It has been over a week since Wolfenstein was released and already we have two mods out.
Wolfpro is at the moment more interesting and attracts more players for several reasons: The people working on it were working on ET:QW promode, the mod is polished, has many features, developers listen to community feedback and implement good ideas coming from players. The mod has already fixed a series of bugs, balanced the game and brought it much closer to a competition game than it was on release.
Major gameplay changes that the mod introduced are weapon spread (which has been reduced to almost the same spread as that of when aiming through ironsight) and bunny hopping. Another big change is the panzerfaust's rocket explosion radius, turning it into a more useful weapon.
At the moment, it is a mod no doubt leagues will be using.
What the mod aims to do is balance and improve the original gameplay. This is a safe move, as changing gameplay to that of RTCW/ET would make current maps unusable as they were designed for a much slower paced game.
On the other side, there is shrapmod. This mod is supposed to bring game as close as possible to RTCW and ET gameplay. It is not nearly as polished as wolfpro and is seriously lacking bugfixes and game changes that are needed, which comes as a no surprise when you consider it is only being developed by a single person. It did however introduce some interesting major gameplay changes:
- as in Wolfpro, spread has been significantly reduced (i think both mods have similar spread now)
- it has removed recoil so aiming is much closer to that in RTCW/ET; it is also a change that directly benefits competition gameplay, without making maps imbalanced
- it increased the movement speed close to that in RTCW/ET
Movement speed changes are done by enforcing different player movement cvars values.
Neither mod currently has strafe or circle jumping, however that is because of technical reasons. Even after the release of the SDK, it is very improbable that such changes will be introduced as we will not have the source code.
As mentioned before, changing player movement speed has to be done carefully as drastic changes could easily make current maps unplayable. Currently, the software required for custom map development isn't available and even if it was, it would take time for mappers to actually make maps which are suitable for competition.
All of this being said, its time to take a look at the competitive potential of the game original ideas.
Compared to ET, this game is much slower paced but in some ways it is better for competition. Less heavy weapons and less grenades result in more focus on aiming. It also requires better tactics, timing and teamplay since holding an objective requires better crossfire, and breaking that crossfire is impossible now by calling artillery or airstrikes. Lack of artillery or mines and objectives which are easier to complete are making the game faster with less waits in choke points and more action. Sprint makes the game more in favour of a defending player or camper as noted in some columns on crossfire posted a long time ago, however removing it from ET was never actually discussed as it would make certain jumps impossible to do without it. That problem does not exist in this game as shooting while sprinting is disabled thus placing attacking and defending players in an equal position in a duel.
Both RTCW and ET had turn spread - on fast turns the players spread would increase thus giving advantage to backrapers, again something non-existent in Wolfenstein.
With a proper mod, Wolfenstein could be turned into a good competitive game... the only question left is who will play this game?
It has been mentioned a lot that the only thing Wolfenstein has in common with RTCW and ET is the name. Many say it's closer to Call of Duty gameplay-wise than the games it's supposed to be a sequel to. It is speculated that CoD players will not be interested in the game as a new CoD game is coming out in November, thus leaving RTCW, ET and ET:QW players as those who the game will be the most interesting to. However, as it is seen from many comments here on crossfire.nu, the competitive community is well... not exactly thrilled with the new game.
Lets take a look at some statistics.
http://et.splatterladder.com/?mod=statistic
http://etqw.splatterladder.com/?mod=statistic
As seen from the above links, ET has a larger active player community than ET:QW does. It is almost certain that this information is not precise, but it's enough to point out the difference in player quantity and prove that ET is the game Wolfenstein could "draw" more players from.
Yet Wolfenstein has not succeeded in doing so as can be seen from sign-ups to the Clanbase OC. 36 teams have signed up for Wolfenstein (5on5), while 105 teams have signed up for Enemy Territory (6on6). Even though this could be argued by the fact that game is still new, the crossfire community certainly wouldn't agree with taht.
