GB02 January Network Test Feedback + Discussion

[wilsaaan]

This Network Test was too short lived! QQ

Been a long time player on the PS4, and had taken a break since Q3 to relegate my gaming time to PC. I was only able to catch that end time once and briefly amongst the deluge of maintenance updates - It's hard to imagine the devs doing that much different with our feedback in the linked survey since the game's roadmap has long been underway - but as a longtime fan of the franchise overall, the foundation present in the Battle Operation series is the most on-brand for what Gundam is to me.

GB02's core gameplay loop lives between a tactical third-person shooter and a tank simulator. There is a weight and deliberation to every action you take - your weapons/equipment are the equivalent of skills with cooldowns in more traditional hero-shooters. Gundam VS and Evo are fun and all, but they're ultimately arcade fighters/shooters with a tremendous disregard for physics. If you're a longtime Gundam fan, you understand "the weight of gravity" applies to both our human psyche and humans self-destructive brute-force method of technological/economic gain. You gotta give your hats off to the devs for managing to integrate and balance the insane amount of original UC timeline units and most of their weapons in this game while still feeling canonically appropriate.

AC6 is due out soon, and it's a shame that Bandai Namco hasn't figured out a proper entry to rival that potential depth after all this time. I really hope they develop it further beyond GB02, and I'm also really curious as to what people's thoughts are on PC. Also, I did so well in a majority of matches that it felt like bullying for a few, but I was also at the s ame time having a blast feeling like a Newtype. If you were a new player on the other end of that stick, I'm sorry if I soured your impression of the game. There is a very high skill ceiling to this game that is very rewarding when you come to terms with it.

My takeaways from the Network Test:
- TG I no longer have to be confined to the PS4 to play this in the future - the improved graphics and performance is really great.
- I did get a lot of frame skips/hiccups in the base camp, while going through UI/menus, and during the launch cutscenes.
- Environments are uninspired to put it bluntly, but the in-game 3D models of the suits and their textures look fantastic.
- There's extra touches I never noticed on the PS4 version, like the metal texture on top of the Medea Bases buckling when you land your MS on it.
- Interesting selection of suits for this test (can't believe they put in the Vertex and Baun Doc), and even more interesting that most of the match options were unrestricted. Pretty sure the latter element made for some really lopsided matches.
- They actually put in an anti-cheat, that's a welcome surprise.
- Not too many network issues, on PS4 with a wired connection its not surprising to run into network skippers (teleporting quite a few meters), here the lag I saw was usually much reduced, they don't warp over as big of a distance.
- Interfacing with your menus while trying to matchmake apparently frequently causes search failures.
- Don't play this on MnK unless you're a masochist.
Edit: sorry I offended all you KnM players haha, I'll be honest I played console games most my life, I've compartmentalized very well how to handle one. I was immediately turned off by the base camp camera tbh, and I didn't feel good using it for one tutorial stage. I do prefer MnK for shooters on PC, but I like handling the analog controller. There's good, and some worse takes, here overall. Hope everyone's having a good one. :]

[M.Remington]

Your comments just about summarize my feelings on this one as well. With two notable additions.

1) It doesn't recognize HOTAS setups or pedals as bindable, which is unfortunate considering the whole addition of M&K support and this game being one of the few that would be able to benefit from a full setup. I understand that BB Studio probably doesn't think about people playing using a custom-built setup, but it would have been nice.

2) The paint MS feature basically tanks performance. Why? I have no idea.

[wilsaaan]

Originally posted by M.Remington:

Your comments just about summarize my feelings on this one as well. With two notable additions.

1) It doesn't recognize HOTAS setups or pedals as bindable, which is unfortunate considering the whole addition of M&K support and this game being one of the few that would be able to benefit from a full setup. I understand that BB Studio probably doesn't think about people playing using a custom-built setup, but it would have been nice.

2) The paint MS feature basically tanks performance. Why? I have no idea.

That's super unfortunate - sounds like something a 3rd party input app might be able to fix with the full release of the game. Playing on sticks/pedals (and a VR display) would be super rad. I didn't notice my performance tanking in the paint shop, but my analog sensitivity there felt way off. I seen word that the game is largely un-optimized so that wouldn't surprise me. :/

[Deadoon]

Originally posted by wilsaaan:

- Don't play this on MnK unless you're a masochist.

