Homefront - Catch all

Few things:

Different perk combos with different weapons make them shine. Finally unlocked the no/low recoil perk and with that the ACR becomes a very nice gun.

Not sure why they have SMGs in the game except that people expect them. There's just a few maps where you can reliably run/gun. Even then trying to break back behind enemy lines is HARD! Granted once you get back there you can get ya a handful of kills.

Oh how i wish i could use 2 attachments. I want a silenced gun with a scope!

What is that buff you get when you level up a weapon?
It says you get +X it goes by so quick i cant read X.

MannishBoy wrote:
Scratched wrote:

The thing is from the perspective of someone who would be mostly interested in singleplayer, by the time it's cheap enough to justify a short SP campaign, and have nice multiplayer as a bonus (from the perspective of the SP gamer), the multiplayer will be unwelcoming to newbies.

The MP is the only reason I bought this at launch, even though from what I'd seen the SP looked interesting. I didn't want to be learning it late when every body else had all the unlocks.

I had a rough few initial games (partially due to bad connections), but ended the night last night with a nearly even K/D overall and a having a good time. Not sure that would happen a month from now.

My KDR is pure sh*t, but thats from mainly playing the objective maps and learning the new weapons.

Scratched wrote:

It's an ongoing argument. For a game as big and expensive to develop ($100m+) as GTA4 I can see where they're coming from, but I think it goes both ways. Not every game is GTA, not every game should try to be GTA in scale or budget, and not every game should be that price. On the other hand, you have people saying anything below AAA and not a budget/mobile/facebook title is dying out.

Thats also the type of game that will seem to satisfy everyone complaining about a scripted single player. To have it be halfway decent it'd have to surpass the $100m mark a few times over. They have another word for that type of game development. MMO. Then you can play SP or MP if ya want.

Of course Activision has already talked about MMOifing CoD.

As for Homefront it will suck if bad ratings about the SP drive MP people away. The MP is a lot of fun.

ranalin wrote:

As for Homefront it will suck if bad ratings about the SP drive MP people away. The MP is a lot of fun.

My response to that would be if you're going to do something at all, do it right. I'm not saying HF SP is 'done wrong', but it's certainly a detracting point from my buying decision. If multiplayer is their focus, then I'd prefer that they follow how Splash Damage have done BRINK, they've got their back story of the Ark as their setting for their multiplayer focused game (and offline with bots I think).

Ranalin wrote:

What is that buff you get when you level up a weapon?
It says you get +X it goes by so quick i cant rRanalin

I believe what you are refering to is a bonus XP for leveling up the weapon.

Scratched wrote:
ranalin wrote:

As for Homefront it will suck if bad ratings about the SP drive MP people away. The MP is a lot of fun.

My response to that would be if you're going to do something at all, do it right. I'm not saying HF SP is 'done wrong', but it's certainly a detracting point from my buying decision. If multiplayer is their focus, then I'd prefer that they follow how Splash Damage have done BRINK, they've got their back story of the Ark as their setting for their multiplayer focused game (and offline with bots I think).

Homefront does have a back story and its somewhat original. At least it doesn't try to ape TF2 (they even have a Scottishman ). If Homefront did anything wrong is not hype the MP more. I understand why they didnt, but you never know how things will play out.

Still that's just different strokes. Depending on if any of the betas i'm waiting on are going when it drops i'll probably try Brink as well.

Edit: as far as competitive shooters go i'll aways prefer more realistic, modern day shooters over stylized ones.

ranalin wrote:

Edit: as far as competitive shooters go i'll aways prefer more realistic, modern day shooters over stylized ones.

My main issue with Brink as well. Those character models are tremendously unappealing to me.

Blind_Evil wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Edit: as far as competitive shooters go i'll aways prefer more realistic, modern day shooters over stylized ones.

My main issue with Brink as well. Those character models are tremendously unappealing to me.

Is there a Brink thread yet? Seriously when i saw a post on Joystiq awhile back about this game and saw some videos i laughed. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but they act like they thought up the greatest thing ever on their own. I keep putting off posting a thread for it or in its own, if there is one, to make fun of it.*shrug* Because of that i regulated it down to the bottom of my list of games to try. I spend enough time and money on all the other shooters out there.

ranalin wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:
ranalin wrote:

Edit: as far as competitive shooters go i'll aways prefer more realistic, modern day shooters over stylized ones.

My main issue with Brink as well. Those character models are tremendously unappealing to me.

Is there a Brink thread yet? Seriously when i saw a post on Joystiq awhile back about this game and saw some videos i laughed. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but they act like they thought up the greatest thing ever on their own. I keep putting off posting a thread for it or in its own, if there is one, to make fun of it.*shrug* Because of that i regulated it down to the bottom of my list of games to try. I spend enough time and money on all the other shooters out there.

