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
Showing posts with label Modern Warfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modern Warfare. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
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, July 18, 2010
The Pros are Human
This is something I myself have never experienced, having no YouTube name, but I've heard quite a bit about. When we(the masses) watch high level video gameplay on the internet, our first instinct is, wrongly, that the results we see are the norm. A high K/D in a few games of CoD, BC2, MoH, TF2, anything where that kind of data makes an appearance, means, at first glance, that these are games that happen all the time. These YouTube commentators always, always, go 75/2 in MW2, 30/3 in BC2, 43/1 in MoH. It's routine for them and there is no frustration involved in getting these games. They are just naturally good and everyone who thinks they do anything less than 10.0 K/D is just a noob with no skills.
It isn't true, no matter what your thoughts on K/D, no one goes for any period of time without something to grow frustrated about. No one has a K/D of 30 all the time. If you look at the stats these very commentators post on their pages, the answers are right there, it's just that no one looks. Would SeaNanners have a measely 5.0 K/D if he always went 30/2? Would Sandy Ravage, who I'll talk about shortly, have a 3.20 CoD4 /3.50 MW2 (XBox 360) or 4.10 (PS3) K/D if those 78/4 gameplays he posts happened every night in almost all the games he played? No, it would be much higher.
On the topic of Sandy Ravage, I watched his live stream today, and I can say that he is just like the rest of us. Not every game is a complete domination (regardless of gametype). He died, he used Painkiller, he had trouble and he quit when he became frustrated with the game or someone in it. Granted, he did win quite a bit of the games he joined, but not all of them. Some you simply can't win, having joined too late. Quite a few of the games too were close calls, with only a point or two between victory and defeat, and Mr. Ravage spent a fair amount of time either looking for players or dying. It wasn't the AC130 fest or the Spas-12 fest that he puts up on YouTube. The reason is simple, and the real point of tonight's blog.
These players are human. They make mistakes, they have bad days, bad rounds and bad weeks. SeaNanners stated in one of his videos that he simply became to angry to continue, which for many of his viewers is all but inconceivable. But the emotions are there, the mistakes are there. No man is a god at anything. These people are good at what they do, sometimes even great or exceptional, but they are not perfect. Ask any of them about going negative. They will have stories for you. Oh, the stories they will tell.
And that leads to the title of the post: the Pros. Yes, what they can do is amazing, and what they show off at tournaments is beyond the ken of 99.9% of regular players. The reason? These guys practice, and they do it a lot. They don't go into public matches, generally, keeping to the competitive circuit as much as possible, keeping their skills sharp by playing against equal or better players and learning, yes learning, from them. Even the best players always learn as they continue playing. A new tactic on how to approach an old enemy, a new technique to surprise an unexacting foe, a new way to use the environment, itself known to a pixel, to the betterment of the game.
This does, of course, lead the the question of frag videos and top ten/five videos. Why aren't there more of them put out? The answer to this is simple as well: those moments are rare at best. Sure kills like those you see on PLDX might be somewhat regular, but the chains of kills, the exterminations, the total destruction is something that happens once in a while, not every day for any single player. The events must line up in just the right order at just the right time and that player must have just the right setting for his epic action.
All this, of course, comes with experience. In established games like Halo 3 or CoD4 or MW2 or TF2, where most maps played competitively are well known and well explored with known troop routes and objective locations and weapon drops times (down to the second), you'll get some really good stuff. That's because the players know what to expect and they play, both sides, knowing exactly what will happen. They've done it before. Many, many times.
One last thing to remember is that every single gamer that has ever lived has been a noob at some point. No human who ever lived jumped into a competitive game with no prior experience with any sort of gaming apparatus and completely owned, that I know of. Any stories I hear I will not believe, simply because of the way humans are. We must learn before we can grow. No human looked at a book at could read at a college level. No musician never heard music and could simply play. Not even Mozart. He copied his sister after listening and watching, not completely cold. The same goes for competitive gamers. They don't just head into Counter Strike or whatever and start dominating. There is always a learning curve that, once surmounted, allows for great feats.
And still, no one does perfect or even excellent at every game. It simply isn't possible.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
It isn't true, no matter what your thoughts on K/D, no one goes for any period of time without something to grow frustrated about. No one has a K/D of 30 all the time. If you look at the stats these very commentators post on their pages, the answers are right there, it's just that no one looks. Would SeaNanners have a measely 5.0 K/D if he always went 30/2? Would Sandy Ravage, who I'll talk about shortly, have a 3.20 CoD4 /3.50 MW2 (XBox 360) or 4.10 (PS3) K/D if those 78/4 gameplays he posts happened every night in almost all the games he played? No, it would be much higher.
