Invasion, Not Incursion

So, this is not Friday's post. I still owe you guys another post today. This is just corrections and updates on my MAG post yesterday, because I played some more, and also did some reading. And yes, I got the quote wrong- it's "any cowboy invasion" not "any cowboy incursion." I kinda like incursion better, actually.

So first off, it seems that between the developer diaries and the beta, the concept for Sver (their logo has it as an acronym, but all the dev posts just have it as "Sver", so I'll follow suit) has changed. They did refer to it several times as a gang back when it was pre-alpha and alpha. Now, apparently, it's a coalition of veterans of third-world armies. This is muuuuch better. A bunch of guys with lousy gear who have basically spent their whole lives on the battlefield... yeah, I can see why they are standing even with the other two. I can respect that. The degree to which their AKs and SVDs are rusted is a little ridiculous, but artistic license is a valid excuse. Exaggeration to make it stand out. Fine.

I have now unlocked all three assault rifles... and man am I disappointed. They all feel exactly the same! They have unique models and firing sounds, but they all seem to hit with the same power, nearly the same accuracy, and no recoil to speak of. They even all have the same magazine size- including the G3, which does NOT have a 30 round magazine IRL. Okay, two 5.56mm rifles performing about the same, fine. But when a BATTLE RIFLE has exactly the same feel (comparison- a 5.56x39mm round vs. a 7.62x51mm round) as the assault rifles, that's just bad design. I imagine it's an attempt to keep their performance identical to their opposite faction counterparts, but seriously, that's just boring. Dull weapons are inexcusable in an FPS.

Now that I'm paying attention, it would appear that the maps are in four sections, not three. The players are divided into squads of eight, and four squads make up a platoon. Each platoon is assigned an area. So yeah, simple math tells you 128 divided by 32 is 4. The more you know, I guess. The maps are big enough that they're hard to keep track of. The feel of it... is very strange. I didn't know that there were four sections of the map because you have no sense of the other platoons. It's like there are 192 other people on the server just to slow down your ping- you never see them, you never feel the effects of their actions. Maybe they are currently capping it at 64 for the beta or something, but seriously, I never feel like anything happens outside of the little area I'm in. It's very strange. Whenever we lose, it's due to something that happens in my sector.

Level design still seems spotty, my gun still seems too good. Most of my problems are still there. I'll keep updating from time to time- frankly, the only other shooters I have to play are CoD4, which I think everyone is tired of, and TF2, which... it's good, but I hate playing games on the computer. Mostly because my computer is a mess, software wise, but oh well.

Besides, every time I hear that line about fending off cowboy invasions, I still smile.