- Joined
- Jan 2, 2008
- Messages
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- Age
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From FPSADMIN.com ----
First I like to get the disclaimers out of the way. You can skip the next two paragraphs if you like but I feel it’s important to let everyone know that I along with every site in attendance, got a free trip out to EA, to cover this new Medal of Honor reboot.
Like all past Medal of Honor community events, EA paid for our flight to the EA offices in LA, hotel (shared rooms) , dinner and the community air soft event. I however paid for my own $29 cheeseburger on two of the three nights at the event. We where also given a set of Oakley sun glasses, custom Oakley embroidered back pack (EA / AMD), MOH mouse pad and a very nice MOH T-shirt. It’s always interesting to see the so called big named media sites forget to mention this stuff but we all know you can always trust their reviews of these games.
One other thing I would like to say about this review. I’m not going to go too deep into what I call spoilers like map names, weapons, perks (EA’s version of perks) and overall game details that every other site will cover. I’m more or less going to give you a behind the game look at the tech we as old school PC gamers/admins want and try and give you answers to the questions I asked at the event as well as my feelings about the new management team behind the Medal of Honor reboot.
So here goes, lets get this out of the way and not waste anyone's time. We’re going to start by answering the two big questions everyone wants to know.
- No public dedicated servers (servers you can run on your own server).
Dice insists that they don’t want to release these files to the general public because it helps prevent cheating. Someone should inform Dice that there is a number of cheats out there already and this could not be further from the truth. Today alone I was on 3 different servers and witnessed about two - three people being kicked for aimbots alone. So much for reducing the number of cheaters. They should instead, invest this time into supporting A/C like Punkbuster and going after sites selling cheats out in the open.
With that said, there is some interesting information regarding dedicated servers (trusted Game Server Providers - TGSP) and how you will manage them further along in this preview.
- No Mod/Map tools
We’re being told that the reason mod tools will not be released, is because of the new Frostbyte engine. They say the tools would be too difficult to use and they don’t have the time/budget to port them to an easy to use format for the general public. I’m sorry but I don’t buy it as much as this new management team is open and honest, I just don’t believe this. To anyone with an IQ of a wet paper towel, it’s because (fill in publisher’s name here but not Valves name) does not want to compete with a community who will create better maps, mods and user created content fast and better then they could ever produce. Which in turn would cut into selling you their DLC.
Now that we have all the bad stuff out of the way, I first want to talk a bit about the new management team behind the all new Medal of Honor. When EA said they rebooted the franchise, they mean it. Not only is the game built upon not one but two engines, for the first time not set in WWII, and has a new management team lead by a gentlemen names Greg Goodrich, who during the community event really impressed me with his generosity, willing to answer all our questions and just a damn nice guy.
It all started when the news broke that there was a new executive producer for the MOH franchise. So I took a chance and posted a welcome message to Greg in the official forums to try and get him up to speed on our past frustrations with MOH. To be honest I was not expecting Greg or anyone, for that matter, to reply in that thread or at all. Well Greg called my bluff and replied. Not only did Greg reply, he replied himself. This may seem like a simple task but if you remember my last post directed to the former executive producer, you’ll understand that you don’t expect much from the old MOH franchise.
Greg Goodrich wrote:
Quote:
“So thank you MOH community! I appreciate you, I welcome your feedback and I take the responsibility of watching over MOH very seriously.”
So when I was invited back to EALA for the MOH reboot community event I was actually excited to return. Some of you may have remembered that my last community event, MOH Airborne, did not go over well and I did not think I was welcomed back to EA LA.
The thing about this management team over the past management teams is their commitment to this game. I remember when past community events, the executive. producer and his senior team could not be bothered with these events and it almost seemed like we where an inconvenience to them. I’ve commented on this during past MOH and CoD events I’ve attended. Where the CoD staff wanted to be with us, wanted to interact with us, where very proud of their game and wanted to show it off to us as well as answer our questions. On the other hand the old MOH team was a complete opposite.