On the topic of Sandy Ravage, I watched his live stream today, and I can say that he is just like the rest of us. Not every game is a complete domination (regardless of gametype). He died, he used Painkiller, he had trouble and he quit when he became frustrated with the game or someone in it. Granted, he did win quite a bit of the games he joined, but not all of them. Some you simply can't win, having joined too late. Quite a few of the games too were close calls, with only a point or two between victory and defeat, and Mr. Ravage spent a fair amount of time either looking for players or dying. It wasn't the AC130 fest or the Spas-12 fest that he puts up on YouTube. The reason is simple, and the real point of tonight's blog.
These players are human. They make mistakes, they have bad days, bad rounds and bad weeks. SeaNanners stated in one of his videos that he simply became to angry to continue, which for many of his viewers is all but inconceivable. But the emotions are there, the mistakes are there. No man is a god at anything. These people are good at what they do, sometimes even great or exceptional, but they are not perfect. Ask any of them about going negative. They will have stories for you. Oh, the stories they will tell.
And that leads to the title of the post: the Pros. Yes, what they can do is amazing, and what they show off at tournaments is beyond the ken of 99.9% of regular players. The reason? These guys practice, and they do it a lot. They don't go into public matches, generally, keeping to the competitive circuit as much as possible, keeping their skills sharp by playing against equal or better players and learning, yes learning, from them. Even the best players always learn as they continue playing. A new tactic on how to approach an old enemy, a new technique to surprise an unexacting foe, a new way to use the environment, itself known to a pixel, to the betterment of the game.
This does, of course, lead the the question of frag videos and top ten/five videos. Why aren't there more of them put out? The answer to this is simple as well: those moments are rare at best. Sure kills like those you see on PLDX might be somewhat regular, but the chains of kills, the exterminations, the total destruction is something that happens once in a while, not every day for any single player. The events must line up in just the right order at just the right time and that player must have just the right setting for his epic action.
All this, of course, comes with experience. In established games like Halo 3 or CoD4 or MW2 or TF2, where most maps played competitively are well known and well explored with known troop routes and objective locations and weapon drops times (down to the second), you'll get some really good stuff. That's because the players know what to expect and they play, both sides, knowing exactly what will happen. They've done it before. Many, many times.
One last thing to remember is that every single gamer that has ever lived has been a noob at some point. No human who ever lived jumped into a competitive game with no prior experience with any sort of gaming apparatus and completely owned, that I know of. Any stories I hear I will not believe, simply because of the way humans are. We must learn before we can grow. No human looked at a book at could read at a college level. No musician never heard music and could simply play. Not even Mozart. He copied his sister after listening and watching, not completely cold. The same goes for competitive gamers. They don't just head into Counter Strike or whatever and start dominating. There is always a learning curve that, once surmounted, allows for great feats.
And still, no one does perfect or even excellent at every game. It simply isn't possible.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
Monday, July 12, 2010
The BC2 Patch: Knifing and Review Begin
Sorry about the missed update yesterday. The family went to a party I didn't know we were going to and that messed up the rhythm of the day. I'm back, though it's my father's birthday tomorrow, so we'll see what I can cook up.
Tonight's topic is, as promised, the beginning of a review of the Bad Company 2 update. I'll speak to knifing in this blog. In future entries, I'll touch on further problems that arose in the second major update, as well as any statistics changes I can find.
But knifing's back. Everyone cheer! When BC2 first launched, after the obligatory problems with any big launch, knifing was a whole new experience. I believe that in Call of Duty, especially the newer ones, the knifing is a little overdone. I know that the Commando perk in Modern Warfare 2 is a bit much (and that's putting it mildly). Therefore, when I first knifed someone in BC2 I was surprised, but not negatively or positively so. The animation was exceedingly slow and the hit registration needed work. That is the negative. The positive is the satisfaction actually knifing someone gave you. You had to really work to get the knife, and on the big maps for any game mode save Deathmatch, going knife only, as is possible in Call of Duty with a fair bit of skill, became a task of almost monumental difficulty. Granted, it is possible, and people do it. Some of them even go positive doing it. They are, however, an even greater minority than in the Call of Duty franchise. I know of only two or three in BC2 while I'm sure there is at least ten times that number, if not more, in CoD.
Then the patched the game in April. Knifing went to hell. Strangely, knifing from behind did not work. You had to be within 180 degrees of your enemy's front if you wanted to get the knife kill. On the other hand, the longer knife animation was not always necessary for the knife kill. A simple swipe got the job done. Hit detection in this regard was much improved, and it was still satisfying to out think your opponents in fights when you've both run out of ammo (which is easy to do between players of equal skill or fail level). Overall, though, knifing fazed out of fashion if only because it was now even inefficient than using guns.
In the recent update, which came out on June 29th, my birthday, they fixed knifing. Anywhere near the opponent and suddenly he's dead. Right on! Unfortunately, the awful hit registration returned as well, and there is, once again, a little bit of a lunge when you knife someone, sometimes. Other times, you just fail. In all my time before knifing returned, I didn't get a single melee efficiency pin, a hard pin to get. I can now claim at least six to my name in the twelve or so hours I've played since the 29th.
This part of the update I give a 9.
