Operation Shingle  

Summary:

The open beta has been very promising.  Unfortunately, a mistake in the ticket allocation means that it is hard to evaluate the team balance scenario.  I played several 40-50 player matches and the wins and losses went back and forth.  At this point, I still expect defense to be heavily, heavily favored because people are not familiar with the map.

Some poor spawn locations may mean that people are open to spawn camping.  Also, I noticed that the role of the walkers had been reduced to a fairly supportive role rather than a full out assault.  Only trenches appears accessible by walker (and that appears to allow walkers in, but not out!)

The map seems suitable for all kinds of kits and squads which revive each other, stay close, and work as a team will prove very effective.  

One problem, which I have noticed and which I would like to take some time out to talk about is the issue of frame rates.  I have noticed that when I am at the beginning of the map facing north, I often get huge frame rate issues.  Wake Island Beta also has frame rate issues (most notably in the form of the lag that occurs on the titan deck between dock and the deck.)  But let's stay focused and look at Operation Shingle for a minute.  

Here I am leaving the EU uncap facing north and you will see a 15 FPS screen shot.  This is typical of facing north at this point in the map.  You see dramatic frame drops at different places.  Sometimes it is 17, 19, or low 20's.  But it is usually facing north.



If we go further up the map, we encounter another drop facing north near Warehouse.  Here it shows 17.6.  



Let's do some comparisons when we get to an area to get a better understanding of what I am talking about.

Here I am at the top of Columns facing North.  It shows 19 FPS.



Here I am facing south.  It shows roughly 35 fps or nearly twice the rate.



If I turn east, I still get a higher framer rate.  It shows 36.5 fps.



If I turn west, I get a healthy 35 fps.



Again, facing north near columns tends to lower my FPS.

At the other end of the map, I get problems up at the Command Center facing south.  Here I have a shocking 16.5 fps.  Imagine trying to rush the stairs with 16.5 fps.



And if I turn around and face north?  A dramatic increase to 50 FPS.



What if I face East?  A respectable 31.5 fps.



And West? Still a respectable 32.4 fps.



Yes, its true, I did spin about the map taking north, south, east, west shots.  Once in a while it got me killed too.  

Here you can see my frame rate drop to 17 fps as I rush the stairs.  Again, I'm facing south.



I could go on with more examples but you get the general idea.  Low FPS seems to occur where the first number is low and the second number is high.  Why that happens?  I don't know.   But if someone can figure this stuff out, then maybe we can fix this problem.

My system:

AMD3000+
2 GB RAM
Radeon X1300 with 256 MB RAM

I have all settings at low, except textures at medium and AA at 2x (Wake Trees issue).

Yes its a bit low end, but hey, that's life.

It's a bit problematic, though, because the formerly legitimate recommended systems may have the most difficulty.  But we also know that Microsoft got into a bit of trouble with the Vista supported hardware issue...

CHEERS!