How to make Extraction more appealing


(onYn) #1

Hey Nexon/SD, and who ever is reading this.

I just invited 5 of my friends into the beta, and played with them a couple games. People who have played over 100 games, and enjoy playing FPS (COD, BF and also ETQW), simply disliked this game. All of them. And I have to agree. I won´t really go in detail, because every point I will mention has been discussed verry detailed, in many threads. Still, I want to mention it again, hoping someone will realise it whats going on… I mean, it cant be overlooked, how many people just quit this game instantly after having played it once. Dont you have some data, that shows how many alpha/beta players are still playing it? I really would like to know. It just no fun at all. Why?

Maps: The maps are a general disaster. You made a verry fast gameplay, that has been wanted from the comunity and you, and then you put it into little tubes with no room and different ways? How is that supposed to work out? Can someone please tell me whats the plan behind making such small maps, with only 1 max 2 ways to an objective, at a game where you are supposed to set up deffense/attacks with high movement speed? There are also no spawn hosts, and just few objectives. All you do, is run straight ahead (because there is no other way), do the boring obj, and finish the maps… no flanking, no specific objectives, it´s just a walkthrough. To be honest, it feels like playing bad custom maps… it feels like watching filler episodes of a series… It´s just not the real deal…

Classes: Just 3 classes? Wtf, I like to play FOPs, Medic, and Sniper, so I am fine with 3 picks, but sometimes I need to go engineer, or go heavy Soldier to brake throgh a defense. Why am I not allowed to pick those then? On the other side, I don´t feel specialised or good in any way, when I just focus on my 3 ones… It´s just a loose without any profits, something that occurs quiet often in Extraction.

Gameplay: It has becamse kinda better, jumping at least doesnt feel full retard now, but there is still no improved movement like strafing, or something else. Also the automatic weapons fire too fast, and on close range the shotgun just instakills you… Feels wrong, but would be understandable in a game that works. It´s far from that tho.

I understand if SD is trying to do a new good game, and not taking too much from previous games. But YOU have given EVERYONE clear signs, that showed that this is going to be like ET, also a little like ET:QW. Just need to watch the alpha promo video. It´s clear were you told the game was going. Also that it is being developed close to the community. Don´t get me wrong, I understand you are game developers, and have your own ideas of how the game is supposed to be, while we are just gamers, who mostly think of what they want, but you cant just put lies out there like this. You can´t say this game will be developed with the community and stuff, and then just ignore 99% of the feedback. You can´t just put out quotes, from people, who obviously tell us this game is like ET is, and then develop it in just the opposit direction. That just can´t be true…

Like I said, I understand if you want to develop an own, and mostly new game, but the way it is right now you CANT. You cant just take some aspects of previous games, that worked out there well, but then take away all the surrounding things, that made those aspects work like they worked out, and how they were fun to play, and put it into an enviroment that you would “like” to have the game like. It has to fit, but the way it is, it´s just a mess. If you want to do a new game, make a new game and if you want to kinda remake and just improve and polish previous games (ET, ETQW), then do this. But don´t do this wishi washi, giving fans the hope, but in the end just trying to do something new. This way you will end up messing it up because it´s neither satisfying and bringing back old fans, nor catching new ones.

Seeing how often great, specific and detailed feedback was given and you just ignoring it, while more and more people who can play this game for free, just drop it INSTANTLY makes me so incredibly sad. It is like watching the Titanic after it hit the ice hill and knowing it´s about to go down… And also makes me mad, when I think about all this “with the community” marketing of you…

//EDIT:
Oh yeah quotes:

“This game is even worse then brink”
“It feels like brink” (they also said it´s better at some points, but the maps and stuffs…)
(from someone who played et:qw for 2 weeks!): “they just should have picked up more things from their previous games, and polish them in a working engine/netcode” … “I don´t understand it why they haven´t done it”
“they are trying to develop a game, that´s different then et and etqw, but they cant. they are doing the same mistake like they did with brink”

onYn


(attack) #2

[QUOTE=onYn;485647]

