Since this is the first weekend I've had off off and the PTS was active, I gave it a swing to see what is going on.
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Optimization:
- The optimization to improve the game performance really didn't help any. In some cases it slowed me down. They did change the team members tab in the upper left of the screen. It lead me to wonder why are there so many different fonts on the screen.
- Lot of graphical glitches that were introduced such as the T-15 has 2 streams of autocannon fire coming off of it instead of the one. A lot of the damage notifications don't show up when you are in sniper view mode and when you cycle back out to the arcade mode there is a huge delay in when they will appear.
Tried out a few of my favorite tanks to see how they changed since they are known constants to me.
- There are several tanks such as the K2, Altay, and Type 10 that lack their special ability to drop the hull which is part of the protection dynamics to hide the LFP. The ability to drop the hull is not available. Actually, active abilities for everything is disabled.....
- The ability to swap ammo for things that have a ready rack/magazine/clip/whateveryoucallit such as the Altay and K2 are now instant. The only tank that had that before was the Type 10 and it had to be done from a full rack. Now it doesn't care if there is a full rack or 1 round left. That is something that needs to be fixed. it should be a full rack if they want to implement it on other tanks and even then there should be a time delay in it as a penalty. I think in the K2 I was actually able to beat the actual reload by how I cycled from HEAT to AP. I'd have to actively try again to see if it is true which if it is so then the entire mechanic is broken. The insta-swap also works on the 2AX for some reason.
- I do like the penetration drop off on the MBT's. Not being able to snipe an MBT in an MBT from across the runway on Albatross is a good change. I'm sure that there is some sort of negative to this I haven't experienced yet.
- The introduction of HEAT to the 2AX was a nice addition.
- Still a lot of pixel hunting going on.
- The vision changes not so much. Things are disappearing right in front of you now (T14 on the move at 250 meters). I guess it goes back to how the vision range scales depending on the map and that should be addressed so a set spotting range is a set spotting range regardless of the map now that they are dialing the MBT's spotting range back.
My initial opinion is that this is not going to address the actual issues.