http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z11QnbkzJzU
Steam group is up:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SMNCFF
Limited edition Mr. Destructoid skin available for Karl here:
http://www.destructoid.com/mr-destructoid-comes-to-super-monday-night-combat--226510.phtml
Now with 100% more Giantbomb quick look:
Super Monday Night Combat is the followup to Uber Entertainment's 2010 team-based TPS/tower defense hybrid, Monday Night Combat. Super Monday Night Combat has been in beta for a couple of months at this point, but do to a non-disclosure agreement, information on the game has been limited. However, the game recently entered the "invitational" stage and the NDA was subsequently lifted. Now information about SMNC can be freely distributed and discussed, which is good because: (a) The game is actually pretty fun, despite the usual beta oddities and, (b) there is a lot to talk about.
So, what's new?
In a nutshell? Basically everything. It's really easier to point out what hasn't changed. The aesthetics and characters are the same, although several new additions have been made to the cast. The game retains its signature sense of humor, and the core of the game still involves shooting things to push bot lanes past the opposing teams turrets to destroy a moneyball. The rest of the game has been subject varying levels of changes, ranging from, "small, but noticeable" to, "absolutely huge", so expect some noticeable differences when you start playing.
So what are the biggest changes?
Well, for starters the game has adopted the increasingly popular "freemium" payment model, meaning that although the game can be played at no upfront cost, your available pros roster will rotate periodically. To unlock pros permanently, you have to purchase them with either Combat Credits, which can be earned by simply playing the game, or Uber Points, which have to be purchased with real money. Combat Credits can be used to unlock endorsements, small permanent stat boosts that can freely equipped and moved from pro to pro, and products, special character abilities that work similarly to perks from the Call of Duty. Uber Points can be used purchase combat credit boosts, additional costumes and special taunts for the various pros. The switch in payment model also unfortunately means that, as of right now, Uber has no plans to release SMNC on the Xbox 360.
The changes on gameplay side of things equally significant. The team size has dropped from six to five. Base turrets require can no longer be built or repaired, and require bots to drop their shields before they can be damaged or destroyed. The overall lethality of the game has been drastically reduced, with ring outs being the only practical way to one shot kill a player. Health regeneration has been substantially reduced as well, and health bars now take far longer to regenerate even when being healed. A level up system has been introduced in game, meaning players can now gain an advantage with both levels and money. Maps can now be separated into two distinct levels, the bottom level, where the bot lanes and bases are located, and the top level, where you can neutral bot spawners and the annihilator. Overtime and juice have been totally overhauled, and matches are no longer decided by end of game "juice rushes".
I could on and list all the changes, but for the sake of brevity I'll cut it short.
That all sounds...different...
It is. Honestly the name Super Monday Night Combat is kind of a misnomer since the game is less Street Fighter 4 compared to Super Street Fighter 4, and more Street Fighter 4 compared to something like Marvel vs Capcom 3. The gameplay now is more inline with other DotA likes, with higher emphasis being placed on playing conservatively and moving as a team. That said however, the game definitely isn't a rehash of HoN, LoL or DotA. Much like its predecessor, there's really nothing else like it on the market, and it can be a hell of a lot of fun. If you liked MNC it's still definitely worth trying out Super, although there's no guaranteeing that you're going to like all the changes.
Well, I'll give it a try. How do I get in?https://uberent.com/User/LogOn?RedirectUrl=http://uberent.com/beta&titleId=1
Follow that link, create an Uber account and link it with your Steam profile. Iv'e heard varying wait times for the invitation, but most seem to get their invite after a day or two.
Edit: It seems that Uber sends out waves of invites after every major patch/content update, so if you signed up a few days ago, check your e-mail.
Videos:
Miscellaneous:Good advice for transitioning players (taken directly from the invitational e-mail):
Rules & Tips when playing SMNC
We'd like to welcome you to Super Monday Night Combat and the Closed Beta Forums. As you are about to find out on your own, "The Rules Have Changed" significantly. Because the transition from MNC to SMNC can be a bit rough, We thought it would be helpful to post a list of tips and suggestions to follow in game and on forum. Hopefully these tips will make your beta testing experience a bit more enjoyable for not only you, but the small group of other testers as well. Enjoy!