Well this new team is more like the old CoD team. They where very interested in our questions, wanted to show off the game and a first for a MOH community event. THEY WANTED OUR FEEDBACK!
Not only did the Greg welcome us to EA LA, explain the game to us, but showed off the SP version of the game (this was a MP only event) and stuck around for the whole event. Another first for a MOH community event.
Some of you may have seen my tweets and posts right after the event back in May. You may be a little confused with my excitement over a game that does not have public dedicated server files, and or mod tools. While I’m a bummed that those items are missing, I realize that now a days we here at FPSadmin need to understand that having server files on our own servers may be a thing of the past but we still have server files.
In the old days, it was very expensive to rent a server, now a days for almost a buck a slot, you can rent a server. So this means for close to $24 bucks total, we get a dedicated server. Granted we can’t mod that server or run custom maps but the name of the site is FPS”ADMIN” and not FPS”MODS”. While still upsetting, I can live with with what we’er given in respect to Medal of Honor.
I’m more upset that new GSPs can’t get into the trusted GSP program and will be following up with Dice and the MP team to see what their plans are for opening the TGSP program up to others. More on Server sided features a little later.
Back to the game itself.
Single Player:
Yeah it has Single Player and it’s built upon the Unreal 3 engine, it looks good.
Sorry to rant on and on about single player. I lost track of time there.
Multi Player:
As most of you already know, the game is built upon two different engines. Unreal 3 for the single player with EALA leading up that side of the game. For the multi player EA went with Dice and their Frostbyte engine.
They are not going for a game where the SP and MP look identical, they may be sharing some basic assets but the teams are two totally separate teams working half way across the globe from each other. Which if you think about it, is not a bad idea and for this game works really well.
For the most part this is where Patrick Liu (MP producer - Dice) came in and gave his presentation, which included:
Some of the bullet points the Dice team is trying to hit
Best in Class Dice MP
Step into the shoes of the elite
Authentic
Skill and Balance
MP features
- 24 players online
- Improved dedicated servers ** see below
Frostbyte enhanced engine
- Improved hit box detection ( You’ll need to be very accurate - you can shoot arms/legs/head
- Bullet speed increased, much more accurate for fast paste games
- Spectators
- Ammo crates
- Setup teams
- Some destructible buildings but not as much as BC2
Three mods per weapon = Hundreds of combination
Ranks just like BFBC2 but with a twist
- - not only weapons but skins - start with Rangers work up to Tier 1
-Score Chains
- promotes skill not time in game
- tactical choices
- - share tactical choices with team mates (perks on steroids)
- offensive
- defensive
Server sided MP features
- Map rotation can have different game types in same map rotation
- Punkbuster
- Windows server bits for TGSP
- Public leader board / stats
While paying attention to Patrick’s power point, I noticed Greg was still in the room watching and listening to Patrick. I was very impressed by his dedication to us and his game. In the past, the executive producer had to leave for some important meeting or looked bored.
Two quotes I took away from this part of the event:
Serious quote Greg Goodrich
Quote:
“This preview is to also get feedback from you to improve the game”
Funny quote Patrick Liu quote
Quote:
“ Multi Player is about shooting people in the face”
** As for running your server via TGSP. We where told that the server admin side of things will be expanded to offer you more control over your server via admin tools. At the time of the event, we where told to expect twice as many server sided switches then the current Bad Company 2 game.
During the MP breifing, we asked a lot of questions about the problems Dice had with BFBC2 and will they be fixed in Medal of Honor.
Patrick told us they had fixed issues like the History, favorites and friends. It almost seemed like they where using these fixes for BFBC2. We where also told that they will not have the issues with the master servers like they did when BFBC2 was released.
At this point is sounded like a BFBC2 event and not a MOH event. They also wanted to assure us that the game was different then BFBC2. However the screen shots via the power points told a different story. It still kind of looked like BFBC2 reskined. That would all change, once we got our hands on the MP.
