There was a news article on G4TV.com recently calling for the immediate monetization of the Call of Duty multiplayer game mode. They cite "a betrayal of shareholder trust" as the main cause of this call to action (I won't make that pun. No!) On a purely business level, which is really how Bobby Kotick and the analyst in question are looking at the situation, this is a no-brainer. Do it, make more millions (as if Activision Blizzard needed more money), and work on the next way to milk your fanbase. It is good sense to monetize something with as large and fanatical a userbase as Call of Duty, in any of its iterations. What Kotick and our analyst, one Michael Pachter, fail to understand is what that fanbase really is. They are, by and large, ages 12-21 (sometimes younger and older, but that's the average). The lion's share of this population not only relies on their parents for their systems and games, but also the money for absolutely everything else in their lives. With games now reaching what I think is the line where they increase in price again, to sixty five or even seventy dollars, is it wise to charge people to play a game when they can't even pay for their own lunch? I don't particularly think it is.
Now I'll grant you that the parenting in the Call of Duty community is less than stellar. *Soapbox time* The game is rated M, for users seventeen years of age and up. You can't walk in and show a brand new, just out of driver's school license and expect to walk out with Black Ops, or Reach, or any game with rating higher than T. Yet still the parents do it for their kids and let them interact with adults who have every right to be playing the game and saying what they wish how they wish. The children then begin to say these words and use the vernacular, not knowing its full meaning, and end up being lesser human beings because they think saying "Fuck" seventeen times makes them macho, and putting a swastika as their emblem is funny, when to millions upon millions of people it is a sign of the worst memories mankind can muster (We haven't forgotten the Holocaust, kiddies. Parts of Europe are still trying to come to grips with it, more than sixty years later).
*exhale* That being said, most of these kids and young adults, myself included, won't have the funds to pay whatever Kotick shoves at us on a consistent basis. And yes, I know that there would be plenty of kids who could sucker their parents into opening their pocket books yet again, but what I'm trying to get at here is principle. There is not a single first person shooter franchise with a multiplayer side that charges for the use of that service. Battlefield? No. Medal of Honor? No. Halo? No (Microsoft charges you. Not Bungie). Team Fortress 2? No. Counter Strike? No. Assassin's Creed? No. Red Dead Redemtion? No. You certainly can pay for certain parts of the game, the DLC, but you don't have to.
I titled this post "Take a tip from Gabe" for a reason, and I'm finally getting around to what I mean. As some of you may know, Team Fortress 2 was, for a long time, a game with items. You found these items through achievements and eventually through an item drop system (that was exploited and properly patched). Valve always fostered goodwill with its community through these patches, tweaking the game to balance it and make sure that nothing made the game unplayable for a large population. The humor inherent in the game and the fun nature of Valve's interaction with the community meant that, when they recently made certain items obtainable through purchase (and others usable only through purchase), there was a bit of a rumble, but not an explosion. The community was supportive of the new system, and especially those five people who made it work so well, the Polycount winners. Everyone cheered when they saw the items that won, and there was much congratulation, pats on the back and friend requests. Everyone felt that, in the long run, these people had earned every cent of the money they earned, and no one seemed to care that Valve probably takes a huge cut from every purchase made, giving I'd guess only 10-15% of the total profits to the creators. This is the tip Kotick needs to understand: goodwill between the creator of the game, its publisher and the community will fully allow you to charge for Call of Duty multiplayer. If you weren't a total jackass and actually tried to know who you were selling your games to, you'd understand that they want to be talked nice to. Everyone does. If you provide a stellar product, as Treyarch has (with Activision's support), and support it with everything you have over a consistent period of time (as Valve always has), you can make large changes with little fear of reprisal.
But, Mr. Kotick, you have not done this. You see only the dollar signs in the name Call of Duty, Bungie, Warcraft, Starcraft. You are a lucky man that the people in charge of these games love them. Even with this, however, putting in a fee for playing Call of Duty multiplayer will probably not ruin your company, but it will shake the industry like never before. You will lose what I'd say is a full half your Call of Duty player base, your stocks would stumble, and you would be faced with a choice you may not want to make (not to mention a possible fight with Microsoft over the money in multiplayer subscription). Take a tip from Gabe, Mr. Kotick. Become Bobby to those you sell games to. Know what their needs are, what their limits are, both within the game and in their pockets, and foster some goodwill. You'll do better in the long run.
Xiant
Showing posts with label Battefield. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Battefield. Show all posts
Friday, December 10, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Battlefield Marketing: Why Vietnam is Timed Perfectly (Also, Valve!)
This came to me last night and I felt I had to post it before I forgot about it. As I've said, I watch a lot of YouTube, but not just Call of Duty. I play(ed) and watch Battlefield Bad Company 2 from commetators like DCRU Colin, StoneFaceLock, Swordsman75, jayekaiser, mistuhed and Benjisaur among the more prominent. In the past months prior to Black Ops's release, there were rumblings of discontent with the state of the Battlefield scene, and for good reason. EA DICE released almost no truly "new" content. They updated maps for different game modes, but the maps themselves never really changed. For the first two or so months of the game's lifetime, this was a complaint to be sure, but not a damning one. As things went on, though, it trotted closer and closer to that point of no return, when even the dedicated Battlefield players withdrew for what they considered greener pastures (Black Ops and, to a lesser extent, Halo).