Before I post this reply, it is 3 posts down from this one on the front page.

We've actually had multiple threads started.

I'm actually quite interested in the movement stuff and how it affects gameplay. They also seem to have some legitimate teamwork things they're trying to build in.

BRINK catch all
Whether you like BRINK I think hinges on whether you like objective based games over TDM style. It's essentially Enemy Territory with a new name, a weird about turn in an industry that loves established brands, although ET has a reputation of a hardcore PC game.

ranalin wrote:

Is there a Brink thread yet? Seriously when i saw a post on Joystiq awhile back about this game and saw some videos i laughed. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but they act like they thought up the greatest thing ever on their own.

What exactly are they imitating? TF2? If so, I really don't see it. But feel free to come over to Brink thread and make fun of it so I can tell you that the things you like are stupid.

We’re currently experiencing massive demand for dedicated Homefront servers during peak playing hours (between 19.00 – 24.00 EST).

Those players who secure a slot on a local server should be enjoying a smooth, lag-free experience with no wait times between matches. However, once local servers reach capacity, players are assigned to more remote servers - and eventually, if all servers worldwide reach capacity, any remaining players trying to join a game could be faced with a lengthy queue.

What are we doing to address this problem? We are configuring more servers right now for all formats, across the globe, in order to meet demand. We have already doubled our capacity in the past 24 hours, and we are continuing to bring even more servers online over the next few days.

We expect that most players will be able to join a dedicated server today, but if you still experience connection issues, there is another option.

Our ‘Skirmish’ playlists are capped at a lower player count (16 max) which means they do not require a dedicated server. Our peer-to-peer networking code runs great, and the performance will be similar to what you’d expect from any FPS with a solid peer-to-peer infrastructure, like the Halo series. You will certainly be able to get a queue-free taste of the full Homefront experience, until our dedicated server capacity is high enough to support demand.

So, why did we not foresee this problem you ask? Actually, we thought we had... Homefront’s huge pre-order tally had given a good idea of how many copies would be sold in the first 24 hours, first week, and first month. We then estimated our required server capacity as a percentage of total sales, based on information we have from both THQ and competitor titles. We increased our estimate further to be ‘safe’ – specifically to avoid issues like this!

So what’s happened? It turns out our estimate was still too low. Homefront has sold faster than we expected (which we are thrilled about) and more users are spending more time trying to access multiplayer (which we are also thrilled about). The thing we are not thrilled about is the fact that some gamers are currently having to wait for a match, for which we can only apologise.

Rest assured, we are doing everything in our power to cope with the extraordinary demand for servers, and thank you for your continued patience and support.

I'll help test the servers tonight on 360

Interesting that Skirmish can run peer to peer. So host advantage and all that glorious stuff can happen in that game mode. Wonder if we'll see host migration?

I wonder if smaller games are ALWAYS peer to peer, or only when dedicated servers are full?

Our ‘Skirmish’ playlists are capped at a lower player count (16 max) which means they do not require a dedicated server. Our peer-to-peer networking code runs great, and the performance will be similar to what you’d expect from any FPS with a solid peer-to-peer infrastructure, like the Halo series. You will certainly be able to get a queue-free taste of the full Homefront experience, until our dedicated server capacity is high enough to support demand.

Utter lies.

THQ/Kaos say Homefront 2 single-player will be longer if it can be balanced with multiplayer, which sounds a bit weasely and non-committal if you ask me. Also the fact that they're diving into HF2 already is a bit of a downside to me, although not surprising as they have to be working on something.

I'm seriously pissed off that the price dropped $16 the day after it came out. Thanks for taking a big sh*t on the loyal customers who preordered your game THQ.

Gumbie wrote:

I'm seriously pissed off that the price dropped $16 the day after it came out. Thanks for taking a big sh*t on the loyal customers who preordered your game THQ.

I don't think THQ has anything to do with it. I think retailers did this in a competitive price war on a game they may have overestimated demand for.

MannishBoy wrote:
Gumbie wrote:

I'm seriously pissed off that the price dropped $16 the day after it came out. Thanks for taking a big sh*t on the loyal customers who preordered your game THQ.

I don't think THQ has anything to do with it. I think retailers did this in a competitive price war on a game they may have overestimated demand for.

Developers seem to have less and less say in producing and selling their product these days.

Except for Blizzard and Valve who roll in their cash mansions and laugh. Oh, how they laugh (and produce excellent games).

I'm having quite a bit of fun with Homefront so far. It looks qquite good and it runs really well on my machine; I don't think I've seen it dip lower than 50 at 1920x1080/maxed settings on my radeon 5850.
I'm just under four hours into the campaign, having just made it to the 'shale mine' area.

