I'm done with this multiplayer. I hate it. As a disclaimer, I'm a bad player, and I never even played too much of Uncharted 2 (just a few matches around christmas of 2009, which were very enjoyable). I'm just basing this entire post off my personal experience with the game, which is likely to be less than what you guys have put into it, but it's what I got out of it and why I won't be playing anymore.
I don't know what it is about ND that renders them incapable of delivering the game people want. It made no sense with how they handled the entire MP from pre 1.04 UC2 to the release of the last UC3 beta, and it makes no sense with this one. All people seem to want anywhere I go is an updated version of the pre-1.04 uncharted, but ND just won't give it to them. No, they want to put in all these senseless bullshit.
Before I get into the actual gameplay, I want to point out that there has yet to be a single session where atleast one glitch has not occurred. Papercuts' videos on page 14 is what I mean, along with him going into a game and me being left in the lobby even though we're in the same party, and getting stuck inside the truck at the beginning of Airstrip. The games have this weird delay effect that means firefights result in trading kills far more often than they should. It can be so extreme that there was an instance where my buddy was in a firefight with this one guy, and my buddy lost, so I started shooting at him. He survived for a full second after my buddy died and started firing at me, but I managed to bring him down. But SOMEHOW, my buddy is the one who got the kill.
(edit: Oh, and in plunder, the idol landed on a ledge which meant no one could pick it up and we had to wait for it to reset, losing our hard work bringing the stupid thing to our treasure box)
And the spawns...buddy spawn in the last beta was completely broken. Sometimes it'd show that my buddy was in combat when he clearly wasn't, and sometimes it'd let me spawn on him as a fight was going on that very moment. This still happens to an extent, but it seems less often, so kudos on that, I guess. It's no longer as putrid as it used to be, what a victory. However, the spawning can still be horrid, where a person can spawn right in front of their enemy. My buddy complained more about this than I did, but I got my share of crappy spawns when I tried to play plunder, in which I was spawned in the middle of a gun fight like half the time.
The hit detection is so inconsistant that it's unplayable for me. Sometimes I would be no where near a grenade I'll get stunned by the explosion, and other times I'd see people who pretty much walk through it unharmed. The G-Mal is rendered pretty much unusable due to the combined effort of increased speed, decreased auto-aim, and laggy hit detection. Papercuts is the best player I personally know. He does consistently well on every game I've ever seen him try, and the best he can do is go 3-10 with the stupid thing. I can recall instances where I clearly have the crosshair of a T-bolt on a guy, but it somehow still ends up missing. Because of this, the most viable strategy is to run around with an autoweapon, blindfire, and melee, which pretty much everyone has noted in this thread. I don't understand why they felt the need to tamper with what people have generally accepted in the last beta. Honestly, that very core gameplay is something I still found fun in the last beta, even though it was bogged down with all kinds of other bullshit. The gunplay was atleast reliable then. But now, out of no where, for no reason at all, they change right before release? Why? I just don't get it. Why change what no one ever said was broken? And because of it, I can't even enjoy the basic gameplay anymore.
But even if they hadn't changed the gameplay from the last beta, all the other stuff still bothers me as well. The bullshit they put in ranges from the pointless to the infuriating. For instance, they cinematic openings to maps like Chateau, where the players see their characters doing the same pointless cutscene. It's not even a good cutscene. THe heros basically walk up against the wall and the villain throws that thing that sets the building on fire. And at the end, the heroes or villains stand triumphant, closing a truck's door/kicking the hero down. I realize I'm nitpicking, but is this really necessary? Does it add anything? Is there anyone who gives a shit seeing the heroes walk up. But, fine, it's like 5 seconds, wahtever, but after 1000 matches, I think you're going to get tired of seeing it every. fucking. time. you play chateau or another map that has this.
