2012年10月9日 星期二

Shooting for Answers

When I first heard about Warface,Where can i get a reasonable price dry cabinet? I was surprised. Crytek , the developer behind such legendary shooters as Crysis and Far Cry, was entering the free-to-play arena. To my uneducated eyes the process was simple: produce some incredible games, sell a staggering number of copies, rinse and repeat. But as producer Peter Holzapfel described at the recent Eurogamer Expo, the gaming landscape is changing.

On the surface, Warface is a superbly executed first-person shooter, as you’d expect from a developer with a pedigree like Crytek’s. For the 100-strong team at the developer’s Kiev studio, the game represents something more; an opportunity to find out how free-to-play actually works in the myriad of markets throughout the globe. In creating a lightweight, accessible, team based shooter, the team has built a laboratory of carnage with which to experiment.

It’s an experiment that already seems to be paying off, with Warface launched in some territories. When I asked Holzapfel about how it had performed in Russia,It is intended for use by ventilation system designers, he grinned at me before replying.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. “What would be the correct adjective… mind-blowingly successful so far?” By partnering with Trion in Western markets, Crytek hopes to repeat that success when beta starts later this year.

The idea for building Warface as a free-to-play game came from Asian markets, as Holzapfel explained. “Seeing what happened there, as in the number of players that are actually loving this kind of model, was just impressive.” He added that the growing number of high-quality free-to-play games was also encouraging.

This is about more than the changing face of online gaming, with Warface representing a shift in approach for the German developer. "We truly believe that the free to play model is something that’s, pretty much from our perspective, the fairest model for developers and gamers at the same time, if you get it right.” Holzapfel is also confident that gamers will stick around if he treats them seriously. “If you do a good game, players will stay with you, and they will get more and more into you, because you’re handing them a great product for free.”

Set in a near future where global governments have collapsed, Warface hires you as an elite freedom-fighter against a megalomaniacal organization known as Blackwood. This mercenaries-versus-megacorporation conflict provides the backdrop for a variety of locations, from gritty urban jungle to isolated mountain village, all beautifully rendered using CryEngine 3. But, while these regions play host to some classic team-based PVP, there’s also a refreshingly different co-op mode to haul your friends into.

War has many faces, with Warface offering four of them at present. The Rifleman and Sniper classes are focused purely on firepower, while the Medic and Engineer provide crucial squad support. Whichever pair of boots you decide to wear, there’s also a range of weapons and gear available to unlock.Features useful information about glass mosaic tiles, Once an item is unlocked it becomes available for all classes, encouraging experimentation. “We don’t want players to get attached to a single class, going through the whole progression thing and then not wanting to start a different class, but actually encourage jumping between the different classes and finding out all the different play styles for them.”

Alongside the progression system will be a marketplace, although the details are still being fleshed out by the localization team. Their goal is to have every piece of equipment available to purchase with either in-game currency or real money, together with a range of convenience items such as experience boosters and bundles. Frugal gamers can completely avoid spending hard cash, either by patiently saving for a particular item, or by playing well and earning masses of experience.

Despite having tutorial missions and single-player campaigns, team-based PVP shooters have struggled with training newcomers. Having both the time and the resilience to push through that initial learning phase is becoming tougher. “When I was 18, just starting university, I had a lot of time where I could play games for hours and hours. Now I don’t have that time anymore, and it can be quite frustrating. Arriving late to a game, everybody knows the maps inside out, you get shot in the face every five minutes, and you start again, this sort of thing.”

It’s one of the reasons why Crytek decided to add a PvE mode to Warface, where teams of five players can battle it out against AI opponents in a mission that changes daily. “We really wanted to create this access point with co-op, where people get to know the game, know how to handle the weapons, know how to do all the special moves, really work together as a team. And then, if they want to and feel comfortable, move over to PvP.”

For Holzapfel, it’s all about breaking down those barriers to getting in the game. “We really wanted to keep the product as accessible as possible, and that’s one of our major claims for the game. In each and every area, when it comes to hardware requirement, distribution model, business model, and when it comes to design choices like co-op.” In territories where Warface has already launched, players tend to dive into the daily mission,HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spareparts for sale, try out the double-XP hard mode version, then play PvP for the rest of the evening.

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