<div class="IPBDescription">What do you guys think of it?</div><a href="http://www.battleswarm.net/game/" target="_blank">Battleswarm</a>. What do you think of it? Do you think it's a competitor to NS2?
It's got that whole "free to play" thing going to lure you in, with the store then trying to siphon money from you. In terms of visual design it looks quite like Starcraft, which I doubt is a coincidence. I might give this a shot, see if it's worth the time.
<!--quoteo(post=1721378:date=Aug 7 2009, 03:24 PM:name=zimzum)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (zimzum @ Aug 7 2009, 03:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1721378"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->competitor? yes, but so was Savage 2 and we all know where that game ended up.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They have a new media campaign at moddb right now. However, I'm still not impressed.
Back on topic, Battleswarm sounds closer to Zombie Master as a FPS versus RTS game, not a FPS/RTS blended game like NS. So, no, I don't think it's really competition in the sense of in the same genre. However (more philosophically), as a game, all games are competition for players. Even Settlers of Catan is a competitor for my time. Also, sleep is another one. And eating. Man, NS2 has to compete against food......
In the long run, I'm thinking no. This doesn't seem to have the meat of NS2. It may have a small amount of success on its own, but I don't think it's going to be stealing any of NS2's thunder.
They're both FPS/RTS combos, but in different ways. Plus Battleswarm has the whole persistent character MMO thing with those horrible microtransactions. So as has been said, no more of a competitor than any other game.
As said before in long run I think it will fade into the background. NS has its roots firmly set and many gaming magazines know of it and supported ns1 so I'm sure they will support ns2 as well as the community. Not to mention the art style is very different to NS. It also has the buy in game stuff option which I'm never a fan of because it separates players and just ends up making the game very hard to get into as a new player. Roll on NS2 to show them how the real men play and how to do it. :)
It's definitely a competitor. They have a huge advantage over NS in the sense that the FPS side is playing an actual FPS game and the RTS side is playing an actual RTS game. When the RTS and FPS side interact with each other, on the same team, you run the risk of dumbing one side down. In NS1, combining both genre's came at a price and I think the RTS side paid the most. I describe in more detail and give specific examples of what I mean <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=102260&st=240" target="_blank">in this thread.</a>
By splitting the two sides they're allowing players to fully experience what each genre has to offer. I have no idea if they're competent or if the game is any good but it certainly has the potential. I'll be trying it out tomorrow because every RTS/FPS game out there intrigues me and I'm waiting for the one game that can successfully combine the two without damaging one of the genres.
/edit:
After playing it, it's sadly not the best thing about there. The production quality isn't too high. There isn't even a menu to change graphical, sound, or control settings. The game also seems to be devoid of all life, as I was the only one online.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1721492:date=Aug 8 2009, 05:52 AM:name=Align)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Align @ Aug 8 2009, 05:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1721492"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This may be the wrong place to ask such a question though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Very good point :P
Honestly though, I suspect that it will not be a competitor for these reasons: 1) Different play style out right. As was pointed out it is much more like Zombie Master 2) Different company type, and business model. I get the feeling that this will appeal more to the casual MMO player (those that play F2P MMOs), and I also suspect for this reason that the FPS side will be relatively silly.
Think about this: What would it take to challenge a good NS player in terms of AI baddies? Now what would it take to challenge the average MMO player in terms of FPS games?
I suspect that instead of giving the FPS players a good twitch based combat system vs solid AI units on the RTS side, we will likely see the FPS side with fairly limited power to compensate for dumb AI.
Oh, and NS2 is modable, will support user generated maps, etc etc.
All I did was read the "About Battleswarm" thing, but it seems to me that almost any competent RTS player will annihilate a loosely banded group of FPS players. It'd be like a shoddy militia versus a battle hardened regular army. And that's putting aside the balance considerations of what ratio of FPS players to RTS players you need, and how the totally number of available RTS units has to change based on the totally number of FPS players. If there are only 3 soldiers, you don't want to let the alien swarm be 1000 strong, that's just not fair.
To ping off of Steve's point, this does create a game that brings pure genre lovers together, BUT I think that might be bad. The game would be unplayable without the correct number of both types. And this is before you even consider skill differences and how that effects balance.
