Multiplayer hands-on van www.cybergamer.com:
[spoiler1]Heyas...!
This morning... Twilife, Jipd, Pod and I attended an exclusive MW3 hands on event in Sydney and gave the years most anticipated game a solid two hours worth of game time.
This was a really cool event with about 30 people from the media and various gaming sites getting to give the games multiplayer a bash, ask questions to the head man himself Robert Bowling, and give general feedback on what we thought of the finished product.
In the two hours that we had, we played a total of 4 maps only that were shown to us. On them we played TDM, Kill Confirmed, Domination, CTF and Search and Destroy. Except for snd which was only played once, we played the other modes a couple of times each and got the overall impression that this installment will really be focusing more on objective gametypes and faster gameplay.
The morning:
Picked up Twilife from the airport at 8am and met the boss man himself. Cool guy! We then picked up Jipd and Pod and headed towards the venue at Pyrmont, Sydney. After getting lost a few times thanks to my lack of direction and Jipd's noob navigation skills and poor comms, crossing bridges that we weren't meant to cross, we finally ended up where we needed to be. Exciting...!
Robert Bowling introduction and Q&A:
The morning opened up with Robert Bowling - Creative Strategist and Community Manager of Infinity Ward. He's basically the guy that everyone wants to hit when you hate the game, and when MW2 was released out of the box all buggy and with issues, he's the guy that went on a two week holiday. In person today, he seemed like a fairly cool dude with a lot of passion and big enthusiasm for MW3.
I'll give a rundown on what was asked and what his answers were, as well as other things that were mentioned...
- Theatre mode will be back but with heaps of improvements including being available on System Link.
- There will be no Prestige Edition yet to be announced. It is just Standard and Hardened.
- Killstreaks have been changed to "Strike Packages". You have "Point Streaks" that help you obtain these packages but you don't just get them via kills and can now get them through completing objectives. There are three Strike Packages:
Assault Strike Package: Basically your damage killstreaks such as predator missiles, helicopters, etc. Killstreaks reset on death.
Support Strike Package: Streaks don't reset on death and are support orientated - e.g.UAV, Counter-UAV, Sam Turrets
Specialist Strike Package: These give you additional perks or improve current perks. These perks last until death.
- There will be filesharing but it will be more accessible. You can still fileshare clips, rulesets, and now will be able to do it in System Link also.
- The game will seriously favour quickscoping. Snipers are now more customisable than ever before in terms of attachments but also being able to add things such as reducing kickback or increasing movement ability. You basically have normal perks and gun perks.
- There will be gold camos as well as a heap of new reticules and more customisation than ever before.
- Robert Bowling wouldn't reveal how many prestige levels there are, but confirmed that there are 80 levels per prestige. You also get "Prestige Points" when you prestige as well as achieve other things in the game that are very hard to do. These prestige points can be spent in a "Prestige Shop". One of the things you can buy in the prestige shop is the ability to take over your favourite weapon to the next prestige level. So you can basically take that high level weapon with you without having to level up for it again in the next prestige.
- There will be local matchmaking out of the box. There was good talk about how many countries, and Australia in particular got screwed over in MW2 with matchmaking. He labelled Australia the worst affected. There will a region filter and local matchmaking.
- We didn't get to see it, and couldn't access it whilst playing, but private matches will be heavily customisable. He referred to working with MLG to improve competitive. You will be able to create rulesets with weapon restrictions, etc.
- There will be a weapon ranking system, so just like you rank up yourself, you will also rank up your weapon for customisation and "Weapon Proficiences". These include reducing kick, flinching, improving ads, etc. It is basically adding perks to the guns themselves.
- Two new game modes: Kill Confirmed and Team Defender.
Kill Confirmed – Collect dog tags from killed players. Prevent the other team from collecting yours.
Team Defender – Grab the flag and protect the flag carrier to increase your team's score. Basically mobile CTF with one flag.
- 16 multiplayer maps out of the box. However, we only got to play on 4.
- Specs Ops will be back but still only support 2 players and not 4 as was hoped.
- To actually get the most out of the game, and especially from a clans point of view, you will need the Hardened Edition.
