Sorry for the short update. I have decided to try and incorperate Youtube as a medium for blogging to the world. I will be uploading a game play video to Youtube tomorrow as a review for Blacklight Retribution, and will also be uploading an accompanying review here for anything I didn't have time to fit into the video.
I appologise for the inconvience.
Welcome to the blog everyone. I am currently playing Diablo 3, and will be posting some tactics along with theory crafting over the next few weeks. I will also occasionally post content from other games, so it's not all Diablo 3 related!
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Friday, 9 March 2012
Day-One DLC, is it right?
Publishers today are starting to move their attention towards DLC as a means to bring in more revenue after the release of the game. I personally have no issue with this itself, I am more than happy to support the developers of games that I love and in the past have purchased a huge amount of DLC content. However it's the downsides to this DLC frenzy that is slowly starting to take over the industry. With the shift towards DLC as a source of revenue, developers are starting to cut support for custom content in games. I have heard many reasons for this from developers including the comment from EA about fans being unable to use Frostbite 2, which as someone who has toyed around with creating content I was deeply offended by. What is starting to irritate me more though is that fact that we are seeing games released on much shorter life cycles, which are actually lacking content because developers want to shift DLC later on down the line.
Console games especially suffer from this problem, while PC is starting to move towards free to play to avoid this problem. One of the reasons that people are complaining about is the fact that single player games are now increasing in price, and having less content resulting in shorter completion times. RPG's such as Skyrim and Mass Effect don't really suffer from this, but shooter games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield can easily be completed in just a few hours. If you have no intentions of playing the multiplayer, this works out at around £10+ per hour of game play. That's a story for another day, as I am here to talk about day one DLC.
Releasing content on the first day is something I don't agree with if it is for a fully comercialised game retailing at £40+ R.R.P. DLC packs are usually around £6.99-11.99 on the Xbox, a price which usually translates on to the PS3 and PC releases. There is no reason that this content shouldn't already be on the disc come release, but even worse than that is developers pulling content out of the game to release as day one DLC. This is something that we are starting to see a trend with, which developers usually use the fact that the DLC comes with the collectors edition as an excuse for this. I wouldn't mind but it usually costs more to get the standard game and DLC than it would for the collectors editions which usually sell out fairly quickly. Battlefield 3 actually did this fine for me, as the content wasn't ready on release so they allowed you to download it for free in the future if you had the collectors edition.
Mass Effect 3 has however had its disc data mined, which has resulted in people finding half of the day one DLC already on the disc. This is yet another kick in the customers teeth from EA, who are very rapidly starting to show the industry that they actually don't care at all and are more interested in the short term than long term financial gains. It's the equivilant of buying a directors cut edition of a DVD, only to get home and find out that while the content is on the disc you need to pay extra to view it. I hope this is a practice that we see disappear very soon, but I sadly doubt that is the case.
With the rise of free to play games, and the rapid increase of mobile gaming on smart phones and tablets, big companies like EA will start to lose out a huge chunk of the market. It's not like the graphical quality or drive space of these devices is behind, the rumored iPad 3 specs is looking likely to be more powerful than the PS3. Big companies like EA and Activision could lose the huge share of the market they currently monopolise. When you look at the PC market, they don't seem to have even close to as big an impact at the minute and companies such as Valve and Riot are leading the way. The only foothold they have is Battlefield 3, which disappointed a lot of PC gamers who felt like they had been ignored for the console players, and Starcraft 2 which is currently a phenomon thanks to e-sport scene exploding has seen huge success.
Sadly it looks like day one DLC is here to stay. It's becoming more common and I can only see it being an expected feature in the future. With Microsoft and Sony trying to lock down their consoles even more and not allowing free to play becoming a feature, it seems to be a bleak future for console gamers. The casual players most likely won't stand for stuff like this and have no brand loyalties, they just play games because they are fun. The only people getting hurt here are the long term fans that put EA and Activision on the map, something neither company seems overly bothered about.