From a quick glance, the game isn't enticing enough. Looking at the screenshots, they don't look as evolved. Just from the little bit of content I have seen for NS2, I don't think UWE has anything to worry about with this.
Trailer looks nice, rest of the game seems unpolished from what I can see on the screenshots. Community is kinda non present, but apparently they just <a href="http://www.battleswarm.net/community?g=posts&m=24#post24" target="_blank">started</a>. Going to try it out, RTS/FPS combo has always been interesting to me, not many have it done right though.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
Gem, SentrySteve and I just randomly booted it up at the same time.
Basically it sucks.
It has a lot of really cool ideas, but the amount lost in translation, bad clipping, unfun RTS (there is no resource management), lack of players, unintuitive ANYTHING, etc etc etc makes it a failure of a game :)
Pretty much. It took us like 7 / 8 mins just to figure out how to start a game.
I was the bugs, aka the RTS side, and it was pretty lame. There are no resources, so you just produce units until you hit your population cap. You can't build any buildings from what I saw. There really isn't any strategy to it, other than spamming production of units and hitting 1a2a3a (to make the groups attack move). This game could have been cool but it falls pretty flat.
Didn't help the marines really needed about 4 people for most maps and Steve was chucking these huge hulk things at us that our guns couldn't bring down within any reasonable space of time (I think we killed one in the whole time we were playing and heck knows how many shots that took :p ).
But yeah, as they both said the interface is atrotious; trying to find your way about or know what you're doing is a trial in of itself and the common question we had is "what's the objective again?". We even lost a map we'd though we'd won :p
<b>edit:</b> Some other things maybe worth pointing out...
1) We never earned any 'gold' through play. I suspect you have to do 'tours of duty' or something to earn some (they're like mini-missions you can select from the main area e.g. kill 1000 bugs in a game with 4 players and whatnot). This means we were limited to the 1000 metawhatevers they gifted us with at the start (which will be bought with real money in the final game). Even then a lot of equipment could only be bought for 7, 14 and so on days. There are permanent ones but I had to scroll through quite a few to get to them.
2) Outside of new equipment there's no character customisation. The only initially changed aspect is your gender which is locked to the gender you entered as your real one when making your profile. This is kinda silly as Ragnarok proves; once people discover this and word spreads then anyone who plays characters of the opposite gender will know to enter their desired gender instead of their real one when making a new account. The only people you'll probably catch with this are initial players. It also makes guys even more likely to assume female characters are played by females which leads to more harassment :/
3) the assault rifle is a sniper rifle (it's not a rapid fire weapon but rather a 6 shot weapon with slow refire rate... huh?)
4) I checked my stats and the game doesn't seem to have kept track of anything. It says I've played zero matches! Maybe it requires a minimum amount of players to count? :o
douchebagatronCustom member titleJoin Date: 2003-12-20Member: 24581Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
i did the tutorials and thought it might be a little interesting to play, but apparently there are absolutely no players, so i couldn't actually play a game.
maybe we should try and arrange a time for a decent amount of us to jump on at the same time? See how it fares with the numbers it was built for? :3 We'd probably only need about 5 players total to get some of the maps to function but there's a couple of 8+ ones too.
It's odd because even the most obscure free to play MMOs I've tried have had bigger populations than this :o
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
Gem didn't catch on that all the things we were doing were 'practice' At the end of each game all of our XP and gold was multiplied by 0. I assume that if you play via the normal match system you would earn gold and XP normally.
The normal match making system is also horribly obfuscated, however I THINK I know how it works: You join a room as either FPS or RTS. Hit Ready The game now tries to find other people in the same state to fill up the room. You can ALSO (if you want), set up teams ahead of time by joining a room, then inviting friends to your team, then when you are all read it hunts for more players to fill the gaps.
<!--quoteo(post=1721559:date=Aug 8 2009, 11:16 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Geminosity @ Aug 8 2009, 11:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1721559"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->maybe we should try and arrange a time for a decent amount of us to jump on at the same time? See how it fares with the numbers it was built for? :3 We'd probably only need about 5 players total to get some of the maps to function but there's a couple of 8+ ones too.
It's odd because even the most obscure free to play MMOs I've tried have had bigger populations than this :o<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
dude, set a LAN time up and let's go smash some buggies!