Tonight's topic is, as promised, the beginning of a review of the Bad Company 2 update. I'll speak to knifing in this blog. In future entries, I'll touch on further problems that arose in the second major update, as well as any statistics changes I can find.
But knifing's back. Everyone cheer! When BC2 first launched, after the obligatory problems with any big launch, knifing was a whole new experience. I believe that in Call of Duty, especially the newer ones, the knifing is a little overdone. I know that the Commando perk in Modern Warfare 2 is a bit much (and that's putting it mildly). Therefore, when I first knifed someone in BC2 I was surprised, but not negatively or positively so. The animation was exceedingly slow and the hit registration needed work. That is the negative. The positive is the satisfaction actually knifing someone gave you. You had to really work to get the knife, and on the big maps for any game mode save Deathmatch, going knife only, as is possible in Call of Duty with a fair bit of skill, became a task of almost monumental difficulty. Granted, it is possible, and people do it. Some of them even go positive doing it. They are, however, an even greater minority than in the Call of Duty franchise. I know of only two or three in BC2 while I'm sure there is at least ten times that number, if not more, in CoD.
Then the patched the game in April. Knifing went to hell. Strangely, knifing from behind did not work. You had to be within 180 degrees of your enemy's front if you wanted to get the knife kill. On the other hand, the longer knife animation was not always necessary for the knife kill. A simple swipe got the job done. Hit detection in this regard was much improved, and it was still satisfying to out think your opponents in fights when you've both run out of ammo (which is easy to do between players of equal skill or fail level). Overall, though, knifing fazed out of fashion if only because it was now even inefficient than using guns.
In the recent update, which came out on June 29th, my birthday, they fixed knifing. Anywhere near the opponent and suddenly he's dead. Right on! Unfortunately, the awful hit registration returned as well, and there is, once again, a little bit of a lunge when you knife someone, sometimes. Other times, you just fail. In all my time before knifing returned, I didn't get a single melee efficiency pin, a hard pin to get. I can now claim at least six to my name in the twelve or so hours I've played since the 29th.
This part of the update I give a 9.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Medal of Honor Gameplay and Problems
Jumping right in here.
I've made mention of the fast paced nature of the game, and that is the only way I know to describe it. From what I've seen, and seen is all I have, of MW2, Medal of Honor is only slightly slower in the deathmatch mode and significantly slower in the objective gametypes. This is, of course, relative, since spawn times are, at their longest, only about 5 seconds long, and then only for the defenders. Attackers reenter in about 2 seconds tops. Modern Warfare 2 and its nigh-instant respawn times in all but CTF or no respawn in Search and Destroy, is faster. Dying is also faster, even more so than Medal of Honor, and with the number of different ways to die (air support mostly) and patently noobish ways to acquire said kills, not only do games last significantly shorter spans of time, but there is quite a bit more rage involved.
The deathmatch games last about ten minutes, which is comparable to anything in MW2, and for good reason. Respawn times are so similar and the map is much smaller. That is not to say the map is actually small, as it is moderate to large compared to MW2 maps. However, even with a twelve on twelve game, sometimes actually finding another player to kill takes time, especially if spawns recently shifted, instant respawn doesn't do as much to speed up play.
On the deathmatch mode, the score counting kills as well as support actions and revenge/savior/headshot kills, not to mention assists more than makes up for the lulls in battle, as well as lowering the time for gameplay. And speaking of time, DICE continues their idea from BC2 by not putting a time limit on either of their game modes. For Combat Mission, there is a built in limit on how long a match could concievably last, since the attackers have only so many troops to send in before they fail. In a 1v12 situation, with a full spawn trap, the match's limit is only around 200 seconds, or three and a half minutes. However, with the various people playing, and the different ways they play (cautious or aggressive or in between), the matches tend to go into the fifteen minute mark, though they don't really last more than 20 minutes at the maximum. The longest I've seen is a little more than 18 minutes.
That all being said, the comparison of MoH to MW2 and BC2 is impossible to ignore. If you follow anyone on YouTube with the beta in hand, and there are many, the opinions are out there, and they are, surprisingly, wide and varied. Some think the game is more of a Battlefield mod or outright copy, essentially DICE repackaging BC2 with a few changes to gameplay and new maps. Others see it as a mishmash of the two, hedging its bets between the warring franchises. Still others see it as the silent observer, who realized what worked and what didn't, and took its own spin while adding something of its own. The last one works for me. It is neither a copy of MW2 with a DICE touch, nor is it a BC2 mod with different maps. It isn't even a mix of the two, and here's why. First, there doesn't appear to be an air support problem. When I say problem, I mean that during play you don't hear ENEMY AC130 IN THE AIR! at all times, and there aren't constant assaults by harriers and helicopters and missiles aren't falling from the sky every five seconds, or at least, not guided ones. A human guided missile is a late scorechain reward, and you can't call a harrier strike to sit over the map and do the work for you. Secondly, the game takes only the actual engine from BC2, the Frostbite, but utilizes it in a very different way. The destruction is exceedingly limited, since C4 can't even destroy mud houses and it obliterates concrete in BC2. Add to this that the only vehicle acts only as a support unit, not as the primary attacker/defender. If this were a BC2 mod, even the deathmatch mode would have something like a tank or emplacement or something. If it were a clone of MW2, players wouldn't have to work quite as hard for their air support, and they wouldn't have a choice to be team players with defensive scorechains either, especially not when there's a viable mortar strike just waiting at 40 points. The weapons travel in similar paths and in similar ways to MW2, since bullet drop isn't a factor, but they do less damage all around, though more than BC2.
