It’s good but not great. It needs more tweaking. As wumpus notes, some circles are better than others for those large battles. We had one over the weekend that centered around the industrial buildings not far from Dusty Depot and that turned into a really exciting pitched battle. I had one where I was one against 23 and I was able to sneak into Shifty Shafts and build myself into the caves in such a way that they had to hack their way in to get me. Most players were still outside running around shooting all the other structures so I picked off a couple guys that found me as they came in one by one. That was fun, even if it was futile. :)
One thing I like about it is it gives you time to experiment. I’m trying different things, using weapons I don’t always use, and building… lots of building, and pushing the pace, which can only help in Solo, Duo and Squad matches later.
Also…
I made a concerted effort to start in Tilted this weekend too. I wanted to get better at the combat side of the game. It definitely helped. One thing I would like to see them do though is make the pick a lot more dangerous. When you think about the weapons in the game they are all deadly at certain ranges and less deadly at others. They have a really nice handle on all the guns in the game and their specific uses IMO except maybe the standard submachine gun (not the silenced… that one is good). If you want to be consistent though, the pick should be a one to three hit kill, not TEN swings, because if I can get that close to you, then it should f-ing hurt. That would eliminate the feeling of helplessness that comes from being the guy who didn’t get to pick up a gun or open a chest. You’d know that you might have a chance instead of equating a lack of weapon pickup in the first five seconds to another trip into the queue.
I think it would also be more internally consistent with the rest of the weapons in the game. Think about how Quake 3 Arena’s Gauntlet was a near instantaneous melee death. That’s how it should work.