Free Weekend First Impressions - Blacklight Retribution
Free Weekend
Free weekend is a new section I am going to be doing every weekend. Every week I will be finding a new release, or a game still in beta, that is free to play and be playing it over the weekend. I will be posting on the Friday my first impressions, and then on Sunday writing up a larger review. Throughout the following week, hopefully starting on Monday, I will be uploading videos onto Youtube of the game I have been playing. I will also be hoping to stream some games and play with the community as well. For the first weekend I will be playing Blacklight Retribution.
Blacklight Retribution
The game is published by Perfect World, who aren't well known for shooter games. However don't let this put you off. Blacklight Retribution is actually a followup to Blacklight Tango Down which was originally an Xbox Live Arcade game. The game itself is built upon Unreal Engine 3 and because of this has a solid foundation for it to be built upon.
While the game is still currently in Beta, it has now moved on to Open Beta. Most free to play games enter open beta before release, but during this open beta everything is usually usable including the cash shops. The cash shop in BLR is actually quite a surprise. Perfect World have been well known for having quite a few "Pay to win" games, where while they are free to play you can't actually unlock most of the more powerful items without spending money. Usually quite a large sum of money. BLR however doesn't follow this model, and everything can be purchased for either the real money or in game currency.
When you purchase an item in game you are given the choice of purchasing the item for 1 day, 7 days or permanently. The prices themselves are actually fairly reasonable for the majority of things. Unlocking a weapon permanently will cost you either 5500 GP (In game currency), which I have earned before level 8 in a night of playing, or 500 Zen which is worth €4.50. These guns can actually be hugely customized, ranging from damage to range and also recoil to weapon spread. There are also your typical unlocks such as scopes and increased magazine sizes. There are a few items that are only purchased by real money, but from all the ones I have seen these are only cosmetic items. The only problem I have had so far is that you can unlock an additional load out at level 5, but the game doesn't mention this anywhere and the load out is available to purchase for 1000 Zen (€9.00).
In terms of game play, the game is quite solid. I haven't seen many bugs other than an occasional problem with hit registration which I have read is currently being fixed. The connection seems to be fairly solid, and the maps well constructed. Blacklight Retribution currently 6 maps in the game and 4 game types, 5 if you count Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch as separate game types. The game features CTF and Domination pretty much how you would expect them to be but it also features King of the Hill with a bit of a twist. Teams will fight over the hill as you would expect, but each hill has a small capture time. Upon reaching the capture time your team will gain a point and the hill will move. It's more dynamic than normal king and leads to some great comebacks, where games might usually feel lost. Blacklights only downside is that servers only play one game type at the minute and don't rotate.
I will be playing the game during the course of the weekend, and will be uploading a more in depth review on Sunday. If you want to join me in game add me, my username is Nood1e. The L is a number one.
Official Blacklight Retribution website
Free weekend is a new section I am going to be doing every weekend. Every week I will be finding a new release, or a game still in beta, that is free to play and be playing it over the weekend. I will be posting on the Friday my first impressions, and then on Sunday writing up a larger review. Throughout the following week, hopefully starting on Monday, I will be uploading videos onto Youtube of the game I have been playing. I will also be hoping to stream some games and play with the community as well. For the first weekend I will be playing Blacklight Retribution.
Blacklight Retribution
While the game is still currently in Beta, it has now moved on to Open Beta. Most free to play games enter open beta before release, but during this open beta everything is usually usable including the cash shops. The cash shop in BLR is actually quite a surprise. Perfect World have been well known for having quite a few "Pay to win" games, where while they are free to play you can't actually unlock most of the more powerful items without spending money. Usually quite a large sum of money. BLR however doesn't follow this model, and everything can be purchased for either the real money or in game currency.
When you purchase an item in game you are given the choice of purchasing the item for 1 day, 7 days or permanently. The prices themselves are actually fairly reasonable for the majority of things. Unlocking a weapon permanently will cost you either 5500 GP (In game currency), which I have earned before level 8 in a night of playing, or 500 Zen which is worth €4.50. These guns can actually be hugely customized, ranging from damage to range and also recoil to weapon spread. There are also your typical unlocks such as scopes and increased magazine sizes. There are a few items that are only purchased by real money, but from all the ones I have seen these are only cosmetic items. The only problem I have had so far is that you can unlock an additional load out at level 5, but the game doesn't mention this anywhere and the load out is available to purchase for 1000 Zen (€9.00).
