My gaming laptop is on the fritz so I am forced to use my desktop PC instead. It does have a 1GB 9800 GTX video card, but it is a few years older system. That being said I can only play on medium graphics without game stopping lag. That isn't really problem, as I don't mind medium graphics, they look alright. My problem is that during the level startup scenes, you get to see the pitgirls (which is a must lol) and the rest of the map layout and what not. However, while watching this, I always see a few people burst out of the respawn well before I even have a chance to see the back of my character. Granted sometimes if I am holding forward and spamming left and right I will make it to the ground outside the spawn. But basically what this means is that only the people with the best PC's will be able to start the map right when the timer drops. We are only talking about 5 to maybe 10 seconds here during the whole pan of the map, however that can be the difference of walking out of the spawn and running into a back stab waiting for you or at least bots at your door sometimes. My suggestion is perhaps to put up a SMALL delay of 5 or 10 seconds before people can exit the base or at least have a button to skip the startup footage. Granted I am sure some of that is the map loading up and all, but I really don't want to have to buy a better PC to try to compete when most of the game plays just fine. I know this isn't as big of an issue as situations like when I fall off the edge and yet am still able to grab someone as I am falling and punt them out of the ring (I kind of LOL when that happens tbo). But I am curious if other people that don't happen to have quadcore gaming rigs would find something like this handy.
I play on a 2010 MacBook pro and a 3 or 4 year old rig with an intel pentium D 2.2ghz and an 8600 GT and have no problems usually. If you pick your class quickly you don't spend time looking at the map overview.
I pick my class in the first two seconds it pops up and then wait like 15 seconds to see both the pit girls, some shots of the map, and lastly a second or two of the map in a wide shot. In the wide shot, I see people running out the base. About two to three seconds after that I can spawn and run out. Sometimes while I see people flying out of the base, I hold down forward and when it spawns me I am a small ways out of the base. It has nothing to do with how fast you pick the class is what I am saying.
This is a known issue we're looking in to possible solutions for. It's bigger than just preventing players from moving at the start of the match, though that may be the solution implemented at least in how it ends up appearing to users.
Glad to hear you are somewhat aware of it. I know if I was playing on my gaming laptop I have a hunch I wouldn't experience this as much. Granted we are only talking about a few seconds here, but as the players are getting better on a whole, matches seem to almost be won in the first wave. Obviously you can stop them and push them back, but it is unfortunate to start a match and already have to push the bots out of your base instead of pushing on the offensive. The only solution I could think of would be a base lock down (similar to TF2 where you can't get out of the base until the timer drops). This could obviously be a temporary fix until the issue is resolved, but it would make the game quite a bit more balanced right at the start of the match. And again I don't think we need a 30 second timer or anything that drastic, but would be nice to have about 3-6 seconds of no one leaving their respawn at the start of the match to make things even. It isn't anything that can't be recovered from as it stands now, but it is really a WTF moment when the match JUST starts, you spawn and you walk a foot out of your base to a headshot, back grapple, airstrike, or other insta death when you assume the other team started at the same time. As it stands, not everyone starts at the same time when the round begins.