This idea leads nicely into the problems section. First, two things about weapons. Maybe reduce the damage a little bit, just a couple bullets more for each kill, and then make there be a little time between shooting and hitting. Less than BC2 but more than there is currently. I think also there needs to be a kill cam. Giving the weapon that killed you is certainly a nice piece of information, but also knowing from where the bullets came helps occasionally, so that players must move to remain deadly. It reduces camping, if only a little bit.
The lag, of course, needs fixing, as do the freezes on console and the random crashes on PC. I mentioned hacking already, and the server browser needs work, but I know a lot of this last stuff came, and is coming, in the patch.
All this being said, I am glad that DICE put MoH through a beta, because if all this stuff were in the final product, I can only imagine the flame and hatred the game would draw (and I look at MW2 here). Plus, DICE is even patching a Beta so that testing can happen. That makes me happy. Fixing a beta usually happens after it ends, and some companies don't do squat until they don't have to worry about actual gameplay occuring. Granted, these bugs in the beta are next to game breaking, and many are straying away for that reason.
If anything, I wish the beta were extended longer than just a month. This is a fun game.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
I've made mention of the fast paced nature of the game, and that is the only way I know to describe it. From what I've seen, and seen is all I have, of MW2, Medal of Honor is only slightly slower in the deathmatch mode and significantly slower in the objective gametypes. This is, of course, relative, since spawn times are, at their longest, only about 5 seconds long, and then only for the defenders. Attackers reenter in about 2 seconds tops. Modern Warfare 2 and its nigh-instant respawn times in all but CTF or no respawn in Search and Destroy, is faster. Dying is also faster, even more so than Medal of Honor, and with the number of different ways to die (air support mostly) and patently noobish ways to acquire said kills, not only do games last significantly shorter spans of time, but there is quite a bit more rage involved.
The deathmatch games last about ten minutes, which is comparable to anything in MW2, and for good reason. Respawn times are so similar and the map is much smaller. That is not to say the map is actually small, as it is moderate to large compared to MW2 maps. However, even with a twelve on twelve game, sometimes actually finding another player to kill takes time, especially if spawns recently shifted, instant respawn doesn't do as much to speed up play.
On the deathmatch mode, the score counting kills as well as support actions and revenge/savior/headshot kills, not to mention assists more than makes up for the lulls in battle, as well as lowering the time for gameplay. And speaking of time, DICE continues their idea from BC2 by not putting a time limit on either of their game modes. For Combat Mission, there is a built in limit on how long a match could concievably last, since the attackers have only so many troops to send in before they fail. In a 1v12 situation, with a full spawn trap, the match's limit is only around 200 seconds, or three and a half minutes. However, with the various people playing, and the different ways they play (cautious or aggressive or in between), the matches tend to go into the fifteen minute mark, though they don't really last more than 20 minutes at the maximum. The longest I've seen is a little more than 18 minutes.
That all being said, the comparison of MoH to MW2 and BC2 is impossible to ignore. If you follow anyone on YouTube with the beta in hand, and there are many, the opinions are out there, and they are, surprisingly, wide and varied. Some think the game is more of a Battlefield mod or outright copy, essentially DICE repackaging BC2 with a few changes to gameplay and new maps. Others see it as a mishmash of the two, hedging its bets between the warring franchises. Still others see it as the silent observer, who realized what worked and what didn't, and took its own spin while adding something of its own. The last one works for me. It is neither a copy of MW2 with a DICE touch, nor is it a BC2 mod with different maps. It isn't even a mix of the two, and here's why. First, there doesn't appear to be an air support problem. When I say problem, I mean that during play you don't hear ENEMY AC130 IN THE AIR! at all times, and there aren't constant assaults by harriers and helicopters and missiles aren't falling from the sky every five seconds, or at least, not guided ones. A human guided missile is a late scorechain reward, and you can't call a harrier strike to sit over the map and do the work for you. Secondly, the game takes only the actual engine from BC2, the Frostbite, but utilizes it in a very different way. The destruction is exceedingly limited, since C4 can't even destroy mud houses and it obliterates concrete in BC2. Add to this that the only vehicle acts only as a support unit, not as the primary attacker/defender. If this were a BC2 mod, even the deathmatch mode would have something like a tank or emplacement or something. If it were a clone of MW2, players wouldn't have to work quite as hard for their air support, and they wouldn't have a choice to be team players with defensive scorechains either, especially not when there's a viable mortar strike just waiting at 40 points. The weapons travel in similar paths and in similar ways to MW2, since bullet drop isn't a factor, but they do less damage all around, though more than BC2.
