Over and out – Feedback about the Alpha/Beta and how feedback was handled

(Kendle) #21

Agree with pretty much everything warbie says, but this is the kicker, everything SD have done with the genre since picking it up with ET, from ET:QW through Brink and now DB, has moved the game away from the “pure” teamwork mechanics that made RTCW so great, and whilst I can understand their reasoning for doing so (no-one’s going to pay money for a game that already exists, so new games by default have to be “different”) the thing is RTCW was 14 years ago, I suspect there are only a very few old-timers like me and warbie who even remember it from it’s heyday. A new game NOW based on RTCW would have been a viable proposition IMO.

I do get that maybe I’m looking at RTCW thru rose tinted glasses, but it was my first game, and I don’t remember needing my hand held in order to understand it or like it. Team work was forced, through simple mechanics like not having ammo racks and having to rely on a team-mate to provide it, like not having global health regen and having to rely on Medics to keep you alive, like having asynchronous spawn times so objectives weren’t simply meat-grinders and luck wasn’t the defining factor in who won the day.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it feels to me like SD are intent on re-inventing the wheel just for the hell of it, and DB is like a sophisticated suspension system they’ve come up with so they don’t have to use wheels that are round. Why? Why did they not take this opportunity, as a game they commissioned themselves, and originally intended to publish themselves, why did they not take this opportunity to take the genre back to where it began, and where it worked best, and start from there?

(Szakalot) #22

[QUOTE=Kendle;542724]
I do get that maybe I’m looking at RTCW thru rose tinted glasses, but it was my first game, and I don’t remember needing my hand held in order to understand it or like it. Team work was forced, [/quote]

I know what you mean, with RTCW’s emphasis on emergent teamplay as opposed to ‘press X at a teammember to be a good teammate’ but the fact that it was your first game impacts this perspective a lot too. RTCW veterans have a sense of teamplay that is hard to match by today’s standards, where its not just about dropping ammo and reviving, but knowing when to push/when to hide/where you are most needed and how you can contribute to the victory the best. These are not obvious to most players today, at least not by the standards of a decade-long team-FPS veteran.

What you should keep in mind though is that all the games you mention ALSO have emergent teamplay. QW has amazing amounts of emergent teamplay and metatactics that came up years after the game was released, and had nothing to do with those direct player-player interactions. One example would be Area22 last stage, where having a tank inside the tunnel is extremely useful to GDF victory. On tryhard servers you would have a dedicated fireteam spawning outside with the sole purpose of escorting the tank in, which is no easy task as you have to driveby the opponent’s spawn & automatic defenses, etc.

DB has plenty of that too, but the game is still young and people are mostly figuring out the basics, even on the minlvl10 servers. Things like pushing when a friendly phoenix is down (so they can selfrevive and help you), knowing when to shoot the enemy and when to try to revive as a medic, where are the best spots for Aura bunkers and who should camp them and who should setup flanks; how to go about busting such bunkers, these are things that will not be obvious to random players for a while.

I think you just have to accept that there is a standard of teamplay that new players will not match anytime soon. Just imagine: if there was a prequel to RTCW (wolfenstein 3D team-fps haha) that some veterans were duking out for a decade, and you come in to RTCW as your first game - what would be their impression of your teamplay ability? : )

(KeMoN) #23

I can’t argue with your second post warbie and also Kendle raises solid arguments in the post above.

In my opinion it isn’t so much the fault of the games but rather the general decay of the online FPS community plus the fact that Free-to-play attracts far more useless players than ‘normal’ games would. If you wanted to play RTCW with all its features and quircks you bought it and if you didn’t like teamplay, you didn’t.

In my observation the general attitude shifted to ‘everyone support me, I’m the one going in’. I mainly blame CoD with all its clones out there for this.
RTCW launched today would only be semi-successful in my opinion. It would be impressively successful among the ‘old-schoolers’, however this market is a joke to put it bluntly. So SD had no other choice but to adapt.

You say there was a decline from RTCW to W:ET already, but I can’t comment on that, sadly I only played the SP.
For that decline I solely blame the F2P genre.

But everytime I go back to W:ET to play some matches, I see people without hesitation switching teams to balance a 8 vs 6 for example. They work together and I believe you completely when you say it was even better in RTCW.
In DirtyBomb I get flamed when I even dare to call for a shuffle vote. But it is not limited to DirtyBomb, I played League of Legends briefly and the community was horrible.

What I want to say is, that it is not DirtyBomb’s fault. The game is for current standards great, however the standards lowered themselves.
The community (online FPS players) screwed itself and now games adapt and adress the new (screwed) community, because there is no other market.

