What happened to online team-based fps gaming? Splash Damage ruined it for me.
This article was inspired by many fellow online friends that keep asking me what is the 'next big game'. And now I finally have an answer to give them:
The Past: [/u]
I have found Return to Castle Wolfenstein to be one of the most successful team based objective games of all time. The game play and spectator entrainment was phenomenal. Add-ons like WolfTV along with OSP and a shout caster by the name of Warwitch from the Team Sportscast Network made the game play experience fantastic. These were the days where you could actually watch a full match and be entertained. Watching The Doctors vs. Infensus duel it out on mp_ice on WolfTV was flat out awesome. RTCW was the pioneer team based objective shooter that was smooth as butter. Nerve, the company in charge of the multiplayer for RTCW, did such a fantastic job and should be praised for their work. Now looking back at things, was it Nerve who came up with the idea to make a 'med and ammo' pack along with different classes in a team based objective? If it was they are pure geniuses.
After 2003 gaming for me was never the same. Many players left RTCW to fulfill their gaming careers in something else that was more competitive. Call of Duty and Counter Strike/Source were (and still are) the most competitive first-person shooters that have much more money that was backed into them. I don't really like the type of one life to live games for competition and never could find myself playing them competitively. I feel they are slow and getting killed at the beginning of the round and waiting a couple of minutes for the next round is not my cup of tea. So what was offered next you ask?
Splash Damage released their unfinished project and released Enemy Territory (W:ET). W:ET never offered the same thrill and intensiveness that was in rtcw. It was a great pub game where you could join a server and see how many unskilled players you could spawn camp in 30 minutes. As for the competition it was bogus. The competition mod (etpro) was developed and set into the community almost a year after its release. This mod did not give me the same euphoric desire that rtcw once did.
W:ET spectator mode was not as entertaining due to the larger maps and multiple objectives compared to RTCW. For example: on a typical RTCW map of mp_beach the round length was 8:00 minutes and ithe objective could be obtained 2:00 minutes. This made it perfect for viewing on WolfTV. Objectives such as blowing up the side wall on mp_beach were a necessity but did not need to be destroyed in order for you to win the round. Teams could get lucky and boost a player over a wall and catch the defense off guard in order to complete set or break a time.
W:ET on the other hand you had to build a bridge, escort a tank half way around the map, blow up a door and plant at the last objective. Complete all this is a time-consuming and spectator boring 15 minutes. If you defense made a mistake on the first stage you had time to re-organize on the second or third stage and probably were able to salvage the round. In RTCW if you messed up once on defense it was very hard to recover and set back up. Not to mention the spam W:ET had when it was first turned into competition. It only took 1 year for the leagues to implement an anti spam setting which was created by a third party gamer (not Splash Damage).
The Present: [/u]
Let's fast forward to 2007. Splash damage was in charge of Enemy Territory Quakewars (ETQW). Based on original W:ET the game play and spectator entrainment flat out sucks. Like W:ET, you have to build a bridge, escort a vehicle (while repairing with a wrench) destroy 2 AVT's 1 APT's, dodge two plasma motors and hack and objective. Once this was completed Splash Damage thought it was enough pain and frustration that they included a final objective of blowing up a generator to set a time. Complete all this in an agonizing and painful 20 minutes! First of all, who wants to spectator Bob the builder repairing an MCP? Second, how could Splash Damage fuck up something Nerve created not once, but twice with ET:QW. When ET:QW competition was at his peak (2007), the game could hardly field over 50 teams to compete for thousands of dollars and prizes for an online league (TGL Intel Extreme). Like W:ET; 16 teams could not be fielded at quakecon (unlike RTCW which had to have online qualifiers the two years it was at quakecon) and had to settle by making pub teams at the event. You cannot pay people to play this game!
Splash Damage even tried to be creative by offering the game for free with select EVGA cards. Did this work? Absolutely Not. Once again a frustrated player of the game had to clean up Splash Damage's mess and create a mod called etqwpro to limit the over abused spam for competition. This time the mod was implement about 6 months after the games initial release but it was too late.
