The challenge is dwindling

I can't say I'm not enjoying this game. I love it. Easily one of the best online multiplayer experiences I have ever had. However, in the last couple of days I have gone from "still getting used to the controls" to "MVP in every match".

I love the easy difficulty curve as far as gameplay goes, but it seems like once I got the macro strategies down, the game was easy as pie. It seems like for every 20 games I play, I only lose one or two. It's almost become monotonous.

I suppose I can attribute this to the fact that few other people have already played 25 hours of the game and there is still a lot to learn for them, but at the same I wonder when people will start playing more seriously and we see highly skilled players competing against one another.

Well one solution is to give it some time.
Otherwise find people who kill you or give you a "challenge" and ask them if they can host a server for "non beginners". That way you will get less new players joining and with any luck you will get an evenly matched team.

However your post does come of as slightly arrogant lol, I mean you must get killed some time right? What class do you play? What level are you now?

Also I read there are servers where the teams are stacked in the admins favour so that he and his friends can play together - if you want a challenge then you should look for these servers. A team of people sitting next to each other or communicating through VOIP is a good team.

Right right, that wasn't meant to be a braggy thing. Looking back it totally looks like it and I have to apologize for that.

And yeah I get killed all the time. It's mostly a matter of the actual objectives; pushing lanes, killing bots, downing turrets, destroying the moneyball. My playstyle generally goes about ensuring those objectives are fulfilled, rather than solely killing other pros. This leads to the games ending quickly and often with less satisfaction.

Also, I play Assassin about 50% of the time, Tank 25%, and sprinkle in the rest when I feel like it.

LOL not only the post but the name too........... :lol:

Apology accepted.

Since you play an assassin and the things do happen ingame like you say then you are doing your job, the char's job main job is pushing lanes and eliminating threats inbetween and obvious you have good items to take care of the money ball.
However if the games really do feel easy or unsatisfactory then go try classes that you are weak with, you may find that they give you both kill/objectives and satisfaction at the same time.

starting to sound like a shrink.....

you should finish as an MVP if your playing as and assassin or tank, 2 of the best bot killers and tank can handle pro's easily to, other pro killing classes don't always rack up more money....mainly because the players suck at those classes but i don't see why your complaining? its always fun to destroy people....

some people actually like a challenge.. a good close match is way more satisfying

I'll be honest, I kind of agree...I'm not quite as good as you yet, but I'm always a major force to be reckoned with and rack up 20+ kills regularly with assist numbers that are high as well...I normally play assault (actually I suck at every other class)

I think we just need to wait until everybody "gets" the game...like, an assassin charging at me should know she's going to die...and a tank should know they stand no chance if I'm not that close to them.

As far as winning the game, my team normally wins unless they don't know what they're doing...if I don't have anybody on my team to take down turrets effectively while I protect them from pros and spawn bots/get the annihilator regularly, then there's really nothing I can do to win more than that.

So yeah, long story short, when players start getting better, it'll be more of a challenge. In the meantime, the good players should just learn different classes I suppose...

It's a Beta. People tried it out as a demo, basically. Most are now waiting out the beta for when all the bugs and stuff are figured out. There will definetly be a lot more people to provide a challenge once it's released.

Wait out the beta?
If you wanted to get better at the game surely its best to play the beta and adapt with the patches as they come, be it good or bad for your class.
Sure people who don't have the time or not too serious about gaming may not play the beta and find things to do that are more festive throughout the holidays.
Playing the beta will give you the upper hand at how the game works, strengths and weaknesses of each class and just generally at an advantage.

Not everyone that plays video games want to be good at it. Some people just want to have fun and meet people, so they rather just wait for the bugs to be fixed and the game be more polished then actually play to get better.

Also the fact that there is no good players atm is because most people that play it are coming from the xbox. I have friends that play pretty high level competitive TF2 have it but don't like playing it due to the fact that the game is a direct port from the xbox and theres no options like disabling mouse accel and the fucked up sensitivity.

Well, all of the things you guys said make me feel better about it. I guess I'll give it a week or so and come back to it. I'm glad the forum community is active enough for this to be possible.

we need to fire up the competitive community and get organized matches instead of pubs

You can see this debate in just about any game that is recently released, even for games making their way onto other platforms after having been out for a while.

When Street Fighter 4 first came out on PC, I would go on 30-win streaks just by having played SF2 a bit back in the day. Nowadays I'm much better at the game, but get completely annihilated online due to the two-fold effect of people getting better over time, and only the core fans of the game sticking around after the initial release.

Especially for new strategy games you'll see people arguing that they have no depth because they can "win every time" with some basic strategy they came up with.

Hey Demigod, do you happen to be on the Hotshots team more often than not?

The easy solution is to find a game with a hacker in it, and try to maintain a positive kill:death ratio against them.

I think Uber needs to integrate Steam into the lobby. So we can click on their name and get their profile like on Xbox Live. Would be sweet.

That is mainly due to the ue3 engine in less on the fact its a "port" (They made and likely tested allot of the game on PC for the 360 release). UT3 has the same issues, luckily many the fixes work on any UE3 game.

http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=588887 <- improves but does not fix it completely its still not as nice as ut2004 or Quake live moment

in the HostileEnine.ini (Documents\My Games\UnrealEngine3\HostileGame\Config)
OneFrameThreadLag switch it to false Reduces the input delay but can make it worse in low framerates

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=586697 <- general tweaks and settings guides, many the things they cover are still relevant in MNC as they are in all UE3 games

Hope this gets some more of your TF2 buddies interested.

Not quite the same I guess, but if you load up your friends list and click add a friend, there is a link there to view people you recently played with. A temporary solution for now if you are wanting to check anyone out or friend them.

Err, I dunno about that. Though if what your getting at is the imbalances favoring the Hotshots, that isn't it.