I understand if SD is trying to do a new good game, and not taking too much from previous games. But YOU have given EVERYONE clear signs, that showed that this is going to be like ET, also a little like ET:QW. Just need to watch the alpha promo video. It´s clear were you told the game was going. Also that it is being developed close to the community. Don´t get me wrong, I understand you are game developers, and have your own ideas of how the game is supposed to be, while we are just gamers, who mostly think of what they want, but you cant just put lies out there like this. You can´t say this game will be developed with the community and stuff, and then just ignore 99% of the feedback. You can´t just put out quotes, from people, who obviously tell us this game is like ET is, and then develop it in just the opposit direction. That just can´t be true…

cheers,
onYn[/QUOTE]
i agree with you about nearly all :).same frustration.
but the point above, they gave the refund option which was a nice step!(activison would laugh on you :D,if you would ask them).

it feels like moving in a never ending circle, its like there is no goal behin all. i rly like the decision to get with LB more too our wishes,b8ut there comes the problem which i see that often,they simply dont speak enough with the peopl.,lets look on london Bridge,we have a Nationscup et player which lives in england (potty),why you not simply ask him to look over the planed mapchanges.this would be so much more effective,all the mapschanges must cost a high amount of time and money.potty is a realy nice guy with englisch as his motherlanguage ,so damn why not let him, look for errors before change smth.

the best would anyway be to show all alpha players the planned changes.
damn we need communication.


(Kl3ppy) #3

just to be fair, when the famous quote about ET was made, the game felt really nice. Too bad it was one year ago :frowning:


(Rex) #4

[QUOTE=onYn;485647]You can´t just put out quotes, from people, who obviously tell us this game is like ET is, and then develop it in just the opposit direction. That just can´t be true…
cheers,
onYn[/QUOTE]

Hahahaha, Darkangel your fault again! :smiley:


(onYn) #5

If it was better, more like ET, a year ago, considering that most alpha players liked ET gameplay, it is even more of a disaster. Because this showcases, that most of the time, the opposite of what the people have been asking for was done.


(Protekt1) #6

I don’t think making it more like ET is going to solve players not playing it long enough to learn the game well enough.

Feedback I’ve gotten is that people don’t like the maps.

I’ve only asked one person though and even though he used to play ET in the past he mainly plays CS now so the movement speed is a bit of a change but not an issue. He likened the pacing similar to another UE3 game coming out soon which is Rekoil. I found that a bit unusual but he is sort’ve accurate. While rekoil has wider hip fire, it has lower avg TTK and is more akin to cod1-2 but iirc movement speed is a bit faster in rekoil. Its been a long time since I played the game though. XT is clearly superior… Rekoil has 1hk bodyshot snipers cause of the general low ttk of all weapons. IIRC rekoil does have a better recoil system though. The guns fire in patterns rather than random spread.

Also, you should limit your criticisms to feedback you are getting from other players. Otherwise you’re just reiterating the same complaints we’ve seen here time and time again making this thread worthless. Just a thought… SD knows our complaints already.


(S0und_) #7

Everyone complained about the maps before, but i’m not sure if anyone highlighted my biggest concern about them. I’m not gonna brag about them if they work or not.

My main problem is the initial design idea. The core idea was, every map has at least 4 objectives. You were absolutely fine with this idea, and pushed out 4 (nearly 5 maps with Canary Wharf) based on this. You invested a lot of time, money, and effort into them. But here comes the problem. You already had 4/5 nearly finished maps when (due to the complaining/feedback), you had to change them, maybe because they were simply too big, or to boring, w/e was the reason. “Redesigning / changing / fixing” in this case means MUTILATION to me. That map never will be a whole, because it’s never been design like that from the beginning. It’s just a desperate series of changes, to make it WORK. You may make it work (London Bridge is a good example), but they simply don’t feel as a whole.

-Hey Mr. Michelangelo, i’m here to talk about your last work!
-Hi there, go on!
-You see, your last work, David…
-Yes?
-Weeeell, it’s not really portable, maybe, just maybe, but can you make it a bit more lighter?
-Wha… how?
-Maaaybe, loose some limbs, a head maybe? It’s just an idea!
-You know, that’s not how i imagined my statue.

While all these mutilations are in progress, there is that sad, unborn child, who never will see the daylight in it’s current form. I’m talking to you poor Canary Wharf, you are one big, long, linear child. How they gonna fix you, or cut you half?

I understand that, game development has a lot of parallel work. You need to give some work for the map designers, or the guys who make the assets, but still, a wrong initial design idea, results a lot of wasted time and money, also half done maps. Also you lost a lot of work. Like Camden 3rd objective, i really like that one, (prob. my favorite). Can you ever reuse it?