The Future: [/u]
RTCW2 code name "Wolfenstein" is on the horizon and due out in 2009. I can tell you that this game will be much better then W:ET and ET:QW mainly because splash damage is NOT[/u] developing Wolfenstein. From now on if anyone asks me what is the next big team-based fps I will tell them anything that splash damage does not touch!
Conclusion: [/u]
What frustrates me is that many people that played W:ET never had the chance to see, live, and enjoy what I saw with RTCW. Those that have participated during this time remember the euphoria that rtcw gave you. Your typically W:ET player downloaded the game for free and got addicted to the team based and class orientation. This game style was started by Nerve and implemented back in 2000 with rtcw.
The main reason W:ET was successful because it was FREE and available to a large range of players. However, if RTCW was offered for free like W:ET was back in 2003 it would have be even bigger, better and had a lot more competition then W:ET. I will also go out on a limb as say there would have been much more money and prizes involved which would have lead to many more LAN event, competition, and players that would actually enjoy the game play and continue to play the game.
Since Nerve is not working on the multiplayer for Wolfenstein I have a couple of recommendation for Endrant Studios. Don't be crazy with the multiplayer and try and re-invent the wheel. Keep it simple and basically copy what Nerve did with RTCW. Use the same weapons, movement, spread and shooting theory's as Nerve. It might be too late but even using the quake3 engine would be great and include updated graphics. Use all those fancy terminology words that are on the new Nvidia graphics cards that we the gamer have no clue what they do. Port over the same maps as RTCW and include a competition mod with its release and not have some third party coder that doesn't get paid a dime of profits to do it for you. If you basically re-release RTCW with better graphics it will be worth the $59.95 and you have the game of the year.
This is a recent picture of a screen shot of Wolfenstein and so far I’m not impressed.
wolfenstein
This article was inspired by many fellow online friends that keep asking me what is the 'next big game'. And now I finally have an answer to give them:
The Past: [/u]
I have found Return to Castle Wolfenstein to be one of the most successful team based objective games of all time. The game play and spectator entrainment was phenomenal. Add-ons like WolfTV along with OSP and a shout caster by the name of Warwitch from the Team Sportscast Network made the game play experience fantastic. These were the days where you could actually watch a full match and be entertained. Watching The Doctors vs. Infensus duel it out on mp_ice on WolfTV was flat out awesome. RTCW was the pioneer team based objective shooter that was smooth as butter. Nerve, the company in charge of the multiplayer for RTCW, did such a fantastic job and should be praised for their work. Now looking back at things, was it Nerve who came up with the idea to make a 'med and ammo' pack along with different classes in a team based objective? If it was they are pure geniuses.
After 2003 gaming for me was never the same. Many players left RTCW to fulfill their gaming careers in something else that was more competitive. Call of Duty and Counter Strike/Source were (and still are) the most competitive first-person shooters that have much more money that was backed into them. I don't really like the type of one life to live games for competition and never could find myself playing them competitively. I feel they are slow and getting killed at the beginning of the round and waiting a couple of minutes for the next round is not my cup of tea. So what was offered next you ask?
Splash Damage released their unfinished project and released Enemy Territory (W:ET). W:ET never offered the same thrill and intensiveness that was in rtcw. It was a great pub game where you could join a server and see how many unskilled players you could spawn camp in 30 minutes. As for the competition it was bogus. The competition mod (etpro) was developed and set into the community almost a year after its release. This mod did not give me the same euphoric desire that rtcw once did.
W:ET spectator mode was not as entertaining due to the larger maps and multiple objectives compared to RTCW. For example: on a typical RTCW map of mp_beach the round length was 8:00 minutes and ithe objective could be obtained 2:00 minutes. This made it perfect for viewing on WolfTV. Objectives such as blowing up the side wall on mp_beach were a necessity but did not need to be destroyed in order for you to win the round. Teams could get lucky and boost a player over a wall and catch the defense off guard in order to complete set or break a time.