Money = Experience: This means any money earned from killing pros, bots, and picking up coins will become experience. Coin drops give significantly less experience than pro and bot kills, but do give a noticeable edge if you continuously collect them.
Avoiding death is top priority: Because money equals experience, every time you die to an opponent you are "feeding" them. Die enough to one player and you will find that he will have a significant level advantage on you two fold, due to the facts that you have been handing over kills and because you haven’t been leveling off bots. Having high earnings means nothing if you have fed the opponents.
Do Not Over Extend: With the extremely increased health. The low lethality creates a false sense of invincibility to many new players. It isn't worth running too far behind the enemy lines to finish a kill if you end up dying for it. You must learn that conserving your self is a huge priority. Since respawn times get longer as the match goes on, you put your team at a disadvantage every time you die.
Kill bots: NOT JUST THE ASSASSIN ANYMORE! In the beginning of the game, every person should be killing bots and playing conservatively to gain levels. Ignoring bots will quickly cause you to become under leveled, and you will have a significant disadvantage the rest of the game.
Tap bots: While it is vital to kill bots to progress towards enemy turrets, if you’re not in a position to kill a bot entirely, make sure to at least hit it with skills/weapons. “Tapping” a bot will give you the experience it would normally give out for the next 5 seconds following your damage, and it is an essential tactic if you want to try and gain an advantage over opponents. While you can tap Shadys, Fujis and Jackbots, the cash rewarded from killing a slim but only goes to the player who kills it.
The Juice has changed: Don't expect to go god mode with your juice anymore. Juice no longer will instant heal you and gives no armor bonus. Juice will give you a damage bonus, a speed boost, and massively increased health regeneration (as long as you aren’t attacked/burning). You can also use it to break out of any grapple, but it will use up nearly all of your juice.
Beware of the edge / Keep an eye on the ejectors: Every One Hit Kills (OHKO) death has been removed except for ring outs. It's important to stay away from the edge of the map since an enemy can easily catch you off guard and get a free easy kill simply by ringout. Pay attention to the ejectors. Ejectors kill many unaware players. It can be avoided by simply staying away while ejector is off CD.
Check the annihilator: Can't stress this one enough. The annihilator can be game changing and is available at the 5 minute mark. The cool down on the annihilator is five minutes. As a contributing member of your team, it's important to be defending the annihilator at least 30 seconds before the cool down is up.
Grapple / avoid grapples: Every class has one. Grappling is very important in this game. It can be used for many situations. Use it to hold down an escaping opponent. Use it to contain a juiced enemy. Use it to protect an escaping ally. Use it to cancel annihilator activation. Since this move is so effective against the enemy, you should avoid getting close enough to be grappled by your opponent.
Don’t be discouraged: Remember when you were brand new to MNC? You probably sucked... I know I did. There’s enough new mechanics to this game where being good at MNC won’t carry over to being good at SMNC. Many of us have been playing non stop for about a month and a half. Accept that they probably know a bit more than you, and you may get stomped a bit before you can compete. Just hang in there. I promise that this game is fun once you’ve learned how to play it.
Monitor your HUD: You need to check your HUD frequently to check the status of bot lanes, to watch the health of friendlies, and to make sure your moneyball is shielded. It is essential to stopping backdoor maneuvers.
Adjust for Team Composition: 2-3 assassins is no more effective than it was in MNC. Before locking in your pro, take a look at what everyone else wants to play. Typically the only pros necessary on the team are a healer, veteran, and second enforcer (heavy). It will only benefit you to learn to play multiple pros. Choosing pros that help create a diverse composition will only benefit your team.
The spawn room heals: Running into the spawn room will rapidly heal your pro. Many times, instead of risking death, it is better to run back to spawn and heal up. It's better to spend 15 seconds running to the spawn and back than dying and suffering a 30 second penalty. However, it should be noted that spending too much time running to the base will drain cash and experience gained, meaning repeated returns will leave you outleveled and outgunned.
Handy links:
Recent patch changes:
Update 14: 7/11/12
New Rules
Added Treasure Balls and Keys.
All Patriot heads set to "Classic" and removed from the store.
Mutual contacts can now see each other's status of in chat, queuing, or in a match.
