Enemy Territory:Speculation Wars

(B0rsuk) #1

Hey

Let’s speculate about ET:QW. Basing on already known reviews and this: http://www.xfire.be/?x=news&mode=item&id=1427
I honestly hope this topic will become obsolete soon.
I go first.

I. 5 classes for each side. It’s not obvious If you read the scans - there’s no mention of Strogg equivalent of Field Op, and no mention of human Medic. However:

  • one of scans shows 5 different strogg models
  • one of official screenshots shows one of soldiers healing another, fallen soldier.

II. Basing on screenshots, how does each class look like ? By bets:

  • medic is the one with light uniform and little protection/no body armor. The one with shiny helmet. No visor/glass before eyes.
  • Field Op is the one with the visor and the antenna coming out of his backpack. This screen has both medic and field op (field op is shown better on the first released ET:QW screenshot) http://pix.nofrag.com/12/87/3522eec49c0c2b669087b8c7b900.jpg
  • soldier is the one with heavy body armor, including leg protection. Doh.
  • On this screenshot, and the official one with APC, you can see an unknown soldier with orange visor/glasses. http://pix.nofrag.com/0d/3e/ca1e4bce5b0b804efbafd2b50ce8.jpg
    It could be either engy or ranger. Probably ranger, because he doesn’t look too engish and and seems to be sniping.

So, where’s the missing 1 class ?

As for Stroggs, I have no idea. On this picture you can see all (?) 5 classes: http://pix.nofrag.com/7d/34/7214150a5b92fdb7b95643529425.jpg
I’d say the rightmost is infiltrator, and the second counting from right probably tank.

(famine) #2

On this screenshot, and the official one with APC, you can see an unknown soldier with orange visor/glasses. http://pix.nofrag.com/0d/3e/ca1e4bce5b0b804efbafd2b50ce8.jpg
It could be either engy or ranger. Probably ranger, because he doesn’t look too engish and and seems to be sniping.

I’d go for engie, thats a shotgun for sure! And he also has aaah… what should i call it…“engie stuff” in his belt.

(nUllSkillZ) #3

Hmm, not sure of the 5 classes for the strogg.
If they use “Stroyent” as health and ammunition they only need 4 classes.

(famine) #4

That class is way to powerfull, hope he cant heal himself.

(kamikazee) #5

Well, any strog can heal himself or get extra ammo (not both). So basicly, this one gets ammo AND heals himself.
But it has probably got a less powerfull weapon to balance things as you see.

(ParanoiD) #6

The Strogg can also change some ammo into health! So I guess they don’t need a medic. As seen in the trailer there is a medic in ET:QW who revives a soldier with those electric things (dont know how they call them) on the GDF. Guess an engineer could make your shields and so make ur hp better as well, not sure of it…

(B0rsuk) #7

Another thing… looks like heads of Strogg are pretty badly protected. Do you think this means they’re more vulnerable to headshots ? From balance point of view, it would make sense, because their bodies (in general) seem to be much more metallic than humans.

Is it safe to say hitboxes are gone ? (They are gone in Doom3 and Quake4, I hear, but… look below)

One more speculation. ET:QW is going to be optimised for 24-32 players. Last time I checked, Doom3 multiplayer was maxplayers4, and Quake4 multi was maxplayers 8. I mean, in order to optimise ET:QW they have probably had to “cut something down”. Some aspect of details, perhaps. Maybe it’s shadows - I think shadows don’t have to be so intense/sharp in a mostly outdoor game. If I’m wrong, what do you think could be reworked to permit more players ? Last thing I want is my connection unable to handle the game…

(ParanoiD) #8

Shadows affecting your connection? What data do you think you get from other players? You will get coordinates, ammo, weapon, direction hes looking etc. Your computer gets these usefull information and the game will create the person with this information, its shadows etc. If you get more players your pc would need some better specs, higher cpu, more mem and better gfx to render it. Also they will try to get this down by the megatexture (6GB on graphics minimized into 8MB i did read in the magazine scans). Sounds good doesn’t it?