W:ET on the other hand you had to build a bridge, escort a tank half way around the map, blow up a door and plant at the last objective. Complete all this is a time-consuming and spectator boring 15 minutes. If you defense made a mistake on the first stage you had time to re-organize on the second or third stage and probably were able to salvage the round. In RTCW if you messed up once on defense it was very hard to recover and set back up. Not to mention the spam W:ET had when it was first turned into competition. It only took 1 year for the leagues to implement an anti spam setting which was created by a third party gamer (not Splash Damage).
The Present: [/u]
Let's fast forward to 2007. Splash damage was in charge of Enemy Territory Quakewars (ETQW). Based on original W:ET the game play and spectator entrainment flat out sucks. Like W:ET, you have to build a bridge, escort a vehicle (while repairing with a wrench) destroy 2 AVT's 1 APT's, dodge two plasma motors and hack and objective. Once this was completed Splash Damage thought it was enough pain and frustration that they included a final objective of blowing up a generator to set a time. Complete all this in an agonizing and painful 20 minutes! First of all, who wants to spectator Bob the builder repairing an MCP? Second, how could Splash Damage fuck up something Nerve created not once, but twice with ET:QW. When ET:QW competition was at his peak (2007), the game could hardly field over 50 teams to compete for thousands of dollars and prizes for an online league (TGL Intel Extreme). Like W:ET; 16 teams could not be fielded at quakecon (unlike RTCW which had to have online qualifiers the two years it was at quakecon) and had to settle by making pub teams at the event. You cannot pay people to play this game!
Splash Damage even tried to be creative by offering the game for free with select EVGA cards. Did this work? Absolutely Not. Once again a frustrated player of the game had to clean up Splash Damage's mess and create a mod called etqwpro to limit the over abused spam for competition. This time the mod was implement about 6 months after the games initial release but it was too late.
The Future: [/u]
RTCW2 code name "Wolfenstein" is on the horizon and due out in 2009. I can tell you that this game will be much better then W:ET and ET:QW mainly because splash damage is NOT[/u] developing Wolfenstein. From now on if anyone asks me what is the next big team-based fps I will tell them anything that splash damage does not touch!
Conclusion: [/u]
What frustrates me is that many people that played W:ET never had the chance to see, live, and enjoy what I saw with RTCW. Those that have participated during this time remember the euphoria that rtcw gave you. Your typically W:ET player downloaded the game for free and got addicted to the team based and class orientation. This game style was started by Nerve and implemented back in 2000 with rtcw.
The main reason W:ET was successful because it was FREE and available to a large range of players. However, if RTCW was offered for free like W:ET was back in 2003 it would have be even bigger, better and had a lot more competition then W:ET. I will also go out on a limb as say there would have been much more money and prizes involved which would have lead to many more LAN event, competition, and players that would actually enjoy the game play and continue to play the game.
Since Nerve is not working on the multiplayer for Wolfenstein I have a couple of recommendation for Endrant Studios. Don't be crazy with the multiplayer and try and re-invent the wheel. Keep it simple and basically copy what Nerve did with RTCW. Use the same weapons, movement, spread and shooting theory's as Nerve. It might be too late but even using the quake3 engine would be great and include updated graphics. Use all those fancy terminology words that are on the new Nvidia graphics cards that we the gamer have no clue what they do. Port over the same maps as RTCW and include a competition mod with its release and not have some third party coder that doesn't get paid a dime of profits to do it for you. If you basically re-release RTCW with better graphics it will be worth the $59.95 and you have the game of the year.
This is a recent picture of a screen shot of Wolfenstein and so far I’m not impressed.
