Paladins - FPS MOBA by HiRez

[Cadaverine]

I've got two spare keys for closed beta if anyone is interested.

[MrHat]

I've got a spare key for this, PM.

[Kail]

Popped in for a few rounds of this tonight and it feels way better than it did in 2015 to me.  It looks like they're cribbing a lot of stuff from Overwatch, so YMMV but as someone who likes Overwatch this seems fun.

Update for anyone who hasn't played:

• For starters, the TTK is way down.  This is probably the most debatable change for me, since I generally like games with a long TTK, but the shorter gameplay does make the weapons feel more impactful.  It's still slower than something like Quake so we're not quite at instagib CoD levels, but it's still faster than something like a level 1 matchup in Dota or LoL.  It feels a lot more visceral than it did before, which does a lot to help the overall game feel.
• They added ultimate skills, which work basically the same as they did in Overwatch last I played.  I didn't like them there, I don't like them here.  At least they seem a bit less impactful than in Overwatch, and it's not like they ruin the game or anything, they just kind of bug me.  They also added a bunch of new normal abilities, things like alt fire modes and so on.  This has changed a lot of character roles in the game, for example, Pip is a dps / healer now (traded his adhesive bomb for a "healing potion toss" and his ult is that he can transform enemies in to chickens, for some reason, apparently).
• The random card system has been basically trashed.  Now, you build decks before the game, and over the course of the match you put points in to whichever card you want when you level up.  So basically the randomness is almost totally gone.  At the beginning of each match, you choose two decks: one for your specific champion and one "common" deck that any champion can use.
• You get cards from chests, still, I think it's like one chest giving five cards or something.  My inventory is a mess since I've been playing on and off through like three major overhauls of the system so I don't know what all a new player will have access to.  But from what I can tell, since duplicates are pointless, you automatically sell them for gold which you can use to buy individual cards for specific champions.  So the P2W aspects are at least a bit toned down, since it's possible to blow all your gold to spec out one character if you want.  I'm not sure how realistically easy that is since all my legacy junk means I already have ~170 cards and am mostly just missing a few legendaries at this point, but it doesn't seem like a huge money sink yet (though that might change as they add more characters and more cards per character).
• In addition to cards, when you open a chest you have a chance of getting a character skin, and you can also craft weapon skins (for something like the cost of 10 legendaries).  This is kind of underwhelming at this point, since the character skins are mostly just recolors and the weapon skins are just retextures, and the chance of getting a skin (much less the specific skin you want) is pretty steep so the cost gets prohibitive fast.  Presumably there will be some changes here at some point if they want to sell skins and things directly.
• They added a few new characters and modes.  There's a new map type called payload, kind of similar to the TF2 version (or the Overwatch "escort" gametype) and one called survival which I guess has no respawns but I haven't played it yet.  Some new heroes, including Grover (the "Groot" to Pip's "Rocket Raccoon" I guess), Androxus ("Hey, you guys know that 'Reaper' character in Overwatch?"), and Kinessa (I generally hate snipers, but at least she looks cool)

TL; DR: The gameplay is faster, they removed a lot of the RNG and added some cosmetic stuff.

Seems fun to me so far.

[Falconeer]

I got the founder pack as soon as it was available and I am still keeping an eye on this, but I decided to put it on hold until it's more fleshed out and I am glad to hear it's coming along well. I always watch the "new patch" videos and I have a certain degree of trust in Hi-Rez ability to make fun multiplayer games. My biggest gripe so far is the art/character style, this generic cartoony bullshit that is everywhere, I can't stand it. Smite has a distinctive theme and taste even in its over the top colourful style, but this is generic cartoony crap that draws from all the tropes and stereotypical nerdy stuff with a whiff of Blizzard and I find it desperately boring so far.

[Maledict]

It still plays far, far too slowly. They just turned a standard MOBA into a 3rd person shooter without changing the pacing or movement at all, and it flat out doesn't work. Everything feels like you are wading through treacle.

