Starhawkers on Day One or why not?

[saskbob]

Hey everybody buy this game. It is the best. Really. Not even kidding.
That's my take.

I think the single greatest thing about this game is we can finally have something with not only clan support but private password protected, dedicated servers. And that will be a big deal because the last game at VGEVO/Retroids with this was KZ2 and that was a game that really glued the community together.

With Starhawk we can have a serious clan (Starhawk beta Zeroes clan headed up by Artifact was holding an overall KDR of 3:1) or just have lot's of laughs on a private map screwing around retroids vs retroids. You don't get destroyed anymore as a ground troop, the controls are now in line with the best 3rd person shooters, and I like the advanced hawk flight much better.

I guess my favorite thing is all the ways to play, I can dogfight, infiltrate on foot, build the base at home, lone wolf or squad up.

I'm just interested in who is getting it, and if not, why the heck not ?

[WCG.Podcast]

I'll buy it when it's in the $20 range.

I'm not keen on some of the changes going from Warhawk to Starhawk, like the focus on manual shooting game play mechanics. Magic health regeneration is also not a good idea.

This will be proven over time, in the beta there were a lot of skilled jetpack users would could aim incredibly well, remain out of your aiming range (no help from the simulated inaccuracy of the guns), and fade away to regenerate health as needed. They were a complete menace in the beta and it's my feeling they will completely ruin the retail multiplayer experience unless Lightbox makes changes. They got rid of hover on the aircraft, but replaced it with hovering soldiers with regenrating health which is worse.

The three maps from the beta were very uninspired compared to the variety and level of detail and interactivity in Warhawk. The lack of structures that just exist in the evironment for you to use as cover, or a hidey hole is lacking in Starhawk. The Dust map has an abandoned little ghost town, but it lacks any sort of interaction (you can't hide in buildings) and is just there as window dressing.

I feel that having more pre-placed structures that players could use in addition to the build & battle system would prevent the high level of base camping all throughoiut the beta test. The tactic employed in most games was to buiuld up the home base and just camp. This is worse on Dust where it's just a huge expanse of nothing with beam turrets and those machine gun turrets at eitehr end of the map.

Lightbox cranked up the rift energy collection for doing nothing in the 1.3 build of the beta, and reduced the amount of rift you gain from shooting rift barrels; deincentivizing the forward positioning and jockeying to control rift energy rich areas of the map and encrouaging base camping.

Not having a logical melee attack all through the beta was also a problem. In the first release of the beta, the melee attack was a free kill canned animation from about five feet away. So if you were engaged in a firefight, it was easier to dash in - once close enough press melee and get a free kill. Then they reduced the distance for the melee. Then they dropped the canned animation. Then the melee in the 1.3 build was the opposite problem of the first build, now when I knew an enemy was going to try to knife me and I'd run away my character would get magically sucked back to the enemy so they could perform their canned melee kill.

There are things I do like. Getting rid of the hover mode from Warhawk (the single most abused aspect of that game). attempting to balance the Hawks so that ground troops sort of stand a chance. Build & Battle is neat. A much better scoring system that can allow for a good player on a bad team to be the top player at the end of a game.

Those are the reasons I'll pick it up once it goes on clerance or I can find a used copy in my price range.

[saskbob]

Hmm, I never had a problem with campers as they were free kills to me, I could always make way more rift capping a flag or simply reigning down destruction. Really the torpedo makes camping a non issue for me. just read all the base camper whining about it in the threads.

The jetpacks are way tone downed after 1.3 as well, they are much slowed and with less fuel.

As far as maps, I really like them an the art direction but that is down to personal preference. Scourge actually does have quite a bit of "hides holes " I used to great advantage capping flags.

[smthng]

I'll be getting it, but I'm leaning away from a day-one purchase. I want the Limited Edition, but refuse to buy anything from GameSlop. I'm hoping that the "exclusive" agreement will disappear a week or two after release and I can snag it from Amazon then.

