Angel City First Couple of Hours

Angel City (The First Few Hours)

So being the casual gamer I am, some may say... noob, I was pumped for the return of Angel City.  For the most part I can say, they did not disappoint!  I will say this however...

The Bad:

1) There were quite a few glitches and server drops the during the first hour.  I got stuck in a wall on Attrition, I had people miraculously appear and disappear, wondering sites, times during video sequences that it would jump back and replay the same thing more than once.

2) It feels very small.  Don't get me wrong it's still the classic Angel City.  Nothing has changed really except the loadouts, which make a huge difference.  The time to kill, which previously mentioned is faster for most weapons, and on this map there is just no reacting to anything.  There were times where I would hop on a roof and within a second of landing I was dead, granted the folks I was playing with were pretty impressive just to watch because they were insanely good.

3) Sadly the number of people currently playing Angel City is quite low.  I played for 2 hours and the people I played against only changed for 1 game when I changed the faction I was a part of.

4) Overhangs and small places.  There are a crap ton of these buggers and it makes it extremely hard to get any sort of running route established.  I'm going to have to create a private attrition map just to figure out mobility for the level.  If you think climbing, meaning using your hands to get up a ledge is something you can do, think again.  It's to small of a map, and the pilots are to easy to see.  Here, you are just clean pickings.

5) The Tone "nerf" still leaves tone exceptionally OP, however I feel like they may have powered up Legion and Ion a bit.  I haven't played with the other 4 yet.  Scorch is basically the same.  I did notice that a number of my loadouts went back to basic weapons with no add ons.  The add ons where there I just had to go and reapply them post update.

The Good:

1) They decided to add something like... 15 banners and a bazillion credits to my account just for updating.  From what I gather it has to do with stats and how the system wasn't tracking assists and weapon hits.  Either way I was happy to get a bunch of new stuff.  Oh that's another thing, player stats are now available as well.  I don't use them but others do!

2)  The store didn't seem outrageous!  I think it was $1.99 for a set of something like 20 new banners, and 10 new icons for the banners.  It was something like $2.99 for the Titan nose art and camos packages (each), and $4.99 for the new  prime titan loadouts.  I didn't buy any of them, but they look pretty sweet, and the people who were destroying me with them... I wasn't even mad.

3) The map itself is beautiful, crisp, clean, ideal for grapple hooking extraordinaires.  There have been nerfs and power boosts for titans.  I haven't used them all yet, but it looks like Ion can kill a pilot in a single/two power hits instead of 3-5, Tone is supposed to be nerfed, but all I noticed was possibly fewer rockets in a salvo, however the damage is still huge.  I haven't played with Tone enough really to tell you more than that, as I played Scorch mostly last night.

4) This map shows how much TF2 has changed from TF1.  It is really hard to point out the insane skill you have to have to maneuver this map and get kills with the new loadout options.  Things are to close together to spray and pray, meaning its to easy for them to get to cover for a long distance shot, but the roof tops provide little cover and leave you exposed.  It's the ideal maneuverability map and it forces you to change how you play, and to adjust loadouts based on your opponents. Are they camping? Grenader or sniper.  Are they flying around the map and long shots are next to impossible? Shotguns.  Are they constantly on the attack?  Amped shields and close combat weapons.

5)  The introduction to Angel City 24/7 game mode.  Angel City all the time.  They mix it up like mix tape, meaning last titan standing, capture the flag, hardpoint, attrition, and PVP, but it's all Angel City all the time.  Now I didn't go into any other game modes last night except this one.  I don't know if it is in regular attrition etc but I would imagine it is.

Now I would rant about how they need to work on their team creations because I got destroyed in every game last night and it wasn't pretty, but I also noticed there were only about 20 people from my area on Angel City 24/7 right after it's release.  So I expect the team building to change today or later this week as the map becomes more available, as this hasn't really been too big of an issue in other maps.  I have found that if you are getting destroyed in one faction changing factions can change to level of players you go against to a degree.  Currently in my GEN2 I have Ace faction unlocked and often there will be groups that just steam roll you and you'll lose 4-5 games in a row, but changing factions and dropping to Apex Predators or Ash's faction can usually free up some of the overwhelming number of high level players.  My gaming strategy has definitely changed a bunch in recent weeks.  My loadouts used to be primarily smgs or assault rifles, but now it seems my sniper rifles and grenade classes have really started to level up.  

I'm greatly enjoying the game and I hope it continues to grow, and I really hope they come out with a few more maps and that they are hopefully similar to others from TF1.  I'd really like to see different environments in these maps like in TF1.  Areas like the forests, beaches, cityscapes, digital, or one similar to the ship to ship in the campaign would be awesome.  Even an environment similar to the "Here Be Dragons" map.  What do you think?