In terms of game play, the game is quite solid. I haven't seen many bugs other than an occasional problem with hit registration which I have read is currently being fixed. The connection seems to be fairly solid, and the maps well constructed. Blacklight Retribution currently 6 maps in the game and 4 game types, 5 if you count Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch as separate game types. The game features CTF and Domination pretty much how you would expect them to be but it also features King of the Hill with a bit of a twist. Teams will fight over the hill as you would expect, but each hill has a small capture time. Upon reaching the capture time your team will gain a point and the hill will move. It's more dynamic than normal king and leads to some great comebacks, where games might usually feel lost. Blacklights only downside is that servers only play one game type at the minute and don't rotate.
I will be playing the game during the course of the weekend, and will be uploading a more in depth review on Sunday. If you want to join me in game add me, my username is Nood1e. The L is a number one.
Official Blacklight Retribution website
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Battlefield 3 expansions revealed
When Battlefield 3 came out, one of the biggest complaints that I saw was about the maps. People complained that they were too enclosed, and there just wasn't enough space for proper vehicular combat. The levels Metro and Seine Crossing were commonly complained about due to their urban setting, something people felt belonged more in Call of Duty. I personally agreed with such comments at the time, and still do. What Battlefield has always had is its own niche of combining infantry and vehicular combat almost flawlessly.
In todays current gaming selection, modern combat is taking over. Nearly every game is either modern combat, or bases itself very closely to the Call of Duty formula. What Battlefield 3 did was push itself away from this by giving people the option of vast environments, which they could happily destroy with tanks, jets and other forms of armored weaponry. With the release of BF3CQ they are planning on moving more towards that CoD formula, which is something they really don't need to do. On the BF3CQ preview page they mention the word competitive. This is something that most likely won't exist in Battlefield.
Battlefield has struggled to make a huge impact in the past at events, and I believe that it will continue to struggle. The problem is that while Battlefield 3 is a great game, it requires far to many players to actually form a team, so organisations aren't willing to sponsor teams as often. By reducing it to Close Quarters they are now allowing for making teams smaller (Something we could have already done anyway with Squad Deathmatch and Rush), which makes it easier for teams to form and organisations to send teams to events. However by doing this they are now losing the niche and entering the 4v4 or 5v5 area of competitive FPS, a scene dominated by Counter Strike and Call of Duty 4 on the PC and Halo and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 on the Xbox, and personally I don't think that it can compete.
Battlefield 3 was never made with competition in mind, it was made for the huge maps and 32-64 player games. Trying to bring that formula down to 8-10 player servers is only going to ruin the experience. They would be best leaving Battlefield as it is, and actually do something with Medal of Honor if competition is where they want to go. The last iteration of Medal of Honor was forgotten in just a few weeks, and failed to make a big impact on the gaming world at all. Battlefield Expansions are gaining far more discussion than Medal of Honor is, which is something EA need to change if they want to continue spending money on the series. Now personally I would love to see them go to Medal of Honor with competition in mind, and take it back to WW2 and it's Allied Assault roots on the PC. Even today MoH:AA is still one of the finest PC games made, and still has quite a healthy community.
EA has the money, and certainly the talent, within their company if they wish to make a truly incredible competitive game. Turning Battlefield into EAs flagship competitive game, and moving it towards CQC will only upset the hardcore Battlefield players and be yet another question to the long list of "Why does MoH actually exist?".
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
SMNCs staying power, and a brief update on Halo 4
Recently I was accepted on to the beta test of Super Monday Night Combat. So far the game has been enjoyable, and is certainly a very good attempt at bringing the DotA genre to a shooter perspective. The game has multiple maps, which is something the DotA genre never managed, which are all well made and each one has it's own completely different feel to it. The Pros, this games name for champions/heroes, are also fun to play with most been unique even though a couple are a little too similar. In this respect I can't praise the game enough, so what makes me think that it might not live around to tell the tale?