This idea leads nicely into the problems section. First, two things about weapons. Maybe reduce the damage a little bit, just a couple bullets more for each kill, and then make there be a little time between shooting and hitting. Less than BC2 but more than there is currently. I think also there needs to be a kill cam. Giving the weapon that killed you is certainly a nice piece of information, but also knowing from where the bullets came helps occasionally, so that players must move to remain deadly. It reduces camping, if only a little bit.
The lag, of course, needs fixing, as do the freezes on console and the random crashes on PC. I mentioned hacking already, and the server browser needs work, but I know a lot of this last stuff came, and is coming, in the patch.
All this being said, I am glad that DICE put MoH through a beta, because if all this stuff were in the final product, I can only imagine the flame and hatred the game would draw (and I look at MW2 here). Plus, DICE is even patching a Beta so that testing can happen. That makes me happy. Fixing a beta usually happens after it ends, and some companies don't do squat until they don't have to worry about actual gameplay occuring. Granted, these bugs in the beta are next to game breaking, and many are straying away for that reason.
If anything, I wish the beta were extended longer than just a month. This is a fun game.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Hacking
The title needs no real explanation. People in any game, if they can, hack or cheat to make the game easier or different. Some do it to frustrate other players or to make themselves look aces to others on the internet who don't know that they actually hack.
Now, this wouldn't have been tonight's topic of discussion, but I joined three out of the twelve games I played tonight to see unbelievable scores posted at the top of the leaderboards. At first I thought the players were just really good, but I began to watch the killfeed and discovered differently. Also, the scoreboard itself told a very clear story. In MoH, as in any shooter that requires a good deal of aim, programs called aimbots allow for pinpoint accuracy and kill shots at any distance, almost always in groups of four or five. Also in games like MoH and MW2, where bullets do not feel the effect of gravity and where the game rewards players for accurate headshots and then goes on to give them extra abilities for those kills, you have a recipe for broken games.
What exactly did I see in these games? Kill to death ratios of something like 50/1, headshots that do not account for actual human movement of the mouse, impossibily consistent headshots, absolutely no one being able to kill a player. The list could go on. In each of these games, I recognized the hacks as aimbots that automatically, and within the code of the game, put the targeting reticle exactly on the enemy and then pulling the trigger, shifting at an inhuman rate to the next target.
What is so pathetic about this is twofold. One, why do you want to just sit back and let the computer play the game for you? These players literally sat in one place and let the game do the work for them. It ceases to become a game at that point and little more than clicking a button and watching. If you need to watch Medal of Honor or Modern Warfare 2 and not worry about your own skills, go on YouTube. Search for five seconds and you'll see crazy scores that come legitimately and fun commentators who enjoy the game for what it is while not trying to cheat their way through (for the most part. There are some fakes up on YouTube, too). Two, and this pertains almost directly to Medal of Honor, the game is still in beta. Beta! This game won't come out for months, and many, many things will probably change between now and October and any score you post will most likely be erased, forcing you to start from scratch. Your hacks might even be unusable at that point, and where are you then? No real skill or game knowledge and hated by everyone you play with.
Maybe these people want to show their mastery and ability to manipulate game code or pad their stats to the point where they look like the proest pros to ever pro up a pro server. Any legitimate player with two functioning brain cells knows a hacker/cheater/no skill player when they see one. Whether this is actually the case is usually in favor of the positive, but sometimes players just have that kind of skill or their don't play the way that some consider "good." That being said, I digress. If these people think that learning how to infiltrate a game, alter its code or exploit something inside it to their own benefit will get them jobs or endear them to the developers or other players, I know they are sorely mistaken. Then there are of course those that do it simply because they can, and they don't care what others think; some even find it amusing. Enter the troll.
At the end here I must apologize. This is perhaps the most personal blog I've written, and I want to stay away from that. News reviews and critical evaluations, Xiant, not personal beefs with the games. Get more news up, more reviews, Xiant. Talk less about yourself.
Okay, let's try that.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
Now, this wouldn't have been tonight's topic of discussion, but I joined three out of the twelve games I played tonight to see unbelievable scores posted at the top of the leaderboards. At first I thought the players were just really good, but I began to watch the killfeed and discovered differently. Also, the scoreboard itself told a very clear story. In MoH, as in any shooter that requires a good deal of aim, programs called aimbots allow for pinpoint accuracy and kill shots at any distance, almost always in groups of four or five. Also in games like MoH and MW2, where bullets do not feel the effect of gravity and where the game rewards players for accurate headshots and then goes on to give them extra abilities for those kills, you have a recipe for broken games.
