Hello, I'm Knickles

As a fairly experienced beta player I'd like to welcome you all 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, I 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 amount of other testers as well. Enjoy!

Rules & Tips when playing SMNC

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 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. 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 15 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.

Closed Beta Forum Rules & Tips

Read the forum!: Before posting a bug in the forum, make sure you check to see if it hasn’t been posted before. Example: Graphics are bugged at setting #5. Every single new player reports it. A simple forum search or skim of the latest posts is usually enough to avoid duplicate posts.

Stay away from the Balance Discussion Forum!: Seriously. Give yourself 2-3 weeks of playing this game before you make a complaint about balance. It’s not that the experienced players don’t care about your concerns, but chances are, you haven’t recognized a mechanic of the game or haven’t gotten used to the new play style of Super MNC. If you think something is OP, you probably haven’t learned how to counter it. If you think something is UP, you probably just don’t know how to use it properly. We understand you want to provide feedback, but please give yourself time to learn.

Use Evidence: when making a post about a complaint you have. It’s important to back it up with solid examples. When giving your evidence and reasons, be prepared to defend it. If you think something is OP, and people disagree, you will most likely get bombarded by counter arguments. If you find yourself not able to answer well back with good examples, chances are your argument isn’t very strong.

Stay open minded: I myself struggle with this one. When someone feels strongly about a certain topic, usually they tend to ignore logical reasoning from others. The point of the forum is to mix the ideas, not just give your one opinion and disregard everybody else.

Take insults lightly: If you’re a new player, you’re probably going to get a lot of “get good” or “stopping being a bad” responses. Usually someone who post these responses is trolling you and wants to see a negative reaction, or is just frustrated with you and is tired of dealing with you. Either way, brush it off and don’t respond unless you see a legitimate post where somebody put time and effort into conversing. It’s the internetz... nothing new here.