I played the closed beta and still do (the closed servers are still there for now and even outnumber the open servers last time I checked). It wasn't too much fun until a few days after I started when I was finally able to attack everyone around me and kill them all. It kinda sucks now that they finally killed me back, but I just started over and all is well.
Not a very good game and it is laggy, but it's not that bad. All I had to do to play it was make a new email and sign up in Origin with the email. It really isn't nearly as bad as people make things out to be. Nothing had to be installed on my computer at all and the lag is probably more because of my slow computer and having four different browsers all with a different base in the game open at once on the slow computer. With only one open I never had many problems.
I never had to log back in. Whenever it freezes and has a blue "back" button pop up, just ignore it. It will go away and let you play after a few seconds. If you do click back then you may need to log in again. Sometimes it says update error (or something similar) or command error (or something similar). You only need to log back in if you click back and you only need to do this if instead of command error or update error, it says log out. This only happens to me when I leave it running while I don't play it for hours (such as leaving it on overnight).
It was a lot less laggy once I clicked "options" (lower right corner, it's in small, blue text next to "feedback") and disabled animations (does almost nothing visually, but it reduces the workload it puts the computer on tremendously), enabled webGL, and restarted the browser. I used Palemoon, Lunascape, Dragon, and Opera and I feel that Lunascape is best avoided for this, but the others did well. Dragon is based on Chromium and Palemoon is based on Firefox, so I assume that Chrome and Firefox should do similarly well.
Overall I'd say it's a decent casual game, but it's not like playing other C&C games. It isn't too great until your construction yard is over level 11 or 12 (of course, you might wait longer if you don't know what to expect like I do now that I've done it several times). Once I was tough enough to attack other players, it got a lot better. It seems simple, but if you really think about what you do and you do it fast enough, you find yourself moving up a lot faster than anyone who doesn't think much about it (most players) and if you stay ahead of them, well there is little they can do to you.
For the first few days you're most likely to just build up your base and attack Forgotten camps and outposts. If you are close enough to the center of the map (you don't choose how close you are to the center, it depends on how populated the server is with more people meaning further from it) then you can attack Forgotten bases after you advance far enough, but if you are too far then you may need to kill other player's bases and build on their territory in order to reach the Forgotten bases.
If you do this then you need to be even more careful with your defenses because people don't like it when you attack and destroy them. I haven't taken any bases out yet because I started out far away from them, but I have killed a dozen players or so and I got a little careless... My forward base that was reaching for the forgotten was destroyed after I took out to many people in the area and the survivors took revenge and now I have to start it over again.
It's a decent game for casual gamers, but I prefer getting into an FPS game with huge amounts of players in tiny maps for some death match or CTF action.
Also, keep in mind that this is a beta. Many things may be changed (I know that a lot of changes are planned by the developers).
[citation][nom]noblerabbit[/nom]I don't know where the gaming society went wrong, was it with the advent of facebook, or some other veered off direction in brain chemical alteration, but having played this tutorial, expecting, something along the lines of RED ALERT 1 , at the VERY LEAST? , instead, I CLICKED OK TO CONTINUE and CLICKED OK TO COLLECT REWARDS approximately 500 times, (including to re-login due to server timeout) , all this before I even had a 2nd harvester.Now, not only is this absolutely insulting to any veteran gamer, but if any young folks have to begin their gaming lives, based on this horrendous crap, then I really pity your youth.This has got to be the worst iteration of a Command & Conquer (sad to disgrace their name) and worst game in digital electronics history.Shame on you EA. SHAME ON YOU.[/citation]
You know that you can build the second harvester before you even get a single bonus reward from the first one, right? Like most people that complain about a game, you don't know it very well before you judge it. Is it great? Nope. Is it horrible? Nope. Like I said earlier, it seems like you don't need to think much about playing it, but if you do you find yourself having far fewer problems and more fun. What I did was build up my base and even my second base on the close beta, but by then I knew what to expect and how to play a lot better and I set up a new account on the open beta and I'm doing a lot better.
I had four harvesters before I collected a single bonus, so you did something wrong and/or I did something right. What you need to do is upgrade them quickly so the bonus don't get in your way until they are actually large enough to matter. The tutorials don't really show the best way to play, just the easiest to teach you what the things do. I suggest actually reading the short descriptions instead. Also, you understand what you need to do a lot better once you have already done it, so make another account/use another server and start again, especially if you find a new server that is barely populated yet. I got into the open right after it started so I start off as one of the top players and I'm good enough to stay at the top and it's a lot easier when you don't need to worry much about being steamrolled by higher, aggressive players.
As of right now it is probably the worst iteration, but only because it is a beta and a different type of game. I've played the betas for a lot of games and they are often not as good as the more finished product. Anyway, I'm not sure if I'd put it behind (or at least far behind) C&C RA3... That one was like having someone hold your hand throughout the whole game.