The Killzone 3 Red Eye Catch All

Dyni wrote:

Yeah, I kind of like playing straight deathmatch from time to time, but I'm not too keen on paying for many mode-specific maps. Although, a map full of jetpacks might get me to bite. That trailer looked sweet, and I had a lot of fun with the jetpack in the single player demo (haven't gotten it in campaign yet). $5 for 2 maps seems ok to me when the running trend with other popular shooters is $15 for 3 maps.

Again, if those include some kind of Operations missions, then I think it's entirely worth it. If it's just Guerrilla Warfare on one and just Warzone on the other, then it's a harder sell, for sure. If you get Operations on one or both too, though, then I think it's more justifiable.

One thing I'd like to see them add, though, is some button that allows you to select for DLC maps. In KZ2, you could get a map rotation list on whichever server you were playing on, so you knew if you were playing DLC maps or not. In KZ3, it doesn't seem like you get that opportunity, so they just get added in to your rotation automatically. So what if you buy a set of maps on Day One and you really want to play those? And immediately? It'd be nice to tell the game that you want to find one of those maps first, rather than cycling through random matches until you find one.

Supposedly, Guerilla Games is patching in some kind of Custom Match support, though, so maybe that'll fix the issue. Perhaps it's already in there and I just haven't found it?

Happytime Harry wrote:

I will be out of commission for about a week unless i bring my ps3 to my sisters (taking care of her dogs while she's on vacation) so if you don't see me on thats unfortunately why.

Take it with you! What are you gonna do, play with the dogs all day? :p

78% trophies now. I have all the single-player ones except 1000, 1500 kills, and elite difficulty.

Need someone local to play the two coop ones with me.

And then a couple more multi ones... looks like the hidden ones for vehicle kills.

Do DLC trophies count for the % or platinum? If so I guess I have to get 15 kills with a secondary weapon too.

Haha I brought the xbox, I have a feeling I'll get about 2-3 days into it and go get the ps3.

Since I was looking for it, and maybe you guys will be too... the map details.

Highlights:

MP01 - CORINTH HIGHWAY
Warzone (24 players)
Exos
WASPS
Mortar Beacons

MP02 - PYRRHUS CRATER
Warzone (24 Players)
Guerrilla Warfare (16 Players)
Miniguns
Mortar Beacons

MP03 - BILGARSK BOULEVARD
Warzone (24 Players)
Guerrilla Warfare (16 Players)
Miniguns
Mortar Beacons

MP04 - TURBINE CONCOURSE SE-6
Warzone (24 Players)
Jetpacks
Miniguns

MP05 - FROZEN DAM
Warzone (24 Players)
Guerrilla Warfare (16 Players)
Operations (16 Players)
Mortar Beacons

MP06 - AKMIR SNOWDRIFT
Warzone (24 Players)
Guerrilla Warfare (16 Players)
Operations (16 Players)
Snowstorm

MP07 - MAWLR GRAVEYARD
Warzone (24 Players)
Operations (16 Players)
Mortar Beacons
Crusher

MP08 - KAZNAN JUNGLE
Guerrilla Warfare (16 Players)

EDIT: And also, the Retro Pack

SALAMUN MARKET
Game Type: Warzone (24 Players)

BLOOD GRACHT
Game Type: Guerrilla Warfare (16 Players)

And Steel Rain pack:

MP-09 JUNKYARD
Game Type: Guerrilla Warfare (16 players)

MP-10 STAHL ARMS
Game Type: Warzone (24 Players)

So yeah no extra operations maps listed yet.

And if you need jetpacks, turbine concourse warzone is the only place?

And exos in corinth highway warzone. Or I think Salamun Market has them, even though it's not listed?

Guess I'll be trying those maps tonight and see if I can get my mutli achievements.

Stele wrote:

That was like the best round ever. Me and jakeleg teamed up for Warzone. Last round was a speaker pickup, but no one was able to get a single cap, so we ended with a 3-3 draw. But 8500 points, so I can't complain.

And another tie the next round. Damn. :cool:

That was awesome, especially since we were down 3-1. That was a hard fought tie.

Stele wrote:

Oh and jakeleg is our new friends leaderboard leader. Just got me by 179k to 178k right now. Oh well, I was #1 for 2 whole days. ;)

That is my human wave approach. I just spawn and die repeatedly until the other team submits.
I do try hard to do the objectives as Tactician and Engineer. I usually spawn in immediately as tactician and work on grabbing spawn points for a while and switch to engineer later.