Mutual contacts can now send private messages to each other.
Throw grapples now limit air control for a short time on the victim after they are thrown.
Bug Fixes
Fixed melee attacks not doing damage properly.
Fixed cart screen disabling when accepting an invite.
Fixed some instances of chat input going to the front end UI when not intended.
Fixed stats drop down so that you don't have to scroll to see the Wascot stats.
Fixed incorrect refreshing of contacts that can be invited to games.
Bundles
New Bundle: Summer Bundle
Flair
New Flair: All-Star My Friend Lars - Treasure Ball Only
New Flair: All-Star The Plumber - Treasure Ball Only
New Flair: All-Star Dali - Treasure Ball Only
New Flair: All-Star Captain Thompson - Treasure Ball Only
New Flair: All-Star Motorhead - Treasure Ball Only
Added flair for eyes.
New Flair: Knight Driver - Limited Time Summer Flair
New Flair: Gong Rescue - Limited Time Summer Flair
New Flair: Growing Years - Limited Time Summer Flair
New Flair: Perfect Wonder - Limited Time Summer Flair
New Flair: McCharles Of Power - Limited Time Summer Flair
New Flair: Solid Silver - Limited Time Summer Flair
New Flair: B-Unit - Limited Time Summer Flair
New Flair: Vice Bros - Limited Time Summer Flair
Added flair for waist.
New Flair: Duck Handles - Limited Time Summer Flair
Artemis
New Uniform Head: Artemis Chickey Head - Post Game Prize Only
Taunt: On Your Feet: Updated camera
Skewer: Fixed not properly getting penetrating shots when fully charged.
Outerang: Fixed getting 'hit flash' effects when passing through allies.
Fixed names for her damage types when viewed in the death screen.
Captain Spark
Megahurtz: Can now target Black Jacks, Jackbots, Bouncers, and Gremlins
Cheston
New Uniform Head: The Biscuit - Treasure Ball Only
Gunner
Rocket: Can now target Black Jacks, Jackbots, Bouncers, and Gremlins
Gunslinger
Knee Cap: Can now target Black Jacks, Jackbots, Bouncers, and Gremlins
Megabeth
New Uniform Head: The Biscuit - Treasure Ball Only
Rocket Ma'am: Fixed an instance where you could lose the weapon.
Tank
Jet Gun: Fixed not removing falloff on critical shots.
Veteran
New Uniform Head: The Biscuit - Treasure Ball Only
Wascot
Party Pooper: Can now target Black Jacks, Jackbots, Bouncers, and Gremlins
If anyone spots any problems with the OP or has suggestions to improve it, feel free to post or pm me and I'll try to fix it asap.
Posts
As the OP says, this game is very different from MNC. I know a lot of people said that MNC combat was kind of a shallow shooter with overly simplistic moba elements thrown in. SMNC is a much deeper game in comparison, though instead of ditching the dota-esque aspects, it instead expands on them and (slightly) reduces the shooter ones. This is a slow and more cerebral shooter, where teamwork plays an incredibly role part in winning. You have work harder for you kills, rarely killing people on the front line, but rather ganking them as they either run away to heal or if they dive too early. Feeding can really hurt your chances of winning, just like it does in dota, but the game has some catchup mechanics (such as rewarding more xp for killing people who are a higher lvl). Unlike many moba games, which can take upwards of an hour to play a match, one nice thing about SMNC is that matches only take anywhere from 15-25 mins to play. Really close matches can last a little longer, and stomps can even be shorter.
So who will like this game? People who play mostly hardcore shooters like CoD and BF will probably not enjoy the pace of this game. Even fans of classic MNC might not enjoy this game as much as they did the first. If you play a lot of moba games and want try to try something a little different, I think you will greatly enjoy this game. Also, if you like shooters, but want to try something a little slower and more cerebral, I would also recommend this game. Of course, you can all try it free so even if think you won't like it its still worth checking out (even just to say you "tried"). Personally, I'm in love with the game and have already played over 40 hours of the beta.
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
I think the main reason they didn't want to port it to xbox is because of MS's patch authentication service. For pc, they can release patches weekly, but on xbox they have to go through a lengthy authentication time (and pay money for it too).
