Gears of War 3 - Multiplayer Beta

[NecronomiconUK]

Just got it downloaded via MS ExpertZone access.

Only managed to play 1 match as I just nipped home for lunch. Hard to give massively useful and specific impressions. A few things worthy of note:

• The retro lancer bayonet charge is bloody hilarious fun. The character screams and runs like a mother, head down. I forsee hilarious suicide charges.
• The user interface is really polished and complete, loads of menus, stats, medals and so on. There's a full halo reach style party system with a useful 'invite team to party' system in the post game lobby.
• Currently and quite understandably there's sod all players online atm, less than 100 when I was on. Also there was a message that the dedicated servers aren't online yet but the match I played seemed utterly solid.
• Team deathmatch, it's interesting, a lot more chaotic and mixed up than the usual gears style 2 fronts inching forward. Will take some getting used to for those of us who are so hard wired into Execution
• While pointing at an enemy, if you click the left stick it will highlight them on the HUD of friendlies, this will be amazing for team work and could negate some of the chaos I saw in TDM

Generally though, it feels like Gears, which makes me happy. But it has been tweaked and polished so that feels really tight, fast and instinctive.

[Synthesthesia]

First of all, I hate you.

Second of all, that's great news that it feels solid even without dedicated servers! I can't wait for monday

How is the stopping power? Is it only when running towards the person firing it slows you down now? I really hope so I hate that in 2.

How does the headshot hit detection feel/How does the sniper feel? Hopefully closer to Gears 1 minus 1 shot downs.

Cheers.

[Family Fry]

So far looks damn spectacular but seems like shotty hell at the moment, one game ended with every one just running in with shottys.

[Daragon]

Is this open to Bulletstorm epic edition owners yet?

[Family Fry]

Goes live on Monday I think.
Oh and playing with randoms suck as they still don't know what team work and reviving means.

[Family Fry]

After a day of frustration I really hope dedicated servers make the difference, CQC and shotty is just being pumped out at stupid rates now.
Imagine this, you active reload shotgun someone in the face they explode but SOMEHOW they have shotguned you and you are downed!
Seriously, I was last man standing and I could have broke my controller into tiny pieces, when the guy came running over got his fists ready and beat me senseless.
When you do an execution now you can hammer the Y button for +9 points per bash to the face, obviously great fun when it's last man but very stupid and cocky if it's the first kill, looks cool though and some are brutal.

The maps are nicely done in GoW style, symetrical but some only have 1 or 2 spawn points which is just ridculous and leads to spawn camping death, Thrash Ball is just stupid when you spawn in a tiny room and if you get pumped into said room, can become painful especially when Mortar is on the bloody level and you get pumped as you run out! Trenches is the same when you take higher ground and the spawn areas are wide open. So far for me highlight map is Oldtown, nice size map and hasn't got too spawn campy yet, apart from the digger spawn area which is a nice little hole to nest up in as a squad, generally a really nice size map for lurking around.
So far I have played some quality games but more have been stinkers which I have been getting annoyed at very much, think it's cause I am playing alone mostly.
Went into my first ranked match and was matched against level 20, 19, 16, 14 and 9. My teams highest level was 8 how the f*** does that work out for matchmaking?! We got absolutely destroyed, I mean proper bummings, I was mouth open through the entire match and just how good a solid team can play together, flank and destroy a team of randoms, I did even plug my mic in thinking that would help, na no one had a mic on.
All in all GoW3 needs some tweakings with spawns and weapons, hopefully the beta feedback will be listend to.

[Mayhem]

Double KO is a fairly common occurrence now in GoW2 following the last TU... especially if people are firing shotguns at the same time. I suppose, in a way, it's a lot "fairer" instead of one person having an advantage in timing.

As for the matchmaking, it's entirely likely the team you mentioned were all in the same party to begin with and not thrown together as randoms, so therefore you'll get paired with everyone else present into a team. The matchmaking now works by getting all ten players together and then trying to split them evenly into two matched teams, instead of before where you made a team of five, and then it tried to match against another team of roughly equal skill. Hence anyone in a party of five will have an advantage now against a team of randoms. Usually. Sometimes I've seen some clutch performances out there from the AN Others...

[nonny]

I'll be partaking this evening but watched the Joystiq in-depth look and it really looked great all round.

