Theo_S

Due to some web differences between the Europe and US teams, players who signed up for the European beta received a confirmation email. Players signing up from North America did not. Sorry about the confusion - but you should all be signed up. I'll see if our community team can clarify this a bit.

Thanks Apex, I appreciate that. I'll try to pop in here now and then to post on a few topics, and a little later (once they can come up for air from shipping the beta) will be joined by some of the other developers for more specific topics. But for now, all of us reading are these forums and others frequently. The really interesting conversations between dev & the community will start in earnest once we're in live beta My own take is that, while its healthy for developers and the community to, you know, talk to each other - the real result both sides will be looking for is a better game and service that results from it.

Hey all, First off I just want to say "thanks". I take the issues you guys are airing to heart, even the really critical ones, and we're humble enough to realize the onus is on us to prove - and not on the community to simply accept - that the game mechanics in conjunction with level design create a tactical, teamplay-oriented game rather than a shoot 'em up. I won't try and convince anyone otherwise at this point. But will say that, as the beta opens up and people have actually played the game, I'll be listening closely to hear if people still have these same fundamental concerns. I'm not expecting we'll get it perfectly right on the first try, but the whole idea of an online game is that it can evolve with the community's feedback. What I would like to reflect on, however, is more generally how game mechanics interplay with level design, with each other, and with a hundred other things to culminate in the final flow & feel of a game. In other words, whether a level is somewhat linear or whether it's an open spaghetti-web design by itself doesn't mean much. In both cases, you could have gameplay that is either very tactical or very arcade-like. The same is true for whether or not gameplay is inherently dynamic or whether almost every game feels repetitive in flow. What I'm getting at it is very rarely possible to make deterministic decisions about gameplay, flow, and feel from any kind of Recipe-approach to game mechanics. E.g. "I want variety in my game. So, I'll make my maps open. Check & done." I wish it was true, because our lives as developers would be a hell of a lot simpler But frankly - development is a highly iterative process. You try, you fail, and you try again until you get it right. The most subtle adjustment to any game mechanic (let's say running speed) will dramatically, and completely change the feel of a game. What we zoomed in on with GRO is finding a set of mix of all these mechanics and other choices that ultimately achieve a few things we considered core to the franchise: 1) rewarding thinking before acting. 2) rewarding tactical play, 3) an emphasis on the value of Intel, 4) getting away from a run 'n gun style action shooter (of which we think there enough out there already), and 5) having a dynamic game (the person posting about meta-gaming is exactly right). Not everyone will like every choice of mechanic, but I hope you guys will come around on some of the specific ones after you play. But if not, we’ll be listening. Thanks, -- Theo

Sounds like its would only be a p2p connection and not dedicated servers. If that's the case, instant fail. GRO is based on a Client-Dedicated Server model. Maybe I can clarify the 4v4 vs 8v8 comment a bit. A well-designed matchmaking system will create the best possible combination of: search time for game, latency to server, team balance, reasonable skill range of players, and number of players in the game. When players populations are high (e.g. during peak hours) matchmaking can be very picky about each of these variables and create near-optimal matches very quickly. However, the system needs to be able self adjust itself for non-peak periods. If at 7am in the morning EST on a weekday, there are only a tiny group of players online - you generally want to match them together regardless rather than having everyone sitting around indefinitely waiting for a match to start. 4v4 just represents the baseline, after widening of search variables for a match to start. Think of it (sort of) as "can I make an 8v8 with the players online now?" nope... "a 7v7?" nope.... etc. -- Theo