Slashdot Mirror
An Early Look at Killzone 2's Multiplayer
Giant Bomb takes us through the multiplayer mode of upcoming first-person shooter Killzone 2 from Guerrilla Games. They explain how you gradually unlock more ranks, weapons, and classes as you find success. They also say you should expect different modes of play to be thrown at you after every victory:
"The big thing to 'get' about Killzone 2's multiplayer is that the game isn't really broken down by game types, like team deathmatch or capture the flag. Those styles of gameplay are instead integrated at a higher level. Each map and each match is capable of serving up five different objectives. And the game serves these objectives to you on the fly. So you might join a game and get thrown into a Body Count mission, which is the game's take on team deathmatch. If one side hits the kill count or if time expires with one side ahead of the other, the leading side wins that mission and earns one point. After a brief respite from mission-based activity, the game launches into the next thing."
With multiple objectives given, the easiest one (or the most profitable one) will be the only one to be accomplished. When it's easier to slaughter the enemy to win, capture-the-flag will not happen. Likewise, if it's faster to capture and hold all objectives because kills don't matter too much, capture the flag will be the only (real) game mode with killing taking a backseat.
While I'm ranting, in what way is this different from the standard play style of the Battlefield series?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why are there no games on the PS3 that have an offline split-screen option? I merrily bought 4 controllers hoping that Haze etc would offer offline bot-enabled deathmatch action but so far have been severely disappointed.
:/
Am now considering picking up a 360, as when mates come round we can't blast eachother in the old N64 style
Can any 360 owners provide examples of games for their system which are good for this?
So, let me get this straight. Killzone looked at the current FPS market and thought "You know, if we could find a way to take away the user's choice of what kind of game to play, that would sell like hotcakes!"
Killzone 2 has been in development for more than 5 years. They should rename it Killzone Forever.
So, let me get this straight. Killzone looked at the current FPS market and thought "You know, if we could find a way to take away the user's choice of what kind of game to play, that would sell like hotcakes!"
Or they looked at minigame collections such as Mario Party and WarioWare, saw that those sold like hotcakes, and tried to adapt them to a first-person shooter environment.
I've always hated this idea.
Some people either spend more time or are more naturally gifted, thus are more capable in the game. The game rewards these people by....making them more deadly?
It seems to me that you're locking people out of the game that way. The best players become nearly unkillable with all the bonuses, special weapons, insane classes, and such they get for being the best players, and the new players become nearly impossible to level, because they're competing against the aforementioned best players.
It's been a long time.
This really isn't so different then what we have now in every other FPS. Its like a standard server that cycles gamemodes (which are already not very popular) except that you don't even get to change maps now between modes.
So, you're stuck with one map thats been bastardized to handle all of these different play styles? Yuck.
Speaking from personal experience developing a shooter: It is very, very, hard to make a map layout that plays well in both say, capture the flag and counterstrike style "die and you're out". Typically you make compromises with the design to support both modes and wind up with something thats only average at both, instead of exceptional at one or the other.
As a thought exercise: imagine trying to play CS's "bomb mode" on team fortresses' 2forts....
Actually, the reason they're rare on the PC is because it's very rare that you have more than one control device plugged into your PC.
But why is it so rare to have one gamepad in each of the two front panel USB ports, or more if you use a multitap? If the answer has something to do with crowding around a 17" monitor, every TV over $300 at Walmart* has a 15-pin VGA port.
I'm replying to a couple of threads here...
1. On the multiple-objectives idea, America's Army got that dead right. The most popular map (Pipeline) had three possible end-games: Capture three minor points, one main point, or kill the opposition. Plenty of games (and even maps within AA) don't achieve this balance, but it is possible.
2. On leveling up good/persistent players to the detriment of noobs, AA's honor system is almost perfect: More play and success give you more honor. Honor can be filtered on each server (e.g. newbie servers for people under 30 honor, elite servers with honor over 50) and is only used to determine who gets first pick of the classes.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I have a little theory about that and it will most likely get modded troll but here it goes.
The current generation of consoles are underpowered.
HD TVs are now standard. SD TVs run at 480i (640x480@30) HD is at least 720p (1280x720@60).
Most console games this generation run around 720p and rely on upscaling to get the frame to 1080p. I say around because one upscales horizontally and the other vertically, so each console actually uses some funky resolution and uses its scaler to get to the appropriate resolution.
Now then think back to Halo 3, remember how the graphic were reduced when you played multiplayer. The Xbox wasn't powerful enough to render everything for 4 different cameras.
Now then some of that can be attributed to rough SDKs that all launch games have, so it will improve but I don't think that it will overcome the hardware's limitations.
I think that is why there aren't more split screen games because devs don't want to have to scale down the graphics to support it.
The special weapon in TF2 are side grades not upgrades, for the most part. Some yes they are upgrades because of how you would actually use the weapon, ie the Heavy's gloves.
Besides there are servers you can go to that will unlock all of the upgrades for you.
Its probably because most people don't want to haul their computer out into the living room to hook it up to the tv.
Blogs report that laptops outsold desktops in 2007 and in 2008. Several companies sell slim desktop PCs that would work well as a second set-top PC for the TV room; I believe this setup is called home theater PC. Why haven't PC game publishers taken advantage of these?
Or that typical interface for almost every PC game is keyboard and mouse.
Why is this the case, and why must it continue to be?
Of course PC gaming has always been a one person to a box thing unlike consoles
This brings me to another question: Say a company wants to develop a fighting game, a party game, or something else where putting all players' characters in one view is desirable. But the company isn't yet big enough to become an authorized developer on PS3 or Wii. What would you recommend?
Regardless of software and platform, supporting split screen is often trickier than network play. You are literally loading the system to perform twice as much work for half of the output. Two views with full scene transformations need to be calculated. Two rendering pipelines plus shader processing must be supported. And so on... It isn't that it is impossible but it is often more trouble than it is worth especially given the demands of gamers on modern graphics engines. They could spend a lot of time tweaking the game to perform at a certain frame rate at a certain resolution and have to come up with completely separate tweaks for split screen.
The way the demographics break down as well have been trending away from "couch multiplayer" to "network multiplayer". I'm disappointed if a game doesn't support online multiplayer but never surprised if they skip the split screen multiplayer.