Some thoughts on ET:QW

(Corbie) #1

So, ive been reading some info on Quake Wars today, and while I am no 10x more excited about the game, I am also a bit more worried. Maybe someone with more knowledge can alleviate some of these fears.

Here is what worries me.

  1. I saw no mention of the ability to choose weapons, and only the soldier class listed more than one weapon type (Assault Rifle and Rocket Launcher). This seems to stem from the fact that the classes in QW are being made a bit more one dimensional than the RTCW classes, in order to further promote team work.

I am all for more teamwork, but if the classes are TOO restrictive, it will scare off many… MOST… of the “traditional” FPS gamers… who are used to having their choice of an arsenal of weapons.

  1. I am further worried by the selection of weapons. I am assuming that while the weapons for each side are different… the basic idea behind each classes weapons are similar (meaning…soldiers on both sides get a fast firing or heavy hitting machine gun type weapon… and an explosive throwing type of weapon…same with all the other classes)

What worries me is that Medics get an assault rifle with a grenade launcher add-on. That sounds to me like one more reason to be a rambo medic, and it may again spell doom for the soldier class. Additionally… Engineers get a shotgun… and traditionally, shotguns are short range weapons. That, to me, means that an engineer is going to be useless as tits on a boar in many situations, especially outdoor maps… and will be limited to mostly just running around repairing things when it comes to defensive fights. LTs get a pistol… now it may be a really good pistol… but im thinking it will probably lack the power of the other guns… pistols usually do… and it will probably have a smaller clip. The Infiltrator gets a sniper rifle… which makes sense… but in ET there were three sniper rifles and an SMG available to the class, and it was NECESSARY to have those choices, because sniping isnt always the best course of action. Limiting it to just a sniper rifle in QW COULD mean that Infiltrators are near useless up close. Course… the sniper rifle may be just as good up close as it is from a distance… we dunno… but it still worries me.

The point im getting at is that the setup in ET was ideal when it came to weapon choices. Everyone could at least choose a “bread and butter” weapon… like the MP40 or Thompson… but some classes had additional choices that made them unique. If you limit everyone to those unique choices, and take away the bread and butter… it is going to lead to alot of problems… such as:

A: Newbies not knowing the ideal class choices in situations… and losing the match for their side because they didnt have the fire power necessary to take or hold an objective.

B: People complaining that there isnt enough variety in the game.

C: Forced balance issues… such as a team had one too many snipers… or one too many LTs. In ET that problem was lessened by the fact that anyone had access to weapons that made fights “fair”… but now, an infiltrator against a soldier at anything except long distance is unfair… an eng against anyone from a distance is unfair… so on and so forth… this means that if you dont have the perfect balance of utility and offensive capability on your team… it will be much easier for your team to get overrun.

(of course… all of this may be made moot by the fact that there will now be a building you can go into the change classes in the middle of a fight… but, with certain mods in ET that was possible too… and really it just wasnt feasible. You dont have time to run off and change classes alot of the time)

and finally… my last worry…

  1. No Gatling Gun? cmon! :)… I needs me a gatling gun. I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights… thinking about my poor lost Venom.

Ok… Im aware that im making some huge assumptions… im not trying to pass off my worries here as fact… and im not trying to dog on the game. Im stoked about it… ive waited years for a followup to RTCW/ET. No other FPS will do. I cant wait for QW… I just hope that it is every bit as addictive as its predecessors.

All im trying to do with this post is stir up some conversation… maybe get some people to disagree with me and tell me why they think it will work out better than ET :slight_smile:

Thanks for reading.

(B0rsuk) #2

Nice to see someone with insightful comments.

  • Medics are said to have a choice (!) between grenade launcher and scope.
  • I can’t imagine there’s no grenades. There are grenades for sure, even if no class gets more than 2 (spam is a problem in Wolf:ET, but mainly because of all these bottlenecks; it shouldn’t happen on open maps). I suspect there are handgrenades, but it was too obvious to mention.
  • About rambo medics: wait, it may be even worse. Mediteks can extract health AND ammo from human corpses. Human medics are supposed to build Supply Stations - these probably provide ammo. I mean 1) they wouldn’t be called supply stations if they provided medikits only 2) in Q3F, supply stations provided ammo. If that’s true, medics may become more self-sufficient than ever.
  • I don’t see Shotgun as useless, unless it’s similar to one from Q1 or Q3F. (ok, you could kill with that one, but seriously…). I mean, I can kill with Flamethrower in W:ET, so I probably can with something that has longer range, too. The key is to be as sneaky as possible. I actually think it may be better than other weapons at short range. I wonder - do headshots work with shotgun ? That would be scary.
  • ET:QW classes still seem more flexible than Q3F (TF) ones. In that case you get set-in-stone classes with specific purposes. Or no purpose - see Flametrooper.
  • I think infiltrators get some good close weapons, too… because how else are they supposed to kill while in disguise ? First, why the hell would you need a disguise to snipe ? Second, typical sniper rifle would be of little use in short range. Or perhaps Infiltrators can use weapons of soldier they disguise as ? That would be uber-cool, and innovative solution, too. NOTE- only Strogg Infiltrators can disguise.
  • Not sure what you mean about Gattling Gun, but human (only human) soldier can deploy his assault rifle or rocket launcher to make it usable by others. Mobile MGs for everyone !
(ParanoiD) #3