Those of you, who still/will complain about the maps, don’t have delusion guys. SD not gonna redo the maps, this game will ship with these(fixed versions), and some additional maps.


(Protekt1) #8

just going to make a new thread, since this is much more specific and coming from my own POV and not from a newer player.


(Bangtastic) #9

simply dont worry, why do ppl worry about xT, either you play it and have fun or not;

all you have to do is to play the game, dont worry about anything;

SD already took a lot of suggestions and put it into the game. For instance the 3 char per match limit was discussed here, before it was implemented.

being cooperative is the key to be heard.


(Kl3ppy) #10

[QUOTE=Tast1c;485693]simply dont worry, why do ppl worry about xT, either you play it and have fun or not;

all you have to do is to play the game, dont worry about anything;

SD already took a lot of suggestions and put it into the game. For instance the 3 char per match limit was discussed here, before it was implemented.

being cooperative is the key to be heard.[/QUOTE]

But when I waste my time with pc games, I rather have fun than being pissed.


(acQu) #11

“they just should have picked up more things from their previous games, and polish them in a working engine/netcode”

Great quote.

Well, you can not say “this is the absolute truth”, but it was definiteley a path one could have gone down in the past.

But i also value the biggest core problem (there are others who have to synchronize after this change) the same way as was stated by OP: maps. How to say: they are tiny, unoptional and no exciting objectives. (by the way i recently thought about the EV barriers, they really are somewhat weird, compared to blasting a tank barrier for example, they need to be reworked imo, be made more authentic).

The next thing about maps is kinda the bigger picture created with xT. That is why i started saying that making this game take place only in London is not so good of an idea. Maybe some jungle, castles (ok i guess something can be done here with castles), water, oasis, ice, antarctis, … oh … and something more original and exciting instead of “well, we gotta go in there and catch the valuable data”. That was imo the original mistakes, which in turn restricted the level designers of SD (much much of creativity is lost by simply saying “create urban maps based around London”). And as far as i catch the intentions of SD, there is nothing changing on that.

Oh yeah, and story is also not far away from the argumentation of above (maps restircted to urban/london and objectives in a radioactive poluted city).

But yeah, for me, (and i can only speak personally), the trend in FPS goes away from MMS FPS and more into open world, MMO, WoW-like, RPG kinda games. xT is, for me, faar too unrelaxed and stressy. It kills me literally (burns me even more out, but that is just my personal problem i guess, gotta play different games then if i decided to relax and have some fun in video games). And thus, again from my perspective and i know not all think like it: SD is imo trying to catch an already left train (the MMS train), while the FPS genre is currently shifting towards new trends. But in turn, SD created something fairly unique so far with xT, but it is built on a totally outdated core game imo.


(RasteRayzeR) #12

Do I smell riot in the air ?

We are alpha/beta testers, it’s our job to suffer the bad designs, we are here for SD to experiment on us.However I have to agree with the maps problem. IMO if SD adds a movement style and keeps getting more abilities, the core gameplay feels pretty much right to me.

But maps … if money wasn’t an issue, i’d say start from scratch the maps (not the assets or the mood, but the maps). Only this time for each objective you design :

- plan 3 different access routes to that objective (main, flank, backdoor)
- one open fighting area near that objective (give space)
- a related secondary objective worth capturing

And generally, just wider roads and more asymmetrical designs where what you do follows a story line that takes into account that these attacks are not already completely planned


(BomBaKlaK) #13

Even if the core gameplay is good if maps are broken, the game will be dead in a near futur !


(.Chris.) #14

[QUOTE=attack;485649]we have a Nationscup et player which lives in england (potty),why you not simply ask him to look over the planed mapchanges.this would be so much more effective,all the mapschanges must cost a high amount of time and money.potty is a realy nice guy with englisch as his motherlanguage ,so damn why not let him, look for errors before change smth.

the best would anyway be to show all alpha players the planned changes.
damn we need communication.[/QUOTE]

That just wouldn’t work, first of all letting one guy dictate what is good or not is generally a bad idea, also showing alpha players every single change before it happened for review would slow down the development process almost to a halt which would probably be more costly, time is money.