What I think DICE was well aware of, even back in the March release of BC2, is that their game was not Call of Duty 4, the game that needed no infusion of new content to remain both relevant and prominent for two years and longer. This led them, or at least it led Electronic Arts, to the following strategy based on their knowledge of their game. They knew they had about six months worth of game life ahead of them if they did nothing, and seven or maybe eight if they released different map types but not new maps. Their calculations put the end of their game's relevancy right at the release of Black Ops and the huge rush that the game would surely (and did) bring. They knew also that Battlefield wouldn't die out entirely, but it would begin to fade. However, the second tier to their plan was the coming Vietnam expansion, placed about a month and a half after Black Ops release of November 9th.
The timing of this expansion, and the Map Pack 7, which actually brought new maps, is next to perfect, and ingenious regardless. By allowing the giant push and affair with Black Ops to fade and then shoving a boatload of new content at their faithful consumers, DICE extends the lifetime of Bad Company 2 until the release, or at least the Beta, of Battlefield 3. To encourage their followers to play even more, and this is perhaps the most effective marketing that isn't Team Fortress 2's constant update system and Portal 2's announcement. By asking their players to use 69 million support actions (heal, ammo box, repair, revive, spot) in order to receive a fifth map for Vietnam, they've assured a huge amount of time spent in other things in game. Vietnam has been rumored for several months without a release date, and now that it has a firm December 21st (18th on PC) release, you can bet the dedicated BC2 players will not only be helping their teammates a whole lot more (something that was certainly lacking in the games initial stage), but that Vietnam will get even more orders.
I put Valve in parentheses in the title for a reason: they already do this kind of thing, and the industry is only now catching on. TF2 released and was immediately patched quite a few times in the months following its hitting Steam. Valve has always been dedicated to making their games as playable as possible for as long as possible. But they didn't stop at just game tweaks. They did what more developers need to do, at least from a business standpoint: add new content at all times and take full advantage of their community's own map/content making ability. TF2 as a game on release wasn't really much. Few maps with only two or three game modes and nine classes when a fairly set playstyle, I would have placed a lifespan of around six months at the very most, even with constant game code tweaking and bug fixing. Valve, as usual, knew how to make their game continue thriving for three years and counting: class updates. Placed around four months apart, Valve had 36 months, or three years if they only updated the classes and added nothing else. They also added new maps, game modes, in-game systems to acquire class items (hats included), community maps becoming official, contests and more. This does not even take into the fact that they haven't yet finished the Meet the Team videos and remain coy on both what those clips will contain and which gender the Pyro is (we want to know, dammit!)
I'll end by saying what I've always said outside of this blog to my friends. The video game industry is reactionary to Valve. They innovate, and everyone else clammers to catch up, even Bungie. DICE and EA took the right rout with the release of BC2 Vietnam, and when Battlefield 3 comes out, I think there'll still be players trudging the rice paddies long into the future.
Xiant
What I think DICE was well aware of, even back in the March release of BC2, is that their game was not Call of Duty 4, the game that needed no infusion of new content to remain both relevant and prominent for two years and longer. This led them, or at least it led Electronic Arts, to the following strategy based on their knowledge of their game. They knew they had about six months worth of game life ahead of them if they did nothing, and seven or maybe eight if they released different map types but not new maps. Their calculations put the end of their game's relevancy right at the release of Black Ops and the huge rush that the game would surely (and did) bring. They knew also that Battlefield wouldn't die out entirely, but it would begin to fade. However, the second tier to their plan was the coming Vietnam expansion, placed about a month and a half after Black Ops release of November 9th.
The timing of this expansion, and the Map Pack 7, which actually brought new maps, is next to perfect, and ingenious regardless. By allowing the giant push and affair with Black Ops to fade and then shoving a boatload of new content at their faithful consumers, DICE extends the lifetime of Bad Company 2 until the release, or at least the Beta, of Battlefield 3. To encourage their followers to play even more, and this is perhaps the most effective marketing that isn't Team Fortress 2's constant update system and Portal 2's announcement. By asking their players to use 69 million support actions (heal, ammo box, repair, revive, spot) in order to receive a fifth map for Vietnam, they've assured a huge amount of time spent in other things in game. Vietnam has been rumored for several months without a release date, and now that it has a firm December 21st (18th on PC) release, you can bet the dedicated BC2 players will not only be helping their teammates a whole lot more (something that was certainly lacking in the games initial stage), but that Vietnam will get even more orders.