The safehouse was neat! I love attention to detail by focusing on some of the things the resistance is doing to attempt to maintain a semblance of pre-invasion life. kids on swing-sets, tomato plants (though the tomatoes are so low-poly they would look right at home in the original Deus Ex.) The extended animation of the guy filling the tomato juice jars was a nice touch. Make sure to talk to the guy milking the goat sufficiently to exhaust his dialog options; he offers one of the fairly rare glimpses of humor I've seen in the game.

The newspaper clippings are fun to read as well. A few have been ambiguous to make me wonder 'Man... would they be ballsy enough to cast the U.S.A. as the bad guys in this game, with Korea intervening to overthrow a corrupt and dangerous US government? That would be bad-ass. Sadly, I doubt this will be how it plays out, but it's neat to think about. Any game that has me pondering on its back story a bit gets bonus points.'

Oh! Speaking of the newspapers, is there a way to go back and read old entries? I was hoping for a journal/archive of some sort to read through them again, but I haven't found a way to do so in-game.

The combat feels fine; nothing extraordinary, but there have been some pretty tense fights. I'm playing on hard, and it's nice that the player and the enemy can be brought down with just a few shots each.

A couple of things that I haven't liked:
- grenade tossing feels pretty weak and un-grenadey. It feels to me more like a have a grenade launcher mounted in the middle of my chest, and my arm just does some kind of crazy wiggle whenever I hit the G key.
- paucity of non-fully-automatic weapons. I'm not a big fan of full-auto weapons, so I'm sticking to the pistol whenever possible. Where's my shotgun? Where's my sniper rifle?
- even when minimizes via Alt+Tab, the game seems to work the hell out of the CPU and GPU. Even when minimized, my 3.16 dual core E8500 is showing a 75% load from Homefront, and the 5850 heats up to about 85c (highest I've ever seen it get up to from any game.)

Puce Moose wrote:

- paucity of non-fully-automatic weapons. I'm not a big fan of full-auto weapons, so I'm sticking to the pistol whenever possible. Where's my shotgun? Where's my sniper rifle?

Starting off you get sniper rifle and real early is the SCAR unlock which is a 3round burst weapon. Later on you get the M16 set to just single fire.

There's a shotgun but it's listed under downloadable and i have no clue what that means. If its DLC or what.

Edit: shotgun was a preorder special with Gamestop. I HATE multiple retail specials... Do people really double dip or do the retailers bid on which gifts they offer? ugh...

ranalin wrote:
Puce Moose wrote:

- paucity of non-fully-automatic weapons. I'm not a big fan of full-auto weapons, so I'm sticking to the pistol whenever possible. Where's my shotgun? Where's my sniper rifle?

Starting off you get sniper rifle and real early is the SCAR unlock which is a 3round burst weapon. Later on you get the M16 set to just single fire.
There's a shotgun but it's listed under downloadable and i have no clue what that means. If its DLC or what.
Edit: shotgun was a preorder special with Gamestop. I HATE multiple retail specials... Do people really double dip or do the retailers bid on which gifts they offer? ugh...

I wonder if that sniper rifle shows up in the single player campaign (haven't tried multiplayer.)

Speaking of weapons, I just picked up a rifle with a grenade launcher attachment (playing PC version). How do I make the grenade launcher fire? The controls say 'zoom/alt fire' is set to RMB, but pressing RMB just makes me zoom, and not fire off the grenade.

Wow. The single player is short. Three to four hours, maybe?

Puce Moose wrote:

Speaking of weapons, I just picked up a rifle with a grenade launcher attachment (playing PC version). How do I make the grenade launcher fire? The controls say 'zoom/alt fire' is set to RMB, but pressing RMB just makes me zoom, and not fire off the grenade.

Probably have to switch to it... try the 4 or 5 key to see if it switches modes.

Thirteenth wrote:

Wow. The single player is short. Three to four hours, maybe?

Is that the time you played it in? I was assuming those 5 hour numbers were like extreme minimums. 3 to 4 is insane.

Probably have to switch to it... try the 4 or 5 key to see if it switches modes.

Ah! cool. That was it. For my system it was '3', and it switched over to a grenade launch mode. Though it seems that I magically removed my scope from the weapon during the mode change, but firing did indeed launch a grenade.

DSGamer wrote:
Thirteenth wrote:

Wow. The single player is short. Three to four hours, maybe?

Is that the time you played it in? I was assuming those 5 hour numbers were like extreme minimums. 3 to 4 is insane.

