Many of us have been working crazy hours getting a special rev of our BETA build ready and this weekend we and our test team in
San Diego, all got together for some crazy 32-player action. I took these photos during our session on Saturday.
We had some bugs that we were working on and some of them were pretty random, or only ever showed up when we had about 30 players in the game. As you can imaging these are kind of tricky to repro since step #1 is get a 32 player game running...and if any of you were wondering, step #2 is *not* "put your junk in that box".
I find it very interesting, and a good sign, when we ask the team to come in on the weekend to work, and to help us test, and they end up not really testing, but having fun. Kind of weird to think that a game session "degrades" into people forgetting about the work that they need to do, and just end up having a great time. Its really good to see especially how tough our dev-cycle has been.
It was also good to get some fresh eyes on the game. I've mentioned before in my interviews with the press our notion of "hate-sessions". The times after a game session when I actively seek out all of the stuff that people thought sucked about what we just played.
Saturday we had 6 people play the game for the first time and it was really beneficial to get their opinions. Of course I have to review all of their feedback through the lens of "first-time players playing against our best testers here at Incognito and at San Diego". Nevertheless, it was good to hear newbie opinions about pickup placement, tactics, what they got confused on, etc.
Some of their feedback dealt with a recent gameplay issue that has come up and that is the total domination of Tanks in the game. We are seeing groups of players form convoys of 3 tanks as they move from base to base. Granted, if a group of players are coordinated enough to do this, then good for them and they should be rewarded. But as it stands right now, that 3 tank config is almost unstoppable. Over the next couple of days we are going to be looking at ways for players to combat domination of the "tank roll-out" as we have started calling it.
Interesting to note the "tank roll-out" got wicked powerful when we made a slight adjustment to the tank turret rotation speed. We may need to set it back down to it's original speed. It's a great example of how just one little change can have a huge impact on the overall combat economy and game balance.
On a somewhat unrelated note, here's an updated picture of our resident super-pilot Greg -- callsign "Gergination". Look at the top of his sash and notice that he is officially an Airman 1st-class. He still wears it proudly around the office :-)
His domination and skill has further enraged our test team in San Diego as they have started a Warhawk Clan named [Gerg]. Their clan goal is simple; to whoop on Gerg as much as possible. Since I get a great amount of pleasure any time I can shoot him out of the sky (which is rare), I decided to disband my own clan [BFF] (The Best Friends Forever) and join [Gerg].
It's a fun game, it doesn't take itself too seriously and it's a really great type of game for the Wii technologically speaking. It's not dazzling me with normal maps on his overalls. It's not the subsurface scattering shader applied to his huge head -- hell he's only 2D and not even dynamically lit....Albedo is all this little plumber needs.