I put Valve in parentheses in the title for a reason: they already do this kind of thing, and the industry is only now catching on. TF2 released and was immediately patched quite a few times in the months following its hitting Steam. Valve has always been dedicated to making their games as playable as possible for as long as possible. But they didn't stop at just game tweaks. They did what more developers need to do, at least from a business standpoint: add new content at all times and take full advantage of their community's own map/content making ability. TF2 as a game on release wasn't really much. Few maps with only two or three game modes and nine classes when a fairly set playstyle, I would have placed a lifespan of around six months at the very most, even with constant game code tweaking and bug fixing. Valve, as usual, knew how to make their game continue thriving for three years and counting: class updates. Placed around four months apart, Valve had 36 months, or three years if they only updated the classes and added nothing else. They also added new maps, game modes, in-game systems to acquire class items (hats included), community maps becoming official, contests and more. This does not even take into the fact that they haven't yet finished the Meet the Team videos and remain coy on both what those clips will contain and which gender the Pyro is (we want to know, dammit!)
I'll end by saying what I've always said outside of this blog to my friends. The video game industry is reactionary to Valve. They innovate, and everyone else clammers to catch up, even Bungie. DICE and EA took the right rout with the release of BC2 Vietnam, and when Battlefield 3 comes out, I think there'll still be players trudging the rice paddies long into the future.
Xiant
Monday, August 9, 2010
A little of Me and Training in FPS Games
Yesterday I said I'd talk a little about my gaming habits and the little side business I started. I plan to make good on that promise. First, let me clear the air by saying that, yes, video games were the first games I ever played, but my introduction into pen and paper games was all but a foregone conclusion by 1997 when Final Fantasy VII came out and I, on a lark, rented it and loved it. I collected every game since (though I never played XII. Too much changed) and I haven't looked back on that. Fifth grade I started playing social RPG's and all through high school I continued. By college GenCon became my only outlet, and I think I can sneak in a change to that pattern here in the near future. I also dabbled in CCG's or collectible card games, namely Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh (blame the horrid anime, I suppose). Though nothing ever came of it and I've played all of one unofficial and one official game of Yu-Gi-Oh and MtG respectively, I amassed quite a collection of cards. Due to my quickly fading interest in card games entirely, I thought I might make a little extra cash selling them on eBay, at this fine location. The stock is currently very small, but I have a booster box in the mail and a plan in my head to increase and diversify stock on a grand scale here shortly.
Regardless, that isn't the main point of tonight's blog. Instead, I want to talk about training in FPS games. When you play these virtual soldiers, in Call of Duty, Battlefield and Medal of Honor, you use almost any weapon you want and your avatar knows the ins and outs of every one. For the record, this isn't realistic, but it's a game, right? Sure, let's go with that, but take into account the years of training that goes into each soldier on the battlefield. Then think about the special operations teams and the intensive molding and shaping they go through. Now think about Medal of Honor's advisers: Tier 1. These guys, according to the site (and I have no choice but to believe them, since I'm afraid of the guy with the epic beard and assault rifle), go through more training than even the best Spec Ops team. Their numbers fluctuate within a few hundred, with a classified exact number, and you wonder what they do that other soldiers do that others don't. Translating that into a game world seems almost like a moot point when you think about it, since soldiers in the big FPS brands already use every weapon they can pick up, every piece of equipment on the field and every vehicle they get their hands on. Everyone is Tier 1 in CoD4, MW2, Bad Company 2 and Halo. But that isn't true, because in the world of the game, it is a matter of simplicity and ease of use to have soldiers proficient with all weapons and equipment. This leads me to a point I noticed in the Medal of Honor of beta.
The weapon you choose is the one you stick with, and you cannot pick up enemy or ally weapons to use in place of your own. In an earlier post I said that DICE needed to implement this, but I retract that statement. Thinking about it again, I recall the Rifleman's Creed. In essence, the weapon you receive from your country is the one you stick with, through thick and thin, in the worst conditions, through repairs and cleanings, peace and war. Because both EA and DICE are going for the most realistic depiction of modern war in Medal of Honor, that they restrict which weapons everyone uses means they consider the training, time and emotional attachment that soldiers spend and accrue in their service. Think about a soldier on the battlefield watching his best friend die, then avenging him with the weapon he and the fallen knew back and forward, divided only by the set of hands holding it. Would the surviving Marine or Ranger or Seal or Tier 1 operative not wish to use that gun and only that gun in all mission to follow? I would think he would, in memory of his friend, and to show those who took his life what it means to feel the hot steel of vengeance.
And with that cheesy metaphor, I leave for another day.
Xiant
Regardless, that isn't the main point of tonight's blog. Instead, I want to talk about training in FPS games. When you play these virtual soldiers, in Call of Duty, Battlefield and Medal of Honor, you use almost any weapon you want and your avatar knows the ins and outs of every one. For the record, this isn't realistic, but it's a game, right? Sure, let's go with that, but take into account the years of training that goes into each soldier on the battlefield. Then think about the special operations teams and the intensive molding and shaping they go through. Now think about Medal of Honor's advisers: Tier 1. These guys, according to the site (and I have no choice but to believe them, since I'm afraid of the guy with the epic beard and assault rifle), go through more training than even the best Spec Ops team. Their numbers fluctuate within a few hundred, with a classified exact number, and you wonder what they do that other soldiers do that others don't. Translating that into a game world seems almost like a moot point when you think about it, since soldiers in the big FPS brands already use every weapon they can pick up, every piece of equipment on the field and every vehicle they get their hands on. Everyone is Tier 1 in CoD4, MW2, Bad Company 2 and Halo. But that isn't true, because in the world of the game, it is a matter of simplicity and ease of use to have soldiers proficient with all weapons and equipment. This leads me to a point I noticed in the Medal of Honor of beta.