Is it just me or does the Turbine Concourse (aka, 'jetpack') map that everybody seems to love feel unbalanced? The team that gets the elevated tactical spawns out of the gate wins that map 9/10 times. it is nearly impossible on a pubbie team to take those spawns back because the only way to get up there is by jetpack and the coordination involved just isn't going to happen with a pub group. They need to add a second footpath route to those spawns -- or is there some hidden way I have not seen yet?

Also it is games like KZ3 that make me lament the PS3's lack of party voice chat like Xbox Live has. It would be great to get 3 or 4 GWJers together to work as a private squad on Warzone. We would run the table.

Stele has 2.5x my points, but I have more headshots....ha!

jakeleg wrote:

That is my human wave approach. I just spawn and die repeatedly until the other team submits.

I do that too, but your k/d is like .7 while mine is .55.

jakeleg wrote:

Is it just me or does the Turbine Concourse (aka, 'jetpack') map that everybody seems to love feel unbalanced? The team that gets the elevated tactical spawns out of the gate wins that map 9/10 times. it is nearly impossible on a pubbie team to take those spawns back because the only way to get up there is by jetpack and the coordination involved just isn't going to happen with a pub group. They need to add a second footpath route to those spawns -- or is there some hidden way I have not seen yet?

Agreed. I played that map today and it was amazing how easy we won when we had that spawn and how badly we lost when we didn't. Got my achievement though, so I might be done with that one. People spend way too much time standing around spawn waiting for a jetpack instead of doing objectives. Frustrating as hell.

jakeleg wrote:

Also it is games like KZ3 that make me lament the PS3's lack of party voice chat like Xbox Live has. It would be great to get 3 or 4 GWJers together to work as a private squad on Warzone. We would run the table.

We can do it pretty easily in-game, we just have to squad up before rounds or whatever. Someone may have to leave a game to join us, but I think the xp lost will be made up for when we play together. Had some trouble when we tried it on warzone but I have had those same errors by myself so it may have just been dumb luck. But operations as a squad has worked every time I think.

Wifey is going to a conference, just leaving now, and back Sun afternoon. So I've got about 44 hours straight of solo time, which means I'll be up for whatever you guys want to play. If by some crazy chance my PS3 isn't already on you can message me on Steam and tell me to get my ass in game.

I'm pretty sure I'm near the end of the campaign, so I expect to leap into MP after that. I think I was sitting around 1.42 K/D, and that just won't stand--I was .52 in KZ2.

Edit at 8:20: Not ignoring you, Stele, just watching Fringe. I'll be on when it's done.

Cool cool. I DVRed Fringe and am taking a break to eat some pizza and watch it now. Sorry you got stuck on the opposite team from us. But I did rather enjoy beating you down with my gun that round we won.

Stele wrote:

Cool cool. I DVRed Fringe and am taking a break to eat some pizza and watch it now. Sorry you got stuck on the opposite team from us. But I did rather enjoy beating you down with my gun that round we won. :lol:

I will not lie, I laughed hard when I got to violate ilduce's Geneva Conventions. Take that, ISA Scum!

Fringe touched on some personal history for me, and I found myself moved. Enjoy it.

I chuckled a few times during the campaign, the Geneva thing was funny.

I have been pulled away by the launch of RIFT, but will be on some more this weekend. Hope we can finally get a few matches in together.

Good games this afternoon, Stele. Though that last one kinda sucked.

Yeah should have seen what me and glanton ran into, a full clan team of 8 in operation.

My cable modem just disconnected mid-match though. Posting from my phone, be back in a few.

Man I hate getting disconnected when it's not my internet. We were 3-0 on warzone and dominating the other team with every spawn point. I had gotten several 3, 4, even 6 kill shots in with the mortar beacon, and was just kicking ass. On my way to at least 10k points... and error 8001.

That sucks I haven't had any errors since the beta, but I don't think I've played nearly as much as you.

On another note, IGN threw up a few developer hint videos for certain maps. I thought there was some decent info there. I had no idea that using silenced weapons prevents you from showing up on enemy radar.

Dyni wrote:

I had no idea that using silenced weapons prevents you from showing up on enemy radar.

You need to read your unlock descriptions. For Tactician's first weapon:

The StA11SE is perfect for soldiers looking to operate under the radar. The silencer fitted to this sub machine gun is the ideal attachment for getting behind enemy lines

But some classes don't have as many (or any) choices. Actually I don't think anyone has more than two?
-No silenced weapons for Engineer.
-VC32 Sniper Rifle and M66 pistol for Marksman.
-StA11SE SMG for Tactician.
-StA52SE for Infiltrator.
-M82SE Assault Rifle and M66 pistol for Medic.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I will not lie, I laughed hard when I got to violate ilduce's Geneva Conventions. Take that, ISA Scum!

