After some extensive playing the last week, I started to jot down some of my comments in a text file, which today began to take form in a more "official" document (as in something I may send to Guerilla and see if they have anything to say about it).
Anyway, it's quite long but I may just as well post it here to see which, if any, of my suggestions are the consensus here and which are just bad ideas...
Here's an easier-to-the-eye PDF document
Suggested Improvements for Killzone 2: Warzone
First, Id like to thank Guerilla Games for a brillant game. I absolutely love the single player campaign, and the multiplayer is quite amazing when you find a good game. Unfortunately, a couple of problems with the balancing and the lobby system makes those
good games very hard to find, and the
not-so-good games can get quite ugly indeed.
That is a damn shame. Here are my suggestions on how to make Killzone 2 the quintessential tactical multiplayer shooter.
Battle Units
The issue: It's near impossible to engage in casual play with your friends.
Solution: Some sort of party system is needed! To keep the militaristic tone of the Killzone universe Im using the term Battle Unit instead of party. This isnt a party, its war! The crucial feature here is to be able to establish a list of 2-16 friends from the main Warzone menu. This is done via a Battle Unit sub menu with the options to create a new unit or join a friend. If the player creates a new unit he or she is appointed the leader and is in control over finding and creating games. While in a unit, a new tab called Battle Unit will be available in all screens from which actions and settings related to the unit is accessed. Each player can invite more friends to the unit, and the leader can kick any player as well as passing the leadership to someone else. The leader can also access a preferred faction setting which is used during faction balancing. At all times during menu screens, and if possible also during map loading, you can communicate through an open voice chat.
When searching for games, only those with enough open slots for the entire unit to fit will show up.
When entering a game, a couple of issues arise. The most obvious one being that if the game is currently in progress there will possibly not be enough slots on the same faction for the whole unit, or if auto factioning is enabled the whole unit cannot enter without ruining the balance. In those cases the unit will have to split up for the duration of that game. Evenly distributed squads for unit members will be created automatically (for example, if six players are on the same faction there will be two squads with three players in each). All unit members in the same faction have an open voice chat channel. For obvious reasons chatting between factions is not enabled.
At the end of the game, the open channel works as usual. A mute function here would be a nice touch, though!
At the start of a new game getting all unit members on the same faction is prioritized. If theres roughly the double amount of players or more in the game this wont be a problem; the whole unit is automatically put in the preferred faction and squads are created automatically. If the unit constitutes the majority of the players it will have to split up, according to the same rules as when entering an active game. If enough additional players drop in during the pre-game phase the unit will automatically be united again, and a couple of solo players will be shuffled to the other side.
The faction selection step is never displayed. The advantage is that faction slots quickly get allotted for the whole unit, which in turn will make the auto factioning for solo players more even.
If the leader quits the game he or she gets the choice of taking the whole unit with him, or appointing a new leader and quit by himself. If any other unit member quits the game he or she also leaves the unit.
Game Info & Filtering
The issue: Right now you constantly find yourself in games with the most crazy settings, because theres no way of telling what youre getting into until youve joined the game and loaded up the map.
Solution: Offer more search options, but more crucially you need to display match info in the search results screen. This can be accomplished by splitting the view in two parts, with the game list to the left and a window with the essential match info to the right. This info includes current map and which maps are in rotation, enabled game modes (with timers) and enabled classes.
Spawning
The issue: The objective based, supposedly tactical, game modes often turn into a chaotic massacre of random close quarters combat as both teams throw one or two spawn grenades right in the objective area.
Solution: I have two suggestions that I believe will make the tactical modes much more satisfying. The first is to disable spawn points near the objective areas, either by disabling the item altogether when in the area (in the same manner as air drones are disabled indoors) or by making the grenade a dud if thrown inside the area. The latter would create a risk/reward mechanic, as a thrown dud would still start a counter until another grenade can be thrown.