What exactly did I see in these games? Kill to death ratios of something like 50/1, headshots that do not account for actual human movement of the mouse, impossibily consistent headshots, absolutely no one being able to kill a player. The list could go on. In each of these games, I recognized the hacks as aimbots that automatically, and within the code of the game, put the targeting reticle exactly on the enemy and then pulling the trigger, shifting at an inhuman rate to the next target.
What is so pathetic about this is twofold. One, why do you want to just sit back and let the computer play the game for you? These players literally sat in one place and let the game do the work for them. It ceases to become a game at that point and little more than clicking a button and watching. If you need to watch Medal of Honor or Modern Warfare 2 and not worry about your own skills, go on YouTube. Search for five seconds and you'll see crazy scores that come legitimately and fun commentators who enjoy the game for what it is while not trying to cheat their way through (for the most part. There are some fakes up on YouTube, too). Two, and this pertains almost directly to Medal of Honor, the game is still in beta. Beta! This game won't come out for months, and many, many things will probably change between now and October and any score you post will most likely be erased, forcing you to start from scratch. Your hacks might even be unusable at that point, and where are you then? No real skill or game knowledge and hated by everyone you play with.
Maybe these people want to show their mastery and ability to manipulate game code or pad their stats to the point where they look like the proest pros to ever pro up a pro server. Any legitimate player with two functioning brain cells knows a hacker/cheater/no skill player when they see one. Whether this is actually the case is usually in favor of the positive, but sometimes players just have that kind of skill or their don't play the way that some consider "good." That being said, I digress. If these people think that learning how to infiltrate a game, alter its code or exploit something inside it to their own benefit will get them jobs or endear them to the developers or other players, I know they are sorely mistaken. Then there are of course those that do it simply because they can, and they don't care what others think; some even find it amusing. Enter the troll.
At the end here I must apologize. This is perhaps the most personal blog I've written, and I want to stay away from that. News reviews and critical evaluations, Xiant, not personal beefs with the games. Get more news up, more reviews, Xiant. Talk less about yourself.
Okay, let's try that.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Medal of Honor Spawn System
As I continue to play MoH, I come to enjoy and loathe the spawn system. Having never played MW2, I can't contest as to its comparison, but several people say it's exactly the same. The best I can do is describe what I see and how I think it plays into the game. So here we go.
In Combat Mission, an objective gametype, there are two spawn options. First, spawning back at the base keeps you "safe" from enemy fire but leaves a large gap between you and the enemy base/objective. Thus, you have to traverse quite a ways to find assistance, all the while making yourself vulnerable to enemy fire. If, on the other hand, you chose to spawn on the front, the game chooses a random player, who may or may not be taking fire. If he dies, a new spawn location pops up, in my experience at a safer position. The advantage of this latter option, of course, is getting you into the action much quicker and most likely close to the objective. This system is for the attacking team.
Defenders in Combat Mission spawn at their currently held base, since that is always the center of action. In either case, attack or defense, the respawn timer is set to five seconds, which seems like an eternity. The action in MoH is fast and hard, and doesn't really reward sitting back and waiting for kills the way Battlefield does. Five seconds, however long it may feel, keeps the ebb and flow of soldiers on both sides even, allowing for lulls in the action for the defenders to catch their breath before renewing the fight. The win to loss ratio in Combat Mission, all things being equal, is about 50:50. However, like the game type Combat Mission is more than obviously modified off of, Rush from Battlefield: Bad Company 2, if the attacking team has only a few players who want to attack the failure rate increases very, very quickly. If you renamed Combat Mission Combat Rush or Rush Mission, the point becomes only more clear, as does the direct pull from BC2. The basic play style is the same, minus only the vehicles and with far increased bullet damage and lowered player health.
The other game mode, Team Assault, is essentially team deathmatch. The spawning system here is relatively simple. The minimap divides the battlefield into discrete sections, and your spawn point shifts depending on where troop concentration is. If you put a four quarters grid on the beta Team Assault map, the outermost corner of each is the spawn point. Of course, with this lack of generally random spawn points, a couple players can post up and take people out as they spawn, wait for respawn and repeat until someone finally gets them. Again, I've never played Modern Warfare 2, but from what I've seen this is how that game's spawn system works. Add to this that the respawn timer is a little under a second to keep the action fast paced (given the smaller map size) and spawn camping, trapping even, becomes an issue. This happened to my team when I joined a game tonight, though we eventually broke or spawned out of it, but it is not a fun experience.
One thing I want to get off my chest, though, before I end tonight, is aiming. With consoles, as I understand it, there is a system of auto aim to compensate for the control stick's lack of precision. Because the mouse on a computer allows for next to exact aiming, auto aim is never a factor. For me that's a problem, since I find that I always tend to aim directly to the left or right of my enemy before he sees me, and then he sees me, shoots me, and I die. Bah I say, bah.
Anyway, thanks for reading,
Xiant.