wolfenstein
I've played both a fair bit and honestly... come on... take off the nostalgia goggles. Sure it's a little faster but it has it's own downsides, hell straight away the spam issue comes to mind - but then again, ET has shit like riflenades
rtcw is a good game but people need to stop acting like its totally superior to ET, both have flaws, one is dead, live with it
i will add that the map whine seems bogus too, sure to the uneducated spectator lotto might be interesting but to me the player, lotto shouldn't influence a result. maps with an rtcw-esque pacing are usually shunned/removed after a season all bar adlernest which is these days considered a lotto map
And ye, those maps are shunned because any attempt to make a good map out of a map from a different game is doomed to fail. RTCW had a faster pace, smaller maps, fast firing rate and less retarded screenshakes (from bullets not from explosions), so any converted map is gonna be totally different from the original. What wasnt lotto in rtcw will become lotto in ET
btw, imo the fast pace/small maps/fire rate/ less screenshakes made it such a great game
Looking at that final screenshot, two things stand out to me:
1. The graphics will not be too impressive, hence they will not have that crutch to fall back on with new players.
2. Aiming down the sight makes this seem more like COD than RTCW. Are we going to get the option to enable our precious crosshair? Maybe. Are we going to have perfect strafe jumping, RTCW fire rate, etc? Not likely.
Right now they're mostly releasing information about the single player. Competition for this game is way out of sight for the time being, since that's clearly not their priority. I think at best you can hope for something like ET, where it went from a dumped pub game to having good competition for many years.
The pretended to work closely with the community but despite a beta that some saw potential in, the end resulted in an unplayable shit game that did not look at the evolution of ET by the community...meaning:
Faster rounds/maps, more aiming skill, less spam, less verhicles. Basically, fast dynamic gameplay...not the rather static, slow, boring and simplistic gameplay that ET:QW offered.
So I rather have nerve working on it...because those guys made rtcw great to play 6v6.
I had a type-o and corrected it!
RTCW2 code name "Wolfenstein" is on the horizon and due out in 2009. I can tell you that this game will be much better then W:ET and ET:QW mainly because splash damage is NOT[/u]developing Wolfenstein.
Indeed, but it had rpg aspects, thus increasing the playability. U didnt see everything with one or even two playthroughs. Plus the game was way bigger than the average singleplayer fps campaign
et is also a nice game funny and a way faster than cod or cs
rtcw is cool but as meez already mentioned above both games have ups an downs
Your right that RTCW>ET. Every player who experienced both (during the best days of each game + for a few years) will agree that RTCW is better then ET. I wouldn't say ET is that bad tho. I enjoyed watching a lot of tense, close games during EC/NC's like on radar with the radar parts. U also can see lot's of multikills which u didn't saw that much in rtcw. After experiencing both games for a few years I still say that RTCW was better but I rate ET higher then in the beginning. Lot's of minor stuff like proning, xp, etc.. is out of it and it's now a much better game.
About rtcw2, it looks more like Cod then rtcw so I wouldn't be that hopeful. If the moving & aiming is the same as in rtcw then yes it will be good but I doubt that. I haven't seen 1 good game in MP mode in the last 5 years and I fear they still haven't learned their lesson.
edit: rtcw2 may be a bit more then just a graphical update, but the main stuff like the aiming & the movement (strafing) should certainly be included.
I'm trying to be as optimistic as possible about Wolfenstein but id Software is helping with this project which scares the shit out of me TBH.
I can see at least a playable demo of Wolfenstein at this year's Qcon if not a beta tournament like ET:QW had 2 Qcons ago.
All in all, I will buy this game no matter what... but man, id Software can't seem to help put a good game together in recent years :/
"the MP has been finished (well what 3wave did at least until their contract expired I believe) since January... almost a year ago."
This doesn't speak well for the MP. I mean, at least it's 'finished', but now they'll probably mess around with it for the worse. Also, if it's taking so long to get finished, I'm guessing it'll be released prematurely like ET or the whole thing will get scrapped. I'd bet on the latter.
Well, if you prefer more lotto-based games. With ABBA it wasn't that much of a problem though than in ET. More exciting to watch for sure but annoying to play (well it worked in rtcw with its gamestyle but unfortunately some retards tried to adopt the maps to et and maps like beach can still be found in some et mappool). And you totally sound like 30in fueldump would still be played in competition.
Not a surprise, if you have a look at the circumstances the et tournament was announced. And having a look at the crossfire lans shows that the game isn't really dead yet.
I don't wanna vilify rtcw - like other ppl said both games had its pros and cons - but you don't really know much about ET and all this nostalgia...
You do have some points but at the same time you have to agree that rtcw is more "beta" than ET.