The casual market is certainly the biggest market right now, and while yes I strive for competitive aspects in each and every game, if the casual market is over looked then the game will rapidly decline. This is bound to be the case with SMNC. Being a DotA style game, it has the learning curve of running head first in to a brick wall. League of Legends countered this with a fantastic tutorial mode, and good in depth write ups of what champions did. They have now also added videos to all the characters so you can easily identify what is what.
SMNC doesn't do any of this. The practice mode it has is actually a custom game mode, with no practice to be found. Also finding information on characters is difficult as the option is a tiny little button not clearly marked. While they have moved it to a better location instead of being down in the bottom right hand corner on it's own, it still isn't clear what it does. This is all in the store page however, come match time when you choose a character I still haven't found a single way that tell you what each champion does. So you have no idea what you are going to be playing as, nor fighting against, if you didn't find it in the store before. With this being a free to play game I doubt peoples first reaction will be to jump in the store. The UI is also horribly clustered, and it force you in to a global chat room which takes up a huge chunk of the home page, something everyone I have played with has complained about. The other major issue I have with this game is the matchmaking system.
Matchmaking is something that is now rapidly growing in the PC market, and I no longer mind this as they are running on dedicated servers and it is used to make sure you get a good match. Sadly this isn't the case with SMNC. The matchmaking just slaps ten people in a game together. Which means that if a premade is going somewhere, as a single player you have a chance to end up fighting against it. I have been in many matches where the premade just destroys me, and I have no way of fighting back. The worst problem about this, is that you can feed champions like in any DotA style game. As you level up you can increase your skills and damage, as well as gaining a passive health and damage increase. Now when you hit level 8 you have already seen you damage increase, and you are also now doing 50% additional damage if you choose to spec into it from the offensive skill. 50% is far to big a number, as if you get fed early on it's not uncommon to be level 8 while the opponent is around level 4-5. As a premade you will most likely have a team of level 8s fighting a team of level 5s, which means the non-premade team has even less of a chance.
The game is a really solid game, with a few balance tweaks needed. This wasn't meant to be a game review saying that SMNC is a poor game, far from it in fact as I love playing it at the minute. However I am used to playing in competitive rule sets and against higher skilled opponents. As a casual player I can only see this game been hell right now until they tweak things and massively improve the matchmaking (Which is something they have actually attempted in Patch 27). The game will be free to play so I recommend it to everyone upon release as I'm hoping these issues will be sorted out by then.
Halo 4
Just a brief update on Halo 4 folks. Frank O'Connor has come out and told us that "I’ve responded to it a couple of times. There aren’t ‘perks’ in the game as being described here. And classic Halo is still there."
This is good news as it means that CoD style perks won't be used. I didn't think this would be the case as such, and don't think I mentioned as such yesterday. He has also said that the engine isn't the same used for Anniversary, and more news will be out on the composer soon. 343i also asked for some questions which they were planning on answering in an update. Once that update is out I will dissect the information for you all.
The source for the Frank O'Connor quote is found here.
The casual market is certainly the biggest market right now, and while yes I strive for competitive aspects in each and every game, if the casual market is over looked then the game will rapidly decline. This is bound to be the case with SMNC. Being a DotA style game, it has the learning curve of running head first in to a brick wall. League of Legends countered this with a fantastic tutorial mode, and good in depth write ups of what champions did. They have now also added videos to all the characters so you can easily identify what is what.
SMNC doesn't do any of this. The practice mode it has is actually a custom game mode, with no practice to be found. Also finding information on characters is difficult as the option is a tiny little button not clearly marked. While they have moved it to a better location instead of being down in the bottom right hand corner on it's own, it still isn't clear what it does. This is all in the store page however, come match time when you choose a character I still haven't found a single way that tell you what each champion does. So you have no idea what you are going to be playing as, nor fighting against, if you didn't find it in the store before. With this being a free to play game I doubt peoples first reaction will be to jump in the store. The UI is also horribly clustered, and it force you in to a global chat room which takes up a huge chunk of the home page, something everyone I have played with has complained about. The other major issue I have with this game is the matchmaking system.