In Combat Mission, an objective gametype, there are two spawn options. First, spawning back at the base keeps you "safe" from enemy fire but leaves a large gap between you and the enemy base/objective. Thus, you have to traverse quite a ways to find assistance, all the while making yourself vulnerable to enemy fire. If, on the other hand, you chose to spawn on the front, the game chooses a random player, who may or may not be taking fire. If he dies, a new spawn location pops up, in my experience at a safer position. The advantage of this latter option, of course, is getting you into the action much quicker and most likely close to the objective. This system is for the attacking team.
Defenders in Combat Mission spawn at their currently held base, since that is always the center of action. In either case, attack or defense, the respawn timer is set to five seconds, which seems like an eternity. The action in MoH is fast and hard, and doesn't really reward sitting back and waiting for kills the way Battlefield does. Five seconds, however long it may feel, keeps the ebb and flow of soldiers on both sides even, allowing for lulls in the action for the defenders to catch their breath before renewing the fight. The win to loss ratio in Combat Mission, all things being equal, is about 50:50. However, like the game type Combat Mission is more than obviously modified off of, Rush from Battlefield: Bad Company 2, if the attacking team has only a few players who want to attack the failure rate increases very, very quickly. If you renamed Combat Mission Combat Rush or Rush Mission, the point becomes only more clear, as does the direct pull from BC2. The basic play style is the same, minus only the vehicles and with far increased bullet damage and lowered player health.
The other game mode, Team Assault, is essentially team deathmatch. The spawning system here is relatively simple. The minimap divides the battlefield into discrete sections, and your spawn point shifts depending on where troop concentration is. If you put a four quarters grid on the beta Team Assault map, the outermost corner of each is the spawn point. Of course, with this lack of generally random spawn points, a couple players can post up and take people out as they spawn, wait for respawn and repeat until someone finally gets them. Again, I've never played Modern Warfare 2, but from what I've seen this is how that game's spawn system works. Add to this that the respawn timer is a little under a second to keep the action fast paced (given the smaller map size) and spawn camping, trapping even, becomes an issue. This happened to my team when I joined a game tonight, though we eventually broke or spawned out of it, but it is not a fun experience.
One thing I want to get off my chest, though, before I end tonight, is aiming. With consoles, as I understand it, there is a system of auto aim to compensate for the control stick's lack of precision. Because the mouse on a computer allows for next to exact aiming, auto aim is never a factor. For me that's a problem, since I find that I always tend to aim directly to the left or right of my enemy before he sees me, and then he sees me, shoots me, and I die. Bah I say, bah.
Anyway, thanks for reading,
Xiant.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The Medic Update and Medal of Honor
So, yes, I finally dove into the MoH beta tonight. But more on that later. First is the medic update. With the engineer update still to be released, and with the changes the medics update weapon underwent, I'll stray from speculation as to what the shotgun revealed in the Mac Update video actually is.
The medic's update weapon is called the Blutsauger, or Bloodsucker/Vampire in German, when released, was probably the most powerful weapon one could think of for the medic. Not only did it allow the medic to retain his slow health regeneration, but it also healed him as he did damage with it. Of course, that the medic even needs a close range weapon should be a non-issue, seeing as their job is to keep the killers alive. One must also put into play that the medic update was not even named the Medic Update. Rather, it was the Gold Rush update, the first major update to the game, and they tagged along the medic's weapons and achievements with it.
The main drawback to the Blutsauger came at the cost of random critical hits when fired. Offset by the massive +3 health boost per each needle, at ten needles per second, this really didn't hinder it. Add to this that in competitive gameplay random criticals are turned off, and suddenly the Blutsauger became the go-to weapon for medics the world over (in TF2, of course). On September 15th, 2009, Valve changed the Blut's effect on the medic and the medic's abilities themselves. Without the Blut equipped, he now recovers from 4-6 hp per second, but with the Blut only 1-3. At first it may not seem like such a big deal, especially with random criticals reinstated, but playing a Blutsauger medic, and I can say this from experience, is almost detrimental to your health. The increased health regeneration saves precious seconds to reach a health kit or get behind allies. Plus, since the damage output for both the main syringe gun and the Blutsauger is the same, it really comes down to what you want to sacrifice and your confidence with your needle aiming. Watch competitive medic play now and you'll see a mix of syringe run and Blutsauger play, though the former is now the more prevalent.
Enough about that though. Let's talk Medal of Honor. Let me start out by saying that, no, it is not a Modern Warfare 2 clone, nor is it Battlefield: Bad Company 2 repackaged. Rather, it is a little bit of both with some major tweaks from both. On the MW2 side, there is the decreased map size, the high intensity action and the fast, sharp gameplay. On the BC2 side, there is the excellent sound design, weapon animations and team based, tactical play that must occur for a team to win hands down. There is also the kit selection system that limits you only as much as the beta is allowed to contain, even though customization is still quite varied. The little something extra is the realism that comes in MoH. Calling in a mortar strike is quick, but what is really rewarding is seeing that walkie-talkie calling in a UAV, or the cell phone detonate the C4. Also, the battlefields are real places, created with the utmost care for balance and game enjoyment. The weapons too look and feel like real weapons, and the sounds they make sound like the actual gun. Also, there's a tank. And tanks are always awesome. Granted, the bullets and cannon of the tank take way too many hits to kill right now, but given the confined space of the map (currently there's only one) in which a tank gets used, that's okay. They also need to be harder to destroy, though not to the extent of BC2. I killed one with my gun's grenade launcher, so something's wrong there.