Oh and rumors has it that ironsight will be sp only.
What would you say if there was first ET and then rtcw? I bet you would praise ET.
<3 your conclusion, nice read btw!
a few years ago (when modus-operandi went) they had online qualifiers then..
failing to see your point. oh is it that the game is extremely old and the player numbers have dwindled so it was an overall failure.
good one!
edit: look at the cc5, some of the games there where!!!!!!!!!!!!! woww!
As far as Qcon/Qualifiers go, iD completely ripped the heart out of ET - particularly in North America where the scene was smaller even at the start - when they chose to bring Doom3 to Qcon. I remember people leaving in absolute droves to Call of Duty when they decided to promote the newly released, piece of shit Doom3 over ET. By the time ET came back the next year, most people had moved on.
I wasn't part of the RTCW scene at all, so I don't know how early WolfTV came around, how popular it was and so on, but the work done over the last 2 years with Gamestv/ETtvOnDemand is nothing short of spectacular. Yes, some of the maps were poorly made and bogged down to a crawl but that became such an issue only because configs were relatively slow to be adjusted (even more of an issue in North America where there is STILL no pronedelay).
Most of these were far larger issues in North America as the community was smaller and only continued to splinter as time went on. Tosspot & Co's efforts in Euroland with the Crossfire LAN's (and a larger community to begin with) and other work have resulted in a huge difference between the two.
Barring an utter Wolfenstein failure these are things we absolutely have to remedy moving forward or we are destined to continue to be a dead community
WolfTV wasn't as good as Gamestv / ETtvondemand. But it was something that was new in technology at the time that brought the community together. Many times for the CAL-I , Battle of the beach, QuakeCon Qualifiers and LAN matches had multiple servers were maxed out with 200 people on each.
I'm not sure how many people actually watch W:ET now since I have not been a part of the community since 2004; but ETQW only has about 20 people watching for a finals match in North America.
Good post!
But you're actually judging W:ET?
Yes, Fueldump is a massively popular competition map, it pains me too.
“Splash Damage released their unfinished project and released Enemy Territory (W:ET). W:ET never offered the same thrill and intensiveness that was in rtcw.”
Subjective claptrap…
“W:ET spectator mode was not as entertaining due to the larger maps and multiple objectives compared to RTCW.”
Again, subjective… RTCW is ET but with longer periods of nothingness ‘n more screenshakeintastic spam.
“For example: on a typical RTCW map of mp_beach the round length was 8:00 minutes and ithe objective could be obtained 2:00 minutes.”
I’ve not played for a while but erm… average time on Grush? 8-9 mins. Average time on supply? 8-9 mins. Average time on adler? Anything from 2-7 mins. etc etc etc
Nostalgic claptrap, the US scene is dead for both games. You can’t objectively ascertain anything from that…
How else does CoD have such a huge playerbase if being free is de facto?
as for the "free" thing, the competition may have been stronger if you had to pay for the game. the game would have got more advertisement and sponsorship etc. arguably of course.
So how come SD ruined online team-based fps gaming for you while you actually played the games they made, and left games such as Call of Duty and Counter-Strike alone because you didn't like their gameplay? It seems to me you dislike the way the industry is moving as a whole, which should be blamed on the people playing video games behind their TV's and not the companies trying to make money in these times of financial setbacks...
If they would have listened to players in the private beta they could have made this game more appealing to the competition community. Today we live in a society where you only have one first impression to get your consumer to bite and they failed from the competition stand point.
ET:QW, like W:ET used to be back when I played (before the game evolved w/ competition mods) was also fun to pub and see how many people you could spawn camp in the time aloud.
I don't remember when Ryan Mannion of RtCW shrub "fame" declared game over (was it really a year?), but the decision to go with his "TourneyMod" should be blamed on the [American] leagues.
ETPro was superior much from the first version, and most certainly when version 2.0.0 was released less than four months after the game itself.
And as you said, ETpro 2.0.0 was released mid-september 2003 IIRC.
