Is this now dead? One of the things that sold the game to me was that if you damage a machine, weeks or months later it is still trundling about trailing sparks. But now the total machine respawn every time you log in has apparently wiped out that stunning idea! Is this right?
I got killed miles from a safe house with no adrenaline and three or four rounds from killing off a Harvester, but i thought, “Okay, it’ll still be there when I come back.” When I got back, there was the morning sun, glinting off all the new paintwork! What a dreadful shame - that was one of the foundational ideas of the game, which I loved and was one of the reasons I bought it.
This leads me on to something connected. When all the missions are done, the game promised the idea of a guerrilla war against the Machines. Is that now dead, too? What I was looking forward to, was finishing the missions, and then starting to fight back to reclaim the mother/fatherland from the deadly intruders - months of joy!
But is it going to be automatic across-the-board respawn of all machines forever, in which case, one will eventually get bored, because you can’t win. It’ll turn into a shoot’em up. What if, when you finish the missions, the game automatically resets into “War Mode” and you can gradually clear the whole world? Harvesters build machines, and are well-protected, but finally kill one and it can’t make more and so on. Victories. Progress. When the land is free for repopulation, you can start another game and pretend it’s a new attack…
This is indeed one of the founding principles that lured me to this game. The permanent damage and machines that stay damaged.
Now what i would like to see is a way of looking at a part of a map and see (similar to gang areas in other sandbox games) number of machines perhaps an estimation not very accurate but still some number. And you could clear an area of machines, but maybe they could (like gangs) take back the territory over time. Like in some games they do. Maybe this could add some replayability to the game? Robot gang mentality.
First of all, damaged enemies will remain so until you kill them. That hasn’t changed. But logging out and/or switching characters will reset the session. And yes, enemies will respawn. You’ve brought up this being an issue before, but I’m not sure I agree.
It’s not the kind of game where you clear the map of enemies, partly because of gameplay and balance situations but also for the sake of multiplayer. You’re meant to be able to hop into the game at any time and have a good time shooting robots with your friends.
The game is still in it’s early phases, and you’re meant to feel like you’re in the middle of a conflict that’s too big for you to take on alone.
You playing my tune. This I have said. I wish they would spread out from a centre over time - convoys to ambush, patrols to encounter, centres of production to find (no clues as to where - no markers - work it out!) but damage whould stay damaged. Apart from anything else, playing solo, what joy to creep up on what you think is a new machine, only to find it trailing fuel and sparks. Ah! We’ve met before!
Yes, but they promised months of damage. It’s in the launch trailer video. Unless I’ve a dedicated machine, I can’t keep it on for months! I have a job and a life, and while I upgraded my computer exactly to play this game, I have to reboot sometimes!
Indeed this would make nice personalized memories of the battles. It would make sense to have convoys and some sort of bases where they could over time repair/ re arm. Because they are primitive machines how do they keep appearing and where do they get maintained etc.
They ambushed human convoys they must have convoys too unless they are aliens that are disquised as primitive robots.
That could probably work if you ran a server, but I’ve never actually tried But I do recall retreating from a fight then coming back later and finishing the job in longer sessions, so I suppose it does work.
Okay, I don;t know whether all the commentors do, but I’ve had a think about this, just wandering about the house. There is no reason at all not to have different modes. If the lads want to run about randomly shooting machines, then they can. But for me that’s Doom and I played that as early as I played this - that is, three days after launch. Having played it through, I never really went back. But some people do.
But there is also no reason not to have a “Campaign Mode”, where the campaign is exactly where you left it, when you come back - damage to machines and all. The work has already been done - the new work is about making it more Doom-like. Because in the long run the game needs to apply to the shooters and also to the more thoughtful guys like me. The SAVE function is already perfectly capable of saving everything in place and recreating it when you log on. That way, you could have two games running - the respawn with your mates, and the sneaky beaky on single player, or just with a different set of mates.
The point is, the DEVS had a concept which was so good, I bought the first game since Half-Life 2. They don’t really WANT to move away, do they? I don’t want them to. But as I’ve said above, half the launch trailer no longer applies. But you want both sets of players - me and my like, and also the runarounds.
I go to every single building and feature on the map. Behind me there is no mark on the map, and very few shorelines I haven’t searched. But not everyone does - some people have finished the game in a hundred hours. I played BOB back in the day. You joined at the start of the Battle and played the missions through to the end, or you took control of the whole battle in a campaign mode.
Would you at least ask them? The game is so fantastically good it has the capacity to appeal to both sets of players - I’m not the only one, I know.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers
Robin/Bootie (if you didn’t know Bootie is what Marines are called).
Give me an email address (privately if necessary) and I’ll make a proper memo, taking the time over the arguments and options. I spend several years as a soldier at exactly this time, and twenty-five years in Marketing, so I tend to know what I’m talking about. And I can make a case! And in this case, I know that the work has already been done!
But I do recall retreating from a fight then coming back later and finishing the job in longer sessions, so I suppose it does work.