f13.net forums - End of Nations (MMORTS)

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
April 23, 2024, 11:21:40 AM

we're back, baby

Well, this game is still a ways off (a year?), but it intrigues me, and since we haven't much new to talk about lately, I figured I'd start a thread.

This is an attempt at an MMORTS. The player is a commander, and it looks like you get an HQ (instanced maybe?). From it, you can deploy units into the world and control them in ongoing conflicts with lots of other players (PvE and PvP from what they say). Apparently there are classes and levels in terms of the commander type you are and what types of abilities you get.

There are 3 videos here:

http://www.endofnations.com/en/site-media/videos.php

The bad news: Petroglyph is developing it (Star Wars: Empire at War, Universe at War: Earth Assault) which we not exactly stellar. Still, I think its worth keeping an eye on just because it seems different from other MMOs pretty significantly (although some of the talk about bosses and stuff in the videos has me a little nervous).

Info from their overview page in the spoiler:

I am interested in a "I hope they have a demo" level.

Quote from: Malakili on April 27, 2010, 12:16:48 PM

I think rvr will be the heart of it - will the game develop an Eve style rvr of empires and years-long grudges or a Warhammer style style rvr of "shit, my faction is losing, better server transfer"?

Taking on the Order of Nations I would guess is simply pve to grab gear to kick the other faction(s) in.

Forum etiquette questions: why put game mechanics in spoiler tags? Are there really people who prefer not to know anything about a game before they buy it and if so do they read these boards?
Next, if I quote and talk about mechanics that are in spoiler tags should my posts be in spoiler tags too?

People usually put longer posts in spoiler tags. That doesn't seem long enough to warrant it though.

So it's not actually spoiler in the usual sense, e.g. telling the end of an Agatha Christie story or something?

Quote from: Mrbloodworth on April 27, 2010, 12:35:40 PM

I am interested in a "I hope they have a demo" level.

I'm interested in an I hope they have a demo and you try it first to tell me if it's good kind of way.

Quote from: Stabs on April 27, 2010, 05:43:07 PM

So it's not actually spoiler in the usual sense, e.g. telling the end of an Agatha Christie story or something?

Yeah, I did it for length reasons. It wasn't exceptionally long, but I judged it to be long enough. In terms of forum etiquette though its not strictly speaking necessary, just something some of us do for long things, "how long is too long" isn't really well defined.

In any event, back to the game itself:

I'm hoping that the faction PvP stuff plays a big role as well. A glorified co-op RTS with raid bosses isn't all that interesting to me, but an on going battlefield(s) that I can deploy my units onto to fight over territory and resources and so forth sounds quite good.

Such cynicism. I really like Universe at War, and now that C&C has gone to shit it's the only new-ish game with that classic Westwood RTS feel. I await this eagerly.

A preview from game informer. Actually sounds pretty solid, I especially liked the mention of "persistent PvP objectives"

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/06/17/end-of-nations-might-pull-off-mmorts.aspx (or click spoiler)

This sounds like some fun.

Quote from: Mrbloodworth on June 28, 2010, 01:32:18 PM

End of Nations E3 2010 Trailer Thumbs up!

Unfortunately most of that footage is a from a PvE instance. If it was some clan assaulting another clans base or something, we'd be looking at possibly the coolest thing in the history of the world, when its just 5 guys taking their armies and playing a co-op RTS level, well...meh.

Don't get me wrong, the game isn't in the crapper yet, but a lot of what they've been saying leads me to believe the game is getting closer to being a very standard MMORPG where you just control a group of units instead of a single avatar. (Instances, loot drops, your base basically just being a graphical representation of a talent tree, etc).

You got all of that by that trailer?