Only way for their to be a "new big competitive game" is a community build game or a great mod made for competitive play, only problem with that is when a game publisher releases a game they can put up money for lans increasing the popularity, thus coining the term sell out gamers
our expectations are just too high for what game devs can do, games used to be good because we didn't think they could get any better now we are stuck in a point where most games are aiming for really awesome graphics and dumped down gameplay so the games can become more popular.
we are in the era of "casual gaming" and this isn't a good thing for the competitive community
/stoned rant idk what the shit i have typed and i cba to read it : |
I couldnt agree more with you dude ;p
been playing RtCW from 2003 or something and I seriously think its flawless and the best game that ive ever played. And tbh cant think of any downside from it, EXCEPT!!1111 NO ANTILAG for finns 8<. "too much spamming"... dunno... i dont think theres too much of it and you can avoid it anyway if you have brains ;P since most of it is very predictable. (except My lottonades.)
Ive tried to start playing ET for about 10-15 times HONESTLY :D
buttttt EVERY SINGLE TIME I start to think about uninstall after ive played for about 3-4 weeks...then i just quit playing it again.
I just cant understand "how the hell can this be the "follower" of RtCW?!"
ALLTHO - I dont even know why is it so horrible for me, it just doesnt have that Something. (i dont even get badly owned or anything and I know the maps etc so you cant blame it on that ppl soz :P)
and about "Wolfenstein"... might be a bit pessimistic but I dont think it will be even as "good" as ET is :p
PS HOLLYWOOD: http://koti.phnet.fi/silppuri/rtcw/stats/mixeds/mixed_vs_yankees.html was ggs, played @ 5am :D
that's all folks!
np if you didnt understand !
or is it me who doesnt understand?!
i just wanted to say that all rtcw players that i talked to feel like us ... et doesnt have that Something that rtcw had, has and will have. And for this we dont like that game.
i dunno if we will play a new game and find the same we find in rtcw... i think that the most loved game is the first that someone play... i played first rtcw... my friend played cod... the fact is that cod had the same gamestyle from cod 1 to 5 ... with little changes ... rtcw to et changed like the day and the night... they r 2 different game ... they have the same idea as start ... a class based mp but all the rest r far away to be similar.
well said mate ^^
Nostalgia is irrelevant.
11 ETTV replays for every hour of every day since its creation says differently :O)
FIRE THE RAIL GUN!
BUILD THE WATER PUMP!
ESCORT THE TANK!
MOVE THE PICKUP TRUCK AROUND SUPPLY DEPOT..
...OBJECTIVE TAKEN... OBJECTIVE DROPPED......OBJECTIVE TAKEN... OBJECTIVE DROPPED......OBJECTIVE TAKEN... OBJECTIVE DROPPED......OBJECTIVE TAKEN... OBJECTIVE DROPPED......OBJECTIVE TAKEN... OBJECTIVE DROPPED......OBJECTIVE TAKEN... OBJECTIVE DROPPED......OBJECTIVE TAKEN... OBJECTIVE DROPPED...
The stats don't lie, the longevity, the popularity. Free is irrelevant if something's shit.
respect for admitting to nostalgia bias
With more support yes, but RTCW in its current state I don't really see as a better game than ET, I just see it as a different game. Both have their fair share of issues and both have redeeming qualities.
At the end of the day nothing will come from these discussions :(
only "good old times" - feelings for hc rtcw players :(D
I played both, allways had this nice nostalgia about rtcw, but after playing it again you realize the game has a totally different balance with its faster firerate and insane splashdamage spam.
The Quakecon I met with KiH, idle, Crossfire etc
The community had to pay for the Crossfire team, so if no one didnt start the initiative of paying for them , there would've been a lot less skilled people there
It was about a 1000 € per flight.
They got cheaper though these days :d
I'm sorry? You say you've played RtCW? The spam in RtCW is/was comparable to ET prior to the XP removals - half charge for airstrikes, panzers that blew away entire teams. Compared to ET as it is today, RtCW was a much spammier game.
