I mean, it's pretty fucking great, honestly.

To start, the new game mode, Hardcore Checkpoint, is an absolute pain in the ass. It's everything I could ask for.

Improved AI is definitely easy to spot. I've had several instances where a bot would engage me from an angle and then immediately retreat before I could fire back, like a jack-in-the-box tactic. Bots also love hiding in some alternate routes to catch people off-guard. They also seem a bit smarter when investigating noises, and will occasionally use the intimidate command themselves (like how we spam the shit out of that command when we're playing Checkpoint normally lol).

The adjusted movement speed is excellent. I like how slow you move, even while sprinting, as it really punishes players for moving in an open field with no nearby cover.

The limited ammo is also a neat feature, with only three resupplies throughout the entire map and some small ammo boxes in each objective area that gives about two mags worth of ammo for both your primary and secondary weapons. Other than that, you're down to scavenged weaponry and your trusty Mosin.

Locking all classes to one player each reminds me of the classic Ins2014 class selection system.

As for the new map, it's really incredible. Reminds me a lot of Escape From Tarkov's Shoreline and Customs maps with its design, taking place in a large construction site and in some neighborhoods.

The new anti-materiel rifles are a blast to mess with, and while they probably aren't the most practical weapons to use, who cares?

Everything else is looking good too, with the new cosmetic options and the major Tutorial bugs getting fixed.

Now, time for my personal suggestions:

-> I feel like the anti-materiel rifles could use a little more punch. It should either dismember enemies instantly or send them flying backward. Also, I think shooting a teammate accidentally should just fucking instakill the teammate, because there's no way in fuck you're gonna live that.

-> While the AI did get a lot of improvements, the occasional 100% first-shot accuracy is still there, and still annoying. It's still horrible on Dshks, as well.

-> The Mosin is good in Hardcore Checkpoint, or at least, it's viable to use. The Makarov, however, is a glorified peashooter, and about 20% of my teammates' deaths occur because their Makarov simply fails to kill the enemy. I'd love to see enemies drop their sidearms again to help fix this issue. They currently don't drop sidearms for "optimization" but I don't feel like there's much of a difference there, anyway. I loved the fact that sidearms were dropped on death in Sandstorm before.

  • Also, I'd still love to see a general increase in sidearm ammunition, or at the very least an accessory that gives the player more ammo for their sidearm.

-> The M82A1 and M99 AMRs, like the LMGs, have a firing delay, where the gun actually has a period of time between when you click your mouse and when the gun fires. While this isn't an issue for me with the LMGs, I think this makes no sense at all for the AMRs. After all, they are "Marksman" weapons, and this firing delay makes trying to hit distant shots, or shots on any moving target at all, a real pain in the ass. You essentially have to lead every moving target, even in hitscan ranges. When ballistics takes into effect, good luck hitting anything.

-> I was hoping that the new anti-materiel rifles would help counterbalance the helicopters owned by the Security faction. However, after dumping about fifty 12.7mm rounds into a Minigun Chopper and watching him fly away unscathed, I was definitely disappointed. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I also tried aiming for the tail rotor and just couldn't take down the damn thing (and this is with "notarget" on, as well). Turns out I'm just shit because a single shot to either rotor will take down the helicopters.

-> The small ammo boxes located at each objective normally give you two mags' worth of ammo, but I noticed that with shotguns, you only get ten rounds, even though the shotgun itself holds seven shells (not counting the +1). I think it should give you 14 rounds just for consistency.

-> Having each class only be playable by one player is a neat idea. However, this also means that if the server is full, no one can actually change classes, as going to Spectator is currently impossible. Adding in maybe one or two more Rifleman slots would fix that.

Now, onto a few bugs currently in the CTE version that I don't think have been addressed already:

-> Currently, you cannot perform an ammo check while holding a G3A3 battle rifle.

-> The Mosin occasionally has a bug where you cannot load the weapon. Instead, the reload animation plays indefinitely, but no bullets are ever loaded into the gun. I'm not sure of the exact cause, but I think that a possible cause might be if you use a small ammo box to get ten Mosin rounds while you have 11 rounds or more in your reserve ammo pool (and this is after dying and respawning). The bug occurs when you have 20 rounds in reserve and you're trying to load more rounds into your rifle.

-> The M82A1 and M99 stats currently make no sense whatsoever.

Here's the unmodded M82A1 stats:

0_1558410101657_1yeet.PNG

And here's the stats of an unmodded Mosin-Nagant:

0_1558410126406_2yeet.PNG

First of all, the M82's .50 BMG is, for some reason, considered to be the size of maybe a 5.56 round, which isn't exactly correct.

Second, the Mosin somehow has better penetration than a rifle specifically made to penetrate APCs and IFVs.

-> On a 1920x1080 monitor and resolution, the icons on the Customize menu that allow you to preview armor and ammo rigs gets cut off at the bottom of the screen on the Match Overview screen. Might get a screenshot later if I remember. Here's the screenshot:

0_1558424051582_20190521013511_1.jpg

EDIT: Another suggestion that I forgot to add. I think it would be neat to have a lot more of the small ammo boxes on the map, but have them scattered around so you have to do a bit of exploring to find them. I think that would be an interesting mechanic to spice things up.

last edited by MarksmanMax