Gears Of War 2 - Interview - Teil 2
Hi,
..hier geht es weiter:
Zitat:
EGM: Grenade taggers often die in the act of tagging, but since taggers are awarded a kill and taggees aren't, the game actually doesn't discourage suicidal play too much.
CB: Well, the next step right now is to just make grenade tagging a lot harder to do. From my own experiences online, I've found grenade tagging to be very frustrating--people grabbing it and then just diving and the game devolving from there. So we're nerfing that back a bit, but we still want it to be a viable tactic. You take the risk of getting that close and you get the reward. But keen players who really know how to aim, they can keep players with shotguns and grenades at a distance very, very easily, because they just aim for the head, have an active-reload clip, and take them down in a nanosecond.
EGM: Can you talk more about why Gears doesn't support friends in ranked matches?
CB: It's basically a rule from Microsoft. They wanted to prevent players teaming up and padding the ranked matches and getting on top of the leaderboards.
EGM: We talked to the Xbox Live team, and they told us it's really up to developers--that if they really want to build it, they can. It seems like you guys are blaming Microsoft, and Microsoft is saying it's really up to you guys. Their upcoming Shadowrun will support team ranked matches with friends. So what gives?
CB: There's been enough of an uproar in the community. I've seen relentless amounts of comments on message boards about it. As far as I know, it was not allowed [by Microsoft]. It could just be a left hand not talking to the right hand type of situation, but gamers aren't going to let the damn thing die. If it keeps coming up...you know how we are as far as supporting our community. We commit to our products; we don't let it go.
EGM: Does that mean you will incorporate team rankings in Gears of War if you can?
CB: Those talks are ongoing.
EGM: Did you deliberately design Gears' multiplayer to favor chance or chaos in order to make the game more accessible to a broader base? Like when two chain saws go head-to-head--it's a coin toss as to who's going to win that fight. Why not make the game more tactical, so a player knows exactly who's supposed to win in that situation?
CB: For me a lot of those scenarios ultimately boil down to the X-factor. When you're playing a real-time strategy game, and you have two evenly matched players, the one thing that can push it away from a stalemate is that random crate that appears on the battlefield and gives one player an advantage. I think it's good for players who are generally better to be able to defeat other players, but if there's a little bit of a random factor in there to allow the s***ty guy to occasionally beat the guy who's really good, I think that, in the name of fun, it's an occasional trade-off that's OK to make.
EGM: Epic Games has a history of making competitive shooters like Unreal Tournament. Gears is fun to play with friends, but it probably won't see major action with the pro leagues....
CB: The game was never designed to be Unreal Tournament. It was always designed as one-third singleplayer game, one-third co-op, and one-third versus multiplayer. The fact that versus has taken off as such a success is a pleasant surprise for us, but it was never something that we had planned to be CPL- [Cyberathlete Professional League] or World Cyber Games--worthy in that regard. It's always been just a "jump in, kick around, and have fun with friends" game. It's not really the kind of versus that we designed for people to play for six figures. That's why we do Unreal Tournament.
EGM: Still, can't you make a game that appeals to the casual audience and is precise enough for tournament-level play?
CB: I think that's something we could potentially iterate on [for a sequel] and nail everything perfectly for extremely high-level competitive play, with high yield for players.
There are always ways around it. The superweapon in your classic shooter is that X-factor of chaos that allows the s***tiest of players to occasionally kill the best players. And what do they do for tournament play? They just disable the superweapon. You can always make small changes--this is the rule set for the hardcore, and this is the rule set for casual players...something that'll maintain the hardcore but invite the more casual to play. But we try to keep them in separate pens whenever possible....