The big difference in RtCW was that, as you said, maps were generally lost as soon as the defence fell. If you were pushed off the radars on Base, or out of the war room on Beach, or away from the transmitter on Assault, or off the upper level on Ice, you were screwed. They were all one or two stages as well, meaning average map times of 2-5 minutes, with maps played multiple times to level out the inherent lotto factor. The fundamental ET mechanic is that you play a map once, but it has three stages each of which holds for 2-5 mins - effectively equivalent to BO3 on a RtCW map.
Honestly, from the point of view of exciting competition, the RtCW approach is more intense, due to the inherant lotto factor in each map. This, if anything, is what makes it (one can argue) a better competition game. It's effectively just a middle ground between ET and, say, CoD, which has 13 ultra-short rounds, as opposed to 3 middling ones.
QW - team fortress
CS
RTCW
ET
And for addon few games for fun on publics (warsow, UT, urban terror etc etc).
Normal discussion over RTCW vs ET is biased. Many of new ET's blame rtcw maps as lotto. They weren't really. Everyone who played it on top level knew sneaking points, watched air for support jumpers and so on. Someone pointed out that panzerfaust was too powerful. It divided bad teams from good ones. In games where top teams played there really wasn't that many multikills (over 2-3 guys gibbed) by pf (some expections like base might come in mind).
Rtcw fast paced, straightforward gameplay was just better than et - atleast for me. I would rate few other games before ET aswell (no hard feelings fanatic ET lovers :)
For the future. Hard to tell which will be next good team based fps. New cod release every year aint good for community. Btw which one is played most atm? Cod2, Cod4 or Cod5? Upcoming wolfenstein looks like cheap version of cod. Maybe some game will come from middle of nowhere and blow our minds off. Thats the day when i update my PC and put my nerdhat back on :)
Sipperi! Oli hauska pelailla wolffia, mut oon kadottanut cd-keyn jonnekin :(
To get a little bit ontopic;
I liked RtCW more, but I think the game also changed a lot. When I play RtCW now, I really have to get used to the game again and in that case I'd prefer ET at this moment.
It's a great thing that people that watch ETTV can spectate anyone they want, but in my opinion it's rather irritating. With WTV (WolfTV) everyone specced one cameraman (if he wasnt afk :p), so everyone saw the same actions, which brought a lot more 'joy' on the WTV server and chatroom.
QW looked nice, but they wanted to bring some of Battlefield community in so they added stupid vechs and other elements which spoiled the game for great part of ET players.
I don't like CODs also, because they're rather slow and use stupid stupid iron sights. I get bored of it in about 5min. I think that COD needs less skill than any Id game every did. It's just too hard to aim for head shot with RTCW/ET precision for those players. Or maybe they prefer more realism (including camping x.x ), who knows.
I'm no expert, but if you ask me, we (as in those wanting games where you actually need skill) are fucked for next few years, till everybody gets his own console and PC games nearly die. Than we'll get proper games that can only be played on PC (fps, rts) again.
So if you're waiting for worthy RTCW successor don't be surprised if codename "Wolfenstein" turns out to be another piece of crap with some possibility of being a tad improved by some 3rd party mods.
I gave up already. I'm even losing battle in TA Spring rts where community of only 1K ppl is turning noob under influence of recent trends. Creating simpler and according to some of them more fun mods.
The main drawback to RtCW was the nuclear panzer, although it hurt much less when it was limited to 1 in the end. However, ET did not learn from this issue, and instead, added rifle nades and mines to the mix. The most successful mp games do not have such weapons available. RtCW would have been fine if the only destructive forces were artillery and air strikes, as such things are easily avoided and mostly used to force a defense to change positions more so than to obliterate an opponent.
ET was a very rough game in comparison to RtCW, however ETPro had much more polish in the end than OSP. ETTV was a marvelous piece of work, although there was something to be said about having a few cameramen in place to provide the same viewpoints for 200 people on a WolfTV server (can make a great LAN spectator event). And ET's Antilag... marvelous. No longer did you frantically battle to be the "home" team and have your match hosted on the server that was the best for your team. 50 ping or 75 ping, it didn't matter in ET. This alone would have made RtCW absolutely perfect for me.