The opening sequences on the Plane and the Train are just as pointless. I've yet to see anyone saying they like it and would be sad to see them go. I only played airstrip a few times and don't really know how they rebalanced it from the last beta, though everyone says they have, and the train doesn't really seem broken to me. But if they wanted to add these exciting cinematic moments as parts of gameplay, they should have expanded on them and made them entire maps in and of themselves. After 2 minutes, they are over, with both villains and heroes being on other sides of the map, regardless of whether they were on the hero's train or inside the airplane that took off. I'd rather they always just started on the actual maps. It just feels so utterly pointless to me and I just keep wanting to get to the actual game.
But the actual game is full of random bullshit I dislike level up MP gaming in general, because long time players are always going to have a huge advantage over new players, and it's clear to see it happening in Uncharted, where the Kal-7 far outclasses the shitty AK47 you start with. I just don't see the point in giving another advantage to the people who already know the gameplay and maps way better than the noobie does, giving them even less of a chance. But Uncharted feels the need to go a step beyond even this, and only offer paid boosters to rank 20 players, which includes shit like a radar. As I said, I didn't play a lot of UC2, but isn't that one of the most bitched about things in the game? And now you want to give it to the best players(who will be able to afford them consistently) exclusively ?
Plus all these random abilities just totally mess up the flow of gameplay. Kickbacks are so goddamn annoying, all of them. You are in a gunfight with someone and out of no where, you get blown to pieces because the asshole just got a medal for being walking long enough. Or about about smoke, which is nothing less than robbing a player from a kill. And how about cursed, which turns everyone into skeletons. Seriously, how the fuck did this make it back into the game? ND, we didn't like cursed because it was a power play, we hated the stupid thing because it's very nature is counterintuitive to team work. And your solution is to give a player control over it?! Ugh. And there is NO DEFENSE against this. In call of duty, you see a person who has an RC car, you can shoot it down. If there a helicopter called in, you can take cover. There is no defense against kickbacks. How are you going to defend yourself against a rocket that literally comes out of no where? How are you going to prevent a guy from using smoke to get away if he wants to do it? How are you going to prevent a guy from turning into scarabs and killing you by essentially being next to you. There is no stopping this horeshit. The most you can do is pray the guy in question has horrible aim and run the fuck away, which will rarely work.
And, of course, these kickbacks? They're, of course, given mostly to players who do well. So, to sum up, experienced players are going to have superior map knowledge, greater gameplay experience, superior equipment, a extra booster, one of which is one of the most reviled features of UC2, AND you are giving them tons of random, extremely lethal abilities for doing well, which they will undoubtedly do with all the other advantages you've given them. The only POSSIBLE way this shit can be balanced if the game matches players up evenly. But the last match I had? Everyone on my team was ranks 1-15 except one guy who was 30, while the other team had ranks 20-35 except 1 guy who was level 7. And on top of ALL THAT, you want to transfer all the points and ranks to the retail game, instead of starting everyone out on a level playing field? Anyone who wasn't in this beta is going to get massacred! Not even your stupid level cap helps, because players will still be earning money. It's only been a few days and I've already seen a few level 35's. By the end of the month, the players will have so much cash that it will be spilling out of their pockets, and once the level cap is lifted, they will by able to guy EVERYTHING as soon as they reach the rank to unlock it, which shouldnt take long given all the new players who will be given up for the slaughter.
I'm sorry, but I just despise this game. It's a glitchy, inconsistent mess with players running around like headless chickens, blindfiring and meleeing or grenade dropping their way to victory filled to the brim with pointless and infuriating random as fuck bullshit that is eventually going to favor experienced player so heavily that it will be rendered inaccessible to new players within 2 months after it's release. And apparently, that's how ND wants it and fuck what everyone else things, right? ND is lucky that I'm one of the people who believes that a good campaign is worth $60, because otherwise, they'd have a lost sale here.
Edit: Thought modded weapons were in hardcore, as they were in the last beta. I only played 2 matches there and missed it. Apologies.
Edit 2: I can't believe I forgot. Power plays. I don't care about them for the most part. Most of the time, they don't make any difference. There was one instance where we had like 5 power plays in 1 match, and we still lost 30-50. But double damage has to go. Any firefight is essentially unwinnable while it's in play.