Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Initial Impressions - Part III

Click here for Part I of my Enemy Territory: Quake Wars initial impressions.
Click here for Part II of my Enemy Territory: Quake Wars initial impressions.

In Part II of my ET:QW initial impressions, I talked about the wonderful question: "What the fuck just killed me?" ET:QW employs a very standard scrolling chat window that details kills.

Example: heartless_ [weapon] UnluckyNewb

So, it isn't impossible to figure it out, but more often than not players will never see it coming. I guess it proves the age old; "You never hear the one that gets ya."

However, at times, this can be totally awesome. My absolute favorite weapon in ET:QW is on the Scrogg sniper class. Scrogg snipers receive flying drones. A player can launch a drone and fly it around for thirty seconds. At any time during flight, the player can cause the drone to explode. Think of it is as a flying grenade, perfect for rooting out camping snipers. The flying controls are spot on, easy, and allow for near perfect placement. The drones are easy enough to shoot down in the open, but a good pilot will use cover and height to ambush unsuspecting targets.

The flying drone is just one of many cool toys that are in the game. Honestly, I just don't have the time currently to test them all out. I said before, that there was a lot to this demo and it could be a bit confusing, but that doesn't mean there isn't a few cool surprises hiding in the game. And demos are the perfect time to play with these toys, before every single player learns how to counter them.

ET:QW offers enough new awesomeness that it should have a fairly strong following. Unfortunately, due to its more advanced play mechanics, it won't attract throngs of new players. For wily old veterans, ET:QW may just be the game they have been waiting for. ET:QW goes a long ways in providing fast and fun action. In the end, fast and fun should keep it going.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Initial Impressions Part II

Click here for Part I of my Enemy Territory: Quake Wars initial impressions.

I left off my last post talking about the objectives system built into ET:QW and how, for a new player, it can be confusing. I don't want potential players to be discouraged. I am not stating that ET:QW's objectives based system is a failure. It works, but at a cost of being a major barrier to entry.

ET:QW is a tough game to pick up and have fun with right away. For the purposes of a demo, that baffles me. I expected better from this game. It feels like the team at Splash Damage wanted to highlight too many aspects of their game in the demo, instead of providing a streamlined demo to introduce players to the game. A simpler map, with simpler objectives would go a long ways to improving early opinions about this title.

Moving on, the action in ET:QW far surpasses that of any Battlefield title, in both speed and veracity. Battlefield games are notorious for having a bit more relaxed style of play with an emphasis on wide open game play. ET:QW does a much better job of focusing players onto a single objective. Spawn points are usually up close to the action, and often times will drop a player right into the middle of the fight. This minimizes the need for a team to spread themselves across an entire map. Teams and players can focus on the current area and progress from there. I have found no reason to go backwards on the demo map so far, except to grab a vehicle.

Speaking of vehicles, they are fairly well done in ET:QW. There is no "vehicle specific class", so any player should be able to hop into any vehicle and go to town. I've never really enjoyed vehicles in these type of games, so I have not tested them very much. So far, I have not been camped at a spawn point by any flying vehicles, always a plus in my book!

My final area of concern for ET:QW is the lauded: "What the fuck just killed me?" There are so many new tricks in ET:QW, that I've found myself more than once trying to figure out what just killed me. Players die fast. Once the damage starts, it rarely ends in survival. As the game play is faster, it stands to reason that players are likely to die without seeing the cause. It can become annoying, but hopefully with time players will have enough experience to know what owned them.

Part III has been posted here.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - Initial Impressions

The developers and fans of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars do not want the game to be compared to any of the Battlefield (1942, Vietnam, 2) games. Unfortunately, they built a team based multi-player shooter that has vehicles and unit classes, so comparisons are imminent. After all, Battlefield 1942 sort of defined team based multi-player shooters with vehicles and unit classes. It may not have been the first, but it was the most defining in my opinion.

Whether players believe ET:QW is anything like Battlefield or not, for me, there are enough comparisons to be made. Honestly, both games play the same. In Battlefield you are advancing from flag to flag. In ET:QW you simply advance from objective to objective. ET:QW has the benefit that objectives are a lot more interesting and can change on the fly. For example: the demo map has the GDF forces charging forward to build a bridge in order to advance on to securing the bridge, followed by advancing a mobile base.

Err well, I think those are the objectives. Battlefield's flag capture system may be static, but at least it is understandable to pretty much everyone. The objectives in ET:QW tend to be confusing at first and confusing in the end. Players can hit the "m" key to select a new mission (objective), but often times missions disapear as the objectives are met. As a new player, I spent most of my time confused on what I should be doing. There is little guidance to indicate what objectives need to be done or in what order they should be done to maximize effect. I guess it is up to the players to figure out?