I'm guessing due to its unpolished nature, no one that's tried it has stuck around, making player population extremely low. Hm... it's almost like people decided there were better things to do with their time....
to be honest spellman I doubt many people were as lucky as us and probably just signed on to find themselves alone. It's a multiplayer game and therefore needs other people. It's kind of a vicious cycle; if there's no people nobody plays and if nobody plays there's no people :3
I'm curious to see what happens when it amounts to a 'critical mass'; whether it just dies out again or if the flames catch.
If they wanted to help it spark though they could certainly do with making it easier to understand :s
Despite all the negativity I quite enjoyed it when me and Than were running around the city from Steve's bugs planting bombs. It only took a down-turn once we completed that objective :3
Think it's down to misguided marketting... I knew of battleswarm already I just didn't know of it; if that makes any sense :p
If you look around all you'll really get from all the press stuff is "Nolan Bushnell is making a game!" It's not like they really throw the name about much or even link the website half the time :p
It took me a few seconds after joining to go "ohhhh this is that game that Atari founder guy was making."
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1721651:date=Aug 9 2009, 07:50 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Geminosity @ Aug 9 2009, 07:50 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1721651"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Think it's down to misguided marketting... I knew of battleswarm already I just didn't know of it; if that makes any sense :p
If you look around all you'll really get from all the press stuff is "Nolan Bushnell is making a game!" It's not like they really throw the name about much or even link the website half the time :p
It took me a few seconds after joining to go "ohhhh this is that game that Atari founder guy was making."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wait, seriously, it is an American game? But, why are there all the horrible translation issues? Did they think that free game players wouldn't be at home if they weren't there?
Only problems I hit were a general failure to explain everything outside of maybe one or two words at times (like when I joined a lobby I got a message saying 'bug'. I'd just finished the bug tutorial so I guess it's related to that though I'm not sure how as it had my human character selected. I'm not even sure what the message was for :o ).
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
I was talking about the fact that multiple items have multiple different names depending on where you look. Including the fact of calling a sniper rifle an assault rifle. Things like that I was assuming to be translation issues, not 'we are idiots' issues :P
Comments
They have a new media campaign at moddb right now. However, I'm still not impressed.
Back on topic, Battleswarm sounds closer to Zombie Master as a FPS versus RTS game, not a FPS/RTS blended game like NS. So, no, I don't think it's really competition in the sense of in the same genre. However (more philosophically), as a game, all games are competition for players. Even Settlers of Catan is a competitor for my time. Also, sleep is another one. And eating. Man, NS2 has to compete against food......
--Scythe--
Roll on NS2 to show them how the real men play and how to do it. :)
By splitting the two sides they're allowing players to fully experience what each genre has to offer. I have no idea if they're competent or if the game is any good but it certainly has the potential. I'll be trying it out tomorrow because every RTS/FPS game out there intrigues me and I'm waiting for the one game that can successfully combine the two without damaging one of the genres.
/edit:
After playing it, it's sadly not the best thing about there. The production quality isn't too high. There isn't even a menu to change graphical, sound, or control settings. The game also seems to be devoid of all life, as I was the only one online.
This may be the wrong place to ask such a question though.
Very good point :P
Honestly though, I suspect that it will not be a competitor for these reasons:
1) Different play style out right. As was pointed out it is much more like Zombie Master
2) Different company type, and business model. I get the feeling that this will appeal more to the casual MMO player (those that play F2P MMOs), and I also suspect for this reason that the FPS side will be relatively silly.
Think about this:
What would it take to challenge a good NS player in terms of AI baddies?
Now what would it take to challenge the average MMO player in terms of FPS games?
I suspect that instead of giving the FPS players a good twitch based combat system vs solid AI units on the RTS side, we will likely see the FPS side with fairly limited power to compensate for dumb AI.
Oh, and NS2 is modable, will support user generated maps, etc etc.
To ping off of Steve's point, this does create a game that brings pure genre lovers together, BUT I think that might be bad. The game would be unplayable without the correct number of both types. And this is before you even consider skill differences and how that effects balance.
[edit] typos
Community is kinda non present, but apparently they just <a href="http://www.battleswarm.net/community?g=posts&m=24#post24" target="_blank">started</a>.
Going to try it out, RTS/FPS combo has always been interesting to me, not many have it done right though.
