Other competitive action games

HeyJD 2015-08-07 20:54:00 UTC #3

I'm partly with you on that, PrettzL. It's very hard to make a game which is more focused on objectives than kills when it's competitive team based. I believe Splatoon has the most balance aspect of the kills to objectives ratio. The point system regarding it isn't the most balanced, and they still rank people on the board according to the amount of kills you got, but you only see the scoreboard once at the end anyway.

In Splatoon the objective in ranked games is mainly a variation of timed King of the Hill mode. So you only win if you do the objective. Killing does not help if you are not going to do the objective.

In the non-ranked casual games, it's like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Graffiti mode. Your team wins if you have more things painted in the environment than the enemy. You can go solo, painting everything you you want randomly. Or you can play with the team, strategically painting areas and painting over the enemy's paint. Or, if you wish, you can go around killing the enemy to stop them from painting. Killing doesn't really help in this mode though because you respawn fast anyway. You also get way more done if you go around painting instead of killing.

Anyway, I guess I'm going off-topic. Like a lot of people, I'm excited to see how Overwatch plays out. The developers seem to know their stuff... But now to think of it, it is Blizzard so of course they know their stuff. So far most, if not all, of Blizzard's games require lots of time and effort put into it to fully learn the game mechanics. I love competitive games which have deep mechanics that take a while to learn. I mean the mechanics which look simple on the outside, but has a lot of in depth knowledge to it hidden on the inside. Like Chess. It really rewards the person who puts time into fully understanding it. Hopefully Overwatch can fulfil everyone's expectations. There's a lot of people watching it closely at the moment.

JustinPierce 2015-08-26 16:10:50 UTC #5

What do you guys think?

Grandy 2015-08-28 13:28:38 UTC #6

I'll have to wait for some regular footage I think before passing my opinion...
They want skilled players to have godlike abilities, but I don't know.. looks rather chaotic to me, and giving people all that potential for power, has to be balanced very carefully, otherwise everything feels OP in its own right and death is too quick.

So I don't know.. looks cool, no doubts there, but I'll reserve judgement until later.

JustinPierce 2015-08-28 13:30:13 UTC #7

Firing behind you looks like it might be a universal mechanic. The Titan guy seems to fire a rocket behind him later in the vid. Wonder what the controls for that are.

Grandy 2015-08-28 13:31:51 UTC #8

yeah, you'd think it would be a mouse button to be honest, because trying to hold down a key, while potentially jumping and strafing, would be a nightmare!

JustinPierce 2015-08-28 13:35:16 UTC #9

They said weapons have secondaries -- maybe firing behind is like, the default secondary mode for weapons that don't have one? The grapple seems to be the sword's secondary, but that was the only secondary I noticed.

I assume you're talking about skirmisher's dive move and titan's AOE explosion. I imagine they're like Destiny's super abilities where you have to build up to them.

edit: I'm guessing it's similar to Overwatch in terms of controls. Left/Right mouse buttons, key for class ability (Skirmisher has thrusters, Breacher has the shoulder rockets, Titan has the ground pound), key for class super.

Grandy 2015-08-28 14:01:39 UTC #10

I was referring to a quote I heard in that interview livestream thing they had.. probably just a nice mix of buzzwords they wanted to use, but I'm not sure I believe them.

I'm not much of a fan of ability-based classes.. had that in Nosgoth and it just confused the hell out of me most of the time.. I didn't want to put the effort in to actually try and learn how to counter certain things. It reminds me of that game, from the outside.

JustinPierce 2015-08-28 14:15:00 UTC #11

But what's the alternative? Have no counter-play?

Grandy 2015-08-28 14:17:13 UTC #12

Nosgoth to me felt like chaos to me.
I'm not saying that there is a solution to it either, it's just the way I saw it and my lack of enthusiasm to try and play around it.. WoopWooper is a good one to talk to about Nosgoth, I'll poke him

JustinPierce 2015-08-28 14:46:58 UTC #13

I haven't played Nosgoth, but do you think the problem might not be how much there is to learn, but the game's failure to motivate you to learn it? I feel like MOBAs show that there's a very high tolerance for having things to learn.

Grandy 2015-08-28 14:52:06 UTC #14

I do think that most MOBAs, or at least the LoL/Dota kind, do a great job at teaching you over time.. and I think credit there is due to the graphics and art style, and the view in which you play the game from.

You learn that bushes hide things, and that it may not be a wise idea to go there. You learn that people can shortcut behind you in lane and that wards give you vision.. put two and two together. From the view you have of the battlefield, all of these things are very visible, and once you've gotten to play against all the champions, you should know your limits to a certain degree. Obviously it isn't always as crystal clear and I make way too many mistakes for my own liking, but at least the potential threats are obvious and it's up to you to consider them at all times.

I find it much harder to track these kinds of things when it's 3D I guess. Something flying at you is not as obvious as a top down view that has really clear animations I guess.

JustinPierce 2015-08-28 14:56:12 UTC #15

I played some of the blops3 beta and was going to write a quick blog post about my impressions, but I've never been a huge CoD player so I wanted to explore what you all think it is that draws players in and keeps them playing. As far as I know, @EGL_Voltage is the only one here that really plays it a lot so I'm especially curious what he thinks.