What? It worked great.
The move to cursor/cursor chasing controls shared between this and many other games worked perfectly to be able to hit people from maximum(or even exceeding maximum) ranges for the weapons.
Took a bit to get used to it, but they worked better than the gamepad controls for me atleast.
Also didn't hold me back either, could easily preset the weapons and quick swap for combos constantly.

[Ellen]

The game does offer some positives, though it suffers from some expected issues like wonky hit detection and uncertain rules. Get staggered by a rocket hit, toppled by a melee hit and nearly killed in one combo seems to be the norm, while new players will not likely to be able to do this as I'm guessing this involves some kind of animation cancelling cause when I tried to do it, the enemy had plenty of time to get out of stagger while my melee attack was 'warming up'.
Enemies ignoring stagger when my melee attack hits them just to lose 75% of my HP due to this feels really cheap.

Game really has that "2005-2010" free to play MMO feeling like tank ace was. With quick play matches only running on unrestricted it was disappointing that I could not play the suits that interest me purely because it was all about using the highest point suit you had access to otherwise you do diddly squat to enemies..like a 150 point Zaku 2 doing sub 1% damage to them and getting killed in two hits.

Being restricted to only one game mode with low level suits was disappointing as well (Zaku 1 could only play in bracket with space maps only, which was meh), here is hoping that for new players there will be an option to play with entry suits in quick play too and not being forced into ranked to be able learn (Though I was told that apparently on the main game there will be restricted point battles for quick play too).

Much of this I don't expect fixes for some issues (hit detection namely), game is meant to be as cheap of a port as it can be to squeeze some extra cash out of potential consumers and their handling of the network test confirms these. Not to mention that they got a separate studio just to handle the port who will just be taking content from the main game and slashing it into this one, which will work for them cause it is 90% just monetization/gatcha/lootboxes

[Cyber_YI]

My only problem with the game is how it's Frame Rate is absolutely bad for some reason, my laptop is already overqualified for running this thing in Medium settings but it insists I run at 20 FPS while also having some response issues, another gripe I had during my short time on the Network Test is that people who are using 5G Networks are receiving 1 Bar Connections even though it should be able to connect with players who are still using 4G Connections which is odd and one gameplay issue I have is that there's no way to access the pause screen or options menu during a battle, you have to adjust it while you're in the base

[MoonlitDNC]

Make sure ya'll are filling out the developer feedback survey. In all likelihood, they're probably not reading anything here on Steam's forums, but the survey link they posted on the Community Hub here is likely going to determine what areas of the client they try to improve, as well as general interest in GBO2.

[Kyane von Schnitzel]

Originally posted by wilsaaan:

- Don't play this on MnK unless you're a masochist.

I don't know what the hell you're smoking, the mouse and keyboard controls were working great.

[Irou]

Originally posted by Ellen:

I'm guessing this involves some kind of animation cancelling cause when I tried to do it, the enemy had plenty of time to get out of stagger while my melee attack was 'warming up'.

I'm gonna take a wild guess but I think what you're having trouble here is not animation cancelling. In fact, there are none involved when someone staggered you and then hit you with melee, except when they do it after hitting you with melee. It's just that when people are sure they're gonna hit and stagger you, they'll immediately change to melee after they shoot to start the wait time of switching weapons early.

Originally posted by Ellen:

Being restricted to only one game mode with low level suits was disappointing as well (Zaku 1 could only play in bracket with space maps only, which was meh), here is hoping that for new players there will be an option to play with entry suits in quick play too and not being forced into ranked to be able learn (Though I was told that apparently on the main game there will be restricted point battles for quick play too).

Are you sure about this? I had plenty of sorties using Zaku 1 in ground maps but I never run it in space maps. In case you didn't know, the sorties rotate every 2 hours where new cost restrictions and maps will be in place. As for the quick matches being unrestricted only, it's probably was because this is just a network test and it's a place for people to test their suits, though there are cost restrictions in quick matches on the PS version as far as I'm aware.