Part II has been posted here.
Part III has been posted here.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Demo

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has launched a demo.

I have found two great download links:

N-Zone
Yahoo!

I should have comments up later this week.

Linux Gaming with Radeon

It is no secret that I am becoming a fan of Linux. Over the past year I have completed the first half of my Red Hat Academy courses and have begun studying for my Linux+ certification. My interest in Linux extends beyond education and work. I am a gamer, and Linux gaming is a sore spot to an otherwise great operating system.

Digging around on the Internet, I found an article showing off Enemy Territory: Quake Wars running on a Linux box sporting the new 8.41 display drivers for Radeon HD 2900XT video cards. If you need to understand one thing about Linux gaming, it is that the lack of driver support is a main cause for the faltering Linux game market. However, this is changing as the article shows.

This gives me a bit of faith that Linux may become a viable platform in the future for gamers. My ultimate dream would be to have a complete Linux distribution built completely around games. How many gamers would love to have an entire operating system dedicated to their hobby? I know I would.

Thoughts on Mythos

I have now played the Mythos beta for a couple weeks and want to share some of my thoughts.

Graphics

The game looks good, albeit simple. The idea with simpler graphics is that it will be very easy for new monsters, races, and other art assets to be created for the game. Flagship Studios, Mythos' developer, wants to be able to easily add content on the fly.

Animations are all very well done. The game runs well on my gaming desktop and on my work laptop, so the system requirements are not steep. This is a clear benefit for the game as many different levels of computers will be able to run it.

Game Play

Game play, like the graphics, is simple. Generally, players set one ability to the right mouse button and their base attack to the left. From there it is straight up hack and slash. Players plow through tons of monsters at a fairly quick pace.

My concern for the way the game plays is that the character advancement is far too slow. It takes a good bit of hacking and slashing to advance a level. Gaining a level is the only time at which you receive points to spend on new abilities. Even then, the low level tiers of the skill trees offer very few new skills. It is quite easy for a player to get quickly bored.

Mythos needs faster advancement or a system that gives new skills on a faster basis. The game is supposedly going to be free-to-play, so there is no reason that leveling needs to be arbitrarily hard or "grindy". Currently it is very grinding intensive, with little flair. Grinding isn't particularly bad in a hack and slash game, but combined with slow character progression, it makes Mythos quite boring.

On top of this, the classes just aren't balanced. Some classes receive early access to area of effect (AOE) attacks that just dominate. Classes without AOE are at a significant disadvantage as they are forced to kill monsters one at a time, burning through a ton of potions in the process. There is plans to introduce more classes to the game, but I sincerely hope Flagship spends some time balancing AOE vs. single target attacks.

Just a quick note on potions. I absolutely hate potion mechanics in most hack and slash games. Mythos, like most games of its ilk, have players quaffing potions every ten seconds. This has never made any sense to me. Why not just increase the amount of damage a character can take, or mana a character has, and save some work for the database hardware?

Loot

A hack and slash game is nothing without it's loot. Mythos operates on a random loot mechanic. Magic items drop or can be found with random stat modifiers attached to them. At any time, a fairly powerful magical item could drop. However, I have some problems with the system.

The system is a fairly standard random loot system prone to the same old problems. Most of the items that drop are worthless, as they combine stat bonuses that are worthless to a class. Plus, a lot of items drop that are not even useable by your class or stat build. I am a little disappointed that Flagship made absolutely no attempt at improving the aging mechanic. They could of made the system more intelligent, dropping loot that is more optimized for your class or build.

Fortunately, Mythos alleviates these problems a little bit with a socket mechanic for plain items. Players can purchase weapons and armors that have sockets into which they can set gemstones that give various stat bonuses. This allows for players to achieve some sense of control over what stats their items will have.

Another problem I have with the loot is that it is not very easy to compare two items. Mythos would benefit greatly if you were able to display the statistics of two items side by side. Also, a "Is this better than what I am currently using?", suggestion box would help new players immensely.

Conclusion

In the end, Mythos will be a fun game to mess around with when players are bored with their main game. Mythos is also a great casual title. Both because it is free and because its game play is rather simple. My only concern is that they will not speed the character progression up, resulting in a bunch of bored players. With a bit of polish and flair, Mythos will be a new age Diablo (minus the demons).

Mark Jacobs: Keep Fighting the Good Fight!

Virtual World News has a transcript from the Austin Game Developers Conference (AGDC) entitled: What Are the Biggest Online Gaming Opportunities?

