So the Section 8 beta has now opened up to everyone, here. We’re aiming to get a big RPS posse online over Saturday, and we’ll set things up in this forum thread. I’ve noticed some surprise from people about how good Section 8 is, so if you’re sceptical, now is your time to take a look and decide. I think it’s pretty damned good, and I’m looking forward to playing some games with RPS folks over the weekend. (Alternative download for file.) And, well, expect problems: it’s a beta. Other instructions on the official forum here.
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Well, all this account nonsense has killed my enthusiasm pretty damn hard.
I still can’t get a beta key from film planet as each it just comes up with invalid code, I’ve tried disabling my firewall and anti virus but nothing works.
I had to use Internet Explorer to get the code visible on Fileplanet. On Firefox it just kept saying invalid code no matter what I tried.
The game itself was surprisingly good. It’s heavily consolized but it still has it’s own flavour added to the general mix unlike some other console multiplayer fps games. It’s no Tribes but depending on what the full version brings to the table, I might seriously consider buying this title. Just needs more depth and more of everything.
Or maybe I’m liking it because fps games have have been quite absent lately…
It doesn’t care about my gamespy account. Maybe because I’ve had to create 5 different names for 5 different games. But choosing the best one should select that one… C’mon gamespy, just sell out to steam, then the problems are solved.
Here’s a wall of text I posted on another site. Remember – it’s only my opinion, not a given – if you enjoy the game, then all the better for you:
OK, it’s time for some in-depth Lim-Dul whining after more gameplay time. Well, not really whining, actually simply providing criticism because I won’t be buying the game and hence don’t whine, which would imply playing despite criticizing it. :-P
1. The description of the gameplay/setting/ for those not in the know:
The game is set in some kind of generic futuristic war I couldn’t care less about. Queue the ever so popular (recently) neon lights on battle suits, shields, mechs, yada, yada.
The gameplay is the usual Battlefield (et al) control point stuff with even the map previews looking laughably like BF2. Instead of tickets DECREASING, you play until one team reaches 1000 points but otherwise everything is as seen before apart from additional ways of getting points known as DCMs (Dynamic Combat Missions – more on this later). Capturing control points is called “hacking” (because it’s SO cool and original) and actually requires you to press a key instead of just standing around – you’re also vulnerable while attempting it.
There are six predefined classes BUT everything is customizable – you can choose your own loadout with primary and secondary weapons, additional devices (like repair tools, sensor jamming devices, grenades – you get the idea) and special abilities that boost your stats e.g. attack strength, shield strength blah, blah. The downside of this is that everybody uses the same character model and you have no clue for what targets you should go for since guessing their loadout is impossible – even if there will be more models in the game they certainly won’t be tied to the equipment, since you can change literally everything. In addition to that the effects of all these abilities have to be naturally smaller than in games with well-designed and well-balanced classes so that players don’t create “killer combos” and hence no matter the pseudo-class, everything plays and feels very same-y. It’s probably the first game that springs to my mind where even playing a sniper doesn’t feel much different from playing an assault-type character.
Your health is a combination of two things: automatically recharging shields and armor that can only be repaired by supply crates, uhm, sorry, supply stations and medics, uhm, sorry, green repair-beam guys (you can use the beam on yourself BTW). While this is a total rip-off of Halo 1 mechanics I actually have nothing against it – I find a dual system better than completely recharging health. Certain weapons also pierce your shields at close range.
A quite nice feature is the overdrive – a very fast sprint used to quickly cover large distances, triggered by holding the sprint button for a certain amount of time (by default it activates automatically). You also get a jetpack (*cough* Tribes *cough*) that allows you to fly short distances but in practice works more like a super jump.
When you die you can choose to spawn in absolutely-not-battlefield-style at your absolutely-not-battlefield-like squad or any other location using the absolutely-not-battlefield-like map. The twist here is that the respawn time is very short BUT the spawning process itself is actually dynamic since you’re being thrown out a dropship Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within style. This is pretty nice since it allows you to do something when spawning and provides some tactical decisions: you can spawn close to enemies but they will usually by protected by deployable AA guns which will damage you before landing, you can hit the air-brakes at a certain point to steer your flight and land comparatively gently OR you can not hit the air brakes at all which won’t damage you and deliver you to the ground faster but you won’t be able to land as precisely and suffer from landing-stun for a while (doing the crouching-fist-ground-trembles-and-cracks-landing kind of move seen in different contexts in hundreds of animes, sci-fi movies, games etc. ;-). This, of course, is nothing like parachuting in e.g. Medal of Honor: Airborne. While the idea is good it has its own share of problems I’ll discuss later.