Hands on with Medal of Honor multi player
1st let me start by saying thanks to AMD for sponsoring the PC part of this community event. AMD provided boxes for us along with eyefinity setups, which included three 24” monitors (not provide by them). Without them we would not be able to have a PC MP hands on. We as PC gamers need to support the hardware vendors who support the PC devs. It’s a circle of influence that we as PC gamers need to support.
Thanks AMD, we appreciate it and my next video card just might be from ATI!!
Now this is where it gets very interesting. I was having flash backs to Airborne and Pacific Assault. This is where all the hype and marketing hits a brick wall. You’re ready to get you hands dirty with a new game and it’s just terrible. The controls are buggy, tha game is laggy and just don’t work ,the game play sucks. At this point you just want to get to the airport and go home. . That is how my past experiences from EA have all been... until now.
Now for me, I invert my mouse (yes I’m an old flight sim guy so shove it) as well as use a custom keyboard by ergodex (DX1) where I layout my keys on a custom board. This does not help at a community events and when you go to someones house and use their setup. At these types of events you’re not allowed to change the config or start poking around. Not that I would do something like that
.
But I managed to get settled in and fire the game up. We played on two maps with two different game types. There was about 8 boxes setup in the room and we played the QA team in Romania.
There was one vehicle on one of the maps but you could only use it to cap a section of the map. The other team was not able to steal the vehicle but could place charges on it.
The first thing that came to mind was this was the next version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It looked amazing and played more like CODMW then BF and that made the Dice guys smile.
They where shooting for the great game play of MW and they did it. Other then when you’re in a vehicle the game does not feel like BFBC2. Only when you enter a vehicle it feels like BFBC2 but you’re not playing in that role long so it should not matter.
The game play was very smooth, fast , beautiful and amazing. They kept telling us it was a pre Alpha build but I still don’t believe them. I was amazed that while I was struggling with my keyboard layout I was still enjoying the game. I’m still blown away at how well the game played, even with the guys from Romania. While we could not see their pings, they did not feel like they where half way across the world. Now granted EA could have a dedicated circuit to their Romanian building but seeing how they run their web servers I don’t think so.
Now I only play BFBC2 now a days and it seems like the Dice MOH guys have done a lot of work on the backend and game engine. it will be interesting to see these improvements brought back to BFBC2.
click here to view image gallery for MOH reboot
Conclusion
I’ve come to the rationalization that things have changed. Gone are the days where the community gets “public” dedicated servers and tools to support a game soon left to die by the developers. Now a days developers are looking to keep a game alive via paid DLC.
We are not their number one customer. Hell, we are not their number one PC customer. They sell many more games to the average PC customer who hasn't a clue about these things, then to the hardcore PC customer. Renting a server from a TGSP for a buck a slot is not going to break the bank.
I’m not happy with how the TGSP program is run and I would love to see PST JOKER and Zeroy do their magic with this game but without tools or a server to run them on it’s hopeless right now. However I realize that things have changed and I don’t game as much as I like to anymore. It could be out of frustration towards so called PC game developers or I’m just getting older. I don’t like how you have to pre order to get into a beta.
If you’re like me and enjoy BFBC2 a lot you will love the new MOH. The gameplay is somewhat different then BFBC2 and a lot like Modern Warfare. The maps we where shown where very well laid out and fun to play. Not as small as MOH maps but not as big as some of the older Battlefield maps. For me it’s also how the management team wants our feedback, granted we can’t get everything we want but I have a feeling they are at least trying to listen to us this time. For that I would recommend everyone checking out the beta, and we hope to get a number of keys to hand out. If we do, we may do it a little different this time around. I want to give them out to old school MOH members first, then our regulars then if any are left to the general public. Again not sure if we’re getting any keys but if we do, I’ll try and get as many as I can.
Rudedogs rating: 8 out of 10. It could have a 9.9 out of 10 if it had tools and “public” dedicated servers.