Regardless, if the next installment of the series incorporate characteristics of the two, it will be brilliant.
...However, if it incorporates ETQW at all... good night Lucy. I finally bought it when it was on sale for 5 bucks on Black Friday. It was uninstalled within two weeks.
Either way, cheers Holly! Awesome to see a name from the old days of Texas Stopwatch, and I still remember you defending the tower on assault with the unscoped mauser while your teammates scrambled to recover from spawn on WolfTV.
- fast paced
- smaller maps/single objectives
- Doc runs :)
But also have the following (some borrowed from ET):
- Little to no heavy weapons
- Antilag/Connection efficiency
- Pro Mod
- Great spectator options
Enjoy :P
Oh wait they won't.
RTCW had objectives, ET has more objectives, ET:QW has even more.
RTCW had Classes, ET added another one, ET:QW extended what they can do.
ET and ET:QW are both perfectly faithful to the core concept of RTCW, objectives + Classes.
However neither Classes nor objectives are required for a good team based game, and both were actually co-incidental to RTCW's success.
We didn't fall off our chairs with excitement because an Engineer (Class) had planted a charge on a Radar (objective) and the other team were about to defuse, we fell off our chairs because one team had the opportunity to win and the other the chance to stop them and we held our breath waiting to see which. Substitute flags for objectives (for example) and the excitement remains.
ET:QW went wrong because the "stuff" they added detracts from the game. ET succeeded because a mod was made to take out the "stuff" that detracts from the game.
It's virtual people running around virtual worlds shooting each other with virtual guns in an attempt to "do something" or stop the other guys "doing something" that makes the game. Throw in too much stuff that isn't part of that and you spoil what makes the game fun to play and fun to watch.
That was SD's fatal mistake with ET:QW. They didn't deviate from RTCW's core concepts (objectives and Classes) they just didn't realise that RTCW was successful DESPITE those concepts, not BECAUSE of them.
And that's a reflection of where all games have been going the last few years. Developers fixated with how a game looks and what goodies it contains, rather than what makes it fun to play.
You seem to forget this was their first full retail game.
ET:QW was OK for me, ET:QW Pro made game more enjoyable and comp friendly in the end but was too late thanks to the delayed SDK release and poor custom content support in general.
I still play ET:QW but only few times a week on custom map only servers.
I play ET 0 times a week and don't see myself returning to the game unless Powerball/domination made a comeback in big way complete with ETPro features :)
I hope wolfenstein is treated in better way by id and activision than they treated ET:QW, it wasnt all SD failings that made ET:QW into what it was.
Stick with what works and keep it simple. New maps & updated graphics + RTCW/ET gameplay = win.
http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=etqwfw5.jpg
^LOL
Maybe it's not that spectator friendly if the action isn't intense, but on the other hand I find it kinda fair that the whole map doesn't rely on one stage but the defenders can renew their defenses in the next stage.
Also ET got many other fixes compared to RTCW (maybe not all by splash dmg).
QW:s problems weren't that it was like ET when it comes to obectives and lengths of maps. The problems were totally elsewhere.
RTCW2 might be a good game but somehow I'm not very confident about that. Probably they won't repeat all the same mistakes of QW but I'm afraid the game will be a lot like COD (at least according to that pic).
I completely agree with Nellie in the sense that it just seems like RTCW fanboyism that is heart broken about losing something you loved.
Also, after reading a comment the name caught me eye. Endrant Studios, which is in collaboration with Raven to create Wolfenstein is a faction that split SplashDamage in half(not really half but it was a walkout)
All the old school high ups of SD basically left after ET:QW bombed and set up their own studio involving some ID or Activision people(person - Ben)
So I'd watch out if you don't like SplashDamage but think Wolfenstein is going to be a saviour as you now appear to have the old SD core working on your beloved soon to be hero
I don't think it was a walkout as much as a change of direction as SD went on to work on whatever they're doing with Bethesda and the others wanting to keep working with id and id tech.
I wonder where you got that information...
Not 1 (one) single old-school/core left.
The core of SD is still going strong. Working with Bethesda.