Very nice comments! But as B0rsuk says I think there would be more as well. This are only previews and maybe the magazines didn’t get all the infromation from SD which could be working on the guns at the time. Maybe in the beta there wasn’tmore to choose as it wasnt finished and the mags only did mention this? Or this are the special guns that can’t be chosen by another class and that there is a smg to choose by everyone. I think SD would think about it good as they want to make a kick ass game as well.

About the medics, I think rambo medic wont be as easy as in ET. In ET u have small ways and other players can’t avoid much inside. ET:QW will be huge, it’s said a square mile for each map to play on. A medic can be killed from all sides. Not just 1 v 1 in little streets in grush, but out of the grass from a meditec, a sniper from far, a goliath. I think it’s not that easy anymore. Medics could defence good on their own camp with a supply station, but I think it won’t be that easy outside of the camp.

(Corbie) #4

Thanks for the reply.

Medics: Thats good that they may have a choice instead of the whole shabang… but they still look to have the best setup… at least to those of us who havent played.

Shotguns: I dont see them as useless either… I love the suckers if they are done right… at least in close quarters. The problem is that you will probably need an Engineer or three on the team at any given time… and if they are forced to use the Shotgun and only the Shotgun… then that severely limits what they can do when they arent repairing something, or blowing something up. In any kind of long range battle (which…considering the size of the maps… is likely to happen pretty often)… the Engineer will be at a severe disadvantage.

QW Classes: While more flexible than Q3F classes… are seemingly alot LESS flexible than ET classes… and ET did squad based FPS very very well.

Infiltrators: Well it makes no mention of any weapon other than their sniper rifle, and smoke bombs/pinch bombs. No mention of close range weapons. However, in the teaser video… I beleive I saw a Strogg with a knife type blade coming out of his forearm or something like that. Ill have to go back and watch to be sure. Anyway… whatever the case may be, unless they have some kind of SMG or Pistol… they will be at a severe disadvantage up close. (BTW…the Strogg Infiltrator transfers his “essence” into the dead trooper… which sounds to me like he will possess him… and that means that he will probably be able to use his weapons)

Gatling Gun: It is a high powered machine gun that has a rotary type barrel on the front and has amunition that feeds into the side. You may remember Arnold Schwarzenegger using one in Terminator 2. In RTCW they had the Venom… a very cool and useful weapon that got taken out of the game in Enemy Territory… due to the fact that it wasnt a realistic weapon to have in World War 2.

http://www.france-fps.com/images/rtcw/venom.gif
http://vssegn.topcities.com/TC2/Pix/GatlingGun.jpg

Long as im replying… there is one other worry I forgot to mention.

Enemy Territory was built using the Unreal engine… which is not a very realistic engine from a physics point of view. Everyone could jump like a high jumper and run like an olympic sprinter. this led to very fast paced battles… and put alot of emphasis on skill and mobility in fights. I worry about the more realistic Doom engine… not necessarily in the “skill” department… im sure there will be plenty of skill involved still… but certain things, like strafe jumping, will no longer be possible. Obviously, the game can be good without strafe jumping… as useful as that was… but there are other things that will be slowed down as well, like reviving people. In ET you could revive someone in .5 seconds if you were good… and it made it possible for good medics to keep a whole squad alive even when outnumbered… in QW reviving with those defibulators looks much slower… and will probably make reviving people in the middle of fights a death sentence.

I suppose that is a small worry though… QW may say “enemy territory” on the front… but that doesnt mean it has to be the same as ET. Im sure it can be fun without this stuff. I just hope that alot of testing and thought is put into the classes and weapons… and classes arent made TOO one dimensional through their limited weapon selection.