I may need to slap that on the back of a t-shirt.

Whatever Stele. Clearly, they patched that into the description after I read it...

There are good map tips in those videos. I didn't realize until I started playing engineer more that there are so many things to repair. Lots of sentry nests. One stage has several of those WASP mounts as well.

I put in a good amount of time last night. Still enjoying it very much and am dabbling in all the different Warzone maps. I've found that, once I'm on a given map, it tends to keep you there, so you have to actually get out of that match and select a different "Preferred Map" in order to get another one.

That said, I'm really, really, getting annoying with the Tactician spawn point ability. In multiple games last night, we had issues with spawn camping. This isn't really new, necessarily, but because the Tactician only captures points rather than creates points, that just means you need to have a few snipers watching the spawn points, preventing you from capturing them. It just makes it really easy for the opposing side to hold you into your single spawn point, and then pick you off before you can even get out. There was a particular game we played on MAWLer Graveyard (sp?) that the entirety of the opposing team was playing as snipers, so we couldn't get anything going. We lost handidly.

So yeah, I hope Guerilla is paying attention and is going to do something about this. I think it's as easy as re-enabling the spawn point ability for Tacticians from KZ2: if the Tactician can place a spawn point wherever they want, then the enemy can't camp as easily.

Similar observations from the peanut gallery?

Controlling the spawn points can turn a game into a rout if the other team doesn't pay attention -- particularly on Warzone maps. The Operations maps tend to have a point close to each side's base, so it is difficult for the other team to grab them after the start of the map. I always begin a map as Tactician and immediately go to grab as many points as possible. Some maps seem more balanced than others in respect to the fixed point layout. I do wish there was a visible hud marker for all classes showing where the points are located and who controls them. It might inspire some folks to try and defend them a little. I have not had any issues with camping yet, but a deployable temporary spawn point sounds good to me. I doubt we will see it though as the devs seem to have designed the map flow around the placement of the spawn points.

ilduce620 wrote:

I put in a good amount of time last night. Still enjoying it very much and am dabbling in all the different Warzone maps. I've found that, once I'm on a given map, it tends to keep you there, so you have to actually get out of that match and select a different "Preferred Map" in order to get another one.

Think that only happens with the retro pack maps, they are bugged into being stuck on them. Had some runs yesterday on warzone where map voting was working fine at the end of matches and rotating properly.

And yeah, spawn points win games. Tacticians are the most important class, especially with those location based objectives, which are most of them. I really enjoy medic and engineer but I'm forced to play tactician most of the time for the good of the team, even if they don't know it.

Stele wrote:

And yeah, spawn points win games. Tacticians are the most important class, especially with those location based objectives, which are most of them. I really enjoy medic and engineer but I'm forced to play tactician most of the time for the good of the team, even if they don't know it. ;)

I've been ranking up my Engineer so I could produce rocket turrets, and now that I have that, I think I have to work on Tactician, as apparently, no one likes playing as them. Unfortunately, it seems that in many games, you don't have teammates willing to help defend you to get to that spawn point. Certain maps make it relatively easy to at least get one tactical spawn point captured, but there are others where it's practically impossible because of where Guerilla placed them.

MAWLR Graveyard was the primary culprit, so far as spawn camping went. If you are familiar with the map, there are two spawn points you can capture close to the side we were localized to. One is inside a building. The other is nestled between two piles of junk, and just below a drop-off where the controls to the smasher-thingie are ("smasher-thingie" is a technical term, of course). Our problem was that snipers were on top of the overlook, shooting anyone that tried to capture the point, and once they captured the spawn point, spawned more snipers to get between the junk piles. So, you couldn't even get to the spawn point to capture it. And because snipers were interspersed throughout, you couldn't even get out of the initial base. And, to make matters worse, there were only a few of us trying to play together, while the others were nowhere to be found.

There were lots of problems with that particular match, and the team I was playing with was a big one. However, if I'd had the ability to drop a tactical spawn point somewhere else, many of those problems would have been alleviated. We could have, at least, gotten out of our building to go do things. You could have tossed a tactical spawn point (like a grenade, as in KZ2) over between the junk piles, had your teammates spawn there, and then overwhelm any snipers that were in the vicinity. They'd pick off some of us, but wouldn't be able to get everyone.