Each player, apart from contributing to the overall success of the team, also gets requisition points that allow him to purchase additional equipment that is dropped after a while at his location – sentries, nay, AUTOMATED TURRETS (he, he), mechs etc.
Apart from the main objectives the aforementioned DCMs will trigger – they’re kind of “side-quests”. A VIP (LOL! They didn’t even go for an original name), convoy, intelligence (a.k.a. flag, symbolised by a briefcase – again, the originality) will appear somewhere on the map and will have to be delivered/escorted somewhere else. Upon successful completion (or failure) either team plus the individual players will get points speeding up victory or allowing the purchase of equipment as outlined above.
Ah! You’re also able to lock onto other people for a short amount of time while aiming (the length and/or ability to do so depends on various factors like chosen perks, distance, yada, yada) and surprisingly the auto-aim actually DOES correctly track your target.
2. Problems:
Yes, I know it’s a beta, so bugs don’t count. I also only mention issues that are either non-fixable that late in the development cycle or simply won’t be fixed because of the developers’ apparent intentions.
Absolutely everything in the game deals horribly low damage except for the mech’s punch (yes, it’s better to punch people than shoot them with the minigun ;-) and knife. This, coupled with the fact that most of the time everything is immediately visible on the map (except when you use this radar jammer (short duration), not a single enemy sees you etc. – these are all rare cases), means that there are virtually no ambushes and all encounters end being many-second long retarded out-strafing duels. It’s not a question of simply tweaking some weapon damage – it’s the intended Halo-like console-ish (the game is coming to the XBox360 after all) flow of the game, which perhaps some people like. It works on consoles, since the limited turning and aiming precision would break the game for unskilled people if they were being quickly killed by ambushing experienced players – this allows the player to react but is completely misplaced on the PC and reminds me of Battlefield Heroes combat.
Another problem of this gameplay type is reinforced by the “drop/spawn anywhere” mechanics – even if the enemy team sets up AA guns there will be a constant stream of players popping up all over the place in vital locations (if both teams know what they’re doing) resulting in dragged out clusterfucks. Yes, the more skilled team will win these by getting more points BUT this will come over as an artificial reward, rather than the usual satisfaction of having cleared out an area of enemies.
When you consider that there are things like the overdrive and jetpacks you truly can’t ever predict where the enemy will strike so the matches will result in endless back-and-forths when capture points are won and lost all the time since the maps are large and open like in the BF series, not closed with carefully designed choke-points like in e.g. TF2. While this might sound as if the rounds were very dynamic and exciting, it really isn’t – you have to try it out yourself.
But hey, does that mean that I simply don’t like the BF gameplay style? No, no! I played BF2 quite a lot back in the day. This gameplay style simply worked for it since it was very carefully designed. You knew where people MIGHT be spawning, knew where the assaults initially started and even if people could e.g. jump out of planes these had respawn timers and meant wasted team resources (yeah, you parachuted somewhere but a useful vehicle was lost in the process). Here the designers simply looked at the dropship concept and thought “*dur dur* that’s so cool”. Yeah, visually and from a single player’s perspective it really is – you do EXACTLY the stuff that’s shown in the cutscenes – but as a gameplay mechanic it fails.