Really not sure why they aren't being a bit more bold with their design - this game feels *old* in comparison to newer MOBAs. It should be a lot, lot faster.

[HaemishM]

Got in this closed beta for this last night. Maybe they've changed it since Maledict's post because it didn't feel slow at all to me. I liked it well enough though I think they have got some champs that are just stupid crazy overpowered. I went 15-1 two straight games with 2 different sharpshooter champs after only 2-3 games with each of them.

It's fun but I feel like this game is probably going to run into a buzzsaw called Overwatch. It feels too much like Overwatch to me to be successful against that juggernaut - kind of like Battleborn only with less marketing budget. If that's indeed the market they are going for, I think they are going to get killed.

Also, fuck the mounts/horses. The mechanic is goddamn irritating. I hit Left-shift in the middle of combat expecting to sprint and instead I stop firing for 1 sec while I mount a horse that I then get shot off of. It just doesn't work very well and doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

[Kail]

It's fun but I feel like this game is probably going to run into a buzzsaw called Overwatch. It feels too much like Overwatch to me to be successful against that juggernaut - kind of like Battleborn only with less marketing budget. If that's indeed the market they are going for, I think they are going to get killed.

Yeah, this is my main concern for this game.  I keep seeing them make decisions which on the surface aren't really bad ideas, but they move the ship closer and closer to the rocks of "trying to compete with Blizzard" and I worry.  People who think Overwatch is a clone of TF2 would probably need special instruments to tell Paladins and Overwatch apart.  Battleborn at least IS a very different game to Overwatch, it just doesn't look like it at first glance.  Paladins keeps moving closer and closer, and I wonder if they really have a strong idea of what they want this game to be.

For example, on each siege map, there are three possible points that you'll be fighting over.  Each round one of them goes live and you head over there.  But that means that every round, about 2/3 of the map is basically useless.  There's no reason for the team to ever split up, no farming for resources or any other point to having such a huge map, it's just kinda there because at one point we thought maybe there'd be some kind of MOBA element here but now not so much.

[HaemishM]

I played this some more last night and I'm just not sure how much longevity there is to this game. The crafting stuff relies on spending gold (gotten by playing games) and champions can be bought with gold or crystals (the pay real money part of the equation). The maps are OK but not great and yes, 2/3rds of the map is unused during games. You level up your champions by playing games mostly for cosmetic bits. The card collection part is bound to get frustrating because those cards only come when you level your account and open chests, each chest has random stuff so you may get nothing you need and you can buy the chests with crystals (real money). There's only 2 games modes and they are basically variations on the same game mode (payload). It's fun but I'm not feeling the long-term hook and without that, this game will be dead in 3-6 months time.

[Kail]

I think a lot of the problem is a lack of a really strong direction for the game.  They don't seem sure about what they want it to be.  Is it supposed to be a complex strategic e-sports thing, or is it a "go here, you idiots" Blizzard style casual game?  They can't really add in a lot of maps since the gameplay is still going through massive changes and they don't really have a clear plan for their heroes (Drogoz runs in to a ton of invisible walls in midair, for example, which Pharah doesn't really have an issue with in Overwatch) so anything they do add might have to be reworked next week.  The card system is being redesigned constantly, I think my inventory has been wiped four times since March due to the system being overhauled.  They don't know how they want to handle in-game progression: do they want players to get more powerful, how do they regulate that, how long does it last, what gameplay purpose does it serve... all of this stuff changes all the time.  And I get that this is still in beta, apparently, but it feels like there's been an AWFUL lot of work done on the game for them to still be swapping out core mechanics as often as they do.

I guess it has been pretty stable for the last month or so, so maybe they've settled down, but in that case, ugh... I gotta agree that there's not a lot of long-term appeal to this game when Overwatch is doing almost the same thing but with more polish.

[Ginaz]

This is now available on Steam as f2p.  If it is an "Overwatch clone" at least it's a free, well made one.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/444090/