Other than that, I'm loving it. I'm sure I'll suck, but I dig the RTS aspects. I'll probably spend most of my time on base building and defense.

[WCG.Podcast]

Hmm, I never had a problem with campers as they were free kills to me, I could always make way more rift capping a flag or simply reigning down destruction. Really the torpedo makes camping a non issue for me. just read all the base camper whining about it in the threads.

The jetpacks are way tone downed after 1.3 as well, they are much slowed and with less fuel.

As far as maps, I really like them an the art direction but that is down to personal preference. Scourge actually does have quite a bit of "hides holes " I used to great advantage capping flags.

Camping: The Torpedo is great, but the respawn time is hellish and the enemy can really fortify quickly. The problem I was running into is mostly based on camper team mates. Enemy team camps. My team camps. I'm the only schmoe going over there to blow stuff up. It takes a village to raze the enemy base.

Jetpacks are still a menace. Wait until you run into Italyrules, HeyitsDan, or TheEnthusiast with one. Your wheaties will be so peed in it won't be funny. Those guys were highly skilled at the game in the beta.

Maps - I enjoyed the look of the game, granted pre-1.3 a lot of structures were very generic looking. 1.3 Lightbox tweaked the coloration on them to make them more unique. The maps though looked fine, they just didn't match the little alcoves, dumpsters, and hiding spots in Warhawk maps. More generic structures on the map would prevent situations where panicked team mates drop random walls for cover.

I'm sure the game will be much better with a clan and focused players, but with randoms the experience was sorely lacking for me.

I'll be getting it, but I'm leaning away from a day-one purchase. I want the Limited Edition, but refuse to buy anything from GameSlop. I'm hoping that the "exclusive" agreement will disappear a week or two after release and I can snag it from Amazon then.

I wouldn't sweat it. The LE is pretty lame in terms of exclusive content and value. It's nothing but a bunch of digital downloads - the only thing I would like to have is the soundtrack. Maybe the skins, but those will no doubt be microtransactions on PSN.

I'm more interested in a Starhawk art book since Star Wars (and generally awesome) concept artist Iain McCaig worked on designs and world building for Starhawk. Though that may never happen. Still would have been really cool.

[Raonak]

Yeah, ill get it when it comes out. The beta was quite nice.

seems like warhawk but better. i was actually suprised how different it looks, but how similar it feels.

[saskbob]

Jetpacks are still a menace. Wait until you run into Italyrules, HeyitsDan, or TheEnthusiast with one. Your wheaties will be so peed in it won't be funny. Those guys were highly skilled at the game in the beta.

Maps - I enjoyed the look of the game, granted pre-1.3 a lot of structures were very generic looking. 1.3 Lightbox tweaked the coloration on them to make them more unique. The maps though looked fine, they just didn't match the little alcoves, dumpsters, and hiding spots in Warhawk maps. More generic structures on the map would prevent situations where panicked team mates drop random walls for cover.

I'm sure the game will be much better with a clan and focused players, but with randoms the experience was sorely lacking for me.

Oh I've run into italyrules and heyitsdan many times, italyrules is very good but he's a one trick pony and there are counters to him unless he's doing the base rape thing , but heyitsdan has killed me multiple ways, that guy is like the man. But really these guys are not the norm, and I noticed a distinct lack of jetpacks killage post 1.3 because I admit to abusing them especially on space, and they seriously became something that the throttle had to be used much more judiciously. Still a great vehicle but nowhere near as effective.

My goto: is Hawks a2a with a bit of a2g, Razorback run overs, sniper and shotgun. My least used weapon is definitely the default carbine.

I'd change: durability on the tanks, they need to be either cheaper or more armor. You can take one out with 3 mines attached o the nose of a hawk, which is great fun when you are in the hawk of course.

