My early impressions of Ranked Terminal Attack and World Tour.

I'm gonna point out again that this is early impressions and I will absolutely be providing feedback later in this season. I hope the best for Embark and for The Finals. I want this game to succeed, so this is coming from a place of love for this game, so please be civil in the comments.

I see a lot of potential with World Tour in future seasons, but I don't think these changes have been made in the best way they could've been, so I hope the feedback that we give can be taken in good faith by the developers, if any of them read this here or in the discord.

Anyways;

I don't really like how they've changed the "ranked" progression for Cashout Tournaments and TA wasn't my jam before the update. All I would play (before it was removed) was unranked and ranked cashout tournaments. I plan on mainly playing world tour this season now because I don't need to play ranked cashout, I just like the tournament format.

I'm willing to sink some time into TA to be able to provide better feedback, but here are my very early first impressions.

1.) The maps are too big for the mode.

2.) The classes aren't balanced around 5 man teams (I mained Medium healbeam/defib from closed beta 1 to s2, not having the "primary" role as a medium available in the ranked mode is really odd to me. I don't like that)

3.) The gameplay is much slower paced compared to cashout, and I'm not really fond of that.

4.) It can take much longer to play TA now with the increased number of rounds.

My suggestion for improvements;

1.) Section off parts of the map to play the mode in. This could make multiple variants of each map on top of the variants we already have.

2.) Add another specialization to Medium that can be used in TA. Enable defib in the mode as a one-time use gadget.

3.) See fix no.1

4.) See fix no.1

What if the game grows because of these changes, and then next season they keep World Tour in the game, but give it a more traditional ranking system instead of the progression system they are working with now? I was really frustrated at first but I'm gonna be putting time into the game anyways and I have fun when I play, so I'm just gonna keep playing and supporting Embark and hope for the best for this game.

Embark could have added the ranking system for TA to World Tour and everyone would've been happy. Who is this change really for? If they want to make things more accessible for casuals, why are there only 3 casual modes this season? World tour is a "ranked lite" mode, but that's not gonna entice the "casual only" crowd to play it, is it? The biggest problem with cashout was the fact that it was apparently too confusing for the majority of players and that it took too long to play a full tournament, these changes dont fix that. Literally, all this did was make cashout enjoyers upset and give them less incentive to play. The "casual only" players aren't going to be playing ranked TA now are they? Why would they? They don't like ranked gameplay.

It seems like this sub has taken to extremes on either side of this discussion initially, either you love Embark and fully support this, or you're not a real fan and should leave. People who are upset about it really do have multiple fair points for being upset, it should be understandable. But I'm not impressed with review bombing and all of the back and forth rudeness in this sub.

I support Embark, and wish the best for them, and The Finals, but my initial impressions are that I don't like TA still, and I don't like the changes to cashout tournaments ranking system. I do enjoy the World Tour aspect, however, and I hope to see them build on it, and I hope new players hop on and the players that left return to the game. I just wholeheartedly disagree with how they went about this. One step forward and 3 big steps back, in my opinion.