Matchmaking is something that is now rapidly growing in the PC market, and I no longer mind this as they are running on dedicated servers and it is used to make sure you get a good match. Sadly this isn't the case with SMNC. The matchmaking just slaps ten people in a game together. Which means that if a premade is going somewhere, as a single player you have a chance to end up fighting against it. I have been in many matches where the premade just destroys me, and I have no way of fighting back. The worst problem about this, is that you can feed champions like in any DotA style game. As you level up you can increase your skills and damage, as well as gaining a passive health and damage increase. Now when you hit level 8 you have already seen you damage increase, and you are also now doing 50% additional damage if you choose to spec into it from the offensive skill. 50% is far to big a number, as if you get fed early on it's not uncommon to be level 8 while the opponent is around level 4-5. As a premade you will most likely have a team of level 8s fighting a team of level 5s, which means the non-premade team has even less of a chance.
The game is a really solid game, with a few balance tweaks needed. This wasn't meant to be a game review saying that SMNC is a poor game, far from it in fact as I love playing it at the minute. However I am used to playing in competitive rule sets and against higher skilled opponents. As a casual player I can only see this game been hell right now until they tweak things and massively improve the matchmaking (Which is something they have actually attempted in Patch 27). The game will be free to play so I recommend it to everyone upon release as I'm hoping these issues will be sorted out by then.
Halo 4
Just a brief update on Halo 4 folks. Frank O'Connor has come out and told us that "I’ve responded to it a couple of times. There aren’t ‘perks’ in the game as being described here. And classic Halo is still there."
This is good news as it means that CoD style perks won't be used. I didn't think this would be the case as such, and don't think I mentioned as such yesterday. He has also said that the engine isn't the same used for Anniversary, and more news will be out on the composer soon. 343i also asked for some questions which they were planning on answering in an update. Once that update is out I will dissect the information for you all.
The source for the Frank O'Connor quote is found here.
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Halo 4 details released. How does it fair up for competitive play?
The first thing I need to mention here, is this is my opinion based on the information released so far. The information comes from the following sources;
Halo 4 First Look Video
11 Things we've learned about Halo 4
In the video we can see at a few occasions that sprint will be back in the game. However there is no visible sign of a sprint bar, so this may just be default now as opposed to being an armor ability. This doesn't instantly make the game un-competitive as quite a few games are using sprint features today. However it did have some downsides on Halo Reach due to the long kill times. It meant that escaping a bad situation was far to easy, so players weren't punished for making bad decisions. We can also see the Battle Rifle has returned, while it's difficult to tell completely it looks like the BR Spread is coming back. When we have the inconsistency of the Battle Rifle combined with sprint, the kill times on Halo 4 could be far too long and player's could easily escape a bad decision they have made. When you get to the higher level of play, players are used to doing everything pretty much step by step perfection. So then it becomes a case of the better team is the one who can punish mistakes the most. When mistakes are hard to punish this removes a lot of excitement from the crowd when they yet again fail to see a team make that Extermination all because the other team just ran away. Now don't get me wrong running away is a legitimate tactic, but it has it's limits.
If we take a look at the 11 things we have learned page, there are a lot of things that don't bother me so much. Things like a new bad guy for the single player, the Nazi Zombies designer now working with 343i and also Mechs. These things shouldn't in anyway affect the multiplayer so they should be of no worries for us. There are a few things that need to be changed, however I don't see it happening. The game running at 30 FPS yet again, but having better graphics than Halo Reach. Reach already had a fair amount of screen lag on some maps, especially forge maps, so increasing the graphics is just going to slow the game down even more. Large "feel good" Text is something that I'm unsure of. I have no problem it making the player feel like they have done something good, providing that it doesn't end up like Call of Duty where your screen is flooded with numbers and icons every time you turn the corner.