First I like to get the disclaimers out of the way. You can skip the next two paragraphs if you like but I feel it’s important to let everyone know that I along with every site in attendance, got a free trip out to EA, to cover this new Medal of Honor reboot.
Like all past Medal of Honor community events, EA paid for our flight to the EA offices in LA, hotel (shared rooms) , dinner and the community air soft event. I however paid for my own $29 cheeseburger on two of the three nights at the event. We where also given a set of Oakley sun glasses, custom Oakley embroidered back pack (EA / AMD), MOH mouse pad and a very nice MOH T-shirt. It’s always interesting to see the so called big named media sites forget to mention this stuff but we all know you can always trust their reviews of these games.
One other thing I would like to say about this review. I’m not going to go too deep into what I call spoilers like map names, weapons, perks (EA’s version of perks) and overall game details that every other site will cover. I’m more or less going to give you a behind the game look at the tech we as old school PC gamers/admins want and try and give you answers to the questions I asked at the event as well as my feelings about the new management team behind the Medal of Honor reboot.
So here goes, lets get this out of the way and not waste anyone's time. We’re going to start by answering the two big questions everyone wants to know.
- No public dedicated servers (servers you can run on your own server).
Dice insists that they don’t want to release these files to the general public because it helps prevent cheating. Someone should inform Dice that there is a number of cheats out there already and this could not be further from the truth. Today alone I was on 3 different servers and witnessed about two - three people being kicked for aimbots alone. So much for reducing the number of cheaters. They should instead, invest this time into supporting A/C like Punkbuster and going after sites selling cheats out in the open.
With that said, there is some interesting information regarding dedicated servers (trusted Game Server Providers - TGSP) and how you will manage them further along in this preview.
- No Mod/Map tools
We’re being told that the reason mod tools will not be released, is because of the new Frostbyte engine. They say the tools would be too difficult to use and they don’t have the time/budget to port them to an easy to use format for the general public. I’m sorry but I don’t buy it as much as this new management team is open and honest, I just don’t believe this. To anyone with an IQ of a wet paper towel, it’s because (fill in publisher’s name here but not Valves name) does not want to compete with a community who will create better maps, mods and user created content fast and better then they could ever produce. Which in turn would cut into selling you their DLC.
Now that we have all the bad stuff out of the way, I first want to talk a bit about the new management team behind the all new Medal of Honor. When EA said they rebooted the franchise, they mean it. Not only is the game built upon not one but two engines, for the first time not set in WWII, and has a new management team lead by a gentlemen names Greg Goodrich, who during the community event really impressed me with his generosity, willing to answer all our questions and just a damn nice guy.
It all started when the news broke that there was a new executive producer for the MOH franchise. So I took a chance and posted a welcome message to Greg in the official forums to try and get him up to speed on our past frustrations with MOH. To be honest I was not expecting Greg or anyone, for that matter, to reply in that thread or at all. Well Greg called my bluff and replied. Not only did Greg reply, he replied himself. This may seem like a simple task but if you remember my last post directed to the former executive producer, you’ll understand that you don’t expect much from the old MOH franchise.
Greg Goodrich wrote:
Quote:
“So thank you MOH community! I appreciate you, I welcome your feedback and I take the responsibility of watching over MOH very seriously.”
So when I was invited back to EALA for the MOH reboot community event I was actually excited to return. Some of you may have remembered that my last community event, MOH Airborne, did not go over well and I did not think I was welcomed back to EA LA.
The thing about this management team over the past management teams is their commitment to this game. I remember when past community events, the executive. producer and his senior team could not be bothered with these events and it almost seemed like we where an inconvenience to them. I’ve commented on this during past MOH and CoD events I’ve attended. Where the CoD staff wanted to be with us, wanted to interact with us, where very proud of their game and wanted to show it off to us as well as answer our questions. On the other hand the old MOH team was a complete opposite.