I'm just reinstalling WoW now. As far as sci-fi RTS/FPS genre goes WoW is not.
However it is WoW > All.
Basically it sucks.
It has a lot of really cool ideas, but the amount lost in translation, bad clipping, unfun RTS (there is no resource management), lack of players, unintuitive ANYTHING, etc etc etc makes it a failure of a game :)
I was the bugs, aka the RTS side, and it was pretty lame. There are no resources, so you just produce units until you hit your population cap. You can't build any buildings from what I saw. There really isn't any strategy to it, other than spamming production of units and hitting 1a2a3a (to make the groups attack move). This game could have been cool but it falls pretty flat.
But yeah, as they both said the interface is atrotious; trying to find your way about or know what you're doing is a trial in of itself and the common question we had is "what's the objective again?". We even lost a map we'd though we'd won :p
<b>edit:</b> Some other things maybe worth pointing out...
1) We never earned any 'gold' through play. I suspect you have to do 'tours of duty' or something to earn some (they're like mini-missions you can select from the main area e.g. kill 1000 bugs in a game with 4 players and whatnot). This means we were limited to the 1000 metawhatevers they gifted us with at the start (which will be bought with real money in the final game). Even then a lot of equipment could only be bought for 7, 14 and so on days. There are permanent ones but I had to scroll through quite a few to get to them.
2) Outside of new equipment there's no character customisation. The only initially changed aspect is your gender which is locked to the gender you entered as your real one when making your profile. This is kinda silly as Ragnarok proves; once people discover this and word spreads then anyone who plays characters of the opposite gender will know to enter their desired gender instead of their real one when making a new account. The only people you'll probably catch with this are initial players. It also makes guys even more likely to assume female characters are played by females which leads to more harassment :/
3) the assault rifle is a sniper rifle (it's not a rapid fire weapon but rather a 6 shot weapon with slow refire rate... huh?)
4) I checked my stats and the game doesn't seem to have kept track of anything. It says I've played zero matches! Maybe it requires a minimum amount of players to count? :o
We'd probably only need about 5 players total to get some of the maps to function but there's a couple of 8+ ones too.
It's odd because even the most obscure free to play MMOs I've tried have had bigger populations than this :o
The normal match making system is also horribly obfuscated, however I THINK I know how it works:
You join a room as either FPS or RTS.
Hit Ready
The game now tries to find other people in the same state to fill up the room.
You can ALSO (if you want), set up teams ahead of time by joining a room, then inviting friends to your team, then when you are all read it hunts for more players to fill the gaps.
We'd probably only need about 5 players total to get some of the maps to function but there's a couple of 8+ ones too.
It's odd because even the most obscure free to play MMOs I've tried have had bigger populations than this :o<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
dude, set a LAN time up and let's go smash some buggies!
I'm guessing due to its unpolished nature, no one that's tried it has stuck around, making player population extremely low. Hm... it's almost like people decided there were better things to do with their time....
I'm curious to see what happens when it amounts to a 'critical mass'; whether it just dies out again or if the flames catch.
If they wanted to help it spark though they could certainly do with making it easier to understand :s
Despite all the negativity I quite enjoyed it when me and Than were running around the city from Steve's bugs planting bombs. It only took a down-turn once we completed that objective :3
There are also a couple of human only/bug only levels that seem kinda interesting.
I suspect that they will manage to get that critical mass, and people will play, I just don't know why I knew nothing of the game before this.
If you look around all you'll really get from all the press stuff is "Nolan Bushnell is making a game!"
It's not like they really throw the name about much or even link the website half the time :p
It took me a few seconds after joining to go "ohhhh this is that game that Atari founder guy was making."
If you look around all you'll really get from all the press stuff is "Nolan Bushnell is making a game!"
It's not like they really throw the name about much or even link the website half the time :p
It took me a few seconds after joining to go "ohhhh this is that game that Atari founder guy was making."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wait, seriously, it is an American game? But, why are there all the horrible translation issues? Did they think that free game players wouldn't be at home if they weren't there?
Only problems I hit were a general failure to explain everything outside of maybe one or two words at times (like when I joined a lobby I got a message saying 'bug'. I'd just finished the bug tutorial so I guess it's related to that though I'm not sure how as it had my human character selected. I'm not even sure what the message was for :o ).