It's interesting that the length of the campaign is being mentioned. I frequently seem to nearly double or triple the standard reviewer's play time, but I wondered how much of that was due to my own lack of precision in recording/calculating my play time. For Homefront, though, I've been meticulous. I'm using XNote Stopwatch, and recording my play time with much more precision, without Steam's gross error-prone (e.g., keeping the timer running when you've tabbed out of a game or in a menu paused for hours) system. *So far* I'm at four hours and forty-eight minutes, and I just reached the point of the... 'Arnie incident'. That may be near the end of the game, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I'll report back with my final clock tally, which should be as accurate of a 'This is the amount of time I spent actually playing this game' report as I've ever done. I do tend to play games slowly and thoroughly, but hopefully this will serve as a good indicator of game length from someone not rushed to meet a deadline, etc.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, is anyone else notcing some weird shadow effects? I see it most frequently with the pistol/looking at legs during certain lighting. Running 5850 at stock, Cat 11.2.
IMAGE(http://www.pucemoose.com/pics/ws1.jpg)

Not that particular effect, but when playing on 360 I did notice something weird. When my character is pressed against a wall his gun kind of radiates a black glow. Like someone had enchanted it. With death.

I really like the MP, haven't played much of the SP yet. I can't get my head around the BP system, really. I can save up and use the big vehicles regardless of my level, right? It's just changing their loadout that requires a certain level?

I've been doing really well since I started using the combo of Penny Pincher and Personal UAV sweep. It's so nice to put my brain on cruise control and shoot motherf*ckers, after a week of playing a RPG constantly and debating its quality here just as fervently.

MP will need to improve a great deal--with the eventual server/patch upgrades to deal with the connection issues and lag--for me to keep this one. The gunplay is horribly inconsistent (I've gotten headshots on people I shot in the legs, and I've been one-shotted at long distance by assault rifles and even SMGs more times than I can count, sometimes against guys I've been putting lead into without getting any sort of hitbox indication) even in the absence of any obvious signs of lag; the spawning system might even be dumber than Blops's; the map designs have done nothing to impress; the gamplay modes are ... not imaginative and don't add anything new, which I was expecting; and it's ugly. Right now, this was a waste of money.

Ohh! I had another nice burst of family-based umbrage at the digs taken at various 'pillar' American commodity/economic platforms during the single player campaign. I actually *bristled* at the negative commentary on General Motors (the Moose's family has a long line of GM employees in its ranks) failing to adapt to updated expectations for sustainable fuel use/conservation. 'But.. what about the Volt!' I thought. 'Too little, too late', I wouldn't be surprised to read in a future Homefront newspaper.

I'm pretty happy that they had the gall/stones/licensing/marketing/whatever to address recent events/speculative economics (pseudo-oxymoron I know, but still)/real-life companies into their game. It's giving some of the tragedies enough back-lighting to really make me want to see how this thing will pan out.

DSGamer wrote:
Thirteenth wrote:

Wow. The single player is short. Three to four hours, maybe?

Is that the time you played it in? I was assuming those 5 hour numbers were like extreme minimums. 3 to 4 is insane.

Maybe I was being unfair. It felt like 3 to 4 hours, but 5 sounds fair. Still, it's not a lengthy affair, and I felt it could be a little meatier.

Another issue is that this game seems to demand a lot from my PC. I was turning everything to the lowest setting and only got 30 fps tops. It's making multiplayer less enjoyable than it should.

CptGlanton wrote:

MP will need to improve a great deal--with the eventual server/patch upgrades to deal with the connection issues and lag--for me to keep this one. The gunplay is horribly inconsistent (I've gotten headshots on people I shot in the legs, and I've been one-shotted at long distance by assault rifles and even SMGs more times than I can count, sometimes against guys I've been putting lead into without getting any sort of hitbox indication) even in the absence of any obvious signs of lag; the spawning system might even be dumber than Blops's; the map designs have done nothing to impress; the gamplay modes are ... not imaginative and don't add anything new, which I was expecting; and it's ugly. Right now, this was a waste of money.

Sounds like BLOPS, but in reverse on the quality of the MP.

Lets make a rapid fire, no sway sniper rifle that one shot kills with any hit above the crotch. Ooh and lets make it available right from the get go. Yea that's balanced for mouselook.

I had to actually stop playing as a sniper, it was so god damned easy that I felt bad. This game is broken on every single fundamental level, I've now played enough to hit lvl 10 and I don't think I can take anymore of this crap. The maps are horribly designed with so much clutter that it's almost impossible *not* to camp. The weapons are hilariously overpowered completely removing any tactical value in weapon choice. Land vehicles are useless thanks to the before mentioned clutter. Air vehicles are just gigantic flying targets thanks to the small maps. The battle points system now allows *everyone* to use the stupid airstrike killstreaks from COD that at least in that game were restricted to those on big kill streaks. It's ugly, there is product placement *everywhere*, the Ground Control matches end way too fast and...

Ugh enough. Whatever. This game sucks.