//The above has been slightly exaggerated for effect.
Cheers

(Kendle) #24

[QUOTE=KeMoN;542732]What I want to say is, that it is not DirtyBomb’s fault. The game is for current standards great, however the standards lowered themselves.
The community (online FPS players) screwed itself and now games adapt and adress the new (screwed) community, because there is no other market.
[/QUOTE]

I think that’s only partly true, as in there’s a bit of chicken and egg going on here. If Devs didn’t make games for dickheads, you wouldn’t get dickheads playing them. The trouble is Mr. Dickhead’s money is as good as anyone else’s, and business is business.

I think RTCW’s success as an MP game was largely due to the fact it wasn’t an MP game. Back then games were made for SP, with MP usually an afterthought. In fact I’m sure RTCW’s MP was also an afterthought, they just happened to get it right, mostly by accident. So RTCW’s sales only really depended on the SP, with the MP they could afford for it not to work.

The point is that RTCW happened, the MP did work, and worked beautifully, and it happened way before most people now playing online FPS’s picked up a mouse, so why not refer back to it, why not use what made it great?

Apologies for going way off-topic, I may be an “older” player but I’m not yet ready to write off the younger generation as all being transient rambo XP whores. I was young once, but I was never a dickhead. :slight_smile:

(Kendle) #25

Sorry, missed your post, but yes, when I started playing RTCW there were many Quake series veterans in the game at the time, and I was such a noob it’s embarrassing to remember.

But I wasn’t put off because it took 30 - 40 seconds to respawn, or because free health and ammo wasn’t just laying around for me to pick up, or because I got my arse handed to me on a plate for a good several months. I soon discovered how to play the game the right way, and I’m not convinced “today’s” gamer doesn’t have the same desire or ability to do so.

I think Devs write people off too easily these days. I really felt that with Brink for example, which first introduced the do-it-all “F” button. Even newbs thought that was too newb. Devs have sacrificed team-work for “accessibility”, and I’m not convinced they ever needed to.

(Szakalot) #26

computer games are MUCH more popular now than they were back in early 2000s, so its no surprise the market caters towards a more casual crowd.

Quakewars was the first to introduce the context button actually.

And i still don’t see how emergent teamplay is being sacrificed. You still absolutely need medics. Ammo is less important, but back in ET people would /kill for ammo anyways.

(sfHitman) #27

na just a german noob who tried to write some english words… but if this is al you have to say about it ok…
didnt know this is an english test… sorry

(Kendle) #28

On that point I’m not sure I’d go as far as warbie and claim that it is, although it depends on context. On a random pub the fact anyone can (however badly) do anything throws team-work out the window to a greater or lesser extent. Pressing ''x" near a team-mate might not be the pinnacle of team-work, but not needing to press “x” near a team-mate doesn’t gain you anything either. In fact it loses you the inherent co-operation that was enforced in RTCW / ET.

In a competitive environment let’s not kid ourselves that 20 Mercs means 4 times as many viable combinations compared to 5 classes. You’re still going to run an Engie if C4 needs arming / defusing, and Proxy -vs- Fletcher on offense is not a hard choice.

Yes. it’ll take time for these things to be nailed down, and we’re not there yet, but the possibilities are not as diverse as they might seem. The exception to that, IMO, is Execution, that’s where the true untested waters are, because other bomb / defuse games don’t have Mercs.

(Raviolay) #29

It has nothing to do the game being designed around forced cooperation in the first place at all ;). This game will be Execution in a year or two, it has to be, it’s much easier to design and produce the maps needed for it. The team behind Dirty Bomb has never been the size, or had the breadth of skills needed to action on the issues, that have availed stopwatch/objective modes. Ultimately they need to put food on the table, so pandering to the hardcore few was never going to bring home the bacon. The best the alpha/beta guys did was to steer the gun play away from what would of been a disaster, movement was a constant bugbear, only Titanfall secured it.

For better or for worse SD are transfixed on market forces…

(Szakalot) #30

[QUOTE=Kendle;542770]On that point I’m not sure I’d go as far as warbie and claim that it is, although it depends on context. On a random pub the fact anyone can (however badly) do anything throws team-work out the window to a greater or lesser extent. Pressing ''x" near a team-mate might not be the pinnacle of team-work, but not needing to press “x” near a team-mate doesn’t gain you anything either. In fact it loses you the inherent co-operation that was enforced in RTCW / ET.

In a competitive environment let’s not kid ourselves that 20 Mercs means 4 times as many viable combinations compared to 5 classes. You’re still going to run an Engie if C4 needs arming / defusing, and Proxy -vs- Fletcher on offense is not a hard choice.