The weapon you choose is the one you stick with, and you cannot pick up enemy or ally weapons to use in place of your own. In an earlier post I said that DICE needed to implement this, but I retract that statement. Thinking about it again, I recall the Rifleman's Creed. In essence, the weapon you receive from your country is the one you stick with, through thick and thin, in the worst conditions, through repairs and cleanings, peace and war. Because both EA and DICE are going for the most realistic depiction of modern war in Medal of Honor, that they restrict which weapons everyone uses means they consider the training, time and emotional attachment that soldiers spend and accrue in their service. Think about a soldier on the battlefield watching his best friend die, then avenging him with the weapon he and the fallen knew back and forward, divided only by the set of hands holding it. Would the surviving Marine or Ranger or Seal or Tier 1 operative not wish to use that gun and only that gun in all mission to follow? I would think he would, in memory of his friend, and to show those who took his life what it means to feel the hot steel of vengeance.
And with that cheesy metaphor, I leave for another day.
Xiant
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Long Delay Explanation and Customization
So yeah, I've been away for a looooong time (by my standards), and there is a good reason for it. I'll go into more depth tomorrow, but for now I'll simply say this. Video games are not the only games I play. I also play pen and paper roleplaying games, and in my home town (stalk me if you must) GenCon Indy just went down and I had some great fun with pre-Con gaming Wednesday night. Thursday took my time, as did Friday, and so tonight, since I'm not making the drive tomorrow, is the first night I've had completely free to blog. I've also started a side business selling trading cards (I don't play. There isn't enough time between sunrises), and I've tried to get my stock completely up on eBay, which, believe it or not, is very, very time consuming. All told I've had perhaps two or three hours to myself, and this usually comes at the end of five or six, so I put it on the back burner. With the Con over, for me at least, I'm ready to get back into things. Let's jump in, shall we?
Modern first person shooters nowadays are big on one thing: customization. Sure there are gametypes and map packs and different play styles, but customization, for me at least, drive a game's replayability. In BC2, for example, there are so many different ways to play every single class, and no one "right" way (though there is always a wrong way, but that's for another post). If you want to play an assault class, but aren't the guy who goes hog wild with the kills and low death numbers, sit back and provide cover for your friends, be sneaky and get behind the enemy, provide a safe place to spawn your mates in, then get out. Throw down ammo packs and keep everybody covered while they rush in to arm the objective. Their eyes are on one thing, and yours need to keep them safe. If you want to do the opposite, slap on lightweight and magnum, a shotgun and some C4 and you've got yourself a mobile death machine. Hell, I saw a guy with lightweight and body armor knifing only, because he could.
What I'm getting at, of course, is that games, especially FPS's, grow boring rather quickly once everyone discovers the routes to run, the weapons and perks/specs to use and the tactics the other team is likely to employ. It becomes a repetitive grind/yawn fest where everyone just goes through the motions until the timer goes "buzz." What makes any game fun for longer is the ability to change it up. Call of Duty is perhaps the best example of this, and I'll explain my reasoning for not going with my series, Battlefield. The Call of Duty engine is relatively static. The maps are not destructible, and only the rare car explosion and window smash break the steady flow of troops around the environment. Call the physics system simple, but with the massive weapon selection, even the most mundane game remains something to enjoy months, even years in the case of CoD4, after release. Players try out new things, from weapons to perk setups to map routes and even douchey tactics to get just a week more out of the game. Slap on an RPG only 360 spin match (Seen it. Hilarious) and you have something fresh to enjoy.
Going back to Battlefield, and why I stray from speaking about it in the same way as Call of Duty. Putting aside the fact that they run on different engines, cater to different players and use different play mechanics, there is one reason sometimes using the same kit until you don't grow bored of it ever is that the matches are always, always, different. Certainly the routes that troops take are probably the same, but the tactics employed are always in motion. In Call of Duty, it's essentially kill kill kill, take objective, kill kill kill. Forgive my presumption, as I don't actually play, but that's how I see it. In Battlefield, there is almost always a different way to approach a situation. Putting aside vehicles for a moment, the maps themselves are large and varied enough that a single objective has at least three ways to attack it at any one time. Combine this with the four different classes, their almost infinite variety of setups, and the constant motion of class balance, and you might play one game on one map and then the next game is completely different, simply by the virtue of a few new players and few new play styles. It doesn't take much.