Well this new team is more like the old CoD team. They where very interested in our questions, wanted to show off the game and a first for a MOH community event. THEY WANTED OUR FEEDBACK!
Not only did the Greg welcome us to EA LA, explain the game to us, but showed off the SP version of the game (this was a MP only event) and stuck around for the whole event. Another first for a MOH community event.
Some of you may have seen my tweets and posts right after the event back in May. You may be a little confused with my excitement over a game that does not have public dedicated server files, and or mod tools. While I’m a bummed that those items are missing, I realize that now a days we here at FPSadmin need to understand that having server files on our own servers may be a thing of the past but we still have server files.
In the old days, it was very expensive to rent a server, now a days for almost a buck a slot, you can rent a server. So this means for close to $24 bucks total, we get a dedicated server. Granted we can’t mod that server or run custom maps but the name of the site is FPS”ADMIN” and not FPS”MODS”. While still upsetting, I can live with with what we’er given in respect to Medal of Honor.
I’m more upset that new GSPs can’t get into the trusted GSP program and will be following up with Dice and the MP team to see what their plans are for opening the TGSP program up to others. More on Server sided features a little later.
Back to the game itself.
Single Player:
Yeah it has Single Player and it’s built upon the Unreal 3 engine, it looks good.
Sorry to rant on and on about single player. I lost track of time there.
Multi Player:
As most of you already know, the game is built upon two different engines. Unreal 3 for the single player with EALA leading up that side of the game. For the multi player EA went with Dice and their Frostbyte engine.
They are not going for a game where the SP and MP look identical, they may be sharing some basic assets but the teams are two totally separate teams working half way across the globe from each other. Which if you think about it, is not a bad idea and for this game works really well.
For the most part this is where Patrick Liu (MP producer - Dice) came in and gave his presentation, which included:
Some of the bullet points the Dice team is trying to hit
Best in Class Dice MP
Step into the shoes of the elite
Authentic
Skill and Balance
MP features
- 24 players online
- Improved dedicated servers ** see below
Frostbyte enhanced engine
- Improved hit box detection ( You’ll need to be very accurate - you can shoot arms/legs/head
- Bullet speed increased, much more accurate for fast paste games
- Spectators
- Ammo crates
- Setup teams
- Some destructible buildings but not as much as BC2
Three mods per weapon = Hundreds of combination
Ranks just like BFBC2 but with a twist
- - not only weapons but skins - start with Rangers work up to Tier 1
-Score Chains
- promotes skill not time in game
- tactical choices
- - share tactical choices with team mates (perks on steroids)
- offensive
- defensive
Server sided MP features
- Map rotation can have different game types in same map rotation
- Punkbuster
- Windows server bits for TGSP
- Public leader board / stats
While paying attention to Patrick’s power point, I noticed Greg was still in the room watching and listening to Patrick. I was very impressed by his dedication to us and his game. In the past, the executive producer had to leave for some important meeting or looked bored.
Two quotes I took away from this part of the event:
Serious quote Greg Goodrich
Quote:
“This preview is to also get feedback from you to improve the game”
Funny quote Patrick Liu quote
Quote:
“ Multi Player is about shooting people in the face”
** As for running your server via TGSP. We where told that the server admin side of things will be expanded to offer you more control over your server via admin tools. At the time of the event, we where told to expect twice as many server sided switches then the current Bad Company 2 game.
During the MP breifing, we asked a lot of questions about the problems Dice had with BFBC2 and will they be fixed in Medal of Honor.
Patrick told us they had fixed issues like the History, favorites and friends. It almost seemed like they where using these fixes for BFBC2. We where also told that they will not have the issues with the master servers like they did when BFBC2 was released.
At this point is sounded like a BFBC2 event and not a MOH event. They also wanted to assure us that the game was different then BFBC2. However the screen shots via the power points told a different story. It still kind of looked like BFBC2 reskined. That would all change, once we got our hands on the MP.