Unfortunately, they only thing I could see Guerilla do to add that functionality back in would be to remove one of the upgrades that the Tactician currently has, like a speed boost. Removing functionality is assured to piss people off, even if you're adding something important back in. Therefore, I doubt it'll happen. Would be nice, though!

I think they had a bigger problem with spawn camping with the spawn grenade, though, eventually. The spawn grenade was undeniably cool, but it made Search and Destroy a painful grind, and it was really easy to exploit them and lock down spawn camps on Blood Gracht and Radec Academy, and I even saw it happen a few times on Phyrrus Rise. I think ultimately the sad fact is that the human mind cannot devise an MP map that the human mind cannot also break.

I've been working on Tactician rather than unlock the last secondary weapons on Infiltrator, and I think it's great. The Spot skill rules--people think they're soooooo clever hiding in those corners, it's great to come through the doorway facing the right direction and pop them.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I think they had a bigger problem with spawn camping with the spawn grenade, though, eventually. The spawn grenade was undeniably cool, but it made Search and Destroy a painful grind, and it was really easy to exploit them and lock down spawn camps on Blood Gracht and Radec Academy, and I even saw it happen a few times on Phyrrus Rise. I think ultimately the sad fact is that the human mind cannot devise an MP map that the human mind cannot also break.

I'll agree with spawn camping on Radec Academy, especially, and definitely during Search and Destroy. I'd say, however, that the "camping" occurred because spawn points were placed inside the room with the bombs. It then created a cluster**** situation where all you had to do was toss grenades in there and kill 6 guys at once. Then, it required the Tactician to place a spawn point at a slightly different location, like around the corner where the Capture and Hold point usually was. So yeah, I agree that it presented other issues, but at least the spawn point would disappear after an amount of time, allowing you to place another one in a different location, one where the enemy isn't camping so heavily.

I can't speak to how KZ2 progressed, though. That's how I remember it during the first year of release. I can't say I played that map very often in the past year though, so maybe it got worse.

Yeah MAWLR Graveyard was the one I mentioned up-thread, where I got disconnected when my team was dominating. I had captured that junk pile spawn and we were just slaughtering the other team. They couldn't move past our spawn, and the speaker objective and destroy objective were both right there in front of that spawn so we finished them easily. Don't even think we had that many snipers, it's just a ridiculously well placed spawn point, with a mortar beacon, which I was throwing every time it popped. Seriously I was going to break my 12.5k in one match record.

MAWLR has that spawn point in the gully on operations too, when you're at the 3rd objective. If the offense doesn't get that point, it's impossible to win. The defense doesn't have to get it, as their spawn is just upstairs, as long as they don't let the offense get it. If the defense happens to get it though, then it's hard for the offense to even get to the battery room, much less capture it, much less ever pick it up, and no way in hell ever make it to the objective. I think that was the one round I had 26k, 49d. I kept charging that spawn point as offense tactician desperately trying to capture it.

But, that seems to be a theme with 2 of the 3 operations maps, that the 3rd point is just impossible without the tactical spawn area. You can't win Dam charging across that field into two defensive spawn points, in the short time they give you. Someone has to get that far spawn point.

On the Arctic operations map, it's more the 2nd point that is difficult, planting those 3 charges, with the defense having elevated positions the whole time. Every single match I have seen where the offense wins that 2nd objective, they always win the 3rd one too, as it's an easier objective.

That's another issue that needs to be looked at for operations, the timers. The first objective of MAWLR, 2nd one of Dam, and 3rd one of Arctic are all capture and hold sections, where there are two areas to hold, and a progress bar for the offense. The problem is the map timer vs the progress bar is way out of whack. All the offense actually has to do is capture one point and turtle it to progress. I've lost on both MAWLR and Dam that way, the offense never even made a token push to the area that was farther away from their spawn, they just dug in and held that close one and got the bar full before time ran out.

I guess it might be difficult to balance. Holding two objectives for very long is tough, but maybe they should just tweak the bar advance speed so that it really ramps up for when you hold two but moves slower with just one. Hell maybe it does work like that, but just needs to be tweaked. Holding one control room doesn't seem like it should be the easy win that it is.

Heh, I considered the ease of Hold segment on the Dam operations be be balanced by the ungodly shredding nightmare of the Plant Explosives segment.

If you get that tactical spawn on the east side of the Dam map for the first objective, it's easy as pie, for whichever side gets that.