I have been playing more Xt recently, and was actually quiet surprised to see some improvements. No offence guys, but you allways take your time with the good stuff 
Anyways, after playing some hours, I am still not feeling like the game provides a “universe”, I can fully be sucked in. Even tho it´s probably too late for such a feedback, I think that the general theme in the game is to generic and just isn´t interesting at all. This shows in many ways, for instance there is no proper name for the game yet, the objectives are just press to win stuff, and allways when I start a map I wonder, “ok what is this about?”. Also there is no distinction between both sides, it feels like playing exactly the same. It would be great if the general 0815 mercs, would have slightly different weapons with other sounds, and maybe slightly different fire rates with adjusted dmg per shot, so that in the end both weapons to the same dmg per secound, but do different amount of dmg per single shot. This way there will be one side stronger for closer fights, while the other one have a small advantage on longer range fights. Other, not so important mercs should be then restricted for one side too. This game is not a MMO, where you have to stick to a side for ever once it´s chosen. If someone preferes to play merc X, and X can be only played with a specific fraction, then he can wait until he plays this fraction again. In the meantime he can try out and play other stuff, and once he can play his favourite merc X again, he will enjoy it more then spaming it until he gets bored of it. Give each side of the game some characteristics and bonuses, or the motivation will wear off super fast (like it does right now).
Because of the theme, the maps are restricted in many ways, what is like a shot in the own foot in the long run. Even if you provide simply perfect set of maps in the beginning, you will need so implement some new ones after time, and the longer the game will be played, the more maps the community seek. It´s almost like you dont expect this game to be a success ;).
Bad Game Theme?
I don’t found that the theme is bad or limits the possibilities, they can still work on it to improve the universe. (improve the background, intros, visuals/sounds differences between teams, etc.)
Limit the mercs to one side is a bad idea for a F2P. Players will buy mercs, it is not conceivable to not be able to play our merc because we are in the wrong team.
I can see the theme creating new campaigns ala ETQW and spreading to new cities further down the line. You could choose country campaign to play and the maps that are involved with big cities like NYC, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam etc. Keeping the bomb theme is fine if it can be tweaked to spread beyond London.
What I posted in another thread:
You’re still limited by what you can do with the London theme because of the story/theme of the game, placing loads of decontamination stuff in the maps might make them look less boring but you still have to make those structures fit in with the surroundings and overall the maps need to fit the theme of the game which seems to be about corporate espionage of sorts with us working for god knows who stealing data from other companies in an abandoned London, typically such data can only be found in certain areas. I’ve never bought into the theme of this game it just doesn’t make much sense at the moment and having two nameless teams with a bunch of identical mercs on each doesn’t help either. I would have liked to have two different teams and an actual conflict but that’s not going to happen now.
I think whatever city you use it’ll end up being largely samey if you keep using the dirty bomb theme, only difference will be that it looks like a different city. ET and ET:QW had a really nice variety of maps/locations which spawned a variety of different objectives which is sorely missing in this game, though I think ET:QW could have been a lot more diverse on the objective side considering we were dealing with Strogg. Strangely I would have liked to see a proper urban map in ET:QW, outskirts wasn’t quite urban enough.
They should have just made each map it’s own premise and location if they knew they were going down this route of mercs for hire and have the mercs fight over something different each time in locations across the globe.
Though most likely too late now I think this idea would have worked better, this way you could have made any excuse for having mercs fighting each other in any location across the globe that’s not just restricted to densely populated urban areas.
Maybe they could make a bunch of maps for a given conflict, after they’ve done with the current London maps that could be the Dirty Bomb campaign and then they come up with another premise and have that play in another region with a different back story.
they have been awfully quiet on the story side of the game development. So far the best we got were the concept arts in a video a long time ago. I believe that if they plan to start talking publicly about XT kinda soon, they will have to reveal more about the story element.
So far we are just shooting.
You mean where there is more than a tea cup broken on the floor ? (cf. Waterloo)
Expanding to different cities/areas of the world with each having a different theme would be nice :]
Indeed, but it requires that the first city impacts hard on the players so they actually follow in other cities …
The way I see SD went is:
SD: lets make a a mp FPS! -K cool!
Where ? -London
K what will be the reason Fighting in London - humm 
:rolleyes:- Dirty bomb ! - K coll!
lets make maps -what will be the objectives -Hum:rolleyes: hum… Datas! …what kind of Datas? hum idk will see -Lets call them Data cores
SD to Levels guys -K guys make maps -Hum k any Base Story ?Hum not realy its Data cores Dirty bomb stuff
-cmon guys lets do it :stroggbanana:-
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
A Better way imo :
Find a Story (including the Factions)Open doors for expand further
Find a location(s)
Find objectives
Do maps on these ^^
As the game has no SP I’m not sure how important a totally fleshed out story is?
The only real issue I see is we have no feeling for who the mercs are fighting for. They’re mercs, they fight for whoever pays them, but why? Who are their employers?
In games like ET you inherently know, Allies = good guys, Axis = bad guys, you already know who they are and why they’re fighting. Same with ET:QW, humans -v- aliens. In XT there’s no feeling about who’s on who’s side, or even what “sides” there are.
