Game Development Giant

What are the characteristics of old-school FPS games?

Basically it can be called the kind of confrontational FPS game before the emergence of Counter-Strike. It has a terrifying confrontation speed, frequent rhythm changes, high-intensity displacement, and a completely not down to earth fighting style. And uncompromising ease of access - and this completely uncompromising ease of access is not intentional.

Rather, it is a situation that will naturally arise after meeting the prerequisites of terrifying confrontation speed, frequent rhythm changes, high-intensity displacement, and a completely unsteady fighting style.

Just imagine, a person who is already familiar with these characteristics of this type of game, and a novice who has just come into contact with such a game, when faced with such a game, when faced with such a veteran's confrontation, it is no more than a piece of minced meat. The difference is nothing more than the difference between being beaten to death horizontally or vertically, and it will take a lot of time to learn these things skillfully.

This is naturally possible when there are no other competitors.

But after enough competitors appear, then this is no longer possible, because your opponents will have more things to attract new players, and these new players will not continue to stick to your This is a game that does not lower its barriers to them and is aloof. It is inevitable to abandon you. After all, the core or gameplay of FPS games is to kill, not to be killed.

No one can feel the slightest pleasure from hundreds of hours of being killed by others and boring practice.

There is nothing like CS. Anyone who has no experience in this type of game can easily get started. There is no weird fighting method, normal fighting rhythm - you will not be blasted into the air by a rocket launcher. Then you were blasted into pieces with rockets in the air. You didn't even have a chance to touch the ground during the entire battle, and you wouldn't be shot to death from a distance of 600 yards. You really can't understand it. Why can't I see why I was beaten to death by my opponent even when I opened the camera?

Team Fortress 2 is undoubtedly an excellent game, and it has all the advantages that an old-school FPS should have.

Terrifying confrontation speed, frequent rhythm changes, and high-intensity displacement. As well as the completely non-down-to-earth fighting style and professional settings, it infinitely increases the gameplay of the game.

It can be said that this game is a tribute to Quake when it first came out. It is indeed very popular. Many Thor veterans are in tears about this game. Since shooting games like CS have dominated the market, it seems like Thor in the creation stage of FPS. FPS games like Hammer have disappeared.

Therefore, this very emotional FPS attracted a large number of players as soon as it came out.

However, while satisfying all the old-school FPS games, it also perfectly inherits the biggest shortcoming of this type of game - the uncompromising difficulty of getting started for novice players. A novice player still needs to be beaten by an experienced player. After how many times, you can gradually become familiar with how to play this game, and then you can become a player who can appreciate the fun of this game.

But this period of time is really too long.

In addition, Valve is very tolerant of plug-in users. The life of this game is consumed rapidly. Although when Jester traveled through time, there were tens of thousands of people online at the same time on the STEAMB platform. It was still among the best on the STEAM platform, but that was all.

This is a clarion call for the counterattack of old-school shooting games. Although it has not achieved any decisive results, this game still reflects one thing, that is, players who like this kind of old-school shooting games. There are still many people out there. After playing down-to-earth combat FPS games like CS for more than ten years, players suddenly want to play the FPS games they once had.

Add to this the cancellation of Blizzard's Titan project. A group of salty developers felt that they could not let our hard work over the years be scrapped like this, so they made a plan on how to use the scraps of Titan to develop a new game - probably Project Titan Combat system or modifications to the arena system, otherwise it would be inexplicable why the game is so complete even after it has been announced.

This plan was first handed over to Chris Mason.

The second-in-command of the Sons of the Storm, who is also the vice president and creative director of Blizzard - the creator of the WOW world architecture, originally developed the origin of WOW as a Mason-style fantasy.

According to Blizzard's WOW ten-year review video. At that time, it was Mason who drew the first map of the Eastern Kingdom on the wall, and then loudly said to everyone, we must make it! This is how the WOW project began.

It was the same this time. Mason was deeply moved by the game's plan. He even threatened Mike Mowaimi and other Blizzard decision-makers in Blizzard's high-level meeting. This was what he did in 2014. Mason said it himself during an interview at the Carnival - 'I put the project in front of them at that time, and then told them in a very serious tone that if they didn't make this game, then I would resign. ’.

Therefore, the project of Overwatch, Titan's scrap material, was established.

When this game was announced, it was actually the 2014 Carnival. Before the carnival started, there were a lot of revelations about this game, but no one knew what kind of game it was. But From the unintentionally disclosed information on LinkedIn and Blizzard’s recruitment advertisements, it can be inferred that Blizzard is indeed developing a game.

Moreover, in the 2014 carnival, there was an empty period of more than an hour between the opening ceremony and the second main stage. This was impossible in previous carnivals.

Because there are so many things that Blizzard wants to say, but they feel that there is not enough time, how could they rashly spare so much time.

So many people are speculating that a new game will definitely be announced at this time.

Sure enough, Overwatch came out under such circumstances. The first thing that appeared was a cartoon CG in the style of Disney and Pixar. Many people felt that they were dazzled, although Blizzard was jokingly called the No. 1 CG in the industry. Big manufacturers, but their CG style has never been like this when I see the game. Many people find it dismissive.