I think people are being a bit unfair when making these kind of sweeping statements, there’s been lots of incremental improvements made based on feedback, movement is a lot better these days, guns are starting to feel nice (some more than others), UI is improving all the time, some of the newer maps are an improvement though not played them since beta started (blockouts), and I was really surprised they made such drastic changes to the older maps in the last update in order to try improve them.

Do you guys expect SD to acknowledge every change they make which was based on player feedback? Also with people having different opinions on matters you’re not going to please everyone, just because a small group of vocal testers claim they speak for everyone else doesn’t make it so. Yes the lack of player retention clearly shows something is a miss but there will be different reasons for different players.

The maps are a big problem and SD have acknowledged this, they have tried making some rather big changes in the last patch based on player feedback, shock horror, and I suspect more will come, the harsh reality though is 3 of the maps are so far in development that to make major changes now is a real ball ache, having made maps myself I can only sympathise with them. I just hope those blockouts we tried in alpha turn out well and arrive soon. I have to agree with Sound, we’ll probably get improved but not perfect current maps and hopefully some much better new maps for release.

Performance seems to be a big problem for some and not so much for others, myself included, however this is the first UE3 game SD have made, I can only guess that they are still learning some of the more complicated aspects of the engine to do with optimisation?

That’s not to say they haven’t made some questionable changes that weren’t asked for but at end of the day it’s their game, we’re here to test it. I don’t think much to the classless objectives, the theme/story/location, lack of rocket launcher :slight_smile: and lots of other little stuff I’ve posted about over time but I don’t feel personally insulted because they’ve not made changes to suit my personal tastes. That said I haven’t exactly invested a huge amount of time the past few months testing it out so that might be why I’m fairly relaxed about the whole situation.


(rookie1) #15

I heard from a guy that I invited hes main problem with XT is Balance .He told me he doesnt want to go on ,because its not fun for him .I suggest Stay with the mercs we have now ,Balance right everything ,add fun stuff s(eg similar to like what I said in Linearity post) in maps that you think their will be nothing much else you can do to fix,then lets go for new maps well thinking… one by one .


(shaftz0r) #16

yes, lets ask a mediocre player from a dead game to look at maps. seems completely logical


(attack) #17

it was more an example. look the mapupdates and say that a desaster update like whichapel havent be preventable.


(shaftz0r) #18

can’t argue that


(RasteRayzeR) #19

How about some respect toward other players ? You’re angry we get it, but keeping the negative attitude all the time won’t do any good.

Then I tend to agree with attack : look at other big games like starcraft for example. They have asked pro players to assist them in the map design process because they have valuable feedback and ideas. It’s a great way to ensure the players will like the maps and bring fresh new ideas they may not have had in the studio before. It could also give more meaning to the VIP status of some comp players out here if they were consulted for maps (early feedback) to make sure big expenses go toward making good content for the game. So yeah, if blizzard does it, why not SD ?

Plus the “dead game” you are talking about has lasted over a decade with a strong fan community around it. You don’t think there are elements in it that explain why people love this game so much ? You don’t think this could impact in a good way XT ?

Yeah, completely logical


(shaftz0r) #20

im angry eh? should i have formulated a 3 paragraph rebuttal as to why that’s a bad idea instead

[QUOTE=RasteRayzeR;485704]Then I tend to agree with attack : look at other big games like starcraft for example. They have asked pro players to assist them in the map design process because they have valuable feedback and ideas. It’s a great way to ensure the players will like the maps and bring fresh new ideas they may not have had in the studio before. It could also give more meaning to the VIP status of some comp players out here if they were consulted for maps (early feedback) to make sure big expenses go toward making good content for the game. So yeah, if blizzard does it, why not SD ?

Plus the “dead game” you are talking about has lasted over a decade with a strong fan community around it. You don’t think there are elements in it that explain why people love this game so much ? You don’t think this could impact in a good way XT ?

Yeah, completely logical[/QUOTE]

that game has been a dead fish for almost 5 years. just because there are 100 people worldwide that still play it “competitively” does not make it alive in any aspect, and we are those people they ask, unfortunately not to the degree that they should be. i can name 4 people from the NA community that used to play ET at its highest level that still contribute to these forums. I have personally played for team USA in 3 nations cups and get asked every season to play. Potty wouldnt even be on the list of people i would ask from euroland