sifnt
26th February 2006, 15:16
Dear Splashdamage,
I’m writing this post because as someone who’s been into the whole gaming scene for some time I’m starting to become seriously concerned about ET:QW’s level of ‘skill’ and consequently its lasting appeal, fun and if its actually rewarding to play.
Before I get into my concerns heres a little bit about my history in gaming so you can understand my point of view and the angle I come from.
I started off playing online games about 4 years ago, and I’ve been the leader of a fairly well performing clan (Regiments Khaos) since RtCW was released. We generally finished 4th or so in our local competitions and recently finished 1st in the Australian / New Zealand GameArena Ladder.
Through my gaming career, both in the servers and speaking to various people outside the servers I’ve come across a variety of views from a variety of gamers.
I don’t advocate that a game should be purely aim based, I recognize that some players are really good at timing weapons, some players are very good at playing sneaky, some players are very good at controlling their movement in a game while when it comes to aim some players have ‘twitch aim’, while some players are better at ‘tracking’ just like some players prefer weapons that are single shot, burst or just full automatic (aka spray and pray).
I’ve played a number of different roles in different games, in RtCW I really enjoyed being a soldier with a venom, in ET I’m pretty much always a Rambo medic as I love the aim and the strafing around. I also play BF2 as something different, but I only fly planes for my clan since the ground combat is completely and utterly devoid of any skill whatsoever.
Actually the whole of BattleField 2 is completely bug ridden and messed up, and after playing it and realizing that virtually everyone I talked to shared similar beliefs to mine; the game had so much potential and messed it up so badly.
Playing BF2 has also made me have a bit more faith in ET:QW, realizing that no matter how hard you tried, no matter how many marketing people told you to release it instead of fixing the bugs, or how many people said effects were more important than skill you’d still do a better job than EA did with BF2.
Now, I don’t know whether you’ll agree with me or not, but for a game to be fun to play it has to have a learning curve, and it has to reward skill in an environment that’s fun. I guess that’s a pretty basic definition that it’s pretty hard to disagree with.
Obviously the original ET was rushed to market because it was a free game so naturally a lot of balance issues weren’t fixed, however again I think we can all agree that if it wasn’t for ETpro and the tremendous effort by Bani, Rain, Zinx and the rest of the team ET wouldn’t be where it is today. Out of the box there were too many bugs and balance issues that made the game un-fun because the game was hurriedly finished as a free product.
So recognizing that BF2 had potential but seriously messed it up, and recognizing that ET:QW needs to reward all the major types of skill instead of just being a ‘newb’ fest with fancy graphics as some people in the ET community seem to think it will be.
And naturally the game needs to have a learning curve (mainly for pubs), so I’m wondering to what degree you guys are interested in rewarding skill and what kind of things are being done?
For example, I read over at http://etqw.gamersnation.co.uk/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=435 that:
“To start, Wedgwood spent some time showing off animations for one of the GDF characters. With a pistol, the player is able to walk slowly, with sidearm raised, as well as from a crouched position. Jogging, the player will lower his weapon slightly, and full-out running will cause the character to brace his weapon against his chest.�
This was one of the big mess-ups EA did in BF2, and one of the things that was pretty close to perfect in ET. For players that don’t use a joystick to aim (ok, you should have to use a joystick if you wanna be a good pilot, but you get my drift), putting limits on their movements instead of supporting movement, aim and trick jumping is going to be a serious damper on the enjoyment.
I’ve played ET since it came out for my clan, and since its been so long people are starting to lose interest in it and put their hopes on ET:QW.
Another thing is the accuracy of the weapons in BF2, they’re seriously inaccurate. At least while your moving, and to add insult to injury the anti lag is about as random as everything else in the game.
You should be able to move and hit people easily while moving, the game should reward those players that want to stand still (snipers) and those that want to make themselves hard to hit while hitting others. And once again one of the reasons people are getting sick of BF2 is because EA didn’t realise this.
Originally I didn’t like the idea of ET:QW having vehicles either, but after having played bf2 I definitely think they can work as long as vehicles are ‘an extra’ element to the game, not something that governs the game.
