If nothing else, please get it to a smooth 30fps....

You should download the beta and try it, come Jan 4th.  The framerate was pretty smooth in the previous betas.

I'll never know.

I happened to nab a key for the last few weeks of the last beta phase.

The frame rate was borderline between noticable and chugging in my opinion and the responsiveness of the controls felt sluggish.

Yea, it's obviously not the best out there, but it's not a bad looking game by any stretch. Like I and others have said, I'd rather them work on stuff like balancing and bug fixing than trying to make the game look like Modern Warfare 2, Killzone 2, or Uncharted 2.

Wow.  Its like we were playing different games.  I find the MP controls/play in many console shooters to be... well.. kinda bad.  I thought the MAG beta was pretty decent.  Maybe I'm confusing control lag with network lag in other games, though.

I think aiming could be tightened up a bit to strike a balance with the acceleration (and perhaps the deadzone?).

I could get used to it kind of like how I did with Killzone 2, but I think it needs to strike a better balance like how Killzone 2 did with the high precision update to the aiming.

At the same time though, I think that some of it was from the frame rate (as noticed by going from near a wall where it runs smoother to the open where it starts chugging a bit).

Ehh.

I bet that it will look slightly nicer, but nothing major.

The only times I ever noticed any remarkable framerate issues, there were a truckload of explosions going off, and I was either dying, or running for cover at top speed. =)

On a couple of the really huge maps, in the endgame, when I would spawn -- there were zillions of friendlies aroundand then the framerate would dip a little too... but it never got in the way of the actual action for me.  The mass spawning was cool.  Really helped squads work together, IMO, and I wouldn't trade it for a few more frames when there's no one to shoot at anyway.

Yes, if not I will be utterly disappointed.