(ParanoiD) #5

ET was build on the Quake3 engine…

Anyways, I think the more realistic doom engine could be cool as well. It will make you force to play more as a team. I don’t think ET:QW is build to all go rambo on their own, you would need to stick in a suad of 3 or 4 people with a tank or something. There is a nice screen showing this: http://www.splashdamage.com/images/image_04.jpg

You can see a whole team going trough the jungle with a tank. Everybody is looking to another side to cover it all. One strogg would be killed in no time. The tank MG would also help to replace the smg’s of the soldiers. I think it’s necessary to use all objects. A tank can make teh transport fast and has a MG to kill easily, while going on the foot you could sneak trough the jungle which wouldnt be possible for a tank. ET was a mix between teamwork and nice unreal like action, ET:QW will be teamwork game with tactics. It will be different then ET, but that wouldn’t be a problem, it will be new, but that makes it fresh and completely different from othe rgames like BF2. Something complete new.

(SCDS_reyalP) #6

As ParanoiD points out, ET is based on the Q3 engine (via RTCW)

Secondly, in Q3 based games, the gamecode, not the engine is responsible for player movement. This means it isn’t an inherent property of engine. Different Q3 based mods and games can have wildly different physics (everything from Q3Rally to CPMA to True Combat) Given that Quake IV MP has Quake III- ish physics, the same seems to be true of the Doom III engine.

(B0rsuk) #7

Also keep in mind that some things are barely mentioned in previews, but already implemented (it seems).
For example, Icarus thingy (jetpack). We don’t know how do you get one - is this XP bonus (doubtful), or engineer has to construct it (probably), or one of classes can choose in limbo ?
The ‘knife’ of Infiltrator isn’t mentioned, either, but it’s there (trailer).

Some more thoughts:

  • we may face an ammo shortage. After all, it doesn’t sound like you can cut Strogg’s arm and use it as weapon. Therefore teammates will stick to Mediteks and Field Ops more. Or play Meditek/Field Op themselves.
  • Stroyent thingy for Strogg sounds like common ammo for all weapons. Could this mean Stroggs have no sidearms (pistols etc) ? Otherwise I don’t see much sense - who would use Stroyent for pistol instead of smg ? Unless it works a bit different - say, Stroggs start with their weapons loaded, but stroyent is not exactly the ammo - but something that can be used to create ammo/health. I just hope it won’t require too much micromanagement.

About gatling/chaingun: I’ve seen dual chainguns in trailer, does it count ? They seemed to be an AA weapon.

The problem with medics isn’t really the fact that they can revive quickly - it’s that they’re esentially soldiers with fast health regeneration, not to mention adrenaline. I really wish medics would revive more on pubs. 6 medics and no one helps me, is this normal ? All idiots blindly rush the main entrance (Radar) and I struggle to kill 3 Axis and build command post… It’s nice that reviving takes more, but… hmm.
By the way: One of big reasons I want to play Stroggs is because there won’t be any idiots teamkilling you in the middle of a fight/when you have MG deployed and reviving. Let’s even forget it’s terribly non-climatic. I really could use that 8 xp from Battle Sense, you know. Some idiots TK me while I’m planting/disarming landmines and expect me to thank them. As I said, play Strogg and you won’t see this kind of sillyness.

I think the jungle screenshot is the ugliest of them all. It looks like Q3 engine game there. And worse, it’s a panzerbait. Perhaps not as bad panzerbait as here http://www.etqw.at/images/quakewars/screenshots/etqw_mag_002_k.jpg but still.

(Ragnar_40k) #8

Maybe there will be an option to set up fights Humans vs. Humans resp. Stroggs vs. Stroggs.

(DarkangelUK) #9

Well you couldn’t do Allied vs Allied or Axis vs Axis in ET… so im kinda hoping not. Maybe you can’t use their weapons, but their ammo may be compatible. Just rambling crap now wmw fasfamfa fluffle efmbleh

(meisterbrau) #10

i dont see why a engi should have a powerfull weapon, as he’s supposed to repair and construct stuff. i even think that it’s a good idea not giving everyone a powerfull weapon. this will enforce teamplay! there will be no medics or engies or fieldops rushing out alone only to get some kills because they want live for long. a medic will have problems getting down a helicopter or goliath while the soldier will accomplish this task whith his panzer. so peoples will be forced to rush out in a team. i already can see a team consisting a solder a engie a medic and a fieldops driving out to some point to accomplish an objective. this will be real fun.

(Corbie) #11

People play to kill… they dont play to repair. The key to a fun game is to give people the opportunity and ability to kill, while still maintaining a team setting.

Besides that… there are times when you need everyone to contribute… most of the time actually. Have you ever played ET? Cause that is where my worries are stemming from. Can you imagine if the LT was limited to his pistol? If the eng couldnt shoot anyone more than 10-15 feet ahead of him? If the Infiltrator could only use the sniper rifle? the classes would be gimped. No one would play them willingly… they would only do it to complete the objectives. And on pub servers with newbs… no one would play them at all.