Hands on with Medal of Honor multi player
1st let me start by saying thanks to AMD for sponsoring the PC part of this community event. AMD provided boxes for us along with eyefinity setups, which included three 24” monitors (not provide by them). Without them we would not be able to have a PC MP hands on. We as PC gamers need to support the hardware vendors who support the PC devs. It’s a circle of influence that we as PC gamers need to support.
Thanks AMD, we appreciate it and my next video card just might be from ATI!!
Now this is where it gets very interesting. I was having flash backs to Airborne and Pacific Assault. This is where all the hype and marketing hits a brick wall. You’re ready to get you hands dirty with a new game and it’s just terrible. The controls are buggy, tha game is laggy and just don’t work ,the game play sucks. At this point you just want to get to the airport and go home. . That is how my past experiences from EA have all been... until now.
Now for me, I invert my mouse (yes I’m an old flight sim guy so shove it) as well as use a custom keyboard by ergodex (DX1) where I layout my keys on a custom board. This does not help at a community events and when you go to someones house and use their setup. At these types of events you’re not allowed to change the config or start poking around. Not that I would do something like that
. But I managed to get settled in and fire the game up. We played on two maps with two different game types. There was about 8 boxes setup in the room and we played the QA team in Romania.
There was one vehicle on one of the maps but you could only use it to cap a section of the map. The other team was not able to steal the vehicle but could place charges on it.
The first thing that came to mind was this was the next version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It looked amazing and played more like CODMW then BF and that made the Dice guys smile.
They where shooting for the great game play of MW and they did it. Other then when you’re in a vehicle the game does not feel like BFBC2. Only when you enter a vehicle it feels like BFBC2 but you’re not playing in that role long so it should not matter.
The game play was very smooth, fast , beautiful and amazing. They kept telling us it was a pre Alpha build but I still don’t believe them. I was amazed that while I was struggling with my keyboard layout I was still enjoying the game. I’m still blown away at how well the game played, even with the guys from Romania. While we could not see their pings, they did not feel like they where half way across the world. Now granted EA could have a dedicated circuit to their Romanian building but seeing how they run their web servers I don’t think so.
Now I only play BFBC2 now a days and it seems like the Dice MOH guys have done a lot of work on the backend and game engine. it will be interesting to see these improvements brought back to BFBC2.
click here to view image gallery for MOH reboot
Conclusion
I’ve come to the rationalization that things have changed. Gone are the days where the community gets “public” dedicated servers and tools to support a game soon left to die by the developers. Now a days developers are looking to keep a game alive via paid DLC.
We are not their number one customer. Hell, we are not their number one PC customer. They sell many more games to the average PC customer who hasn't a clue about these things, then to the hardcore PC customer. Renting a server from a TGSP for a buck a slot is not going to break the bank.
I’m not happy with how the TGSP program is run and I would love to see PST JOKER and Zeroy do their magic with this game but without tools or a server to run them on it’s hopeless right now. However I realize that things have changed and I don’t game as much as I like to anymore. It could be out of frustration towards so called PC game developers or I’m just getting older. I don’t like how you have to pre order to get into a beta.
If you’re like me and enjoy BFBC2 a lot you will love the new MOH. The gameplay is somewhat different then BFBC2 and a lot like Modern Warfare. The maps we where shown where very well laid out and fun to play. Not as small as MOH maps but not as big as some of the older Battlefield maps. For me it’s also how the management team wants our feedback, granted we can’t get everything we want but I have a feeling they are at least trying to listen to us this time. For that I would recommend everyone checking out the beta, and we hope to get a number of keys to hand out. If we do, we may do it a little different this time around. I want to give them out to old school MOH members first, then our regulars then if any are left to the general public. Again not sure if we’re getting any keys but if we do, I’ll try and get as many as I can.
Rudedogs rating: 8 out of 10. It could have a 9.9 out of 10 if it had tools and “public” dedicated servers.
