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Star Wars Battlefront - Striving For Galactic Conquest?
Thanks to LucasArts for their press release officially announcing more information on Star Wars Battlefront, the PS2/Xbox/PC multiplayer action title featuring "the most memorable Star Wars battles set in over 15 environments across 10 diverse planets, including Hoth, Geonosis, Yavin, Tatooine and Naboo." However, a GameSpy preview adds further detail to the previously revealed information regarding this Battlefield 1942-like online-orientated title, including "the 'metagame' driving Star Wars Battlefront. Tentatively called 'Galactic Conquest,' this mode will throw players into a full-scale war. Once you capture every checkpoint on a planet and defeat the enemy's forces utterly, you'll control that planet."
The odds of this game coming out on time are 234,832... to 1....
*R2 bleep-moan*
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It sounds pretty good, but so did the original specs for Star Wars Galaxies. I'll bet 2 years from now, we will be talking about how some cantina dancer took over the universe.
I remember thinking of a game like this back when X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter was first released, except it would be based on space combat rather than ground combat. My idea is still technologically infeasible because of latency issues, I guess. We'll see if this one becomes vaporware, or turns out to be shallow, buggy crap once it's released.
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The only design choice I have a problem with is the third-person perspective that they are using. FPSs are much more immersive than TPSs, however I think if they plan it right, we're gonna see some awesome things with this game if they playtest the hell out of it. I am foregoing the PS2 version and buying it straight for my PC.
Let's hope it's not a subscription.
And what's this about 4 armies to choose from? I thought there were only 2 armies? Who are the 3rd and 4th army?
I liked playing this game the first time it came out, when it was called Planetside.
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I just wish Lucasarts would do some more creative work like they did in the 80ies with titles like Maniac Mansion or Zak McKracken. Today they seem just to wait for other companies to come up with new ideas and concepts so they can make a Star Wars clone out of it.
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1. Identify most popular game genre (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc) and subgenre (FPS: Strategic, say).
2. Apply Star Wars template (i. e. medics become Bacta Droids, magic becomes "force," etc)
3. Name game Star Wars: [Random Star Wars noun] + [Name best befitting genre & subgenre].
Hey if it worked for Force Commander, it's gotta work with...oh; never mind.
1. From everything I've read on this game, it appears its limited to 32 players per server. BF1942 had 64 when it came out. And some of the newer ones are planned to have 128. You can't take a step backward in the number of players with this kind of game and expect it to succeed.
2. Planetside was a cool concept, but they alienated many gamers by their less than stellar FPS translation. IE. "cone of fire" and no headshots. Aim is relative in Planetside. If they could make this SW game behave like a "true" FPS, AND have the massively multiplayer part of Planetside, it would draw in a HELLUVA lot of gamers.
3. Mods. Every major FPS has them. Hell, CS drove more sales for Halflife than the original game did, and currently there are more DC servers in BF1942 than BF1942 servers. If you let the fans mod it, more people will buy it. PLEASE release an SDK for it and don't force people to make their own like they did for BF1942.
4. Don't use anything like Steam. It complicates things, it breaks, its an inconvenience that ultimately will not stop anybody from pirating your game if its good and just causes issues for paying customers.
If they can address the issues I have listed, I feel they have a good shot at becoming a top game, especially since they have the backing of the Star Wars license. I know I have a blast playing the SW d20 game, sometimes even more than D&D because its the SW universe, and I'm somewhat familiar with it.
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Companies like EA do PC ports of a lot of popular sports titles. They're usually sold cheap, and still don't sell nearly what the console versions do.
Why?
Picture you and 3 friends crowded around your PC to play Smash Brothers. Do you have 4 seats at your computer? Do you have 4 gamepads with sufficient buttons? Do you even have 4 USB ports?
Metroid's a little better, and might sell a few copies on the PC, but why would Nintendo dilute the appeal of its flagship unit (the GameCube) in order to sell a few more copies of anything? If it was going to do ports of Smash Brothers, wouldn't it start with a PS2 copy? It would sell lots more...
Until Nintendo doesn't make hardware, it isn't going to be doing a lot of ports.
Until pigs fly, you're not going to see heavy "one machine, many players" on computers. And, yes, I remember Star Control II multiplayer. It's not that multiplayer is unworkable on one computer, just that it isn't nearly as workable as the same thing on a console (or multiplayer over a network).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...