Quote

When I attended the unveiling of End of Nations back in April, Petroglyph and Trion weren't keen on letting us get behind the controls of the game quite yet. That changed this past week at E3 though, as I sat down at the keyboard for a guided tour of the one of the game's many group instances at the Trion booth. End of Nations is an ambitious title to say the least. Promising to be the industry's first true MMORTS/RPG hybrid, Petroglyph has a heavy load to carry through development and to release in 2011. Keep in mind that I am absolutely terrible at RTS games. So much so that I usually avoid the genre unless I'm using cheat codes in single-player mode. I'm that bad. And here I find myself after the show calling EoN one of my top surprises, and I can't wait to see what else Petroglyph has up its sleeve.
advertisement

The demo began with the War Room UI, basically your overview of the entire world (which is actually our world, go figure) and what's going on throughout. The UI is still a work in progress, but it's here that you'll see a running ticker of what your friends, guild members, and enemies are up to in the world. It's also where you'll access your HQ (think housing with an RTS military theme) and keep an eye on who has control of what parts of the world. It's like a blend of CNN and Facebook and even at an early stage it looks fantastic.

The game world is split up by zones that you'll access from the War Room by clicking and selecting "deploy". There are massive open zones that serve as traditional "adventure" areas you might be familiar with in a traditional MMO. These house dozens of players at a time, have quest and trading hubs, as well as public quest objectives. But for the demo we were shown around one of the games group instances (think dungeon) built for a four-player team. It was just me, myself, and I in the instance so I had the luxury of nigh invincibility but rest-assured that it will be clear from both the UI and perhaps just trial and error that the place is designed with groups in mind. Had I been in there alone and without buffs I would have died a swift death.

After choosing my load-out on the Tank Commander I was playing, I selected the instance from the War Room map and quickly loaded into the game. EoN is still in the alpha stages but everything seems to be running smoothly and at a high frame rate even with dozens of units on the screen and explosions going off all around me. It's a pretty game to be sure, with a real post-WWIII feel as there doesn't seem to be a single place untouched by the fight against the Order of Nations (the game's tyrannical NPC overlords). Houses are in ruin, parks are littered with shell casings, and massive Order of Nations structures loom over the green and charred fields of the play area.

The instance began with me safe among the bunkers of my rebel base as hoards of NPC controlled allies filed out to the ongoing fight. It's not like a normal MMORPG dungeon where you enter and it's quiet until you delve deeper into the location. You're basically entering the fight as its in full throttle with the aim to help the rebels overthrow and defeat the Order in that particular area. Anyone who's ever played an RTS will be right at home with the controls of EoN. You can click individual units, click and drag to highlight multiples, and right-clicking will tell your selected units to move to a specific area. Camera control is handles both with WASD and the arrow keys for panning, and the middle mouse button to zoom and swivel as needed.

I had a host of abilities and consumables lines up on the hotbar, as well as a secondary hotbar on the right where I could monitor and select individual units from my load-out. I was told that when it comes to load-out, different units require different amounts of points and that each zone (whether open or instanced) has a limit to how many points you can use thereby keeping higher level players in line with the lower level players for each zone. You might, for instance, be a high level player with an awesome unit that's worth 100 points, but in the lower level zones if you want to bring that unit it might be all you're allowed to bring. It's all about keeping things on a level playing field for both PvE and the PvP zones. This is EoN's way of making sure higher level players delving into lower level zones won't have an immediate advantage over the appropriately leveled players there.

I fought my way past the Order's defenses using my tanks as "tanks", my strike vehicles as swiftly moving in and out damage dealers, and my artillery from afar to take out things like turrets and short-ranged units. Eventually I made my way to the Order's massive base wall. Along the way I stopped at different control points which serve as resurrection points in case of your defeat. The enemy will try to take back these points as you move along through the level, so it makes sense to try and keep an eye on the closest control point as you move through the place so as to not have to fight your way back to where you last were. Because this is an ongoing battle, the enemies don't stay dead and new units are churned out by the enemy as you move along. Luckily it seemed that there were plenty of these control points throughout the level and maintaining control didn't seem like too much of a chore.

The walls of the Order base were guarded by large turrets, which by moving close enough to the player can hack and take control. As I turned the Order's defenses against themselves I moved my attention to the large gun in the middle of the front wall. When I say large, I mean it... the shells of the thing were as big as my tanks. And as the shells were loaded into the weapon, occasionally its shields would open, providing me an opportunity to strike and destroy the thing. After quite a bit of back and forth with the Order's ground units and some running and recharging of my own I was able to destroy the gun and bring down the wall in dramatic fashion. I wanted to go through and wipe out the remaining Order units inside, but it's here where I was stopped by the producer and told I'd have to wait a bit longer to see what's behind the walls.