[QUOTE=Kendle;493588]As the game has no SP I’m not sure how important a totally fleshed out story is?
The only real issue I see is we have no feeling for who the mercs are fighting for. They’re mercs, they fight for whoever pays them, but why? Who are their employers?
In games like ET you inherently know, Allies = good guys, Axis = bad guys, you already know who they are and why they’re fighting. Same with ET:QW, humans -v- aliens. In XT there’s no feeling about who’s on who’s side, or even what “sides” there are.[/QUOTE]
These questions you are asking yourself are Base story questions …you want to know the Base story !
There could be a simple base story like : K Red are the bad guys and wants to kill you, defend and kill red guys …end of story.
or you Do something more immersive and interesting that Hold your players with the franchise
Just need something basic that makes sense and explains what we’re fighting over.
I still think that if you stop thinking of a city simply as streets with buildings on both sides, you can find a way to fit any map concept in a “city” context. Urban, suburban, commercial and industrial areas can all give the maps very different look and feel. Add recreational ares like parks, zoos, huge museums and you can accommodate any setting from claustrophobic indoors to open outdoors, from the mundane to the seriously weird. London even has a river running through it if you fancy a beach landing of some sort…
Of course, you can do all kinds of maps with a “city theme”. However, you still taking away possibilities, and especially: who wants to play in a zoo, where some monkeys try to hit you with their poo? I want military basis, bunkers, military structures, coasts… places where it feels right to shoot. It feels more natural too fight over military stuffs, then in a city for some data cores. It should also be much easier to make maps in a more military way, just because they are by nature made for fighting. City maps on the other side, have to look like a city AND give enough space for fighting. Everyone is complaining about how tight and tubish the maps appeal. Guess what? It´s because it has to feel like a city. Make it military, and you can make badass places with specific objectives, that everyone sees and recognizes as such. In a city there is so much buildings and stuff lying arround, the objective doesnt stand out in many cases.
In my oppinion, city maps can add variety but not be the main place to fight.
And while I am typing this, I remember something else: make classes do specific objectives and nothing else, or at least make a specific game mode where they are restricted for comp play (maybe with less spread too then :P). I see that you are trying to make the game more easy to play, and want everyone to do everything with his merc he spend money for. However, your taking away many tactical offensive and defensive options, what in the end that takes away a lot of the long term motivation.
That’s why I would have liked if they just made each map a different scenario rather than have all maps be in London. You could have a short explanation on the loading screen about what’s going on and then have the two sides fight it out. I’d much rather have two distinct teams and an actual conflict though but that’s not going to happen in this game.
As said in other topic, why would you be fighting in those kind of areas? The current maps don’t make much sense as it is but guessing this is due to lack of context which I assume will come in time. I suppose you could use a park for a single stage leading to an indoor area for the second or so. Having the whole game take place in London just seems really underwhelming and don’t understand why they went down this route, as with Brink it just seems more suited to a SP game.
well, i have never benn to London, but i bet it was a beautiful city. and i would love to find those basterds, whoever is responsible for this!!!
i would love to have some mystery why this happened.
polititians lie, scientists do not know…what was that and how to stop it?
so some maps have to be a try to find out what the hell happened and why
You’ve hit a big part of the problem right there: locations and objectives are meaningless without a context, and we don’t have enough visibility on that context right now. The back story behind the whole thing and each individual map is what is going to sell or not the theme and right now all we have is a vague notion of data left behind and factions fighting to acquire it or protect it. Everyone evacuated but they didn’t bother to take with them priceless information worth killing for?
I disagree with the notion that the backstory needs to be fleshed out. In this regard I feel less is more, by leaving it to imagination. The visuals already do the talking in the character and level design, and tell the story, though I would not mind greater variation. As to the locations and objectives becoming meaningless with no written explained backstory, that is just bullocks. All you need to know to give them meaning is that you are playing a (coorporative FPS) game (with a timelimit.)
It doesn’t need fleshing out to the extreme like in Brink but there needs to be something to buy into, we currently have two identical teams with a bunch of mercs fighting it out in an abandoned London for god knows what reason. There needs to be some kind of premise to this game which is currently lacking, it doesn’t need to be complicated or clever it just needs to be there.
Yes less is more but there’s barely anything in this game. All we can gather from the maps is that there was a clean up operation which was abandoned. If there was some basic backstory and explanation for the conflicts occurring in the maps it would create some kind of mythology that people would buy into, literally, they could do a lot with optional extras that could be unlocked and/or purchased that expands on the game’s universe, either in the game or outside the game.
The game has no identity yet to draw people in, it feels very generic at the moment and based on the comments found on the publicly released footage a fair amount of people out there feel the same.
There’s no context to what’s going on, the game just feels like a bunch of London themed maps where you have to steal futuristic milk jugs. If you’re happy with that then fine but I think a lot of people expect a little more effort and thought gone into the game as a whole, again it doesn’t have to be elaborate but an explanation would go a long way, ET:QW did this very well, you had the alien invasion plot which was explained on the intro sequence (which could be skipped) and each map had a briefing on the loading sequence and the maps themselves painted a good picture of what was going on in the conflict.