FORCING people to rely heavily on each other sucks. People who work as a team should be BETTER than people who dont… but people who dont should not be utterly gimped… otherwise pub servers will be nothing but headaches waiting to happen.

(Gringo) #12

Im findin nowadays that people just want to rambo it up in ET now. It seems that rambo med’s are everywhere now and in abundance. I would hope that QW will be able to induce a more team oriented ethic in the players but i acknowledge the fact that this needs to be done subtly.

Dont know if the restrictions u have listed are goin to be in the game corbie but they seem a bit harsh if it is so. However, if they are there is the possiblity that the could work u. Stranger things have happened. I guess on time will tell!

(zeh) #13

From the articles so far, the stroggs don’t even have ammo, so there will be no kind of compatibility between the two teams. IIRC, after a soldier is killed, the strogg can ‘harvest’ its corpse for stroyant and this stroyant can either be transformed into ammo or into health. In case of a soldier killing a strogg, well, I don’t know… maybe he can melt his body and transform it into bullets. :smiley:

I think what we’re looking into right now is a kinda of a RTS balance, asymmetrical balance between the two teams; they’re not directly equivalent, but there should be some middle ground where one team is not at advantage, in a rock-paper-scissors situation.

(DG) #14

if support classes have poor ability to get kills, especially if significantly hampered in 1v1, you’ll just end up with less people going support. granted, the guys who do go support will be doing so to actually do their job, but i’ll take having 4 medics of whom 1 is dedicated and 3 who revive occasionally over having just one dedicated medic.

you can hamper a medics weapon to offset the health etc bonuses, but hampering an eng because he can repair stuff doesnt work. maybe if he’s the only one who can operate some pwnage emplacement or something.

(B0rsuk) #15

i even think that it’s a good idea not giving everyone a powerfull weapon. this will enforce teamplay!

Only as long as you can reliably kill with any weapon. Think about Q2: Machinegun vs Chaingun. Both are instahit rapid fire weapons, but, uhhhh… I mean no weapon should be 3x times better than any other. If there’s a weapon much better than most others, people will stick to it and demand that others play Field Op/Medics to serve them. (“Someone take engineer !”). I hope relations between ETQW weapons are more less like between Mp40, Sten, Fg42, Garand. Some are better, some are worse, but you still can kill.

because they want live for long

Taken out of context, but it’s simply false. As long as there’s any sort of kill/death statistics, majority of players blindly rush forward even when very low on health. Join observers and look at their Battle Sense - it’s a good measure of how defensive a player is. I play quite defensively, even when I attack (which doesn’t mean I deploy Mg42 in alied spawn on oasis, or don’t attempt to reach the objective) and as a result, Battle Sense is one of my highest skills.

(Ragnar_40k) #16

The gameplay differences between Axis and Allies in ET are only marginal (Engi rifle), so no need to include the possibility for Allied vs Allied or Axis vs Axis matches. In ET:QW on the other hand both teams are quite different.

(SniperSteve) #17

Engie will hopefully have some cool stuff, such as the ability to build turrets that will compensate for the Short Range weapon. Perhaps they will give him a pistol that is VERY accurate. :smiley:

Most game that use the Q3 engine have the ‘skill’ feel. Very unrealistic physics, but this gave way to trickjumping, advanced strafing and combat movement. Much more so than with Doom3, AA, BF2, etc… I prefer the old school physics over the ‘realistic’ physics, I’m a skill junkie and when I cannot use every element of the game to give me an advantage over other players I get annoyed. It means you can only get so good. Sadly the old scool games where you could Mad Pwn are fading out and now its more random.

I miss the days of 30/1 K/D’s

(SCDS_reyalP) #18

IMO, ‘enforcing teamplay’ too much just leads to bad gameplay, because most public servers aren’t going to have that much teamwork no matter what you do. A game should reward those who work together, but if you make a game that just isn’t fun to play without a lot of people working together, you will just end up with a game that isn’t fun on public servers.

(ParanoiD) #19

I would say, get rid of game stats at the end. Only display the XP gained. If you do so, nobody would care as much about kill death ratios, but they will be punished on their game skills and teamwork so that gets more interesting. I really think this would do good to the gameplay.

(kamikazee) #20

The XP system should be balanced then, AFAIK rambo-meds and semi-rambo-meds (same, but these ones do grab their syringe from time to time) get quite more XP then eg. an engineer ‘trying to do his job’.