The points you've mentioned (mainly spawn-camping) is actually great to hear. This is exactly what the beta should be isolating and reporting back to the developers before final launch and it's definitely something that can and should be fixed. The fact the beta is four weeks long means it's enough time to really report back plenty of statistics, not least weapon balance and expoitable tactics once players get comfortable with the maps/modes.

[Family Fry]

Just had mammoth session went from 6 to level 10. Played King of the Hill all night, liking the mode you can get shed loads of kills, I ended on 49 kills on one game.
Noticing just how crazy arsed the retro lancer is, crazy stoping power on that.
Think the dedicated servers went up tonight too.

[Mayhem]

How does the retro lancer perform up close as a melee weapon? How is the sawn off double barrel shotgun compared to the Gnasher? Are people still using general tactics from GoW2 or are they developing new methods? Any changes to existing weapons in performance you've noticed so far?

[Family Fry]

How does the retro lancer perform up close as a melee weapon? How is the sawn off double barrel shotgun compared to the Gnasher? Are people still using general tactics from GoW2 or are they developing new methods? Any changes to existing weapons in performance you've noticed so far?

If I am being honest I haven't used the retro lancer much do prefer my regular lancer for long distance downs, I know when you hold b you roadie run with bayonet charging and its deadly, one hit skewer. Again haven't used sawn off much but I can say it's deadly up close n personal, single shot though so requires reload straight after and reload time is sloowww.
General tactics, well the most massive one is you can kick people in the face over walls, so if your both in cover on each side jump over and knock em back, Stuns them long enough to kill em 90% of the time, very nice tactic means you don't get that cowering spamming shotgun in cover. Also tagged grenades no longer explode on proximity, they have tiny delay so if your roadie running and go passed a tagged nade you should be fine. Digger gun has quite a large spread and is an awesome weapon, may need a wee tone down on splash area. Think existing weapons seem to be same, lancer is still solid on active reload for long distance downs, shotty is still a swine up close although if your jumping around doesn't do as much. Hammerburst well i never use it but been downed a few times with it and you can look down iron sights, could you do that on gow2?
Oh one thing i will say is if you hold in l trigger and click left stick in on an enemy you can spot them ala battlefield style, makes interesting for last man standing, don't know if i like it.
Sorry its long been doing on mobile too. Hope it helps, won't be long til you play if you own bulletstorm that is.

[Family Fry]

Hmmm interesting, this is the schedul for beta. First two weeks of beta TDM only.

Mon 18th through Sun 24th - TDM on Thrashball and Checkout only.
Mon 25th through Sun 1st - TDM on Thrashball, Checkout, and Trenches only.
Mon 2nd through Sun 8th - TDM and KOTH on all 4 beta maps
Mon 9th through Sun 15th - TDM, KOTH, and CTL on all 4 beta maps.

[Mayhem]

Cheers for that. The Hammerburst has a digital sight in GoW2 that zooms in more than the lancer, but (obviously) less than the sniper. The ironsights thing for it here is completely new. I'd heard about the melee to people when advancing over cover and yes I agree, it should hopefully reduce the cover shotgun spam a bit. I know a lot of people complained about tagged frags in GoW2 so making them explode with a tiny delay is probably the best compromise. I'll comment on the Digger when I get to using it myself; do you get active reload on it? If so, that might explain the extra splash damage (a la boomshot).

I hear that you can now see where the weapons are located on the map... that will help newer players at least discover where they all are. Obviously getting them is a different matter! I'm awaiting the beta code from pre-ordering GoW3 so I won't be in until next week...

[Family Fry]

Oh yeah forgot about that, you just press bumper and it highlights your comrades onscreen in xray style vision and all the weapons spawns show on that too, very handy for callouts. Yeah there is an active reload for digger hadn't thought about that, explains the wide splash damage.

[Synthesthesia]

This game is unbelievably good after what we got with Gears 2. VERY happy Gears of War fan right here .

*Polishes 15 kills without dying ribbon*

I've been mostly using the Retro Lancer, which is FAR better than the lancer IMO but I've always hated the lancer. The hammerburst seems good, but haven't put too much into it. For shotguns I've been using the sawed off which surprised me, but I seem to be able to get really good kill streaks going with it, at which point I pick up a gnasher up and continue it! .

I don't think the servers are fully up yet either, we've been playing player matches and before we got kicked out of a game because "host left the match" (after it had said it had migrated already).