One feeling I had was that there's a lot of choice, but not a lot of variety in weapon selection -- most people use the full auto weapons and they all feel pretty similar. When finding a favorite weapon, it felt less like I was exploring different play styles and more like I was just test driving each one until I found one that got me more kills because it had better stats. I guess certain weapons/configurations would be more suited or hanging back vs running around, but that seems pretty minor.

When watching competitive CoD, what sort of things are you admiring other than aiming skill? Are there players that are known for being really good with specific weapons? Is it more about the tension with killstreaks?

JustinPierce 2015-08-28 15:23:35 UTC #16

Grandy:

I do think that most MOBAs, or at least the LoL/Dota kind, do a great job at teaching you over time.. and I think credit there is due to the graphics and art style, and the view in which you play the game from.

You learn that bushes hide things, and that it may not be a wise idea to go there. You learn that people can shortcut behind you in lane and that wards give you vision.. put two and two together. From the view you have of the battlefield, all of these things are very visible, and once you've gotten to play against all the champions, you should know your limits to a certain degree. Obviously it isn't always as crystal clear and I make way too many mistakes for my own liking, but at least the potential threats are obvious and it's up to you to consider them at all times.

I find it much harder to track these kinds of things when it's 3D I guess. Something flying at you is not as obvious as a top down view that has really clear animations I guess.

Yeah I've actually had a very evolving position on in-game communication (not chat, but like, communicating to the player what's going on) -- I came in as a fan of a more raw experience (no dmg numbers, hit confirm, etc), but I've pivoted to trying to maximize in-game communication. Directional damage indicators is the most recent addition.

I think one of the big reasons (other than cosplay potential) that all these games are going with characters is that it makes it more readable. You see a specific character, or even just a silhouette, and you are able to infer it's capabilities -- you know what weapons/abilities it might use against you. I think it looks stupid when you have multiple of the same characters (like, they are literally the same person) running around on screen and I greatly prefer the flexibility of a loadout system, but readability is something I'll have to address in other ways (made especially difficult by the long distances in AoT). I got some ideas though.

One of the major examples, specific to AoT, that I need to tackle -- being stuck by the Teleport Blade. There's a big red blinking light at the bottom of your screen, but I don't think that's enough for newer players.

EGL_Voltage 2015-08-28 19:30:18 UTC #18

There are players know for weapons but over all it's assault rifles, smg's, and snipers. One rises over the others as being the best of that type of weapon and a players get to be know by that weapon like OpTic Scumpy is a SMG slayer meaning he mostly used the the best SMG of the current game and he is more focused on getting kills other that the objective. Lover all there are 4 or so roles some teams play all four some only play 2 but most use 3
1. SMG Slayer
2. obj
3. Slayer (assault rifle)
4. Sniper (usually only used during search and destroy)
There are a couple different ways each of those are played. OBJ is also usually a SMG but everyonce in a while there are players the perfect a rifle

Kill streaks haven't be prevalent in competitive in 2 years Black Ops 2 had goo streaks that if you got them the could change the momentum. Ghost and AW have had such minor streaks that it would just pad you score and not matter as much to the game so people chose to use those points in other aspects of their class.

Sorry I haven't been around my computer is off at dell getting fixed and my mom is having her birthday party durning the next play test

Grandy 2015-08-28 21:44:33 UTC #19

Woo!

Did not know that, but that's nice

Absolutely, from the moment you see someone, it is obvious as to who they are and immediately alters your playstyle because you know their abilities; you also have their build very visible on the scoreboard so you know how strong they are - it only updates when they are in view of one of your players, which is nice, so you don't know how strong someone is until they're in view. I could see a similar system working for AoT.. see someone's loadout when they're in view by one of your members.. and some way of quickly seeing or identifying weapons for a distance would be great... targetted zoom feature anyone?

Aye, perhaps a warning message akin to how some games do a "MISSILE INCOMING" kind of warning.. a flashing and pinging dot like we have now is not very clear as you say.

JustinPierce 2015-08-28 22:17:36 UTC #20

LawBreakers footage from their event. We'll probably get more. Have updated the list below a couple times, but I'm not sure if I'll keep it up to date 100%.

Controls: https://instagram.com/p/68eXaFCkGe/

duster 2015-09-16 14:27:11 UTC #21

Those are more moba fps. Here are some arena shooters.

Show no fear though, arms of telos is the most innovative of these by far and it itches that childhood lust of mech games I played in arcades. I'm unlimited hype!

JustinPierce 2015-09-17 19:33:18 UTC #22

Yeah, a lot of those stick to the proven formulas. CHAMS looks like a neat spin on the classic Arena FPS.

Here's an overview of the new Metal Gear Online

I've enjoyed the past iterations -- each one has brought some interesting ideas and it's neat to get an eastern perspective on multiplayer shooter design. Also, the soldiers in MGS games always look so much cooler than soldiers in CoD/BF somehow.

More footage

JustinPierce 2015-09-23 15:04:04 UTC #23

Nexon has yet another class based competitive shooter

JustinPierce 2015-09-29 00:52:58 UTC #24

Pretty nice impressions of R6:Siege from PCGamer

You ever give it a try, @Hugo?