The ability to customize load-outs and also improve your character in more ways that cosmetic is something that I am on the fence about. I can see it leading to interesting game play choices if they manage to balance the weapons out. Having a weaker but more mobile player who uses range weapons? Sounds fun. Having a slower but more tanky player who enjoys shotgunning or assault rifling things up close? Again sounds fun. These ideas can also make the game play a lot different, something we know Halo is in dire need of as it's starting to get a little stale. However balance in previous games has been nothing short of awful. There are so many weapons that just have completely no use what so ever. Interesting guns such as the Focus Rifle have been made redundant because it has a cool down of about a second before you can fire it again. Had they lowered it's range and removed this cool down it could have been an amazing tool. Running round destroying shields while your team mates clean up with precision weapons. Having a tool like this on the previously mentioned tanky guy while your squishy ranged team mates pick-up the kills from range sounds like a huge twist in console FPS. This would be stepping the system more towards the style of TF2, which would certainly be the way to go as opposed to CoD. So as I mentioned before, until we see more information I am on the edge. Balance would be a huge factor for this to work, and it's Halos rapid decline in terms of a balanced sandbox that has me worried. 343i are now at the helm though, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and I look forward to seeing what they can come up with.
The final two things I want to briefly touch on are having on screen icons for weapon placements and weapons respawning on random timers. Having icons on screen should act like Tutorial Tooltips for newer players. We should be able to turn them off if we wish. No player should have any reason to complain about this, as after a few games everyone knows where weapons spawn anyway. The only thing could be when a player drops a weapon you can see it, but again in more competitive games people communicate this information anyway. However weapons respawning on random timers is bad for everyone. All it will do is promote camping, as players won't want to move from the area of the power-ups / power weapons. Halo already lacks reasons to move around the map as it is, lets not give them more reasons to sit around and wait. This won't help new player's in anyway sadly, as the better players will still be able to out shoot them anyway. Also this will mess up competitive games as it will start to promote a random element. The best way to stop better players stomping on newer players is to actually great a decent matchmaking system. The one used in Reach was awful and put a lot of players off as it matched anyone with everyone.
To conclude Halo 4 has quite a few issues with it right now which can totally affect competitive play. However with a few tweaks and some solid work on balancing the sandbox, Halo 4 has some serious potential. As a Halo fan would I be worried right now? No not at all. I wouldn't, however, be full of confidence either. If 343i decide to step even closer to Call of Duty then I can see Halo 4 being a mismatch of games that feels nothing like Halo or Call of Duty and just turns gamers away.
Halo 4 First Look Video
11 Things we've learned about Halo 4
In the video we can see at a few occasions that sprint will be back in the game. However there is no visible sign of a sprint bar, so this may just be default now as opposed to being an armor ability. This doesn't instantly make the game un-competitive as quite a few games are using sprint features today. However it did have some downsides on Halo Reach due to the long kill times. It meant that escaping a bad situation was far to easy, so players weren't punished for making bad decisions. We can also see the Battle Rifle has returned, while it's difficult to tell completely it looks like the BR Spread is coming back. When we have the inconsistency of the Battle Rifle combined with sprint, the kill times on Halo 4 could be far too long and player's could easily escape a bad decision they have made. When you get to the higher level of play, players are used to doing everything pretty much step by step perfection. So then it becomes a case of the better team is the one who can punish mistakes the most. When mistakes are hard to punish this removes a lot of excitement from the crowd when they yet again fail to see a team make that Extermination all because the other team just ran away. Now don't get me wrong running away is a legitimate tactic, but it has it's limits.
If we take a look at the 11 things we have learned page, there are a lot of things that don't bother me so much. Things like a new bad guy for the single player, the Nazi Zombies designer now working with 343i and also Mechs. These things shouldn't in anyway affect the multiplayer so they should be of no worries for us. There are a few things that need to be changed, however I don't see it happening. The game running at 30 FPS yet again, but having better graphics than Halo Reach. Reach already had a fair amount of screen lag on some maps, especially forge maps, so increasing the graphics is just going to slow the game down even more. Large "feel good" Text is something that I'm unsure of. I have no problem it making the player feel like they have done something good, providing that it doesn't end up like Call of Duty where your screen is flooded with numbers and icons every time you turn the corner.