Said is that etqw uses the same minimal specs as doom3. One other nice thing is that minimum specs aren’t right always. Nice example is my neighbour who can run COD2 1024x768 with some details up as well on a PIII 900MHz, while minimum is a P4 1400 MHz.

(B0rsuk) #9

Well admitedly I have no idea what’s being sent between client and server in case of network fpp games. But there has to be a reason why Doom3 and QUake4 have so low maxplayers.

As I said in another topic, I’m a bit scared of size of these megatextures. I mean, they can be up_to 6GB large. So what would be the size of average megatexture for average map ? More importantly, how much room do I need to install ET:QW ? I could get additional 7GB by removing my windows partition, I suppose (about 20GB free on my /home partition at the moment).

I’m fed up with playing on low detail. I’ll buy Geforce6800LE (as good as GF6800 or GF6800GT/Ultra depending on how many pipes you manage to unlock), additional 512 RAM (+5 fps from dual channel mode) … Hopefully that will enable me to play in 1024 high/med detail with decent fps.

(Shallow) #10

Nope, Q4 uses hitboxes in multiplayer, which is how it is possible to have 16 players on Q4 servers, not just 8 like you said (you may be thinking of the XBox360 version which is capped at 8)

(B0rsuk) #11

http://www.etqw.at/images/quakewars/classes/classes_gdf.jpg
http://www.etqw.at/images/quakewars/classes/classes_strogg.jpg

My predictions:

  • 60% of Strogg players will play Meditek - you get ammo and health in one package. And as is the case with pubs, most of them will either hog supplies for themselves… or spam them, blocking narrow passages. And yes, everyone else needs 32768 ammunition even if he can’t use tenth of it. Especially when trying to hide and act stealthily. Mediteks in “pack throwing mod” also serve an important role as Panzer and Artillery magnets.
    I may be a little wrong - we still don’t know med’s weapon. Human medic seems to have some decent weapon - smg with scope/grenadespammer, so it’s likely to be the case with Strogg one, too.

*Infiltrator’s disguise ability - which unfortunately made it to the game - doesn’t sound any more useful than in W:ET. I mean, suppose they even gave good team indicators for disguised Infiltrators… even more, let’s assume Infiltrator is harder to distinguish for enemies…
But wait - maps are more open now, right ? So it’s much, much easier to spot someone acting strange or running in wrong direction. Not to mention you’ll be often disguising in open.
(It puzzles me why does the human Ranger get smoke grenades - they’re much better at offense than defense. They would be much more useful for Stroggs. Probably because humans wil attack once in a while, too)

  • It may be that Stroggs are unable to go prone. I think their bodies don’t look very flexible; and Terminators lying in grass probably look stupid. Perhaps they can’t even crouch - althrough the picture with APC and river suggests otherwise.

  • If I were one of SD designers, I would consider giving Stroggs 20-50 more life and making them more vulnerable to headshots (no helmet).

(ParanoiD) #12

Maybe they have done it already. The right word for everything is balance. They will make the teams balanced. But yes I hope that not everybody is going to be a meditek just like everybody wants to be an axis medic… I would say to get rid of the killing stats. Just get rid of it and only use XP as an indicator. I think this would be so much better as kills/deaths wouldn’t care anymore, only the victory of your team which would make a better teamspirit. I know some ppl over here wouldn’t like the idea of it, but I think it’s best for a game like this to not get it fucked up again by so called pro’s who don’t care about losing/winnign on pub, only about their stupid stats. I enjoy playing ET good, i wouldn’t care about stats. I am almost always an engineer obn the battlefield. Commanding my team what to do, trying to get some teammates with me to help me and go for the victory with my team!

(zeh) #13

People play as medic when they’re doing their rambo thing and they don’t want to rely on anyone else. Maybe that’s true on most pub servers, but when you’re actually interested in completing the map’s objectives, you’ll have to play as something else.