Another very console-ish feature is the lock-on, which breaks the flow of aiming in quite annoying ways if you’re used to PC shooters. Yes, you could ignore it and simply aim well but then again it provides you with cheap auto-hits regardless of whether the enemy is using the jetpack or overdrive (making them a bit pointless as evasive devices), so mastering the transition between the two aiming modes potentially increases your efficiency. However, why introduce ANOTHER thing that needs to be mastered in a game that’s already overloaded with half-assed features and concepts? Shooting other people in games is, or rather SHOULD be a simple idea: the better you aim, the more effective you are. Here, you have another factor that influences your efficiency and this doesn’t make the game more difficult, just unnecessarily complicated since accurate shooting is already a field that offers unlimited potential for distinguishing more skilled and less skilled players. It’s so ironic that this is EXACTLY the kind of problem and bad game design I saw some days ago in a feature on ScrewAttack.com – I didn’t think I’d stumble upon a game like this so quickly, what a coincidence. ;-)
http://screwattack.com/TGO/Ep26
So yeah, there you have it. I dropped quite a few names in this post and some might argue that you could apply the “unoriginality” argument to virtually every FPS but each part of the gameplay mechanics is SO derivative of the games I mentioned, actually of many, many more I haven’t mentioned too, that it sticks out. The titles Section 8 apparently “drew inspiration from” had a main idea or concept that they tried to get right to the best of their designers’ ability and then built a whole game around it. Section 8 takes clues from everybody and hence gets NONE of them right since you’ve seen all of them done better elsewhere. Remember, “universal means good for nothing”.
I don’t even know what this game might be advertised as – what is its main selling point, so that people don’t skip over it with a “seen-it-dun-it” kind of attitude?
Ah – have I mentioned the graphics that, despite using the Unreal 3 Engine, look very, very dull with the usual barren brownish-grey landscapes populated by the glowy-power-armor soldiers I already described? The same artistic effect might have been achieved literally 10 years ago with absolutely no difference when it comes to the overall feel of the environment.
So there you have it. I will be playing the game some more as long as it’s free but it’s absolutely not a contender for a purchase. And no, I’m not “too quick to judge” since no amount of content introduced in the final version or the tweaks stemming from beta feedback will change the core of the gameplay which is chaotic, yet boring, derivative and simply not fun since you will be constantly reminding yourself that you could pick up/return to basically any other multiplayer shooter for a similar, nay, better experience.
P.S. Wall of text hits everybody for 10000000000 damage. :-D
I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played so far. I’d like to see how the full range of deployables effects the gameplay. Mainly the deployable AAA. On the mars like map I was able to setup sentry/heal station combos around the cover where the enemy liked to land just out of the bases AAA range. Closed down that area quite well.
The shotgun seems a bit of a waste compared to the machinegun. I’d keep sneaking up to people with the jammer, locking onto them and taking them down in a couple of seconds (with the jammer on they can’t lock onto me either). Maxed out armour and repair and it seems like a good setup.
I thought the sniper rifle seemed a bit naff too compared the the assualt rifle, but it might do better if you max out on damage mods. It really seemed to tear up people with a lot of armour but low shields.
The dynamic mission thing is pretty cool. Graphics are solid, weapons at least sound meaty which is nice. I didn’t notice much in the way of bugs personally, anyone seen any?
Only bugs I’ve noticed so far were the progress bars for capture’s, and the charge bar for your jetpack not moving at all, and once managing to drop myself into the ruins of a ship on the utah map and not get back out again.
Lim-Dul: Some good criticisms in there, but some poor ones too.
“this allows the player to react but is completely misplaced on the PC and reminds me of Battlefield Heroes combat”
Because all PC games have to be precise, twitchy, high-damage games? No, they really don’t, there’s plenty of room for games to be different. You’re slamming it for being generic, and yet arguing it’s not enough like other PC shooters?
“Yes, the more skilled team will win these by getting more points BUT this will come over as an artificial reward, rather than the usual satisfaction of having cleared out an area of enemies.”
So have people protect areas of the map like you would in any TDM game? I’m not sure why the rewards are “artificial”. The whole point of the game is rapid re-deployment. The team that can move its defence rapidly and solidly is the one that wins.
“Because all PC games have to be precise, twitchy, high-damage games? No, they really don’t, there’s plenty of room for games to be different. You’re slamming it for being generic, and yet arguing it’s not enough like other PC shooters?”
No – I gave the answer to this retort in the same paragraph. The lock-on doesn’t add anything to the gameplay. It doesn’t make it easier/harder/more involved, it makes it more complicated for no apparent reason. If, let’s say, a game had night-vision goggles in red, blue and yellow instead of the usual green with 3 different buttons to activate them, would I praise this title for “not being like other games who only have green night vision goggles”?