The question rising here is what is the right track? Should the mods try to turn this game into sequel to RTCW and W:ET? Should they treat it as it has nothing in common with those two games and only improve original gameplay?
The second choice is safer, but it might not be the right one, as game could suffer the fate of ET:QW.
The RTCW and ET community were waiting for a sequel to these two legendary games for a long time, yet developers were incapable of delivering a good game. But the game can still be made into something that those players will enjoy. With changes, enough players might switch to the game to keep it alive and maybe, just maybe, earn it the reputation that a game of the Wolfenstein franchise deserves. It is still not too late to save this game from the almost certain death that awaits it on the PC platform.
Wolfpro is at the moment more interesting and attracts more players for several reasons: The people working on it were working on ET:QW promode, the mod is polished, has many features, developers listen to community feedback and implement good ideas coming from players. The mod has already fixed a series of bugs, balanced the game and brought it much closer to a competition game than it was on release.
Major gameplay changes that the mod introduced are weapon spread (which has been reduced to almost the same spread as that of when aiming through ironsight) and bunny hopping. Another big change is the panzerfaust's rocket explosion radius, turning it into a more useful weapon.
At the moment, it is a mod no doubt leagues will be using.
What the mod aims to do is balance and improve the original gameplay. This is a safe move, as changing gameplay to that of RTCW/ET would make current maps unusable as they were designed for a much slower paced game.
On the other side, there is shrapmod. This mod is supposed to bring game as close as possible to RTCW and ET gameplay. It is not nearly as polished as wolfpro and is seriously lacking bugfixes and game changes that are needed, which comes as a no surprise when you consider it is only being developed by a single person. It did however introduce some interesting major gameplay changes:
- as in Wolfpro, spread has been significantly reduced (i think both mods have similar spread now)
- it has removed recoil so aiming is much closer to that in RTCW/ET; it is also a change that directly benefits competition gameplay, without making maps imbalanced
- it increased the movement speed close to that in RTCW/ET
Movement speed changes are done by enforcing different player movement cvars values.
Neither mod currently has strafe or circle jumping, however that is because of technical reasons. Even after the release of the SDK, it is very improbable that such changes will be introduced as we will not have the source code.
As mentioned before, changing player movement speed has to be done carefully as drastic changes could easily make current maps unplayable. Currently, the software required for custom map development isn't available and even if it was, it would take time for mappers to actually make maps which are suitable for competition.
All of this being said, its time to take a look at the competitive potential of the game original ideas.
Compared to ET, this game is much slower paced but in some ways it is better for competition. Less heavy weapons and less grenades result in more focus on aiming. It also requires better tactics, timing and teamplay since holding an objective requires better crossfire, and breaking that crossfire is impossible now by calling artillery or airstrikes. Lack of artillery or mines and objectives which are easier to complete are making the game faster with less waits in choke points and more action. Sprint makes the game more in favour of a defending player or camper as noted in some columns on crossfire posted a long time ago, however removing it from ET was never actually discussed as it would make certain jumps impossible to do without it. That problem does not exist in this game as shooting while sprinting is disabled thus placing attacking and defending players in an equal position in a duel.
Both RTCW and ET had turn spread - on fast turns the players spread would increase thus giving advantage to backrapers, again something non-existent in Wolfenstein.
With a proper mod, Wolfenstein could be turned into a good competitive game... the only question left is who will play this game?
It has been mentioned a lot that the only thing Wolfenstein has in common with RTCW and ET is the name. Many say it's closer to Call of Duty gameplay-wise than the games it's supposed to be a sequel to. It is speculated that CoD players will not be interested in the game as a new CoD game is coming out in November, thus leaving RTCW, ET and ET:QW players as those who the game will be the most interesting to. However, as it is seen from many comments here on crossfire.nu, the competitive community is well... not exactly thrilled with the new game.
Lets take a look at some statistics.
http://et.splatterladder.com/?mod=statistic
http://etqw.splatterladder.com/?mod=statistic
As seen from the above links, ET has a larger active player community than ET:QW does. It is almost certain that this information is not precise, but it's enough to point out the difference in player quantity and prove that ET is the game Wolfenstein could "draw" more players from.