The whole fight took less than fifteen minutes, I called in several airstrikes and napalm dousing, and left elated with the gameplay I'd experienced. Petroglyph is filled with people whose entire career has been made on RTS games and it shows. The real key to the game's success will be whether or not it can seamlessly blend the RTS with the MMO. The instance I played was not unlike a co-op mission from any other RTS, so I'm curious to see how the title's more open zones where dozens of players commune will play out. I'm also anxious to find out just how class progression works outside of collecting and building new units for your load-out. Still, the team has the gameplay mechanics down. If it can pull off the persistent world part, Petroglyph could easily come through on the promise of an MMORTS that MMO gamers have been longing for.

Linky.

Quote from: Draegan on June 29, 2010, 06:20:13 AM

You got all of that by that trailer?

No, I got all that by all the other videos they have released, and I just recognized a lot of the footage.

I think a lot of it was in this video http://forums.endofnations.com/showthread.php?202-Video-Michael-Legg

Note: Not all of it is bad by any means, for instance I think the world map sounds absolutely awesome.

The video linked above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9hOETVX1M4

EDIT: Wow, 34 armies/players per map at least.

Quote from: Mrbloodworth on June 29, 2010, 06:51:20 AM

The video linked above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9hOETVX1M4

EDIT: Wow, 34 armies/players per map at least.

Ooops, sorry I thought I linked the video itself. Anyway, yeah, the game does have a lot of things I'm excited about, but when he says stuff you can do "WoW runs where you kill big bosses" it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. I did start a thread on the forums about the relationship of PvE and PvP content though and while the devs didn't say anything useful they did at least give a token "We just want to say we are reading this thread" response.

1.an mmorts won't work if your locked to one world.
2.not having your own sovereign territory in a strategy game means you have shit to bargin with.
3. thousands of mercenary squardrons is not exiting
4. persistence, the only real strength of this genre will amount to "do you have land?" no "life sucks for you". with the vast majority of the playerbase not being land owning.

Quote from: me

I'm a little worried this game is teetering on the edge of totally generic

Quote

You don’t really micromanage the units as they don’t have abilities of their own, however, your commander does, and he has a great deal of them.

Its very pretty, and the depth of field used in some of the screen shots give it a nice "miniatures" feel.

Not entirely sure how generic it can be after reading articles like this:

End of Nations is a massively multiplayer RTS with 50-player maps. Seriously

Holy god. I didn't make this connection until watching this video: End of Nations Developer Diary #1

This is effectively being made by Westwood studios. Westwood + Joseph Bostic

Not sure if this was posted yet.

End of Nations Community Play

Truth be told I'm still torn about this one. There is a lot that could be awesome about it, but they have been more or less silent on a lot of mechanics, and I'm really worried all we are going to get is more or less a normal MMORPG but with a few RTS elements thrown in for flavor. That isn't the end of the world by any means, but it has the potential to be so, so much more.

Quote from: Mrbloodworth on August 19, 2010, 09:49:51 AM

GC 10: Ground Assault PvP Trailer HD

This video gives me mixed emotions. A 15v15 RTS battle does sound fun. But the downside is, as I've said before, that it looks like your standard MMO battleground fare, and that doesn't interest me in the grand scheme of things.

Basically it raises the following questions:

1) The premise of this PvP scenario seems to be fighting over the Pacific Northwest. Does this single 15v15 fight determine who controls that particular area on the world map, or is it some sort of combination of this, other battlegrounds, other content, etc. If its the former, how do you plan to deal with the fact that most people don't get a say in who wins control of certain areas, and if its the latter, how do you make each battleground feel like more than a mini game? (and suffer from the same things WAR did in end game territory flipping).

2) Does flipping territories have ramifications? Are there supply lines, troop movement issues, etc that make territory flipping have some sort of bigger scale consequence aside from just changing which area of the map you are fighting over next.

3) Is PvP going to have its own progression/allow you to progress through the levels of the game without having to do PvE content. (which one, incidentally, is very interesting to me because I don't care about PvE in this game at all).

