase for longer. This still make Firebases destroyable before they fully deployed but made it so it wasn’t so trivial. Another interesting thing popped up recently. We were in the process of tweaking how the Gunner and Tank jump jets work. Why? Because with a mouse and keyboard, you can now jump and aim at the same time. With the console controller there's an additional time penalty to be paid to move your thumb off the jump button and back onto the right thumb stick in order to aim while jumping. This is no longer an issue on the keyboard so we looked at ways to slightly change the mechanic so the best move for the two heavy chassis was to always be in the air. I’m sure as the Monday Night Combat beta goes on there will be more and more things I find that are affected by the precision of the mouse and keyboard controls. As I find them, we will fix them up and get them out to the fans as soon as possible. </john.comes>
On January 25 2011 15:51 Najda wrote: If your playing it on the PC do you play off against people on the xbox?
No
On January 25 2011 15:51 Najda wrote: How is the mouse/keyboard support? I've played some other console ports and the control you have with the mouse is very terrible, it lags and is just overall sluggish.
Feels just as crisp as any other PC shooter imo.
On January 25 2011 15:51 Najda wrote: Is there any way to try the game for free?
There's a free trial on Xbox 360, but assuming you don't have one sadly no there isn't.
I can tell you right now though that it's worth the $15 if you like shooters like TF2. This game is basically a lot of what made TF2 awesome with aspects of DoTA put in for good measure.
I believe I read that this game comes with an editor for custom levels. Can anyone who has the game confirm? This would be a great addition to the game. Games that support their communities live the longest.
On January 25 2011 16:50 undyinglight wrote: I believe I read that this game comes with an editor for custom levels. Can anyone who has the game confirm? This would be a great addition to the game. Games that support their communities live the longest.
They're working on it. They said it would be out with the release of the game but it was delayed a little bit, should be out in the next few weeks.
On January 25 2011 16:50 undyinglight wrote: I believe I read that this game comes with an editor for custom levels. Can anyone who has the game confirm? This would be a great addition to the game. Games that support their communities live the longest.
They're working on it. They said it would be out with the release of the game but it was delayed a little bit, should be out in the next few weeks.
Alright sweet, I am looking forward to getting this then.
I bought it and its really fun, just too many assassin's who only seems to do hit and runs (yeah i know thats what they are all about) but the team with the most assassin's tend to lose
On January 26 2011 23:12 Genzo wrote: I bought it and its really fun, just too many assassin's who only seems to do hit and runs (yeah i know thats what they are all about) but the team with the most assassin's tend to lose
Yea i hate assassins. I am always a tank for that reason. Cant really lose to an assassin 1v1 as tank
Does anyone know if when I send the guest pass via mail the pass will be tied to this mail somehow or could I just enter one of my own and then send the serial (I guess you get a serial?) to someone else?
On January 27 2011 05:30 TBO wrote: Does anyone know if when I send the guest pass via mail the pass will be tied to this mail somehow or could I just enter one of my own and then send the serial (I guess you get a serial?) to someone else?
Not sure. Someone sent it to me over to me using steam friends and I got a steam pop-up with the Activate now button. It also said that I could dismiss the window and choose to activate it from my gamelist later (to save game time). However, I dismissed the window and now I can't seem to activate it, so don't do that.
Edit: Why is your name an acronym on TL then? I didn't associate it with you on steam. Edit2: I got an e-mail from steam so I think I can still manage to activate the demo. I have yet to try it.