[HimeNaa]

Originally posted by wilsaaan:

This Network Test was too short lived! QQ
- Don't play this on MnK unless you're a masochist.

this is not masochist, just playing with your own sanity, too fast could be hit, could be miss, or even you died xD

playing with MnK are totally more harder than using controller but im having more fun with MnK but still need remapping some buttons into my mouse and remapping several button into the "FPS" feels where is sprint will be always SHIFT button, and SPACE for jumping, the rest just renumbering the part 1-8 half of them will on my mouse and the rest will be on keyboard

[Irou]

Originally posted by Cyber_YI:

My only problem with the game is how it's Frame Rate is absolutely bad for some reason, my laptop is already overqualified for running this thing in Medium settings but it insists I run at 20 FPS while also having some response issues

Hey I had this exact same problem as well and managed to resolve it. Turns out the game didn't use my dedicated VGA the first time I ran it. So the solution was just to add it manually through the NVIDIA control panel. I assume it's gonna be a similar process for AMD cards as well. I've actually posted this on another discussion and it worked. OP didn't mark my solution as the topic answer so people might not know that it got resolved without opening the discussion.

[HimeNaa]

Originally posted by Irushia:

Originally posted by Cyber_YI:

My only problem with the game is how it's Frame Rate is absolutely bad for some reason, my laptop is already overqualified for running this thing in Medium settings but it insists I run at 20 FPS while also having some response issues

Hey I had this exact same problem as well and managed to resolve it. Turns out the game didn't use my dedicated VGA the first time I ran it. So the solution was just to add it manually through the NVIDIA control panel. I assume it's gonna be a similar process for AMD cards as well. I've actually posted this on another discussion and it worked. OP didn't mark my solution as the topic answer so people might not know that it got resolved without opening the discussion.

i didnt realize this one but im sure mine are going with dedicated VGA, but i could be wrong

[Ellen]

Originally posted by Irushia:

Are you sure about this? I had plenty of sorties using Zaku 1 in ground maps but I never run it in space maps. In case you didn't know, the sorties rotate every 2 hours where new cost restrictions and maps will be in place. As for the quick matches being unrestricted only, it's probably was because this is just a network test and it's a place for people to test their suits, though there are cost restrictions in quick matches on the PS version as far as I'm aware.

I played plenty of hours on the network test, first day I could not get a single ranked match going, guess people were all playing quick play. Second day the 300 bracket was only space maps on ranked(played 3 hours with a friend, all space maps), the DP we got did not allow me to get the rank 5 version of the Zaku 1 (which should be 450 points).

Not going to say that it was a bug with melee, it is fairly possible that some suits just not able to combo bazooka/cannon shot+melee to topple. I switched to melee pretty much straight away and the wait time before I could land a melee hit was so big that my enemy came out of stagger.

[Mr.Kill]

I don't think EAC is gonna be enough. The cheating is rampant in Gundam evolution. The only way to fix cheating is to have better netcode to prevent garbage data from being accepted as legitmate data.

I also had the same issue with the wrong graphics card being selected. I alt-f4'd out of the tutorial as soon as I realized the framerate was extra choppy. For some reason it didn't save my character but reserved the name I picked.

[Irou]

Originally posted by Ellen:

Originally posted by Irushia:

Are you sure about this? I had plenty of sorties using Zaku 1 in ground maps but I never run it in space maps. In case you didn't know, the sorties rotate every 2 hours where new cost restrictions and maps will be in place. As for the quick matches being unrestricted only, it's probably was because this is just a network test and it's a place for people to test their suits, though there are cost restrictions in quick matches on the PS version as far as I'm aware.

I played plenty of hours on the network test, first day I could not get a single ranked match going, guess people were all playing quick play. Second day the 300 bracket was only space maps on ranked(played 3 hours with a friend, all space maps), the DP we got did not allow me to get the rank 5 version of the Zaku 1 (which should be 450 points).

Not going to say that it was a bug with melee, it is fairly possible that some suits just not able to combo bazooka/cannon shot+melee to topple. I switched to melee pretty much straight away and the wait time before I could land a melee hit was so big that my enemy came out of stagger.

Huh, I guess that's true. I myself wasn't able to do that quick enough mainly on lower cost support suits and ranged centric suits. I have no problem doing the combo using all rounder and melee focused suits, though I usually got countered anyway. I tend to not play space sorties at first but I kinda like it now.

[(｀▽´)]

I was trying to set up Splatoon-like gyro before I got banned for 29 hours. Best network test ever.