For example if you’re a foot soldier, regardless of your weapon, you should be able to kill a tank just like you can in ET. It’s just a lot harder and the tank may have a 1-10 chance of killing you if you don’t have the right weapon and it’s in a good spot, but you should still be able to kill the driver.
And that should be the same thing with any vehicle, if someone’s accurate enough to hit the pilot in a jet as it flies past they should be rewarded with a kill. Sure, its not realistic but if you guys wanted to make a realistic game you’d just release a movie of a nuclear weapon going off, or maybe let people run around for a few seconds before it goes off because that’s what a realistic war simulator would involve now a days and especially into the future.
I’m also a little bit concerned reading that you guys want to make your aerial vehicles easy to fly, sure its extremely irritating in BF2 when some complete idiot crashes the transport chopper because they cant fly, but I guess when it comes to transport vehicles specifically they should be hard to crash on public servers.
BUT, when it comes to vehicles that can actually do damage, such as the futuristic helicopter / plane in ET:QW the last thing you want to do is let idiots that couldn’t hit an elephant in a door way with a machine gun standing 2 metres away get kills.
Everyone wants to ‘fly’ in games because it sounds cool, but if you let people fly easily you end up with massive que for the vehicles like in BattleField. You also get killed by idiots that you could easily kill on the ground because they’ve made flying too easy in bf2.
I’ve noticed in bf2 when there are 1-2 skilled pilots on one team the other team gives up trying to use their planes after awhile, while when the game started there were up to 5 people going for each plane. I think that’s exactly how ET:QW could balance things out best, by making people realize that it takes serious practice to fly any vehicle that’s good at killing other vehicles or infantry, while holding the pilot accountable to people on the ground that can aim / time their shots.
If you are still reading this thank you for your time and I hope I haven’t come across as being negative. I just enjoy ET a lot and hate so many things about bf2 (yet I still play it :/) that I couldn’t bear having the game I’m looking forward to end up like it.
So looking forward to playing a well balanced out ET:QW on an updated engine that allows a new level of diverse strats. :D
P.S.
Its 2AM here and I’m tired, so forgive me if my rant doesn’t quite make sense at times, I just came of a bf2 pub and need to get some sleep for uni.
Regards,
[RoK.Sifnt]
www.rokmaens.com
I’m writing this post because as someone who’s been into the whole gaming scene for some time I’m starting to become seriously concerned about ET:QW’s level of ‘skill’ and consequently its lasting appeal, fun and if its actually rewarding to play.
Before I get into my concerns heres a little bit about my history in gaming so you can understand my point of view and the angle I come from.
I started off playing online games about 4 years ago, and I’ve been the leader of a fairly well performing clan (Regiments Khaos) since RtCW was released. We generally finished 4th or so in our local competitions and recently finished 1st in the Australian / New Zealand GameArena Ladder.
Through my gaming career, both in the servers and speaking to various people outside the servers I’ve come across a variety of views from a variety of gamers.
I don’t advocate that a game should be purely aim based, I recognize that some players are really good at timing weapons, some players are very good at playing sneaky, some players are very good at controlling their movement in a game while when it comes to aim some players have ‘twitch aim’, while some players are better at ‘tracking’ just like some players prefer weapons that are single shot, burst or just full automatic (aka spray and pray).
I’ve played a number of different roles in different games, in RtCW I really enjoyed being a soldier with a venom, in ET I’m pretty much always a Rambo medic as I love the aim and the strafing around. I also play BF2 as something different, but I only fly planes for my clan since the ground combat is completely and utterly devoid of any skill whatsoever.
Actually the whole of BattleField 2 is completely bug ridden and messed up, and after playing it and realizing that virtually everyone I talked to shared similar beliefs to mine; the game had so much potential and messed it up so badly.
Playing BF2 has also made me have a bit more faith in ET:QW, realizing that no matter how hard you tried, no matter how many marketing people told you to release it instead of fixing the bugs, or how many people said effects were more important than skill you’d still do a better job than EA did with BF2.
Now, I don’t know whether you’ll agree with me or not, but for a game to be fun to play it has to have a learning curve, and it has to reward skill in an environment that’s fun. I guess that’s a pretty basic definition that it’s pretty hard to disagree with.