Yes. it’ll take time for these things to be nailed down, and we’re not there yet, but the possibilities are not as diverse as they might seem. The exception to that, IMO, is Execution, that’s where the true untested waters are, because other bomb / defuse games don’t have Mercs.[/QUOTE]

I think 20 mercs with distinct abilities is definitely more variety than 5 classes (4 in RTCW actually). A lot of stuff in RTCW wasn’t viable either, like sten, venom, flamethrower ; snipes were only ever used on beach first few waves as far as I remember.

The main difference being the maps, Beach or Base or Sub in RTCW/ET gave A LOT more freedom on how to approach the objectives: even though in DB there is still a similar nr of routes to approach them,

the main difference in RTCW was that the whole map is being played from the beginning. You can ignore the walls and boost a player for a sneaky document steal, and ET introduced the interesting ‘get uniform and sneak an engineer in’. None of the maps had you push directly against the enemy spawn either. Multiple spawn locations and forward spawns added a layer of tactics that is really missing in DB, but apparently DB is trying a different gaming philosophy.

(warbie) #31

I hear what you’re saying but am not sure it’s fair to blame the current fps community or the free to play model. The big difference, as I see it, is that RTWC forced teamplay on the player. Whether intentional or not, the game mechanics herded teams together through a small no. of paths punctuated with one of two key choke points. It sounds limited in scope and variety but it’s what actually made for more of each. I’ll pick an example from ET as it’s the common ground for most of us. Capturing the tank at the start of Goldrush was a very RTCW-like objective. The defending team is setup in a relatively small area with the attackers trying to push through a small no. of predictable choke points. They can see each other and each choke point from their positions. If the opposing team push through the double doors and side entrance at the same time the defenders, as a team, can all see what’s happening. Crossfire focus can be adjusted. Medics can see downed teammates. You end up with players working together simply because they are together and can all see the big picture. And this is when it gets interesting as the important information required for teamwork to happen is already in place - a rare thing - and we get to decide how to go about it. This is how it was defending the wall on Beach, the tavern on Village, the hangar in Assault, Radar 2 on Radar, the doc room on Ice etc etc. This coupled with staggered spawning to offset defender advantage and relatively long spawn times to keep teams together made for situations that encouraged more teamplay more of the time. What we ended up with are teams clashing, rather than individuals, and team efforts winning matches.

Other fps of this type don’t offer this. Players are spread around. They don’t know what their teammates are doing, what the enemy are doing, and soon get caught up in small scale individual encounters. Things play out more like tdm with a side of objectives. And this is where I think the biggest misunderstanding some players have when it comes team and objective based fps. That bigger maps, more side objectives and more classes and items make for more variety and interesting teamplay. In my experience it’s quite the opposite. Put players in the same area with skills that help each other - when the other team comes charging in on en masse they’ll pull together and use them.

(ailmanki) #32

Imo it all came from quake. The simple deathmatch formula worked nicely. Then modders came, people taking that engine and building in there stuff. With time and budget limit, and also no clue of the engine (sure they learnt very fast… look at what valve did with Quake 2).

So RTCW was born, then SD came to RTCW and made ET… fine tuned it a little bit in my opinion. And then everyone tries to create the next star on the horizont. Quake - its basic nature - is a game that will still be played in a long time form today on, be it Quake 10 or Captain Quake… whatever.
But I wonder where the team versions of those deathmatches will go to in far future… Soccer watched by millions every year, maybe someday we have an equivalent e-sport.

(montheponies) #33

Arguably that’s CS:GO.

No matter what anyone says about folk not buying the exact same game as before you just need to point to Counter Strike. Essentially the same game, CS1.6, CS:Source and now CS:GO. Understand purists will argue about 1.6 being the best because the spray pattern of the AK is off by a pixel in CS:GO, but still same game, modes, maps. It has 450k players right now, with a peak of 600k today. Total of 17M owners. Isn’t free to play and includes lots of in game micro transactions.

RTCW wasn’t perfect. In it’s vanilla form I doubt it would have lasted as long. OSP was required to get it in shape for competition, Shrub was pretty much the mod of choice for Public. Some original maps were rubbish (Trench Toast). However what it did do was hit the nail on the head for teamwork (nice UI, compass for example clearly showing who needed revived and based on icon size distance), relatively good class and weapon balance which meant no one felt overpowered. ET was and is the pub version of RTCW and as has been mentioned numerous times SD have no track record in making either mods or maps that come close to giving us confidence that they understood what made Stopwatch tick (first map was Market Garden a large sprawling Dual Objective map, ideal for pubs or Tram a large multistage map ideal for pubs…cant think of one good SW map).

Anyway all been said a million times before. We have what we have, and perhaps too many of us forget the **** times in RTCW when you could be spawncamped on assualt, or that the genius map Beach had the transmission point right beside the Axis spawn - it worked, but I think a lot of luck came into it, especially when you consider it was the developer’s (Nerve Software) first game (I think!)…

/rambling over.