I have been playing the Beta this weekend and have been having a great time. I am not sure how I feel about the card system, but the core gameplay seems really fun. I also love how the game looks, and how powerful the abilities feel.

I haven't been hearing much about this game recently, but now that I have played it I am surprised it hasn't got more attention.

Anyway, I know that is a really rudimentary break down of my thoughts on the game, but I was wondering what you guys are thinking.

I haven't played it in a while, but I think thought it was great the last time I tried it. It's essentially yet another MOBA, but it's a very very good one. Looks/runs great on both PC and PS4, supports cross play between PC/PS4, account unlocks/progress exist across PC/PS4, abilities feel great, movement feels great, etc etc. The business model is among the best in the business i.e. "every character is free for every player forever, but you can pay us for costumes if you want...or just unlock them" so that alone instantly places above the vast majority of the competition in my opinion. Not a ton of characters at the moment, but they plan to release a character every 3 weeks for the foreseeable future so that's pretty cool.

All that goodness aside, I'm not a fan of the card system either. Last time I played, the game did literally nothing to explain it so I was terribly confused as to why I couldn't use certain cards. Even if it was thoroughly explained though, I just don't like "outside influences" like that especially in competitive games. That said, I still enjoy the game in spite of it so meh

Yea its a real shame the core gameplay is ruined for me by the card system. It essentially replaces item buying from DOTA, LOL, However the card packs are tied to real money. So while its true you still have to get the gold orbs to buy the cards in game, a player who hasnt spent a bunch of money/time with the game doesnt even have the opportunity to purchase some cards.

You can also only bring in one deck at a time, which was maybe done to streamline the dreadful item shop most mobas have, but it just leads to inflexibility in builds which is not very fun either. i also think most of the hero designs are boring.

I don't know if anyone has made this joke yet, but I get the feeling that a lot of the characters were at some point leftover concept art from Unreal and Gears.

Has a firm release date been given?

I play pretty regularly, can't wait for the new character tomorrow. I figure once it's free people will be more interested.

I hate to start off a reply this way but as someone who has sunk a significant amount of time into Dota, Paragon just seems lacking.

At first glance, it's a fantastic looking game. They did a great job with the design of all the different characters. The map looks phenomenal as well. Unfortunately, visuals only take you so far. The gameplay, from minute 0 is just boring. It seems like it takes too much time for anything significant to happen. The mid game, when people start to rotate and gank, takes too long to get to and chances are you've already fallen asleep. By the time you've reached the end of the game, one team seems way more stacked than the other on too much of a consistent basis for any sort of comeback to happen.

Replacing items in games like Dota and LoL with the card system is a nice way to streamline the build process. It takes thousands of hours in both Dota and LoL to become somewhat comfortable with item choices so you're not always following a set item build. So, in that regard, the card system would work out well. Unfortunately, the system is poorly executed and the UI surrounding it is a clusterfuck with no real direction.

Paragon seems like it can be a great game, it just seems too slow in the wrong ways.

Haha yes,this is to gears and unreal, what dota is to warcraft

It is pretty dope! I actually have been having a hard time tearing myself away from it to play Doom. A new character every three weeks, and frequent tweaks and balance adjustments help keep things interesting. They've started making a major shift with the last patch, and will be implementing the second half of their proposed changes soon. They've altered the way experience is gained, removed innate passive abilities, eliminated Tower 3 respawns, and soon they will be getting rid of travel mode, implementing a teleport function, and letting players use drop pods for purchases.

The more recently released characters have had much more interesting designs as well. The starting set were mostly humans with some kind of metallic future-armor. Now they've got remote-controlled robots, a goblin riding a baby dragon, and a Strogg (or Borg?) with electric chain whips.

I'm just hoping that when the game goes free-to-play we won't see people treating it like team deathmatch for too prolonged a period of time like we get whenever there's a free weekend.

It will be going into a full-blown open beta on August 14th, I believe. That's modern game design language for "official release".

I don't mind the game for the most part, but it just feels so slow and plodding. If they sped it up a bit it would feel so much better imo.

I thought it was already out? I thought i remembered seeing it for download on psn at one point months ago. Anyway, i think the bomb crew's opinion has been pretty luke warm about it, not bad but nothing that makes it stand out from standard moba's besides being first person.

@oursin_360: Only one of them likes MOBAs in any way so Giant Bomb is not exactly where you go for takes on MOBAs.

Having given too much of my life to League and Dota already, Paragon didnt do much for me. Not enough new or interesting that would make me jump ship.