The two hours of multiplayer - Pros and Cons:
- The maps are very much like MW2. Lots of debri, cars, random barrels. Using the same graphics and engine for MW3, it did visually look like MW2. The maps lean towards this also. I felt they were very Invasion-like. Small, basic, and leaning towards encouraging fast-paced matches. Compared to Black Ops where the maps have some sort of depth and diversity to them in terms of multi-tiered buildings or multiple entrances, all the maps felt like they had a few common roads and a few buildings. You can think Scrapyard in terms of map logic. Out of the 4 maps we played, they seemed reasonably small compared to Black Ops. Actually thought comparing them to Invasion was the best way to explain it. Although there was emphasis in improving snipers and quickscoping, they all seemed close-quarters. I did think the maps favoured objective, and didnt look like snd maps at all. Probably why we only played snd once and the other modes multiple times.
- Kill Confirmed was actually a lot of fun. Probably one of the highlights I thought. Gave a bit of spark to the traditional TDM and even thought it had the opportunity to be played in a 4v4 type environment. The tag collecting eliminates campers and was fast paced.
- Domination and CTF were typical to what we've been used to. CTF played well, but wasn't so sure about the Domination spawns.
- The biggest disappointment was Search and Destroy. To be blunt, I think that this game is going to lead towards 4s and objective. It felt like they killed snd. I'm going to start with the map we played. The bombsite placement I thought was simply rediculous to begin with. Bombsite A was in a courtyard and Bombsite B was in a building right next to it. Looking at the minimap, the A and B triangles, were no joke, almost touching. Twilife and I were on opposite teams. He threw the most randy spawn nade, kid you not, I had literally made two steps from spawn and got spawn naded. The nade he threw from his spawn actually landed in mine. But the biggest issue that is game-wide, but more obvious in snd, is sound. You can not silent walk in any way whatsoever. You make noise moving, using ads, and when crouching - and it is very very loud. I could not emphasise any stronger as to how bad it is. If you don't have a headset heading into MW3, there is just no way you will be competitive. There is no stealth or ability to clutch a 1v1 by outsmarting someone.
- Public will be the worst you have ever seen it. The riot shield and juggernaught combination is unstoppable - even from a predator missile to the face. Add in noob tubes, akimbo secondary machine pistols, shotgun attachments, bouncing bettys, tactical insertions and just anything bad. It's seriously been put together for the casual gamer, and for us, is going to result in mass amounts of rage. I got the impression that the idea was to make everything on screen always look as chaotic as possible with big explosions and lots going on.
- Customisation of Black Ops x10. There is way too much going on. Perks, weapon perks, weapon proficiencies, reducing kickback, flinch, adding deep impact as well as things like dual scopes, extended mags, more weapons than ever... I just sat there thinking... How will we ever develop a ruleset for this? It is so complicated to deal with and will require mass amounts of testing and ruleset revision. The UMP and the ACR are back, but are they as bad? It seemed an Admin nightmare to me and something that could take 3 months or more to define a solid ruleset. Add in map discussion, private match settings, and wow... Where to begin, I have no idea.
- Flashbangs tag and lasted as long as previous on your screen. Semtex was the same, concussions at their worst.
- The M16 felt as unreliable as Black Ops. Tag, tag, tag, tag... get one bursted. I felt like I was always being bullshitted or bullshitting someone - and this was on LAN. However, the MP5 seemed as reliable as ever. The SCAR-H was a solid weapon, and had some hope in both the UMP and ACR being balanced enough. Didn't like the M4 too much. Most of the weapons were familiar favourites.
Conclusion:
Loved the opportunity and the event, but was highly disappointed in the game itself that felt purely like MW2.5 - sigh. It's the noobiest cod so far, the maps were too simplistic, customisation of weapons and their progression / perks overly complicated, but the biggest issue and the deal breaker for me was the inability to silent move in any way whatsoever. I expected to leave the venue wishing that I could take the game with me, but I didn't. I think it's because the game felt like a backwards step, noobier, and didn't favour competitive as I would like it to. Actually left the venue wanting to go home and play Black Ops. On the upside, for those of us that like 4v4s, this may prove to be the best thing for us yet if we can come up with a ruleset solid enough, but there is so much to deal with that it will require a lot of work and we will need to establish a decent Admin Team for it - both CG and ACL. To me however, from what I got to play, snd looked goneskies. The maps just don't look snd friendly and the sound issue is a huge one. Still looking forward to it though![/spoiler1]
Ik vind dat stukje over S&D toch wel jammer. Krijg je weer CoD4 4 praktijken met dat spawnkillen met nades. Ook dat stuk over dat het nog noobier is gemaakt baart me zorgen.
EDIT:
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Laatst bewerkt: 13 okt 2011