Yet Wolfenstein has not succeeded in doing so as can be seen from sign-ups to the Clanbase OC. 36 teams have signed up for Wolfenstein (5on5), while 105 teams have signed up for Enemy Territory (6on6). Even though this could be argued by the fact that game is still new, the crossfire community certainly wouldn't agree with taht.
The question rising here is what is the right track? Should the mods try to turn this game into sequel to RTCW and W:ET? Should they treat it as it has nothing in common with those two games and only improve original gameplay?
The second choice is safer, but it might not be the right one, as game could suffer the fate of ET:QW.
The RTCW and ET community were waiting for a sequel to these two legendary games for a long time, yet developers were incapable of delivering a good game. But the game can still be made into something that those players will enjoy. With changes, enough players might switch to the game to keep it alive and maybe, just maybe, earn it the reputation that a game of the Wolfenstein franchise deserves. It is still not too late to save this game from the almost certain death that awaits it on the PC platform.
yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
anyway, i removed part about wolfpro increasing movement speed.
also, when i spoke with chris eralier he also mentioned you can gain some speed with bunny hop in wolfpro. i'd appreciate if you could write more about it.
me too!
e: and those one-way spawnways are irritating :<
ive yet to play sharpmod but wolfpro is a major improvement over the original game although I feel its more wolf/etqw than an et styled mod. I'd like to see better weapon sounds etc in the game.
As for the lack of spam I think thats a good thing and should be applied to ET
Also this article doesn't mention the Veil which I personally think is a good improvement to the game
I've never been a huge fan of massive spam and weapons that don't require too much skill, but in Wolf you simply have nades and SMG. That's it. Where's the variety for tactics, different tactical setups? The maps are so small, every team is already playing the same tactic pretty much and I actually don't see much space to improve the tactics or change them.
The only way to get through a defense is some well placed nade or just rush in and mow down the opponent.
The problem about this again is that aiming in Wolf is basically not needed or is just totally random. You just point randomly into the direction of your target and move around. Hits will almost come automatically as the hitreg is so incredibly random and laggy. It's so easy to take down opponents (or get taken out ofc) that it's almost impossible to differ a good aimer from a shit aimer.
Hope you can see a little atleast where I'm going here: 65% of the game is basically shooting, rest might be tactics and interact a little with your team. But the biggest part (the shooting) is simply shit, which makes the whole game, well, not too good atm.
I really can't see how this game can motivate ppl to play it so often. It's always the same, really always. You play it once, you've seen all. I really hope WolfPro could provide atleast a little bit more variety to it, yet I don't know how.
You might say CS is only about shooting and nading as well. That's basically correct. But atleast in CS you got 1000 of tactics and different setups to use with different reactions from the opponent.
I haven't played wolf MP yet, only the SP.
However, in SP you have a lot of imba weapons like the panzer, the beam gun, the electricity gun and the evaporator gun (whatever they are rly called). Maybe those could be used in competition, why not?
Totally agree
singleplayer is good enough for most ppl it seems. and big publishers lie EA and activision get their money, everyone buys Britney Spears, why shouldnt it work with games?
Check some wolfenstein server lists, only 200 people are playing wolfenstein online at any time of the day so i think we can end the discussion right here. I for one wont even buy the game, I torrented it, never went beyond 1 st map in SP, MP 1.1 was worse than 1.0, stopped playing it a week ago.
Cant remember one.
EA have been shoveling shit and passing them of as games for over a decade now or so.
Recently they changed their way a little trying new things like mirrors edge and stuff.
Activision seem to have taken EA's place now though.
but honestly activision/id have gotten even worst with wolfenstein than them and thats very very very bad
EA doesnt release games while still@beta state, totally fucking up a long waited sequel using the same coding/files etc of a previous game like QW for wolf
The MP scene is basically defenseless: you cannot earn money from competitive e-sports (OpenCups, clans, etc.), unless by introducing monthly contributions (WoW) or a system like QLive are trying to do. They just focused on making a good SP, and like every reviewer says: the MP is fun for a couple of hours, but it is (for now?) just a mini-game.