I think Call of Duty suffers a little bit for this fact. Because there is no class system, as character skins are determined solely by weapon choice and not role played, there are only so many ways to go about doing something. Again, certainly there probably hundreds of ways, but not the thousands of Battlefield. Add to this a non-dynamic battlefield, smaller maps with sometimes no between-player support, and those hundreds of methods exhaust themselves fairly quickly. In the end, in Call of Duty, with a very specific set of weapons, attachments, perks and killstreak setups making the killing the most efficient in game play, eventually it becomes fairly standard, and you return to the grind described in the beginning of this post. I may be being a bit contradictory here with my belaboring the Call of Duty stuff, but my earlier comments only last for so long, as I've said. I think that, in the end, it comes down to a player and his desires from a game that determine his, and only his, replayability. What I've tried to say, in a very roundabout way, is that the overall replayability of a game measures itself not by a single player or small group of players, but only after a few months of play and discovery. If, in that time, a very small set of tactical choices become the norm, the game has a lesser replayability than another.
Whew. I guess I needed to get this out of me, huh?
Cheers,
Xiant
Modern first person shooters nowadays are big on one thing: customization. Sure there are gametypes and map packs and different play styles, but customization, for me at least, drive a game's replayability. In BC2, for example, there are so many different ways to play every single class, and no one "right" way (though there is always a wrong way, but that's for another post). If you want to play an assault class, but aren't the guy who goes hog wild with the kills and low death numbers, sit back and provide cover for your friends, be sneaky and get behind the enemy, provide a safe place to spawn your mates in, then get out. Throw down ammo packs and keep everybody covered while they rush in to arm the objective. Their eyes are on one thing, and yours need to keep them safe. If you want to do the opposite, slap on lightweight and magnum, a shotgun and some C4 and you've got yourself a mobile death machine. Hell, I saw a guy with lightweight and body armor knifing only, because he could.
What I'm getting at, of course, is that games, especially FPS's, grow boring rather quickly once everyone discovers the routes to run, the weapons and perks/specs to use and the tactics the other team is likely to employ. It becomes a repetitive grind/yawn fest where everyone just goes through the motions until the timer goes "buzz." What makes any game fun for longer is the ability to change it up. Call of Duty is perhaps the best example of this, and I'll explain my reasoning for not going with my series, Battlefield. The Call of Duty engine is relatively static. The maps are not destructible, and only the rare car explosion and window smash break the steady flow of troops around the environment. Call the physics system simple, but with the massive weapon selection, even the most mundane game remains something to enjoy months, even years in the case of CoD4, after release. Players try out new things, from weapons to perk setups to map routes and even douchey tactics to get just a week more out of the game. Slap on an RPG only 360 spin match (Seen it. Hilarious) and you have something fresh to enjoy.
Going back to Battlefield, and why I stray from speaking about it in the same way as Call of Duty. Putting aside the fact that they run on different engines, cater to different players and use different play mechanics, there is one reason sometimes using the same kit until you don't grow bored of it ever is that the matches are always, always, different. Certainly the routes that troops take are probably the same, but the tactics employed are always in motion. In Call of Duty, it's essentially kill kill kill, take objective, kill kill kill. Forgive my presumption, as I don't actually play, but that's how I see it. In Battlefield, there is almost always a different way to approach a situation. Putting aside vehicles for a moment, the maps themselves are large and varied enough that a single objective has at least three ways to attack it at any one time. Combine this with the four different classes, their almost infinite variety of setups, and the constant motion of class balance, and you might play one game on one map and then the next game is completely different, simply by the virtue of a few new players and few new play styles. It doesn't take much.
I think Call of Duty suffers a little bit for this fact. Because there is no class system, as character skins are determined solely by weapon choice and not role played, there are only so many ways to go about doing something. Again, certainly there probably hundreds of ways, but not the thousands of Battlefield. Add to this a non-dynamic battlefield, smaller maps with sometimes no between-player support, and those hundreds of methods exhaust themselves fairly quickly. In the end, in Call of Duty, with a very specific set of weapons, attachments, perks and killstreak setups making the killing the most efficient in game play, eventually it becomes fairly standard, and you return to the grind described in the beginning of this post. I may be being a bit contradictory here with my belaboring the Call of Duty stuff, but my earlier comments only last for so long, as I've said. I think that, in the end, it comes down to a player and his desires from a game that determine his, and only his, replayability. What I've tried to say, in a very roundabout way, is that the overall replayability of a game measures itself not by a single player or small group of players, but only after a few months of play and discovery. If, in that time, a very small set of tactical choices become the norm, the game has a lesser replayability than another.
Whew. I guess I needed to get this out of me, huh?
Cheers,
Xiant
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Camping
Taking a break from FFXIII and back at BC2. What seems to plague a good many Rush games is the idea of camping. Being a progressive objective gametype with an offense and defense, camping is always going to be a factor, especially on defense. Heck, that's what defense play can be, though good defenders actually move around the map rather than posting up with an ammo and health pack and spamming with nades and noob tubes. Where it really becomes an issue is on the offensive side. You take a single base and then suddenly someone decides its best for the team to sit on their duff and watch the defense push back. This notion seems to be contagious, as the entire team soon follows suit. Perhaps the most amusing part about this syndrome is that, when the game is all but lost, someone finally sees that there is an opportunity, but by then, it's too late. Then the game switches, and the rage quitting begins.