[ChryZ]

I'll be there day one. Well, give and take a couplethree days depending on how quickly Amazon is able to deliver. Why day one? I'm not sure if it will have the same legs as Warhawk, not because it's not as awesome but because the online MP landscape changed. Warhawk came out when there wasn't too many awesome games on PS3, people always came back to Warhawk in between major releases. That said even if the MP crowd drops off after a few months it will be there right after its release. Getting 20-30 hours of MP out of Starhawk would be satisfactory to me, more would be a nice bonus.

[WCG.Podcast]

Oh I've run into italyrules and heyitsdan many times, italyrules is very good but he's a one trick pony and there are counters to him unless he's doing the base rape thing , but heyitsdan has killed me multiple ways, that guy is like the man. But really these guys are not the norm, and I noticed a distinct lack of jetpacks killage post 1.3 because I admit to abusing them especially on space, and they seriously became something that the throttle had to be used much more judiciously. Still a great vehicle but nowhere near as effective.

My goto: is Hawks a2a with a bit of a2g, Razorback run overs, sniper and shotgun. My least used weapon is definitely the default carbine.

I'd change: durability on the tanks, they need to be either cheaper or more armor. You can take one out with 3 mines attached o the nose of a hawk, which is great fun when you are in the hawk of course.

Italyrules is anything but a one trick pony. He was also incredibly adept at the CAF A2G dive bomb swoop, which was every bit as terrible for ground troops as hovering was in Warhawk. I would play on the urgentfury.com server often due to the high skill players who also used their headsets.

Heyitsdan was one of the first players to discover the quick snap weapon glitch. Once that cat was out of the bag the beta was hellish. Lightbox tried to find a way around that in 1.3.

In a way it feels like Lightbox tried to fix the imbalances of Warhawk by removing or completely changing features that were in Warhawk, but introduced a new set of problems with the new features of Starhawk. They should stick with a franchise and refine it with sequels rather than jumping around to different IP's IMO.

The cool down of the Ox Tonka truck pad definitely needs to be changed. It was ridiculously high in beta, IIRC 80 seconds of cooldown. It just turned into a situation where players would spawn a new Ox pad rather than wait for the cooldown and waste one of your team resource slots.

I'll be there day one. Well, give and take a couplethree days depending on how quickly Amazon is able to deliver. Why day one? I'm not sure if it will have the same legs as Warhawk, not because it's not as awesome but because the online MP landscape changed. Warhawk came out when there wasn't too many awesome games on PS3, people always came back to Warhawk in between major releases. That said even if the MP crowd drops off after a few months it will be there right after its release. Getting 20-30 hours of MP out of Starhawk would be satisfactory to me, more would be a nice bonus.

I agree that Starhawk may not have legs because now it's directly targeting the Call of Duty crowd with the new game play mechanics, and that crowd is fickle. Maybe not fickle, so much as easily distracted by the next gun porn game that comes along. Starhawk's lack of real world jingoist gun porn won't hold them.

Feels icky.

[saskbob]

Italyrules is anything but a one trick pony. He was also incredibly adept at the CAF A2G dive bomb swoop, which was every bit as terrible for ground troops as hovering was in Warhawk. I would play on the urgentfury.com server often due to the high skill players who also used their headsets.

I played on urgentfury as well, not exclusively though.

As far as italyrules goes, I don't dispute that he is a very good player but whenever i saw him he was glitching the or perhaps min/maxing the balance of breaking others lock on while he was in the jetpack and then using a combination of snap to aiming and burst fire. I really never saw him doing much else, but didn't see him very much post 1.3. I guess i shouldn't have said he was a one trick pony as that's insulting, but he had no problem utilizing the same tactic in the maps i was in with him. I'm sure I've logged easily 30-50 hours post 1.3 and as many or more prior. I've been fairly active in the official forums as well.

I agree with Chryz though, I think this is better than warhawk for my tastes (and i loved warhawk) but it just is fighting for marketshare for shooters, so my best bet of getting a lot of quality playtime will be as a day one buyer. If it really drops off i can trade it in for $20-30 in a month or two. I know already that there are 5 guys here definitely getting it that are pretty hardcore and in the ZEROES that it will be blast to play with.