Mavericks: Proving Grounds is an FPS MMO with a 400 player battle royale mode
Does impressive tech make an impressive game?
Imagine we're trapped in a lift. If I started to pitch "400 player Playerunkown's Battlegrounds" to you, would you scream and start clawing ineffectually at the doors - or gesture for me to continue, with a weary yet intrigued expression on your face? FPS MMO Mavericks: Proving Ground was revealed last Saturday, and it promises just that - with some fancy features powered by Improbable's SpatialOS tech.
I'm intrigued by how the tech supports persistent environmental details: its what allows devs Automaton to implement trails of footprints and disturbed foliage that you can use to hunt other players. The 400 player battle royale mode will be out later this year, while the 1,000 player MMO is due for 2019. I've popped a rather stunning looking teaser-trailer below.
Colour me cautiously optimistic. That peek at Maverick's 12km playing field looks gorgeous, and tracking players using their footprints is something me and my friends have fantasised about doing in Plunkbat.
Still, let's not get too excited. This interview with Automaton's James Thompson is big on buzzwords, but light on specific details. They want to encourage people to take risks, and are going to give people objectives to avoid each match feeling "dead in the middle" - though they aren't saying anything about what those objectives will be just yet. He also talks about "seigable buildings", which will be destructible thanks to Spatial OS's tech.
"Their technology is all about structuring your game servers in a completely different way", says Thompson, so that it doesn't matter how many people are in the same location and firefights can be higher fidelity - supposedly without causing any latency problems. That tech also supports "dynamic water", as well as "dynamic wildfires" - those fires sound exciting, though I can also see it being a bit rubbish to end up unavoidably being burned to a crisp half an hour into a match.
The battle royale mode for Mavericks: Proving Grounds will be out later this year, with the MMO to follow at some point in 2019.