It certainly has its place in FPS games. There are times when you must camp, as is the case with Rush and defense, or in Call of Duty when you just need that last kill or two, or, if your team is good enough to spawn trap, sit back and watch the kills rack up. Certainly there are time when, tactically speaking, camping is probably a better proposition than rushing. However, I take the OpTic crew's ideals that I'd rather lose by rushing than win by camping.This is, of course, more applicable in CoD due to the faster nature of that game series, but it applies in BC2 as well. The name of Rush is rush for a reason. The attacking team needs to rush intelligently and fiercely, then take a quick breather and repeat the process until the game is won. The strategy a team uses must revolve around the environment, how players react to air support and other vehicles, what they destroy and what they leave standing, but rushing teams need to do just that, rush. I've played just one too many Rush games where a team pushes the enemy back then takes just that instant too long and finds themselves unable to push again. The momentum shifts and something in the minds of the players changes, forcing them into a regiment of "sit in a corner and kill when you can." I understand that, at the end of the game, K/D padding is something to think about, but, again, I've been in games when it is literally the very last ticket that allows the attackers to blow up the M-Com and they then have 75 brand new tickets to push once again. It really only takes a few tickets to decide a round. It's those games that are the most enjoyable, the ones where every second could spell the end of the entire base. Games where both teams sit and take pot shots at each other are boring, and spawn trap games are both frustrating and endlessly boring.
I understand the camping mentality. I do. It almost guarantees a kill or two, and smart campers move around a couple spots intermittently, farming their kills as they go. It is an easy, if uninteresting, way to get points and keep an objective safe. Some players do it to troll the enemy team and make them mad, others do it because they don't yet have the skill to do anything else. Others do it just because they're lazy. All three reasons have their place, I suppose. You'll find fault with any of them. The trolls need to get a life and find another way to make their lives enjoyable than making the random person on the internet mad (who hasn't done that? Think of a more productive thing to do). The lazy people probably have better things to do, and I'll admit laziness is a good excuse. The skill factor comes with time, but to really get better, you need to get out of that corner and try other things. I can only bush wookie for so long. I switched to the VSS auto sniper and C4 and I feel like a fuzzy assault guy with boom boom blocks. I'll admit that I actually prefer the VSS play, most times. The bush wookie has his place too. If he takes out defenders when they're doing their job and covers his allies and throws motion mines, then he's doing a good job.Camping for them is a job. That's what a sniper does, and wt some recon guys do and do well enough to shoot up the scoreboard. What I don't condone is joining a team halfway through the round, banking a mediocre score with a few headshots and motion mine assists and finding myself at the top of the scoreboard. If, within 3 kills and 5-6 assists I am doing better than the 15 other people on my team, something's wrong. Either people aren't hitting shots or they aren't really doing anything. It's sad, really.
Camping sucks done wrong, and when it's done right it's still rather annoying.
Xiant
It certainly has its place in FPS games. There are times when you must camp, as is the case with Rush and defense, or in Call of Duty when you just need that last kill or two, or, if your team is good enough to spawn trap, sit back and watch the kills rack up. Certainly there are time when, tactically speaking, camping is probably a better proposition than rushing. However, I take the OpTic crew's ideals that I'd rather lose by rushing than win by camping.This is, of course, more applicable in CoD due to the faster nature of that game series, but it applies in BC2 as well. The name of Rush is rush for a reason. The attacking team needs to rush intelligently and fiercely, then take a quick breather and repeat the process until the game is won. The strategy a team uses must revolve around the environment, how players react to air support and other vehicles, what they destroy and what they leave standing, but rushing teams need to do just that, rush. I've played just one too many Rush games where a team pushes the enemy back then takes just that instant too long and finds themselves unable to push again. The momentum shifts and something in the minds of the players changes, forcing them into a regiment of "sit in a corner and kill when you can." I understand that, at the end of the game, K/D padding is something to think about, but, again, I've been in games when it is literally the very last ticket that allows the attackers to blow up the M-Com and they then have 75 brand new tickets to push once again. It really only takes a few tickets to decide a round. It's those games that are the most enjoyable, the ones where every second could spell the end of the entire base. Games where both teams sit and take pot shots at each other are boring, and spawn trap games are both frustrating and endlessly boring.