Isn't this just a Team Fortress 2 with better graphics? What's so great about it?

Blizzard knows about plagiarism.

In subsequent interviews with the development team, members of the development team also made no bones about it and said that this game indeed borrowed many things from Team Fortress 2 and Quake. Or to put it another way, there are a large number of die-hard FPS fans in the development team, including former professional players of “Team Fortress 2” and “Quake 3”. As well as the developers of the original Team Fortress 2.

Jester only had a glimpse of the game at that time. In fact, he couldn’t get an overview of the game through a short battle demonstration video.

For Jester at the time, it was similar to what many people thought. This was probably a Team Fortress 2 with better graphics.

However, Jester also had some doubts at the time, that is, developing such niche games has never been Blizzard's style. One of the characteristics of Blizzard's games is that they are easy to get started and difficult to master - Team Fortress 2 is indeed It is difficult to master, however. But it is extremely difficult to get started.

Regarding the novice experience, Team Fortress 2 can be said to be a negative review.

This is not in line with Blizzard's usual style and nature.

But as the year went by, Jester, as a blind man, naturally continued to pay attention to this game, and discovered more and more that this game is not simple. In fact, the most intuitive thing is that the development team is The composition of TEAM4 is a group of avid FPS gamers, and they are mainly old-school FPS gamers.

Jester is worried about how they will solve the biggest problem of old-school FPS, which is how to avoid the uncompromising difficulty of getting started while meeting all the advantages of old-school FPS.

Until the closed beta of Overwatch opens. After watching live broadcasts in China or on Mouse Channel, Jester finally understood the design ideas of these designers. They did not weaken the ability for experts to play old-school FPS games to perform operations that newcomers dare not even think of. even. They do this by adding things like flying, walking through walls, perspective, instants, infinite acceleration, and auto-aim. Skills such as instantaneous seconds have infinitely raised the upper limit of how experts can play this game.

Even in the hands of a professional player in Team Fortress 2 that Jester watched, a support hero named Lucio in Overwatch was used to resemble a Persian monkey, taking advantage of this hero's passivity. The skill allows short-term lateral movement, and can actually use various buildings to climb up and down, and reach many incredible places.

It really makes people feel like how could they be so awesome.

Moreover, in addition to the high-level players who can perform such superb operations and show off, the domestic novice anchors can also play back and forth with other novices, using various IMBA skills, even if they have never Players with FPS experience can also have a great time.

It gave Jester the same feeling as when he first played DOTA - if it weren't for the ultimate move that could kill people, he might have given up on the game as soon as he got into it.

This idea came to him when he was watching the live broadcast of Overwatch. Even if he is not very good at playing, it can still be fun to use the ultimate move. It is quite fun to play this game where you can feel it. It seems that as long as you continue to play, judging from the domestic novice anchors that Jester himself watches, their strength will soon improve to the point where they can feel the fun of this game.

Of course, Jester also denounces this game on many forums, and there are many people saying that Battlefield 4 and Titanfall have destroyed this game many times - which game is more outstanding? Sturt doesn’t want to comment too much, because both games are very good. The problem is that they simply didn’t realize that “Overwatch” is a completely different game from the games they mentioned.

There is no need to continue this long story.

Jester didn't have the ability to get a test account for Overwatch, but a friend of his had a good relationship with the moderator of a certain website and was a die-hard fan of FPS games since Thor 3. He was lucky enough to get a test account. I played with the European server.

The feeling is very simple and direct. Even with 200 PING, the game still feels smooth, and I can play back and forth with my opponents. All this shows that the optimization of this game is amazingly good, and the configuration required is small. It's considered high, and the image quality is of course excellent. After all, Blizzard's art team is one of the best in the industry.

The experience of getting started is amazing, as if I have found the feeling of playing Thor 3 again.

Finally, his evaluation of this game is simple and clear. This is a game developed by a group of fanatical FPS gamers for people who like FPS games. It has all the advantages of FPS games - it has a very high The upper limit of operation is also very important for an FPS game, but it is also extremely friendly to novices.

And Overwatch is indeed a game developed by a group of FPS enthusiasts. After the closed beta began, this group of developers who had been working hard on the game for a year searched in circles for those well-known FPS games on the Mouse Platform. The anchors invited some professional players from TF2 and Thor 3 to fight, but they were all defeated by a team composed of Overwatch developers.

Of course, Blizzard does not admit that they are abusive, they just say that they are testing the game.

Jester recalled what happened with Overwatch. Although he didn't know the results of this game after its official launch, judging from the feedback from the test, it seems that this game will definitely revitalize the old-school FPS. Game, because it has all the characteristics for a game to be successful, depth, ease of use, the culture of European and American FPS games, and the aura of Blizzard.

Thinking of this, he turned on the computer again.

He re-posted a post in the Mars Entertainment player community. This is a main post. The name of the post is the thing he just thought of.

Old-school FPS will definitely make a comeback. (~^~)