First Impressions: Diabotical closed beta

Loading time: Less than 10 seconds.
One of my personal gripes with games these days are the painfully long load times. I was relieved that Diabotical doesn’t suffer from this problem. However, I’m uncertain if their anti-cheat solution was enabled for this beta and whether the loading time would drastically increase in the future.

Gameplay: Smooth as butter.
The core focus of this game has been solely on the gameplay and in this regard it doesn’t disappoint. It handles as well as I expected barring a few performance issues which I mention in the next section. The movement system is fantastic, although I’m not a fan of the dodge mechanic but that’s probably because it’s new.

Game modes: Bite-sized portions of fun!
Rocket Arena (1v1) and Arena (1v1, 2v2) were an absolute blast to play and were by far the best modes. Diabotical's 5v5 Wipeout mode puts a modern twist on Clan Arena with healing weeballs and more forgiving respawns. I despise Clan Arena and I’m not a huge fan of Wipeout either, but the respawn mechanic in Wipeout seems to make it a bit better than CA. The Weebow instagib (5v5) is a projectile based instagib mode featuring coin collection mechanics. You need to pick up coins that spawn on the corpse of your enemies in order to confirm the kill. I understand it’s introduced to prevent camping, but in hundred of games of classic instagib in Quake camping was never a problem.

Netcode and server locations: They’ve got you covered!
There are 13 servers located across the world. Of course, US and EU have nothing to worry about. Lucky bastards! However, I’m immensely grateful there are 3 servers in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo) and even ones in South America (Brazil) and South Africa (Johannesburg). I had absolutely no issues with netcode and connected with a ping of around 35. Server locations are subject to change post-release though, but I hope the Singapore server isn’t removed as it covers a wide range of regions and is the only one I can connect to with sub-150 ping.

Maps: Mostly a hit.
Most of the maps in the game are done fairly well. Both from a visual standpoint and a gameplay standpoint. They flow well and instigate exciting combat. There are areas in certain maps where you needlessly get obstructed by terrain. This breaks the flow (like beneath and between the mini bridges in Heikam is awful). I hope these will be addressed in the future.

Performance: Good, could be better.
This is something specific to my system and your experience is likely to be different. On Quake Champions at 1440p (Render scale: 75%, textures: High, everything else: Low) I get a constant frame rate of 155 FPS when limiting the frame rate using RTSS. In Diabotical at the same resolution and render scale, the frame rate was jumping between 90 – 145 using the in-game frame limiter set to 155 FPS. I didn’t try RTSS. I was told there was a bug if you start a game from the Practice Mode, so I’m hoping this will be fixed.

Weapon models: Some of the weapon models are uninspiring.
The shotgun does not look or feel like a shotgun. In fact, its possibly the worst looking weapon among the bunch. The crossbow and grenade launcher also looks rather plain and should be spruced up. The rest of the weapons (not counting the goofy needle pen) look pretty good.

Weapon feedback and audio: Some of the sounds in the game are lacking.
In particular, hit sounds feel like a notification you get on your mobile phone rather than the sound of damaging a metallic eggbot. The sound when an eggbot explodes upon death also doesn’t sound rewarding. Some of the weapon also sound weak, like the grenade launcher and shotgun.

Eggbot customization: Has Potential.
The customization of your eggbot using stickers surpassed my expectations. But I would love to see proper skins for eggbots like those shown in the Kickstarter page. Those are have the potential to be a viable, sustainable monetization option for the developers.