The ability to customize load-outs and also improve your character in more ways that cosmetic is something that I am on the fence about. I can see it leading to interesting game play choices if they manage to balance the weapons out. Having a weaker but more mobile player who uses range weapons? Sounds fun. Having a slower but more tanky player who enjoys shotgunning or assault rifling things up close? Again sounds fun. These ideas can also make the game play a lot different, something we know Halo is in dire need of as it's starting to get a little stale. However balance in previous games has been nothing short of awful. There are so many weapons that just have completely no use what so ever. Interesting guns such as the Focus Rifle have been made redundant because it has a cool down of about a second before you can fire it again. Had they lowered it's range and removed this cool down it could have been an amazing tool. Running round destroying shields while your team mates clean up with precision weapons. Having a tool like this on the previously mentioned tanky guy while your squishy ranged team mates pick-up the kills from range sounds like a huge twist in console FPS. This would be stepping the system more towards the style of TF2, which would certainly be the way to go as opposed to CoD. So as I mentioned before, until we see more information I am on the edge. Balance would be a huge factor for this to work, and it's Halos rapid decline in terms of a balanced sandbox that has me worried. 343i are now at the helm though, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and I look forward to seeing what they can come up with.
The final two things I want to briefly touch on are having on screen icons for weapon placements and weapons respawning on random timers. Having icons on screen should act like Tutorial Tooltips for newer players. We should be able to turn them off if we wish. No player should have any reason to complain about this, as after a few games everyone knows where weapons spawn anyway. The only thing could be when a player drops a weapon you can see it, but again in more competitive games people communicate this information anyway. However weapons respawning on random timers is bad for everyone. All it will do is promote camping, as players won't want to move from the area of the power-ups / power weapons. Halo already lacks reasons to move around the map as it is, lets not give them more reasons to sit around and wait. This won't help new player's in anyway sadly, as the better players will still be able to out shoot them anyway. Also this will mess up competitive games as it will start to promote a random element. The best way to stop better players stomping on newer players is to actually great a decent matchmaking system. The one used in Reach was awful and put a lot of players off as it matched anyone with everyone.
To conclude Halo 4 has quite a few issues with it right now which can totally affect competitive play. However with a few tweaks and some solid work on balancing the sandbox, Halo 4 has some serious potential. As a Halo fan would I be worried right now? No not at all. I wouldn't, however, be full of confidence either. If 343i decide to step even closer to Call of Duty then I can see Halo 4 being a mismatch of games that feels nothing like Halo or Call of Duty and just turns gamers away.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Indepth Nexuiz weapon information.
Illfonic have released the damage and fire rates of all the weapon so far. They have also explained what they are and aren't able to change server side. This is a good piece of information for player's and we can now help point them in the right direction as to where something needs nerfing or buffing.
Official Post
As well as this FellipeMariano has put together a quick guide on each weapon. While most players will have caught up on a lot of what is mentioned, if you are a newer player I would certainly recommend taking a look at this guide as it could help you out.
FellipeMarianos weapon guide
Over the next few weeks I will be making a few guides for SMNC and Nexuiz. I can't do much Nexuiz content right now due to a problem with my Xbox however I will help keep people up to date on the scene as it progresses. As soon as the PC version is released I will be making quite a few weapon and map guides for the game.
Official Post
As well as this FellipeMariano has put together a quick guide on each weapon. While most players will have caught up on a lot of what is mentioned, if you are a newer player I would certainly recommend taking a look at this guide as it could help you out.
FellipeMarianos weapon guide
Over the next few weeks I will be making a few guides for SMNC and Nexuiz. I can't do much Nexuiz content right now due to a problem with my Xbox however I will help keep people up to date on the scene as it progresses. As soon as the PC version is released I will be making quite a few weapon and map guides for the game.
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