Speaking for myself, for what else can I do, I think I'll grow to lie MoH because it is not MW2. The killstreaks, while not named such, are decidedly not MW2 killstreaks. Getting 11 kills will not let you pilot a chopper with explosive rounds or a giant plane with guns the size of houses. You get one missile that you guide yourself or a strategically placed mortar/rocket strike that then goes out of your control. There is not the constant fear of joining a game to nuke-boosters or hackers (as yet), though camping still plays a little part. I saw one of those today. Killed the little bastard too. Excuse me. Can't stand campers. The support streaks also help: new ammo types and UAV recons and others keep the game balanced without causing player to hunker down in houses and wait out the storm. If there is any CoD game I could compare MoH to in any way, its CoD4. Minus the helicopter and add some more awesome (yes, I said it), there is a real comparison to be made.
But that is a story for another time.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
The medic's update weapon is called the Blutsauger, or Bloodsucker/Vampire in German, when released, was probably the most powerful weapon one could think of for the medic. Not only did it allow the medic to retain his slow health regeneration, but it also healed him as he did damage with it. Of course, that the medic even needs a close range weapon should be a non-issue, seeing as their job is to keep the killers alive. One must also put into play that the medic update was not even named the Medic Update. Rather, it was the Gold Rush update, the first major update to the game, and they tagged along the medic's weapons and achievements with it.
The main drawback to the Blutsauger came at the cost of random critical hits when fired. Offset by the massive +3 health boost per each needle, at ten needles per second, this really didn't hinder it. Add to this that in competitive gameplay random criticals are turned off, and suddenly the Blutsauger became the go-to weapon for medics the world over (in TF2, of course). On September 15th, 2009, Valve changed the Blut's effect on the medic and the medic's abilities themselves. Without the Blut equipped, he now recovers from 4-6 hp per second, but with the Blut only 1-3. At first it may not seem like such a big deal, especially with random criticals reinstated, but playing a Blutsauger medic, and I can say this from experience, is almost detrimental to your health. The increased health regeneration saves precious seconds to reach a health kit or get behind allies. Plus, since the damage output for both the main syringe gun and the Blutsauger is the same, it really comes down to what you want to sacrifice and your confidence with your needle aiming. Watch competitive medic play now and you'll see a mix of syringe run and Blutsauger play, though the former is now the more prevalent.
Enough about that though. Let's talk Medal of Honor. Let me start out by saying that, no, it is not a Modern Warfare 2 clone, nor is it Battlefield: Bad Company 2 repackaged. Rather, it is a little bit of both with some major tweaks from both. On the MW2 side, there is the decreased map size, the high intensity action and the fast, sharp gameplay. On the BC2 side, there is the excellent sound design, weapon animations and team based, tactical play that must occur for a team to win hands down. There is also the kit selection system that limits you only as much as the beta is allowed to contain, even though customization is still quite varied. The little something extra is the realism that comes in MoH. Calling in a mortar strike is quick, but what is really rewarding is seeing that walkie-talkie calling in a UAV, or the cell phone detonate the C4. Also, the battlefields are real places, created with the utmost care for balance and game enjoyment. The weapons too look and feel like real weapons, and the sounds they make sound like the actual gun. Also, there's a tank. And tanks are always awesome. Granted, the bullets and cannon of the tank take way too many hits to kill right now, but given the confined space of the map (currently there's only one) in which a tank gets used, that's okay. They also need to be harder to destroy, though not to the extent of BC2. I killed one with my gun's grenade launcher, so something's wrong there.
Speaking for myself, for what else can I do, I think I'll grow to lie MoH because it is not MW2. The killstreaks, while not named such, are decidedly not MW2 killstreaks. Getting 11 kills will not let you pilot a chopper with explosive rounds or a giant plane with guns the size of houses. You get one missile that you guide yourself or a strategically placed mortar/rocket strike that then goes out of your control. There is not the constant fear of joining a game to nuke-boosters or hackers (as yet), though camping still plays a little part. I saw one of those today. Killed the little bastard too. Excuse me. Can't stand campers. The support streaks also help: new ammo types and UAV recons and others keep the game balanced without causing player to hunker down in houses and wait out the storm. If there is any CoD game I could compare MoH to in any way, its CoD4. Minus the helicopter and add some more awesome (yes, I said it), there is a real comparison to be made.
But that is a story for another time.
Thanks for reading,
Xiant
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