I understand the camping mentality. I do. It almost guarantees a kill or two, and smart campers move around a couple spots intermittently, farming their kills as they go. It is an easy, if uninteresting, way to get points and keep an objective safe. Some players do it to troll the enemy team and make them mad, others do it because they don't yet have the skill to do anything else. Others do it just because they're lazy. All three reasons have their place, I suppose. You'll find fault with any of them. The trolls need to get a life and find another way to make their lives enjoyable than making the random person on the internet mad (who hasn't done that? Think of a more productive thing to do). The lazy people probably have better things to do, and I'll admit laziness is a good excuse. The skill factor comes with time, but to really get better, you need to get out of that corner and try other things. I can only bush wookie for so long. I switched to the VSS auto sniper and C4 and I feel like a fuzzy assault guy with boom boom blocks. I'll admit that I actually prefer the VSS play, most times. The bush wookie has his place too. If he takes out defenders when they're doing their job and covers his allies and throws motion mines, then he's doing a good job.Camping for them is a job. That's what a sniper does, and wt some recon guys do and do well enough to shoot up the scoreboard. What I don't condone is joining a team halfway through the round, banking a mediocre score with a few headshots and motion mine assists and finding myself at the top of the scoreboard. If, within 3 kills and 5-6 assists I am doing better than the 15 other people on my team, something's wrong. Either people aren't hitting shots or they aren't really doing anything. It's sad, really.
Camping sucks done wrong, and when it's done right it's still rather annoying.
Xiant
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Heavy Update and More E3 News
Having made a great deal of noise about the Medal of Honor beta, not putting up first impressions of it seems to me to be a betrayal of words. And it is, but I do of course, have a reason (some might call it an excuse). First off, the beta didn't actually go live on Steam when everyone expected it to, though it did go up on the appointed day. That said, it was already rather late by the time I finished downloading, and as I considered booting it up to try it out, a friends of mine, TheDakon, who plays Battelfield and TF2 with me on occasion, already had it going. I asked him how it was, but soon realized he spent perhaps three minutes in the actual game. When I pressed him as to why, his response was quick and to the point. Because the beta had just gone live, everyone and their dog was in game trying it out, and the Steam servers were overloaded, as were the EA servers hosting games. Furthermore, several key functions were malfunctioning, so I decided, rightly I hope, to wait the until initial rush ended and the start up kinks began to work themselves out. I know that the consoles are also having trouble with occasional freeze-ups and other game-cracking things, so my patience, I'm sure, will be rewarded in the end.
With that out of the way, I think I'll get to talking about TF2 some more, this time on the Natasha. Because he heavy loves his guns, he names them, and Natasha is his updated weapon (he calls the regular gun Sasha). Sasha's main selling point is its bullets' ability to significantly slow down the movement speed of its targets. Every bullet causes the enemy to move at 75% their total speed for a little more than half a second. That being said, because four bullets come out of the heavy's gun per one unit of ammunition spent, this makes the falloff much more dramatic, so much so that it seems like you come to a near complete stop at all but long range. The tradeoff, for all valve update weapons have a tradeoff of some kind, is a reduced damage output, to the tune of 25%. Again, with the amount of ammo the heavy puts down range with each pull of the trigger, he still takes out enemies very quickly, put up against a heavy with Sasha, the one who wins is either whoever shot first or whoever has a medic. All things being equal, the Sasha heavy wins.
Natasha went through several update phases, as most times, when Valve updated the gun it would lose the slowdown quality. Valve fixed this only recently. As for me, I don't use Natasha as a rule, though I don't play heavy that often (the servers I play on often having a goodly number of skilled spies). However, when I encounter one, I find my teeth grinding, since I feel, and I think others do as well, that the slowdown is too much and makes heavy a much easier class to play, almost cheaply so. Plus, with even the moderate damage reduction, in crowded areas the heavy loses out to the constant assault of rockets, bombs and bullets quicker than with Sasha. His effectiveness dropped, the medic usually goes with the soldier or the demoman or, if he wants to just clear a room, a pyro, while the heavy sits back and eats a sandvich.
Thinking about it, I'll stick to a single class update weapon, since there's cool news coming out in the industry right now that some might not know about. First is Infamous 2, the game where you have electrical super powers the likes of which send ordinary citizens fleeing in terror and cars effortlessly flung into enemies. Infamous (the original) became a favorite among sandbox game enthusiasts for the ease of getting into the game, the story and unique method of its telling and, most of all, the superpowers, something not often seen in a complete sandbox. Cole McGrath, the main character, always seemed the reluctant hero, forced to battle forces for the reason that no one else would. Assuming you played the good side of things, Cole truly did follow Joseph Campbell's Hero's journey, with a few modifications. It was a story of growth and transformation from ordinary person to true hero. By the end of the game, Cole, while still somewhat reticent about his status as super hero, has no reason not to follow the destiny he begins to see before him, and while the city of the game's setting might be safe, there is a whole world that needs saving. With his powers only in their infancy, what Cole comes up with next is anyone's guess.