Preferrably, though, the spawn points would work more akin to the engineers turret. To create a spawn point the tactician needs to stay still for approximately 5 seconds holding the left button. The direction it faces should be obvious by looking at the object, and colored smoke, however maybe not quite as heavy, should be emitted from it just like the current spawn grenades. Once created it is destructable, but only by standing near it (from any direction) and holding the circle button for 5 seconds to place a charge. This mechanic will reward the tactician for chosing a concealed area for the spawn points; both by not getting him killed while building it and by giving the opposing team a harder time to track it down and destroy it.
The second improvement is to increase the penalty of getting killed by increasing the respawn timer for each death. For example, the first death gives you the usual 8 seconds, the second time you have to wait 16 seconds, then 24 seconds and so on. At the end of each mode the respawn time is reset. A welcome side effect of limited spawning is that medics become much more important.
Assault Class
The issue: The combination of heavy armor and the speed and health boost is way to powerful. Coupled with a rocket launcher has proven to bring out the ugliest and most over powered playing style Ive seen in a long time. The fact that assault is the class most oftenly disabled should prove the point that something is wrong.
Solution: A much decreased default speed would create some much needed risk for the assault class. Also, that combination feels quite natural for a heavy armor soldier. The boosting speed could still be higher than the default soldier, but not as exaggerated as now (lets face it, a running assault with boost looks plain silly from a visual standpoint). A second interesting tweak is turning the boost pill into a double edged sword by letting it fill up your health when standing/walking, but draining health (down to a certain threshold at, say, 20%) while running.
Also, the rocket launcher is problematic. The idea of having such an ammo limited main weapon strikes me as odd, and seems to encourage rapid respawning. Forcing the player to use rocket launchers in iron sight mode will hold back the most obvious fire and forget tactics. Ideally though, the rocket launcher should replace the side-arm or grenades for the assault class, still iron sight only and with a time consuming weapon change animation.
Controls & Aiming
The issue: The aim controls suffer from a large dead zone followed by a very steep response curve, making fine aim adjustments very hard. By response curve I mean the table or equation that defines how the signal from the analogue stick (ranging from 0 to +/- 512 on a PS3 controller IIRC) are translated into actual movements in the game.
Solution: While I totally agree with the design choice to strive for heavy and visceral combat, I dont think the control implementation successfully reach that goal right now. The problem lies not in the slow turning and inertial movement (actually turning speed is very high if you crank up the sensitivity), but in the very fine aim adjustments.
Lets face it: as of now Call of Duty 4 is the gold standard in attaining precision control with a joypad. In part thats due to the higher framerate and the subsequently lower latency of that game, but in large part I believe the response curve and deadzone in Killzone 2 are not optimal. Minimizing the dead zone to make room for a range of finer adjustments seems like the obvious solution to me, and I would love to hear an official word from Guerilla why the analogue controls are designed the way they are now.
General Improvements & Tweaks
Some more ideas and tweaks that will improve the Warzone experience:
Mode Customizations
A no respawning option for all modes except Body Count. The ultimate tactical experience! This is a much sought after option that will allow for slower games with lots of tension. When you die, you stay dead. Until the next round. (See, Im so pumped for such a mode that Im churning out PR-speak without even trying!)
Quick Clan Game
The extensive clan system with tournaments, valor points and charts are all cool ideas, so its a shame that its somewhat of a hassle to engage in clan games. An option for clan members to easily meet up, using the Battle Unit system, and then quickly find or create clan challenges would be very useful.
Better Match Presets
Since many games are created using the presets, some small tweaks to them can lead to more enjoyable games for the majority of players that dont do any tweaking themselves. The basic full-on Warzone should come in 2-3 sizes. For example 32 and 16 players varieties with only the suitable maps included in the rotation. If youve ended up in a 32 player Search & Destroy on the Tharsis Depot map you know what Im talking about!
Field of View
Last but certainly not least! The FOV right now is too limited to be able to properly assess your surroundings (especially indoors), making close quarters combat a game of chance as well as giving a lot of people motion sickness. A FOV approaching the wide setting used in boost mode seems more natural, while narrowing it down to the current setting in zoom/iron sight mode.