“So have people protect areas of the map like you would in any TDM game? I’m not sure why the rewards are “artificial”. The whole point of the game is rapid re-deployment. The team that can move its defence rapidly and solidly is the one that wins.”
The rewards are artificial because the only indication that you’re winning any given fight is the blue/red bar at the top of the screen. You kill 10 enemies in a row, so what? New ones are coming in wave after wave as if it was Serious Sam – you can’t even push them back since they can spawn right behind you. It’s arbitrary.
In another game a feat like that would be rewarded with the line of battle shifting dramatically – here it just goes on and on and on without discernible results, especially since there isn’t a clear front-line, and at a certain point it just stops abruptly with a big “You’re Winner!” (pun intended) sign. You can’t really score a decisive victory gameplay-wise (as in: wiping the other team out or leading your team to victory very quickly etc.).
Yes – virtually all shooters keep score in some form but usually besides deathmatch Quake-style game where frags mean everything you actually feel as if you’re accomplishing something relevant in addition to that. Not so in Section 8. You don’t lead your team to a glorious victory in an epic battle, you make a blue/red bar grow longer and that’s it.
The rapid redeployment part has, like I wanted to point out, but perhaps failed to explain fully, almost no tactical component. You capture a point, run to the next, 10 seconds later the point you just captured get’s re-captured, especially since “hacking” is an automatic process once it starts, the end result being both teams chasing each other like in the Benny Hill Show – even with good coordination.
With the drop-in system the team who is winning is grounded and limited to the overdrive while the losing team can spawn anywhere it wants after dying and has several control points to choose from – chaos ensues without anybody ever feeling “in control” of the match and the winners having paradoxically less mobility than the losers.
I think the lock on might good for helping the poorer shots get some good kills in. It reminds me a little of the heavy from TF2, where knowing tactically when to setup your gun is more important than your twitch skills. The lock-on doesn’t feel especially overpowering, and you can spend a lot of customisation points on it to increase the recharge and duration.
Maybe it’s because people are still learning the ropes but I found on several games one team really dominated the other team, holding all 4 bases for a long time. Numbers on both teams were even, so it was player skill that was making the difference.
I don’t know how the tank handles (not enabled in the beta) but interestingly if you complete the convoy mission you get to keep the convoy truck and it’s quite a beast.
It seems that this game is specifically designed NOT to cater to the Tribes crowd.
This is good, as that game had a learning curve like a brick wall, and most players were twitchier than hummingbirds on amphatemines, able to perfectly hit you from a half-mile away while arcing through teh air at half the speed of sound.
Pretty much every gripe Lim-Dul has there, I consider a plus point. I like being able to play a game where fights last more than a second, and I definitely think the lock-on is a nice concept. It’s pretty much an anti-jumpjet reaction, rather than something to be used for general combat. If someone is shooting past you at high speed, lock on and strafe them.
It’s fun and accessible, but there’s obvious room for a player to improve and learn. Still, the focus seems very much on team operations. A squad working closely together can do exponentially more damage than if the soldiers were working individually, and due to the low overall damage rates, there’s none of that perpetual FPS problem of you losing a teammate to the first bullet fired.
And… seriously, are you complaining that they call the VIP a VIP? It’s standard teminology.
Wow, came to say that after a night on mumble (like vent) the game now seems much more fun, there is loads of potential there. And if it had a bigger ad budget it would be flying of shelves upon release.,
Seriously though its not a demo though so why are the tanks AA turrets ect nbot there, remote mines are missing as well why do devs so this? it will cost them and make me wary of the retail game. also why have aim assist on the PC?????
@lim-dum
While the game is in no way perfect have to dissagre with the on graphics, I thought they were quite nice and run well on almost all rigs which is very important. Also all weapons do decent damage, the lack of 1 hit kills is there to encourage team play, focus fire is a beast and 1 v 2 rightly ends up in a lose for the lone player if the players are of anyhwhere equal skills.
Secondly they do keep score, but not in Kills to death alone, I assume this is done to encourage things other than pure DM play. meaning that 10 kills may mean nothing, while completing 1 convoy mission or holding a point is the aim.
Lastly the points are the fronts, and if you set up the AA ect can be held for a good period of time and focus the action. you cannot however expect free roaming spawn camp free vehicle and based turret deploying maps to employ choke points.