The panel featured:
John Blakely (VP of Sony Online Entertainment)
Mark Jacobs (VP EA, Studio GM EA Mythic)
Raph Koster (President Areae)
Erik Bethke (CEO GoPets).

Moderated by: Matt Firor.

Mark Jacobs goes on the defensive and offensive about microtransactions, RMT, and garbage games that think they can make a buck. This is why I will forever be a fan of Mark Jacobs. He has always stuck to his guns about RMT and the "how can we make more money" attitudes. Many people may doubt Mark's look on the market, but few can prove him wrong.

When everyone in the world told him he couldn't make Dark Ages of Camelot, he did it. Not only did he do it, but he spurred Mythic to do it in a 24 month timeline. On top of this, DAoC launched nearly flawlessly. Sure some mistakes happened with expansions, but DAoC has held onto a relative strong player base and provided for Mythic to pursue further endeavors.

In this transcript, Mark Jacob spends a lot of time saying no. Raph Koster stays pretty centered with his ideals on Web 2.0 and his plans to capitalize on a non-traditional game. However, both Blakely and Bethke spend an inordinate amount of time demanding that they are right with no proof whatsoever.

The argument seems to be that just because something makes money it is good for the market. Jacobs smartly informs the panel that isn't the case. What's good for the market is good solid games, not developers nickel and diming customers. All the other trash will be swept under the carpet; where it belongs.

Northrend: No Fly Zone

There has been a lot of talk lately that flying mounts will not be usable in World of Warcraft's next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard has stated that the use of flying mounts may be restricted until players reach level 78 or higher. The reasoning: flying mounts would allow players to bypass too much content.

Flying mounts were introduced in The Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion, but were not accessible until players achieved level 70. Therefore, flying mounts had little to no effect on leveling speed. They served as an end game treat for players to zip around the zones in Outlands.

With another expansion in the works, Blizzard seems to be concerned that players on flying mounts would be able to just zip around from quest to quest ignoring the vast amount of content built in between. This is understandable, as Blizzard puts a lot of hard work into building their content.

As a player who does not have a flying mount, I tend to agree with Blizzard. There is an ever growing gap between the "haves" and "have nots" in WoW. Nothing would suck worse than landing on the shores of Northrend and be forced to take the hard road as players with flying mounts zip around at 2-3x your speed while skipping over annoying random aggro.

It is understandable that players with flying mounts would be upset that they have invested large amounts of time into getting something that they can no longer use. Or not use for a certain period time. In this regard, I sympathize with flying mount owners.

However, considerations have to be made. Not just for players without flying mounts, but for the design of the content. With flying mounts, the design of both the static terrain and playable content needs to branch into a third, vertical dimension. It is not feasible that Blizzard places "flying guards" over every single quest location. The question needs to be asked, what do players want Blizzard spending time on? Getting the expansion shipped or double checking the expansion for consistency with flying mounts?

Not only is there game play reasons for turning Northrend into a No Fly Zone, but there are lore reasons as well. Blizzard has already stated they will be involving the Dragonflights heavily within WotLK. So, it may turn out that players who attempt to fly over Northrend will be downed by a "sky guard" until they reach an appropriate level and can become friendly with said "sky guard".

I strongly believe that players will be far more accepting if there is a valid lore-related reason for the restriction of flight. If it turns out that Blizzard just wants to slow leveling speed, then there will be valid room for complaints. Azeroth currently doesn't allow flying mounts, but it was also built before TBC. WotLK does not have that same luxury. Players will expect more.

No One's Talking!

Tabula Rasa is set to launch October 19th, the beta NDA has been lifted, but I can't seem to find anyone that will give a decent post about their beta experience. Hopefully, in the next couple of days we will see some great posts from beta testers.

Sadly, this just confirms my suspicions that the interest in Tabula Rasa is not that big. I'm not interested in the game and I don't know anyone that is actually set on playing it. A few of my "I play every MMORPG" friends may give it a whirl, but they will play anything.

I'm debating whether to give the game a try. It has been a good while since I gave a random game a chance. I normally stick to playing games that I've followed for months (or years) through development, beta, and launch. I have paid almost no attention to Tabula Rasa and that may have set the stage for me to play it. Unfortunately, there is that whole work, school, wife, and dog equation that I need fit gaming back into.

Bloggers Roll Call

MMORPG and gaming bloggers, I need you! I need links for a new blog roll I will be putting up. Plus, I want to find new blogs that I don't read. I plan to visit each of these blogs on a daily basis, so please drop your link in a comment.