All that aside, there is one piece of trivia that bugs me a little bit about InFamous 2. Cole's voice actor and character design are completely different. In the first InFamous, Cole' voice was gravely and his head shaven. In InFamous 2, his hair is full and black and his voice is more southern, more relatable. While Sucker Punch, the makers of the game, have purely practical reasons for doing this (their vision of Cole's voice and the actor didn't match up, and the actor couldn't make it to face modeling from where he lived) I find it against the spirit of the game. The voice and appearance of the first game acted as a strong indicator as to both the kind of person Cole is but also shone a light on his internal conflict. His voice, a low, rough sound, mirrored his mental state and reluctance to hear the call to action. His yellow apparel and rucksack showed his link to humanity while still subtly separating him from it. He remained somewhat above and beyond the normal person, while still maintaining his humanity. With the blue t-shirt, the southern voice, Cole is now still more human that he was before, and seems much more casual with the whole idea of having his powers. Now, I don't want Cole dressing up in tights and a cape, but retaining some degree of separation, at least for me, should have been tops on the list. Cole is no longer part of the population. He is a man apart, a man above and beyond so many. I think his appearance should reflect that. His reluctance should be fading as the world heats up in danger and chaos, but I know that to be a room with Cole, a man within whom a huge electric charge always sits, would be uncomfortable to say the least. I don't, therefore, want to feel like I could let him into my house and have a drink with him. If he is to be the savior, make him seem, first visually, the savior.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
With that out of the way, I think I'll get to talking about TF2 some more, this time on the Natasha. Because he heavy loves his guns, he names them, and Natasha is his updated weapon (he calls the regular gun Sasha). Sasha's main selling point is its bullets' ability to significantly slow down the movement speed of its targets. Every bullet causes the enemy to move at 75% their total speed for a little more than half a second. That being said, because four bullets come out of the heavy's gun per one unit of ammunition spent, this makes the falloff much more dramatic, so much so that it seems like you come to a near complete stop at all but long range. The tradeoff, for all valve update weapons have a tradeoff of some kind, is a reduced damage output, to the tune of 25%. Again, with the amount of ammo the heavy puts down range with each pull of the trigger, he still takes out enemies very quickly, put up against a heavy with Sasha, the one who wins is either whoever shot first or whoever has a medic. All things being equal, the Sasha heavy wins.
Natasha went through several update phases, as most times, when Valve updated the gun it would lose the slowdown quality. Valve fixed this only recently. As for me, I don't use Natasha as a rule, though I don't play heavy that often (the servers I play on often having a goodly number of skilled spies). However, when I encounter one, I find my teeth grinding, since I feel, and I think others do as well, that the slowdown is too much and makes heavy a much easier class to play, almost cheaply so. Plus, with even the moderate damage reduction, in crowded areas the heavy loses out to the constant assault of rockets, bombs and bullets quicker than with Sasha. His effectiveness dropped, the medic usually goes with the soldier or the demoman or, if he wants to just clear a room, a pyro, while the heavy sits back and eats a sandvich.
Thinking about it, I'll stick to a single class update weapon, since there's cool news coming out in the industry right now that some might not know about. First is Infamous 2, the game where you have electrical super powers the likes of which send ordinary citizens fleeing in terror and cars effortlessly flung into enemies. Infamous (the original) became a favorite among sandbox game enthusiasts for the ease of getting into the game, the story and unique method of its telling and, most of all, the superpowers, something not often seen in a complete sandbox. Cole McGrath, the main character, always seemed the reluctant hero, forced to battle forces for the reason that no one else would. Assuming you played the good side of things, Cole truly did follow Joseph Campbell's Hero's journey, with a few modifications. It was a story of growth and transformation from ordinary person to true hero. By the end of the game, Cole, while still somewhat reticent about his status as super hero, has no reason not to follow the destiny he begins to see before him, and while the city of the game's setting might be safe, there is a whole world that needs saving. With his powers only in their infancy, what Cole comes up with next is anyone's guess.
All that aside, there is one piece of trivia that bugs me a little bit about InFamous 2. Cole's voice actor and character design are completely different. In the first InFamous, Cole' voice was gravely and his head shaven. In InFamous 2, his hair is full and black and his voice is more southern, more relatable. While Sucker Punch, the makers of the game, have purely practical reasons for doing this (their vision of Cole's voice and the actor didn't match up, and the actor couldn't make it to face modeling from where he lived) I find it against the spirit of the game. The voice and appearance of the first game acted as a strong indicator as to both the kind of person Cole is but also shone a light on his internal conflict. His voice, a low, rough sound, mirrored his mental state and reluctance to hear the call to action. His yellow apparel and rucksack showed his link to humanity while still subtly separating him from it. He remained somewhat above and beyond the normal person, while still maintaining his humanity. With the blue t-shirt, the southern voice, Cole is now still more human that he was before, and seems much more casual with the whole idea of having his powers. Now, I don't want Cole dressing up in tights and a cape, but retaining some degree of separation, at least for me, should have been tops on the list. Cole is no longer part of the population. He is a man apart, a man above and beyond so many. I think his appearance should reflect that. His reluctance should be fading as the world heats up in danger and chaos, but I know that to be a room with Cole, a man within whom a huge electric charge always sits, would be uncomfortable to say the least. I don't, therefore, want to feel like I could let him into my house and have a drink with him. If he is to be the savior, make him seem, first visually, the savior.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
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