I guess the issue is I'm not really seeing anything that makes me think this is going to be an standard MMORPG with all the standard MMORPG problems, just you control a group of units instead of a single avatar. I'm continuing to harp on that point becuase I think ultimately its the single most important question about this game that hasn't been answered yet that I can tell. I've tried bringing it up on their forums only to be met with vague "oh yeah, it'll be good if you like RTS" answers.

Yeah, I have been keeping my ear open for more "high level" info (maps and control stuff), still sounds quite cool to me.

Quote

PLAYER VERSUS ENVIRONMENT: ITEMS AND LOOT

As players lead their forces through the epic campaign in End of Nations, they will assault the Order of Nations’ most vital and well-defended operations. To meet every new challenge, commanders will not only gain new powers and abilities, but will collect rewards and loot for completing missions, defeating powerful foes, and wisely managing their factories. Every item collected or manufactured brings commanders one step closer to winning the war against tyranny.

Players acquire new items as rewards for completing missions, through manufacturing at their headquarters, and from looting destroyed enemy units and structures. Rewards can include specialized ammunition, raw materials for crafting, enhanced versions of helpful items such as vehicle repair kits and consumable items that provide a brief advantage in combat, such as smoke grenades.

Bleeding-Edge Armaments

Most importantly, Commanders can stock their arsenal with new units. Each vehicle you build or earn boasts unique advantages, statistics, and special abilities. Owning a wide variety of units allows you to tailor your force to every map and mission objective. While there is no perfect army for every battle, certain units excel in particular situations. Savvy commanders will collect as many units as possible, and will never be caught unprepared.

End of Nations uses a point-based load out system, where every unit is worth a certain number of points, and every map has a limit on the points a commander can spend when deploying a force. Units of exceptional quality (like many of those that a player earns or manufactures) will be more powerful than regular units of the same point value. So a player who collects rare and impressive units will field a more effective force for the same cost as a player who does not.

A Stunning Offense

The EMP Artillery is one example of a unit with an advantage a player may need for certain situations. EMP rounds stun units within a radius of impact, useful whenever an enemy needs to be pinned down or when multiple enemy units are in a tight formation. Once the enemy is stunned, a commander can use an air strike or other area-of-effect damage to eradicate the helpless foe.

While a commander might arm normal artillery with EMP rounds, specialized EMP artillery never run out of this ammo, and can keep enemies constantly stunned. The consumables a player collects are important and useful, but only units can be reliably incorporated into sound strategies and tactics. Rare units such as EMP artillery are meant to synergize with the other units in a commander’s arsenal, and the more rare units you collect, the more you can combine their advantages to create highly specialized task-forces.

Endless Possibilities

For instance, one Artillery Commander might own an EMP Artillery unit, a Napalm Artillery, and a Super-Heavy Tank. The Napalm Artillery can cause its targeted area to burn, dealing more and more damage as enemies remain in the fire, so the player orders it to bombard a choke point. The Super-Heavy Tank’s advanced armor allows it to survive rounding up the enemy and luring them into this kill zone, where they are stunned by the EMP artillery. As the helpless enemy broils in napalm, the player uses a powerful repair kit—another mission reward—to get the Super-Heavy Tank back to full health.

This is just one of the strategies available when Commanders tackle the campaign in End of Nations. Every new unit and every powerful item presents a wealth of new options and strategic opportunities. The player who collects a wide array of specialized units will never be at a loss when devising new and satisfying ways to crush enemies and seize objectives.

Did we do this yet?

Hands-On: End of Nations

Some new info on classes up in their website, if anyone is following this thing:

http://www.endofnations.com/en/game/pve/classes.php

I liked it, I suspect the bulk of the tactics come from the teamwork with others.

Quote from: Mrbloodworth on October 09, 2010, 05:08:56 PM

teamwork with others.

It seems to me like the game is going to be feast or famine based on how well this plays out. Assuming it looks good enough to buy come launch, we'll have to get a group together to play, because I don't want to be left with randoms all the time. The gameplay looks really really slow, which was a bit concerning, but if there is enough depth from the teamplay, it could pan out well.

Quote

The concept sounds ridiculous. How do you make a real-time strategy game into an MMO? Trion and developer Petroglyph think they have the answers.

Shattered Galaxy is like 10 years old now.

Game Informer...yeah...

Also Shattered Galaxy was great fun.