My understand re “ten kills not counting” is that well, no, because kills aren’t the objective: the team win is the objective.
I agree on the difficulty of tactical awareness and definite “front” thanks to the drop-in spawn, but that simply makes it more essential that squads work to secure bases and hold them until they need to react to a hack.
With sixteen aside you can have 4 fire teams doing just that.
@Lim-Dul:
Just had a quick response for your concerns with two aspects of Section-8 gameplay: that of the lock-on mechanic and of the seemingly long time that it takes to kill somebody. Two particular griefs that you had with the game tend to tie together – the auto-targeting system and the overall slow pace of combat. I’ve found there to be something of an elegant trick to using the auto-target – it isn’t about a momentary boost of efficiency, and nor is it an arbitrary crutch relied upon by the weak: it’s a fundamental kill mechanic with enormous flexibility.
You’re absolutely right – killing somebody does take a long time. I’d guess in the neighborhood of 15-20 seconds from 150+ meters out with an assault rifle, assuming the target had average armor and shielding. The key is /when/ the lock-on is used – if you hold off from using it until you’ve broken through a good potion of the target’s shield and then engage it, you’re pretty much guaranteed a kill if you’re solid on ammunition and they don’t leave line of sight.
What I find to be the most compelling aspect of the lock-on system, however, is that the method mentioned above is only the way that I use it. The system is flexible enough that it permits individual players to use it at times that suit their playstyle and equipment loadout. The sniper may choose to wait until he sees a target that’s had its shield drained by an ally and closes in for the killing stroke – but the armored badass soldier that carries a machine gun at close range could open with it, knowing that his target – if within about 50 meters – is as good as dead, no matter if it was fully shielded or not.
You’re also correct in saying that you don’t actually need to use the lock-on, and a player likely doesn’t even need to use it to do well in Section-8 – but it provides what is often that critical edge in an intense firefight, and being the player with a better understanding of the timing of lock-on can prove the deciding factor.
A strategy that my room mate and I have perfected over the years – honed specifically in World of Warcraft battlegrounds, where I played a priest and he a mage – is that of the strategy that has been fondly termed as Running Like a Bitch. The strategy is pretty straightforward: understand yourself, your team/partner, and the enemy situation well enough so that you can determine when you need to Run Like a Bitch in order to survive. Sometimes, the greatest victory comes after the most humiliating flight – and hey, you won in the end, so that’s all that matters, right? But Running Like a Bitch is pretty hard in Sector-8; the lock-on amplifies the difficulty curve of a successful flight many-fold. If your opponent saved his lock-on for the moment when you decided to flee, you will die unless you can find and duck behind cover immediately. Sure, you can evade him using the sprint boost thing (which I use constantly, mostly because it makes me feel superhuman more than most anything), but if you’re in an open field while it’s charging, it isn’t going to save you – but the lock-on will kill you. It’s good stuff – anything that makes me modify what I’ve found to be a conventional strategy is brain-fodder for me.
Also, to touch briefly on the dropship respawn mechanic: I hugely dig the animations and overall feel of it, particularly the red/blue/green color shift when you hit the air brakes just before impact. Although I kind of agree that it makes it difficult to predict where an enemy will land, it keeps the battle raging in a 360* arc at all times. I’m not actually sure that it grants a bonus to the loser in a conflict, either; they might get to choose exactly where to land, but they have to do so exposed and open to suppressive fire as soon as they land. If you run via the spring thing, it’s much easier to take a specific point of cover and hold it. Finally, it also forces teams to split their forces into groups that can control at least three of the capture points at any given time, so it always becomes a matter of determining which damn point the enemy squads will move towards next – so you know where to defend. I haven’t really pieced out together how yet, but as with most games, seemingly meaningless events initially chaotic often have an underlying ruleset or purpose.
Really enjoying the beta so far, apart from my sound not working for some reason(a few others on the S8 forums reporting the same, no fix yet).
I do think it would be cool if the passive upgrades had some sort of effect on your looks; extra armor plates shown as bulkier armor, shield capacity by some shield gubbinz or whatnot, stealth matrix but some jamming antennae dealies etc.
You get the point, wouldn’t be that hard to do from a technical standpoint, and would give you an idea of how someone was loaded out apart from the length of their shield/health bar.