Today the open beta starts in Paragon. Other than Uncharted 4 it is pretty much the only game I have played since I watched Brad's Unfinished back in March or April. It is my first MOBA, so I had a lot to learn but I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm finally getting to where I am not a complete drag on my team probably.

Epic really does make some cool trailers if nothing else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxRFtNcU3nI

I'm hoping Epic can continue to improve on the game's balance over the coming months. At least they got rid of the deathball, now if they could come up with a workable solution to autosprint...

I love the look of a lot of this game but I haven't had a single moment of fun playing it in the five games I've tried.

It feels so slow and lifeless.

Replacing in-game item systems with persistent card collecting was a great way to keep me from ever playing that game, which is unfortunate because it seems like something I otherwise would have enjoyed.

Pretty much sums up my feelings. Every time they release a new character I jump in and play a match but it just does nothing for me. Movement speed is still way too slow and character animation for ranged characters just looks really stilted and odd. The game desperately needs some color and personality, the characters are so bland in comparison to games like LoL, Dota 2 and Overwatch.

What part of it is a turnoff? The act of collecting the cards themselves? I'm a little annoyed at parts of this myself. I enjoy it some, but there are certain cards that are just such a difference maker, it would be nice to be able to somehow grind specifically for them. Maybe with card crafting on the way there will be.

@blannir: I like the game and that still pretty much sums up my feelings as well lol. It's a solid moba, but it just lacks...oomph.

I've been playing for months now, and really enjoy it. I can't wait for them to get rid of the travel mode, though.

I echo the move speed issue, I disagree with the animation point however I think a lot to the abilities and attacks look amazing, they just never feel as powerful as they look. My hero never feels powerful at all for that matter, even playing vs bots and just wrecking them over and over my hero is still just chipping away at their hp, and all they have to do to escape is get near a tower which kills every hero in 3-4 hits no matter how strong they are.

Fuck this nonsense. Just give me Unreal Championship 3, Epic.

Seriously though, I played just a little bit of Paragon and quickly uninstalled it. The game feels like a sport rather than a video game, and not in a good way. I actually enjoyed my time with Battleborn more than this.

Man, I've had a really good time with it, but I'm also playing with a friend so that could be it. i don't really like the whole card builder aspect to it though, I'm glad they haven't really forced me into engaing with it so far.

@blannir said:

Some of the designs are oke, but others can't be more bland! Also playing it is jus a mess from a ton of different angles.
I feel this is by far the worst Moba from a big studio.

Played a few games of it yesterday, tried to give it a chance but found it very hard to get past the game speed. Very slow, trudging gameplay. Smite at least feels fast at times. I was bored.

@splodge: I tried it again after the quick look. Decided to see what all these havesters are about. Spent 80% of the game standing on them, running to them and collecting them in isolation and boredom. Fights are slow, characters are slow, attacks are slow. I've played city builders that move at a faster pace than this game.

Yeah some of them, like leather jacket gun man are the blandest bland characters ever.

i tried it a while ago when it was open for ps plus members and as soon as they showed me cards had to be unlocked to buy items in game and that some of them are character specific i dropped it and i have no intentions of picking it up again

I tried paragon out quite some time ago while it was closed and I really didn't enjoy it, but over the last week or so I have revisited it with a friend and have been having quite a bit of fun with it. It seems the game is getting better with a bigger roster, initially when I tried it was very small.

A few gripes:

• the interface is a hellscape, it isn't particularly good on PC and then they just mapped that to PS4 version
• The look and feel of the characters and environments are about as generic as you can get. The characters make little sense, it looks like they just pulled a bunch of assets from a bunch of games that have nothing to do with each other in mashed them together
• Their pricing scheme is pretty outrageous, some of the prices they are charging for some of the things seems way out of line with what any sane person would pay. A wise man once said, "The hats are not good."
• The card structure is cool, but if this game lasts any amount of time it will be pay to win, it is fine now because it doesn't seem like a ton of people are sinking money into cards, but when you do run into someone with a literal stacked deck it is VERY evident.
• the games are too long.slow, even by MOBA standards

I don;t know how much of it I will actually play, but I'm having fun messing around with it. I suspect the fun will run out as the ability to earn free cards slows down and you hit the free to play wall. I haven't hit it yet, but I feel it looming.

Just a little nitpick, you cannot buy cards with money at this time. I dont know what Epic's plans for the future are, but as of right now, you can only get cards by playing the game.

Now there are some people who have many days of playtime under their accounts. Those often have a few more of those cards that can be a big deal.

I'm really enjoying it so far, but as an avid League of Legends player I simply don't see this having the legs to compete UNLESS:

• They start to introduce more interesting character designs and abilities into the game. I think they've hit a lot of the genre staples now at twenty characters. I consider even the champions rated as "expert" difficulty to be ridiculously simple to understand and play.
• A MAJOR redo of the card system. This is such a big fuck you to the player as it stands now. When a Gideon guide recommends having two mana potions, and I literally can't do that because of the card draw system, it just turns me off the game in general.
• They move some of the characters' power out of their ultimates and into their base kits. I like impactful ults as much as the next guy but I feel like a lot of teamfights right now are decided by which team pushed the R key together first.

Anyways, I'm definitely going to keep fooling around with the game for sure, but I don't know if Paragon will have legs for me once I get out of the "never played a MOBA" skill bracket and stop winning 80% + of my games.

@wheresatom: While it is true you can't outright buy card packs, you can buy massive boosts that increase your earn rate which essentially ends up being the same thing. Something about the way the card drops work just doesn't feel great to me, I dunno. Thank you for the correction though.