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
Microsoft sometimes takes up to TWO MONTHS to certify a patch. They literally have no infrastructure for F2P, or any kind of free content delivery whatsoever. Hell, Valve had to charge for its patches to TF2 because of their new content.
Edit: Wow, beaten. They do talk about it in the quick look, though, so check that out.
They did release their L4D1/2 content patches this way (due to L4D being way more popular on the 360), but they still had to charge for what was free on the PC.
Oh, tweaking values I fully believe is allowed - that's all server side stuff.
SMNC is going to do a ton more than that, and actually require client updates.
I don't want to sound even remotely "LoL M$" or anything, especially as my investigation on my live account enters week 3, but the closed system that is Xbox LIVE is even more draconian than Apple these days, and represents a time before modern internet implementations, honestly. It was borne out of delivering early broadband content and people not being able to host dedicated servers, back when any kind of internet infrastructure was difficult. Nowadays? Not so much - VMs and faster, cheaper internet has made such things seem.. quaint. And to charge for content and access seems just criminal.
Also, iv'e updated the op with some stuff that was missing.
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
...if only I had gotten this before last night, I *may* not have purchased SWTOR.
-Louis C.K.
http://www.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=14428
Ah well, I'm sure it'll be popular because people like them some mobas, but 95% of the fun of MNC was the sheer speed of it. Was crazy frenetic, and by comparison this game has zero urgency whatsoever.
Also the random price disparity between pros isn't cool. 6 dollars for sniper/commando class pros? Taking the micro out of microtransaction.
To be fair, LoL champions are similar in price. Its kind of good that snipers and commandos are so expensive, since new players shouldn't be touching those classes anyway. A bad sniper or commando can drag a team down horribly.
As for the speed, this game is definately a moba first, shooter second. If you want kills, you don't just run around and shoot people, you have to ambush them when they have little health and finish them off.
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
I don't want kills, I've been playing support, I just want *anything* to happen. The whole game could be played at double speed and be way more fun. Ah well, maybe this'll flop and Uber will have to put out MNC2.
More likely to happen is that when the real thing comes out, they'll up the pace.
What do you mean "double speed'? Do you want the pros to move twice as fast? Shoot twice as fast? Die twice as fast? This kind of speed just doesn't work for this kind of game. When they started beta testing, all the damage values were at about the same as they were for MNC, and what happened is that people snowballed like crazy.
Also, support in SMNC is completely different. You should read some threads on the official forums about it. I used to play support, but the new playstyle doesn't fit me, so I've switched to enforcers.
My board games -->http://www.boardgamegeek.com/collection/user/cpugeek13
My BGG wishlist --> http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wishlist/cpugeek13
I play Combat Girl because she's basically Lux. I'm definitely on the side of those who are not happy with your stats taking priority over whether or not I shot the other guy in the head.
I played Assassin in MNC, and occasionally Assault, but I've been playing support in this game. I mean if you just doubled the speed of the game. All the characters (even the "fast" ones) feel like they're running with lead weights on their feet, and it takes ages to even kill the 2nd level slimbots. Everything is crazy slow and unsatisfying. And god help you if you're 1 level below a person, because they're going to hit so much harder than you are. I dunno, it just feels like they went too far toward moba. I guess trying to get some of that LoL money is the motivation for the design of this game, so meh. Maybe some of the other characters will be better, but the 6 I have unlocked now, none of them are compelling at all.
What don't you like about the new pros? I'm curious, since even people who really hate Super generally really like the new additions.
PSN: JPBrowncoat Xbox: BamSaidTheLaday Also on Steam! Streaming games!
I like the new pros, but the whole gameplay style is just not really a match. So I'm going to take a shot at the other pros before I decide to be done with the whole game, because maybe the character I enjoy will be in there somewhere. If I had never tried Assassin in MNC I probably never would have liked it as much as I did, so never know.
PSN: JPBrowncoat Xbox: BamSaidTheLaday Also on Steam! Streaming games!
I tried wascot and it was awful. his strengths are all team based and he requires punching through to fire off his debuff. Everyone is used to the counter so they just melee you to death instead of grabbing. Every game I saw he was 0-doubledigits-0(max of 2) with a few bot kills.