Obviously the original ET was rushed to market because it was a free game so naturally a lot of balance issues weren’t fixed, however again I think we can all agree that if it wasn’t for ETpro and the tremendous effort by Bani, Rain, Zinx and the rest of the team ET wouldn’t be where it is today. Out of the box there were too many bugs and balance issues that made the game un-fun because the game was hurriedly finished as a free product.
So recognizing that BF2 had potential but seriously messed it up, and recognizing that ET:QW needs to reward all the major types of skill instead of just being a ‘newb’ fest with fancy graphics as some people in the ET community seem to think it will be.
And naturally the game needs to have a learning curve (mainly for pubs), so I’m wondering to what degree you guys are interested in rewarding skill and what kind of things are being done?
For example, I read over at http://etqw.gamersnation.co.uk/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=435 that:
“To start, Wedgwood spent some time showing off animations for one of the GDF characters. With a pistol, the player is able to walk slowly, with sidearm raised, as well as from a crouched position. Jogging, the player will lower his weapon slightly, and full-out running will cause the character to brace his weapon against his chest.�
This was one of the big mess-ups EA did in BF2, and one of the things that was pretty close to perfect in ET. For players that don’t use a joystick to aim (ok, you should have to use a joystick if you wanna be a good pilot, but you get my drift), putting limits on their movements instead of supporting movement, aim and trick jumping is going to be a serious damper on the enjoyment.
I’ve played ET since it came out for my clan, and since its been so long people are starting to lose interest in it and put their hopes on ET:QW.
Another thing is the accuracy of the weapons in BF2, they’re seriously inaccurate. At least while your moving, and to add insult to injury the anti lag is about as random as everything else in the game.
You should be able to move and hit people easily while moving, the game should reward those players that want to stand still (snipers) and those that want to make themselves hard to hit while hitting others. And once again one of the reasons people are getting sick of BF2 is because EA didn’t realise this.
Originally I didn’t like the idea of ET:QW having vehicles either, but after having played bf2 I definitely think they can work as long as vehicles are ‘an extra’ element to the game, not something that governs the game.
For example if you’re a foot soldier, regardless of your weapon, you should be able to kill a tank just like you can in ET. It’s just a lot harder and the tank may have a 1-10 chance of killing you if you don’t have the right weapon and it’s in a good spot, but you should still be able to kill the driver.
And that should be the same thing with any vehicle, if someone’s accurate enough to hit the pilot in a jet as it flies past they should be rewarded with a kill. Sure, its not realistic but if you guys wanted to make a realistic game you’d just release a movie of a nuclear weapon going off, or maybe let people run around for a few seconds before it goes off because that’s what a realistic war simulator would involve now a days and especially into the future.
I’m also a little bit concerned reading that you guys want to make your aerial vehicles easy to fly, sure its extremely irritating in BF2 when some complete idiot crashes the transport chopper because they cant fly, but I guess when it comes to transport vehicles specifically they should be hard to crash on public servers.
BUT, when it comes to vehicles that can actually do damage, such as the futuristic helicopter / plane in ET:QW the last thing you want to do is let idiots that couldn’t hit an elephant in a door way with a machine gun standing 2 metres away get kills.
Everyone wants to ‘fly’ in games because it sounds cool, but if you let people fly easily you end up with massive que for the vehicles like in BattleField. You also get killed by idiots that you could easily kill on the ground because they’ve made flying too easy in bf2.
I’ve noticed in bf2 when there are 1-2 skilled pilots on one team the other team gives up trying to use their planes after awhile, while when the game started there were up to 5 people going for each plane. I think that’s exactly how ET:QW could balance things out best, by making people realize that it takes serious practice to fly any vehicle that’s good at killing other vehicles or infantry, while holding the pilot accountable to people on the ground that can aim / time their shots.
If you are still reading this thank you for your time and I hope I haven’t come across as being negative. I just enjoy ET a lot and hate so many things about bf2 (yet I still play it :/) that I couldn’t bear having the game I’m looking forward to end up like it.
So looking forward to playing a well balanced out ET:QW on an updated engine that allows a new level of diverse strats. :D
P.S.
Its 2AM here and I’m tired, so forgive me if my rant doesn’t quite make sense at times, I just came of a bf2 pub and need to get some sleep for uni.
Regards,
[RoK.Sifnt]
www.rokmaens.com