I think a similar thing happened on BF2. I played as a medic 90% of the time so I didn’t need to count on random stupid people helping me, but as soon as I found a squad with people who actually used their brain, we just had like 1 medic per squad, 2 max; I preferred playing as an anti-tank then, and I depended on ammo support from the commander or the squad.

I hope we’ll see something similar on ETQW, where players naturally see the necessity for them to be playing on other classes without going gung-ho. BF2 is good if you want to go rambo, but if you don’t and you find a willing squad, it’s an entirely new game, and a very good one at that (yes, because despite the bugs, poor software performance and vehicle imbalance at some situations, BF2 is a great game).

(Smit) #14

I don’t think the shadows have been “cut down” for ET: QW. One of the magazine articles mentions how players can hide in shadows/grass etc. and I think that shadows will play a big part in the game. Also if you look at some of the screenshots in the articles you can see that nearly everything has a shadow, the buildings, players, vehicles, tress and even the clouds.

Also mentioned in the magazine articles is how all of the players equipment is displayed on the character model. So if a medic has three health packs and throws two only one is displayed on his pack (or whatever).

(ParanoiD) #15

i think its all possible because of the megatexture tech… I don’t know how it works, but i think it will work out great for teh game and performance.

(B0rsuk) #16

One thing I’m happy with is that they seem to assign different weapons to different classes.
I’m a bit puzzled that they gave weaker(sounding) weapons to Field Ops - machinegun pistol and lightning pistol. From my experience with W:ET,the difficulty is getting close to field op, not killing him.

I tend to play the class most needed at the moment - engineer, mg42 soldier, covert (can destroy some stuff really quickly; mines; smoke grenades on Radar/Fuel Dump/Gold Rush etc). I strongly believe that playing medic (and/or Axis) rots your brain. Playing as medic makes you lazy and careless - you can charge stupidly into enemies knowing you can recover from any injury. No health management, really. When I play other classes, I assume there are no medics, which is not far from truth, makes you more careful and try harder. Amount of medics is not related to quality of medical service.
Playing on defense rots your brain, too. All you really have to do is to camp entrances; no coordination, no stealth, no teamplay. Just make sure someone actually guards the other entrance.
For some reason I really dislike playing Field Op. Perhaps because they invariably have the most teamkills.

Back to ETQW.

  • engineers sound like a lot of fun: automatic turrets, proximity bombs, landmines, repair and build vehicles, and objectives. They will have hands full of work, no doubt. Oh, and the shotgun ! Sweet, as long as it’s better than in Q1.
  • medics sound dangerously potent: decent weapon, provides health, provides ammo (yes, human medic is said to build supply stations). Can survive on their own. But if playing medic won’t feel cheap, B0rsuk will play one too.
  • Field Ops: I think they will need escort now, because both are armed with pistols. He may be engineer’s worst nightmare with all these deployables and vehicles. But it’s not my class, I don’t like spamming.
  • Soldier has biggest assault rifle and can ‘deploy mg’. B0rsuk loves MG42, so it sounds like fun. Tank - it’s hard to predict how good these scout drones are. ANother question is how much benefit do you really get from scouting ? Can you easily pass precise info/locations to your team ?
  • Stealth class may be much more useful now - I mean, sniper rifles. B0rsuk is a sneaky bastard, so it may be a lot of fun.
(Higgins) #17

I think you all have to remember, just because its called Enemy territory: Quake Wars, doesnt mean its any thing like ET. This game is more like UT than ET, because you get to drive things around.

(ParanoiD) #18

The part we are talking about is the classes and their use. Thats more related to ET as the classes have been copied for some part and they want to make it balanced in team to work together, also a part from ET.

(Salteh) #19

Nono, it’s more like Mario, because you can jump on things!!!
:nag:

(Strid) #20

Nono, it’s more like Mario, because you can jump on things!!!
:nag:[/quote]

its more like Space Invaders

cuz we got aliens, spaceships, lasers and such :eek3: