Topic: Monday Night Combat

[Bigred]

Awesome,

This is still a great game, some needed changes in there.  Glad to see they are supporting this.

[Aftrthought051]

FREE DLC and a patch coming!!!   

Uber Entertainment has announced that a big Monday Night Combat patch has entered testing and will soon be ready for certification. The title update is set to fix several issues with the game, notably the ability for players to damage Moneyball shields, and host migration problems. Several classes will receive tweaks as well, with the brunt going to the Support and Assassin. Devious Support players will be displeased to know they won't be able to hack through walls anymore, while Assassins will be happy to hear that grapples won't take as long to recharge after a whiff.

The updated version of MNC will be playable at PAX this week, and Uber is also bringing along plenty of swag, including the T-shirts above. Furthermore, Uber will soon release the first of three DLC packs for the game that will contain "new content, gameplay adjustments, and more bug fixes." According to Uber's Chandana "Eka" Ekanayake, the studio is "very invested" in the MNC community -- as such, the first DLC pack will be free.

Hopefully we'll hear more details about the DLC at PAX. In the meantime, head past the break for the full list of fixes in the title update.

Connectivity and Multiplayer:

•Reworked the way we handle parties in the pregame lobby to avoid splitting them up.
•Fixed several issues where host migration would fail immediately.
•Decreased wait time after a successful host migration.
•Lobbies will now host migrate and not kick you back to the main menu.
•If the host leaves during the end of match sequence, the host will migrate and players will return back to the lobby and not the main menu.
•Optimized the time it takes to migrate hosts, shortening the time to migrate.
•Improved weapon hit detection in high lag situations.
•Fixed endorsements being incorrect after a host migration.
•Fixed getting into private matches without an invite.
General Gameplay:

•Fixed players being able to damage the Moneyball's shields.
•Fixed visual effects staying on the player after the effect has worn off.
•Reduced the amount of increased damage the Moneyball takes in Overtime, thus reducing the effectiveness of "Juice rushing".
•Fixed Ringouts, Headshots and Grapple Kills not giving the proper amount of money.
•Balanced Ringout money to reflect the change. Message now displays correct total amount of money earned.
•New "You Win!"/"You Lose!"; UI for the end of a match.
•Fixed juice benefits ending early if the player grapples during juice.
•Fixed juice bar getting stuck full.
•Fixed deploying on or near active jump pads.
•Fixed controller sensitivity of 10 not saving.
•Fixed messaging for kill streaks. Ultra and Uber streaks will now be named properly when popping up above your cursor.
•Fixed an instance of the player's skill pick UI going away unexpectedly.
•Fixed an issue with bots walking by enemy turrets and bots without engaging them.
•Fixed upgrading a turret that has been hacked to the opposing team.
•Fixed turret collision not going away after being destroyed.
•Normalized time between a grapple miss and the ability to grapple again for all grapples. The biggest change is the Assassin not having as big of a penalty for a missed grapple.
•Fixed the "Team Leader" and "Team Player" highlights from being reversed.
•Fixed players being able to mute themselves.
•Fixed idle kicking when standing still but still looking around and/or shooting.
•Fixed players who cheat and hack their profiles from being able to apply multiple gold endorsements.
•Optimized main menu ticker for players with large friends lists.
•Fixed HUD showing Moneyball shields as up during over time even though they are down.
•Reduced announcer talking for kill streaks to help reduce the repetition of announcements.
•Various performance optimizations.
Support:

•Reworked Support's bot aura so that it doesn't make the Jackbot appear overhealed.
•Fixed Support's Firebase skill from recharging while the Support is dead but the Firebase skill exists.
•Fixed being able to use the Heal/Hurt gun while taunting.
•Fixed some instances of the Support's Firebase not appearing when thrown.
•Fixed Heal/Hurt gun not being affected by rate of fire endorsements and reduced it's overall healing/hurting ability to compensate for the change.
•Fixed Supports being able to use their Hack skill through walls.
•Fixed Supports being able to throw their Firebases through the wall.
•Fixed Air Strikes sometimes damaging enemies under cover.
•Supports can now only Hack enemy turrets at Hack level 3.
•Increased the time to Hack enemy turrets.
•Decreased duration of Hack on a turret for levels 1 and 2.
Assassin:

•Fixed Assassins from being able to get permanent sprint and super speed.
•Fixed Assassins getting a double smoke bomb allowing them to jump higher than intended.
•Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
•Fixed Assassins from being able to use her smoke bomb during a lunge.
•Retuned damage done by dagger after a lunge.
Tank:

•Tank's Jet Gun alternate fire damage is now reduced depending on the percentage of ammo left in the clip. Increased the full clip damage to compensate.
Assault:

•Fixed an exploit involving the Assault's Fly.
•Fixed Assault's bomb audio lingering after bomb is gone.
Monday Night Combat Live Update System:

•Pregame Lobby is now 45 seconds.
•Min Number of Players to start Crossfire is now 6.
•Increased player bot spawing from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.

Joystiq article

[Bigred]

I've played this game quite a lot already and its still fun.  They did a great job with it. 

[nightstorm56]

Makes sense...Monday Night Combat...Monday Night Gaming...

 

[Aftrthought051]

I would just wait then.  All the summer of arcade games from last year eventually went on sale and I'm positive the ones from this summer will be no different down the road.  I'm sure we will still be playing it.  I think it is the unofficial Monday night game.   

[nightstorm56]

I played the demo of it and I loved it, but 1200MSP is still a little too pricy for me ATM.

[Aftrthought051]

Found some more and the breakdown on each.

Assassin- Armor, Skill Recovery, Rate of Fire
Armor so I can live and not be bad, dying after 1 grapple.
Skill recovery for more smoke bombs, dashes, and faster cloak regen on CD.
Rate of Fire so I can attack faster when grapple is on CD.

Sniper- Armor, Rate of Fire, Skill Recovery
Armor so I can, again, live. Wins in counter-sniping and stops face grappling bad assassins.
Rate of Fire, shooting faster = killing faster.
Skill recovery, more grapples, more traps, more flacks.

Assault- Critical hit, Accuracy, Rate of Fire/Reload speed
Critical hit for more pew pew less QQ.
Accuracy for better aim.
Rate of Fire/Reload speed, see: Critical hit.

Support- Armor, Skill Recovery, Speed/Juice/Health regen
Armor, for living and tanking out grapples and people who can't kill you when you use the heal gun on them.
Skill recovery for faster turrets, hacks, and airstrikes, resulting in high K:D ratio.
Speed/Juice/Health regen because everything else is bad.

Tank- Armor, Rate of Fire, Reload speed
Rate of fire, Faster jet gun.
Armor, for... tanking mayhap? Loling @ failed assassin back grapple?
Reload speed, More jet gun.

Gunner- Armor, Accuracy/Rate of Fire, Rate of Fire/Accuracy
Armor for epic in deploy mode.
Accuracy for minigun sniping.
Rate of Fire for faster minigun sniping.

[Bigred]

The Support/Gunner Combo is almost indestructable, expecially if they are both level'd up and the Support guy throws a lvl 3.3 firebase down.

I found I prefer support, I taken out everything with support from assassins to Tank to Gunners.  Not having to aim the Heal/Hurt gun is a big plus for me.  I've survived assassin strikes, but only the front ones, I'll have to try the build with the Armor first and see if it makes a difference.

Typically I concentrate on getting turrets up and upgrading them, then once things are going well I spend the money on getting Jackbots spawned.

I'll usually find a place for my turret and it provides a steady flow of cash coming in.

I've played through all the Blitz levels and completed all of them except for the infinite lvl one.  We only got to lvl 39.

I was wondering if at some level your custom classes get to have higher level endorsments.  In other words maybe one 3 and two 2's, or even at the highest class unlock three 3's.

What a great game though.

[Aftrthought051]

When you get custom classes unlocked, the first endorsement you pick is gold and will give you the biggest boost in that stat.  Then silver, then bronze, and each increase in stat is less for the medals.  Hope that makes sense.  Anyway, I found this post in the xbox forums and I like the thought of that near industructible gunner and a support class that can withstand a rear assassin attack.

Endorsements  -  gold - silver - bronze

Assassin - Speed - Skill recovery - regen
I spawncamp the most threatening enemies and take out jackbots. Every now and then i'll go for other bots if i think they're going to ruin a big bot advance from our team (ie i'll clear out a complete side of the map of bots so ours can walk right in). I think Speed is the most important for offense and for getting away (smoke jump plus fulled upped run and gold speed makes you quick!)

Support - Armour - Skill recovery - regen
I havent yet tried armour as Gold but following on from another thread (with stats) it looks like a support with gold armour may be able to survive a rear grapple attack from an assassin. As assassins are often the only ones that can get past my defenses unnoticed this would give me and the turrets time to kill the assassin even after its most deadly attack! (i'm all about the defense with support, all turrets up to 3.3 and overhealed, teammates overhealed and i'll walk a jackbot up the field and overheal them too).

Gunner - Armour - Accuracy - Critical hits
The Armour takes it up to 300HP which is a rediculous amount. The accuracy greatly increases especially when deployed and the critical hits are already increased with deploy 2 but if you add this as an endoresment too you end up with alot of crits landing on target because of your increased accuracy - this is a deadly combo and i only ever go and attack with this setup. If you can get a support with you too you'll walk right in there.

[Spectre]

I picked it up as well. pretty fun.

[RobWenn]

I have to admit that this game was more fun than I thought it would be. I mean only 1200 points, it seems like such a bargain now. I'm glad I picked it up.

[Jediboy]

I picked it up as well...  Played a little of of the single player Blitz's just to get some familiarity with the different classes, plus there's a couple of achiev's for completing the different single player modes

[Aftrthought051]

It's fun, but it definitely has a steep learning curve.  We keep getting owned right now so it's a bit frustrating, but the potential is still there to have a good time. 

[Spectre]

saw you guys playing, after a little play time what's the verdict  or 

[MagmaFlow]

Dammit! Now I need to buy some points.

[jlfarris]

I have the game, but I didn't get a chance to get online last night like I'd hoped.  I'll be on some this weekend, and will look you guys up.

[Bigred]

1200 pts, are you kidding me?!?  Well worth it in my opinion?  This is one of the top Games for that much money, IMO.  Both the Blitz mode and the other mode are fun in their own ways.  Not sure which class I like more yet.  I do pretty well with the Gunner Class, the support class is fun, But I was getting owned by the assassin last night, so maybe I'll try her out for a bit.

I wish I could have played longer last night, but had to turn in for work this morning.

[Aftrthought051]

   Hell yeah.  Played some tonight w/ Olden, Panoramix, and BigRed.  It was a good time.  Win some, lose some.  Like the new classes.  Gonna have to master that assassin class b/c I get killed a lot by him.  And that announcer might just put the Unreal Tournament announcer finally down a notch.   

[joey791]

purchased

[Aftrthought051]

Add Mondy Night Combat to your queue.

[Panoramix18]

I am really looking forward to this game.  I'll be picking it up tomorrow once I get off work.  Hope to see some of you guys on it.

[jlfarris]

Count me among those on here who will be getting MNC.  The last 2 dev diaries hooked me on it.  I'll have it sometime tomorrow afternoon.

[Bigred]

BACON! 

I'll be picking this up.  Looks like it would be well worth 1200 pts.

[Aftrthought051]

Man, this review by Joystiq has me ready to buy this game right now.  Sounds fun.

Without belaboring every gameplay detail, suffice it to say that Monday Night Combat shakes up the usual capture-the-flag formula by introducing AI-controlled robots and turrets. In order to win a Crossfire match -- one of two gameplay modes -- you must destroy the opposing team's "Money Ball" while simultaneously protecting your own. The twist is that in order to actually damage the Money Ball, you must first escort your horde of bots into the enemy base, where they can attack the ball and bring down its shields. Once the shields are down, the ball is susceptible to conventional weapons.

Thus, proceedings really boil down to a game of strategy, making victory dependent on more than simply scoring the most headshots. Summoning and escorting bots, and building and upgrading defensive turrets, are just as important as picking a class and upgrading its skills as a match progresses.

That's not to say that finding a favorite class and racking up kills isn't gratifying. There are six classes, and each has four skills, three active and one passive, that can be upgraded during a match. I prefer the Assassin, whose dash and cloaking abilities felt a bit more proactive than the defensive powers of the Tank. I also enjoyed the Support, a combination medic / engineer who can improve turrets, heal teammates, call in air strikes and deploy a mini-turret of his own. Each class has a unique style of play, from the offense-heavy Gunner to the jack-of-all-trades Assault to the ... well, the Sniper.



The MNC mascot pops out from time to time. Shoot him for some extra cash.


You will need to do your fair share of killing, though, as each successful kill earns money needed to upgrade skills, build turrets and summon specialized bots. Each map -- there are four in Crossfire mode -- also has unique actions you can pay to activate including jump pads, ejectors and the deadly Annihilator. These are placed at strategic points on the map and can really save your bacon in a tight spot. Let me tell you personally that it's pretty damned satisfying to set off an ejector and watch half of the opposing team fall to its death.

Matches can be over quickly or they can go into overtime, which gives everyone a skill boost and drops the shield on both Money Balls -- but I found the urge to play "just one more" nearly irresistible either way. Even if you don't feel like another round of Crossfire, there's always Blitz, which tasks up to four players (two via splitscreen) with defending their Money Ball against ever-increasing waves of bots. It's also worth mentioning that Uber Entertainment plans to continue supporting Monday Night Combat after launch. Uber's John Comes told me that basic balance adjustments can be made "on the fly without needing to do a patch" and, while he wouldn't confirm any specific DLC, he did say that "some announcements" are scheduled for PAX Prime 2010 in September.

As I said, it can be too easy to write something off merely as a combination of popular ideas, but Monday Night Combat handily outstrips the sum of its parts, presenting a fresh, fun take on class-based shooters. There are so many variables -- twelve players, numerous bots, turrets, unique map features -- that it's hard to imagine a match playing out the same way twice. For anyone with a stable crew of online friends, Monday Night Combat deserves a spot in the usual rotation.

Might I suggest Mondays?
4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Article

[Aftrthought051]

You are correct sir.  All summer arcade games are 1200 points.  This week is Castlevania Harmony of Despair which I am hearing is heavily co-op oriented.  So I'm gonna test it out.

Monday Night Combat looks like it could be fun, but I'm hearing alot of it being a Team Fotress 2 clone.  It's easy to see w/ the class base and cartoony rendering, but I don't think it should be dismissed just b/c of that, and it's not like TF2 is a bad game.  It's a great game.  I'm definitely looking forward to it and can't wait to try the demo.  If it's just a little bit decent, I'll pick it up though.  I know I got more than my money's worth w/ BF1943, so I hope it follows the same path.