I think the future is that MP games should be sold seperately (cf. QLive), so development time is totally focused on making the MP, and trying to sell it as purely a MP (however, SP will be far more cost-effective given the cross-platfrom opportunities)
I would come back to ET if they finally sorted out cheating and stuff and added some sort of age limit to game (and community) :)
However, there's hardly anyone playing, no game can survive with only a few 100 (at most) players. And of those most seem to be ex-ET / RTCW players, and most of them seem determined to play it with an ET mindset, rather than embrace the differences and see what can be done with the game.
We've already had a Cup with no upgrades (so that's Snipers out completely), and Rifles and MP43's limited to 1 per team (so that's the 2 new weapons basically out as well). On that basis Wolfenstein can't possibly compete with ET, it has nothing that's really different, and lots of stuff missing by comparison.
I don't know what's possible yet without the SDK, but I'd like to see the Tactical Scope upgrade selectable (so we can have a Sniper) and the MP43 and Rifle limits removed so we're not forced to play the game MP40 -v- MP40 in the vain hope we can pretend we're still playing ET (or as is more likely ET Meds can't compete without their umbilical cord attachment to their health packs).
As long as there's hardly anyone playing it, and as long as those who are refuse to explore the new possibilities the game offers, I'd say it's almost dead in the water, and close to sinking without trace.
8-D
But you are right, as it's only ET/RTCW players playing it. Some are lured in by WOLFENSTEIN name in it's title, while others are after money, which is totally understandable (see that just announced "10k down the toiled" tourney).
Others won't even bother with this pile of something smelly.
Both are irrelevant when competition is involved.
2000 - DOD starts as a mod for Half-Life and reaches v3.0
2003 - DOD acquired by Valve and released as a retail game, and reaches v1.3
2005 - DOD:S (source engine version) released.
DOD as a game is therefore older than ET (2003) and RTCW (2001).
Many of today's DOD:S players are former DOD players, just as many ET players are former RTCW players. I know people who've played since the earliest versions, several of my DOD:S Clans members are pre-retail players.
For most DOD players there is no distinction between the versions, DOD:S is simply the "current" version of DOD, even more so than ET is the "current" version of RTCW.
Not that any of this is relevant to the thread, but if you want to argue facts it helps to get them right.
edit: I see you edited, yes Wolfenstein as a franchise begins much earlier than DOD, but I don't think DOS based pre-MP games can really be considered relevant in this regard.
edit2: Why are we talking about DOD anyway? Because Yossarian thinks me playing a game he doesn't like makes my opinion less valid than his?
Ah :P
Well, for me they are different games as I can install both of them ^.^
"edit2: Why are we talking about DOD anyway? Because Yossarian thinks me playing a game he doesn't like makes my opinion less valid than his?"
No, don't care bout Yossarian ;P
You've just killed your argument.
Perhaps they have/had an ET mindset but at least they tried to play it. As it seems they're not the only ones who recognized it's a fail due not having a huge amount of (former) CoD players in Wolfenstein.
No, I didn't try it yet but I will.
But yeah, I appreciate ET players have at least tried the game, I not on a downer about that, simply the fact they've not tried to adapt.
If you're going to play a game that's a poor sequel to a previous one, and ignore the things that are different in the new game, of course you're going to notice that it's a poor sequel and probably give up pretty quickly, which is exactly what most people have done.
I'm not defending Wolfenstein but it does at least have a few differences, and if those were fully explored, rather than ignored simply because they're different, the game might stand a slightly better chance than it does currently.
Can't say anything bout Wolfenstein yet, only saw some screenshots and a video... as soon as I've got some Windows as second distribution I'll test it! ;)
tbh I don't think they did, or at least not deliberately. I think moving / shooting in Wolfenstein is the way it is because that's how it was in ET:QW (and Wolfenstein is basically an ET:QW mod) and I doubt anyone in the development team ever played RTCW (or ET for that matter) and so didn't realise how important the RTCW movement is to people.
