CVG comments on the New Halo Reach game due out soon:
Gaming Divisions
Why is it that most people support Premier League football teams as opposed to, League Two, say? Its because theyre the most exciting to watch. For the hardest of the hardcore thats you, right? a monthly scoring system is now applied to a Slayer or Team Slayer option, funnelling players into five unique leagues. Like the premiership, at the end of each month, promotion or relegation will depend on your monthly performance, with many statistics acting on the eventual outcome, including assists and kill/death ratios. This is entirely the reason why, when asked questions along the lines of 'Can you attend our wedding in late September?' or 'It's my 50th Birthday next month, can you come?' our answer is unanimously that We have something on.' wink, wink.
blasting yourself into outer space for a full-on dogfight with a bunch of space-bastards
Seamless Orbital Transitions
We desperately wanted to use the word transorbital to describe this we were sure wed heard the word before somewhere but discovered that its only ever seen when accompanied by 'Lobotomy'. Since we dont want to give our readers the impression that playing Halo: Reach will somehow result in the removal of the part of your brain which controls dribbling and incontinence, we went with 'Seamless Orbital Transitions' to describe the act of bundling your metal arse into a rocket and blasting yourself into outer space for a full-on dogfight with a bunch of space-bastards. Put it this way, wed never seen anything like it before apart from in Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter, but he was already in space before he made the transition, so he doesnt count. Silly Mace Griffin.
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But frankly the game is still at heart a shooter. Not a good thing, not a bad thing. And it is stuck on 5 year old console hardware.. a bad thing if you ask me. And Bungie probably won't ever focus on real racing, that is to say vechiles, be they death machines or just really fast flying joy karts.
But given that it is an online game it is interesting to see skill based divisions. I'm not sure about a monthly refresh though since everything can change in a day. A week is a long time. A month is an eternity.
I look at the prospect of this and try to apply it to an ideal game and can only think that a week long division standing with at least some kind of showdown in primetime, Fri-Sat-Sun, allows for some of the division champions to get to a console and at least play a good few rounds to compensate or pad their ranking versus people who play all week, or month long. For busy people the most important things is that their premium game time isn't directly compared to people who can play as long as they want.
Even if it means that hours or ranking is compared more for people who can commit the time, they have to preserve that ranking in ranked matches no? I mean that's what wrestle mania and all that is about right? you can't expect to hit the highest rankings without a commitment.. but at the same time since it is a game and people are sinking money into that commitment it has to acknowledge that their time is at a premium.. which means cheaters can't be tolerated.
I just wonder though.. if Criterion is paying attention, or even Rockstar if they cared at all about something more for their GTA series as an online MMO... having a racing game, or game with cars and competitions, isn't end of week the best time to have competition to decide rankings.. and to get players to rank up.. and out of basic game play into something more competitive..
I wonder if it could work to sell a game which required you to commit time and rank up so that you could access more cars, better venues, and build an actual reputation online, and in primetime. If such a racing game appealed outside of gaming to people who might just want to watch ranked races (or matches) for sport.
(also if anyone here wants to help me work on a video game based novel (and universe) along these lines, any help (new ideas) would be welcome)
Gaming Divisions
Why is it that most people support Premier League football teams as opposed to, League Two, say? Its because theyre the most exciting to watch. For the hardest of the hardcore thats you, right? a monthly scoring system is now applied to a Slayer or Team Slayer option, funnelling players into five unique leagues. Like the premiership, at the end of each month, promotion or relegation will depend on your monthly performance, with many statistics acting on the eventual outcome, including assists and kill/death ratios. This is entirely the reason why, when asked questions along the lines of 'Can you attend our wedding in late September?' or 'It's my 50th Birthday next month, can you come?' our answer is unanimously that We have something on.' wink, wink.
blasting yourself into outer space for a full-on dogfight with a bunch of space-bastards
Seamless Orbital Transitions
We desperately wanted to use the word transorbital to describe this we were sure wed heard the word before somewhere but discovered that its only ever seen when accompanied by 'Lobotomy'. Since we dont want to give our readers the impression that playing Halo: Reach will somehow result in the removal of the part of your brain which controls dribbling and incontinence, we went with 'Seamless Orbital Transitions' to describe the act of bundling your metal arse into a rocket and blasting yourself into outer space for a full-on dogfight with a bunch of space-bastards. Put it this way, wed never seen anything like it before apart from in Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter, but he was already in space before he made the transition, so he doesnt count. Silly Mace Griffin.
--
But frankly the game is still at heart a shooter. Not a good thing, not a bad thing. And it is stuck on 5 year old console hardware.. a bad thing if you ask me. And Bungie probably won't ever focus on real racing, that is to say vechiles, be they death machines or just really fast flying joy karts.
But given that it is an online game it is interesting to see skill based divisions. I'm not sure about a monthly refresh though since everything can change in a day. A week is a long time. A month is an eternity.
I look at the prospect of this and try to apply it to an ideal game and can only think that a week long division standing with at least some kind of showdown in primetime, Fri-Sat-Sun, allows for some of the division champions to get to a console and at least play a good few rounds to compensate or pad their ranking versus people who play all week, or month long. For busy people the most important things is that their premium game time isn't directly compared to people who can play as long as they want.
Even if it means that hours or ranking is compared more for people who can commit the time, they have to preserve that ranking in ranked matches no? I mean that's what wrestle mania and all that is about right? you can't expect to hit the highest rankings without a commitment.. but at the same time since it is a game and people are sinking money into that commitment it has to acknowledge that their time is at a premium.. which means cheaters can't be tolerated.
I just wonder though.. if Criterion is paying attention, or even Rockstar if they cared at all about something more for their GTA series as an online MMO... having a racing game, or game with cars and competitions, isn't end of week the best time to have competition to decide rankings.. and to get players to rank up.. and out of basic game play into something more competitive..
I wonder if it could work to sell a game which required you to commit time and rank up so that you could access more cars, better venues, and build an actual reputation online, and in primetime. If such a racing game appealed outside of gaming to people who might just want to watch ranked races (or matches) for sport.
(also if anyone here wants to help me work on a video game based novel (and universe) along these lines, any help (new ideas) would be welcome)