In other words I think Wolfenstein works the way it does out of simple ignorance on the part of the developers, rather than because of a deliberate attempt by them to bring players in from another game.
I think if someone worked on a Source SW game type mod would be very successful. Perhaps using the HL2 mod back end as it is a bit faster gameplay than DOD:S etc.
http://www.gamestv.org/news/637-et-source/
Definitely go for a nice, more detailed (css style) texturing/model, rather than tf2's cartoon style though.
just add a pic and bold out some text
25 us ppl online at 8pm eastern standart time ... pls :D
Just the difference is the engine. Then they had modding friendly ID Tech 3 engine, now they have nightmare ID Tech 4. That says all IMO.
Anyway, drop the hope of seeing "OMG ITS LIKE ET/RTCW BUT WITH KEWLER GRAPHICS!!!11 OLOLOL WIN WIN WIN!!!!1 :D;d;D;Dd" game. Just move on to new style games like that could be now Brink or Rage. If you can't learn anything new - just stick to ET/RtCW, since the games still look the same as 5 years ago and plays as awesome as then.
Actually it would be interesting to know, how many thought that ID will actually give a damn about some rather pathetic bunch of ET players who tends to disable or limit everything with what they can't deal properly (aka ETPRo features) than enjoy the new gameplay improvements (NoQuarter, Jaymod ...). I mean, lol, does even 10% of this community even know that one of those mods (atleast some time ago had) have a quite nice shotgun added to weaponlist? For me, as an ordinary player, that's like something fresh to game, not the "freshness" you enjoy - "we shall disable this season the MG42, because there are 5% players who are actually good with them!"-style. You got the point I hope.
Ofcourse, that devs will care for a) the money (sucking it out from widely known brand) b) the mainstream, happy and changes loving players, not for you, the always unhappy bunch of so (self)called "main community" ... Q_Q
The original Wolfenstein was an old game released for many different systems in 1983 as Castle Wolfenstein. A sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, followed in 1984. Both games consisted of a board on which you moved a little stick figure around trying to avoid guards. Its game play and graphics are nothing like those of Wolfenstein 3D, but the games share a similar story/plot/goal. The first-person shooter, titled Wolfenstein 3D, was originally released for DOS on May 5, 1992 by ID Software. It was later released in 1994 for the Macintosh. There was also a version released for the Super Nintendo and later for the Atari Jaguar. In 2002, it was even released for the Game Boy Advance. Someone also created a version for the TI-83 graphing calculator.
The game features the first-person perspective with which we are now so familiar. The items and enemies are sprites. Sprites are a collection of static images that are moved around, resized, and even animated. For example, an enemy's feet moving would be an animation only a few images in length, the enemy's traveling left and right would be movement of the sprite, and the enemy coming closer would be an enlarging of the sprite. The levels are single-layered; this means that even though the game is a "3D first-person shooter," you can only move in 2 dimensions: left/right and forward/back. In Wolfenstein 3D, you can not jump, crouch, climb stairs, etc. Since Wolfenstein 3D, games have steadily improved. Doom added the ability to walk up stairs creating differing heights. Descent and Duke Nukem 3D made the levels even more 3D by allowing rooms to actually be on top of each other; there is also jumping/crouching in Duke Nukem 3D. Quake added high-quality 3D items and enemies by using polgon models rather than sprites. Since then, game makers have been constantly improving on graphics and gameplay.
The first sequel to Wolfenstein 3D was released only for the PC in 1992. This 20-level game is called Spear of Destiny. Since then, there has been only one sequel to Wolfenstein 3D. In Fall 2001, Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released for both the PC and Mac. A free, online-only follow up to RTCW was released on May 28, 2003; it is called Enemy Territory.
www.mac-archive.com/wolfenstein/history.html
Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5YuhTr79F8