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As most PS3 users know MAG is on the way in a matter of months, personaly i took a real hard look at this game and was comparing to the xbox 360, and with so many people able to play this game online with squads and chain of command i thought that this is the next biggest exculsive to PS3 since the rise of Killzone 1 and 2 and later on number 3.

When i was comparing MAG to other games a found some mostlikely obviese information, when MW2 was released it took over half the Halo players of the online servor, and MW2 is similar to MAG in the sence of actual reality and arguably similar game still, so when MAG is release next year will it make Halo slumpt even further down?

MW2 has drawn a lot of players in (at least temporarily) because it was a fething new release, and a lot of Halo's players are in it for the multiplayer. It happens with a lot of big titles when they come out.

Halo isn't dying, it's just the hype of a new release in a big franchise showing. Besides, I doubt many people are going to switch to a PS3 just to play MAG.

Halo 3 is a fun game. I play it all the time for custome games and forge. I will never get bored of Halo, because you cant.

XBOX 360 FTW!

Different game consoles, so it's uncomparible

As Drk_Oblitr8r state, its almost uncomparible.

Each is a different genre, and until sales figures are released, its impossible to compare.

What is MAG I have a 360 and havent heard of it. So my guess is that people will not hear about it and will not switch.

"MAG" is the acronym for "Massive Action Game", if I remember right.

It's basically set up to be a Battlefield 2/Frontlines: Fuel of War styled squad shooter exclusive to the PS3, with no real single player campaigns and a lot of customization on the character you choose to play.

The problem is the fanboys of it are touting it as a Halo killer app(despite the platform difference, game material difference, etc)

If anybody will know what kinda game it will be like its gunna be the japanese, mainly because there country is were the ps3 was made, so for a real detail summary of what its gunna do, ask a them

Kanluwen wrote:with no real single player campaigns

So what the hell are you supposed to do then?

The Dreadnote wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:with no real single player campaigns

So what the hell are you supposed to do then?

Kill yourself

Be nice, Cheese

Dreadnote:
I have no clue what you're supposed to do. It's why the game holds no real interest to me, even in my role as a PS3 gamer. It seems like it will behave as Chromehounds did, where you can probably play skirmishes against the AI that will count towards your faction's win totals and the like...
But won't get you, yourself anything interesting in way of reward.

So pretty much:
Skip MAG unless you want a game where you're going to end up being required to act like Warhammer Online's methodology of taking/holding the keeps(remember the first few weeks of WAR? where you had the oceanic players on East Coast servers, they take the keeps with no resistance and farm loot every night? yeah. that's how this seems like it will end up).

MAG is a multi-player online action game which allows up to 256 players in two teams to fight near-future battles.

There are various classes such as heavy weapons, tech, and sniper, which have different upgrade paths.

There is also a leadership system by which your character accumulates experience points and you become first a squad leader (8 men) then platoon leader (32 men) and finally the 'officer in charge'.

With each step in rank you get new special abilities to call in air strikes, issues group orders (attack the bunker) and so on.

I don't know how the lobby and clan system works.

There you go, KK with the save.

It seems like it's going to be far more complex then it should be.

But then again, all clan/lobby styled matchups on consoles end up being that way from what I've seen.

MAG is a MMOFPS I reckon. It can go to 256 players in the same battlefield and follows a hierarchy of grunt to commander. It looks like its set up the same way as battlefield 2/ Section 8/ Quake Wars are. The big thing about it is that it can handle 256 multiplayer( 128 vs 128 ) with little lag. The E3 demo made it look incredibly promising when the team played a full game( all 256 player) and experienced no lag.




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There are 3 groups present and each has a different story/style.

Stage demos on a closed system link are not really the same as playing on the "standard" connections you'll have, halo.

Chances are they'll either do what resistance did to fix lag or do something similar to what resistance did. Playstation's been working on the online play for exclusive titles, if you notice, even halo lags.


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Like I said, sony has had games with larger amounts of online players than halo, gears, battlefield, call of duty, etc have had for consoles. A game of 20 vs 20 or a game of 30 vs 30 have been done without lag over standard connections. If there is lag, the player lagging is instantly killed until his/her connection boots back up and does not interfere with the play of others.


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Those games are not of MAG, but again Resistance.

Uh, you do realize that the idea of "kill them instantly for a small lag spike" is a bit of overkill, right?

But it still does not solve the issue that "major" gameplay techniques like this aspect have been tried before.

Example?

Frontlines: Fuel of War
Even with dedicated servers on all 3 major platforms...it was laggy as all get out, just due to the amount of vehicles, weapon fire, etc.

That could explain why MAG's graphics look a step back(Quake Wars era, rather than Crysis) however.

Wait so a squad leader leads eight real people, not ingame bots or something?

That will be silly.

Apparently it's crap.

sA

Here's a beta video, there is some lag(OMG! LAG IN A BETA?)



The kill you over lag doesn't count as a kill/death in the game. The player's avatar basically falls over dead until they can get back up to speed in which case their avatar pops right back up. It can be confusing when you're aiming at them and they fall for no reason, but its very effective.

I have had the good fortune of access to the MAG Beta, and I encountered no lag...just mediocre FPS gameplay.

As for the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Beta, better graphics, yet more mediocre FPS gameplay!

I don't know, it's the same as when people play WoW, it looks like garbage but people like the gameplay.

The command thing allows you to call in airstrikes and better support options. You can tell people what to attack, but I am not sure if you have to really listen to them if its an incredibly stupid order.

Lord-Loss wrote:Wait so a squad leader leads eight real people, not ingame bots or something?

That will be silly.

Yep. You're playing with real people, not bots, for the most part.

It's possible they have bots as "filler" slots until real players join but I doubt it.

Which means you're relying on other human beings actually acknowledging they don't know jack and following directions.



That'll happen!

And yes, halo. I get it. I played in the beta. It was not impressive. Tribes 2 did a far better job, as have any other number of "massive" shooters.

The only thing that has changed is the number of players involved, not the actual gameplay methods.

Personally I enjoy this type of gameplay. I loved battlefield 2 more than call of duty because there was more things that I could do. I could fly helicopters, pilot small boats, swim, any number of things to try and kill, take flags, etc.

Call of duty is a major step down from this IMHO, and this game seems to want to go the way of Battlefield 2, not a run of the mill FPS. Tribes 2 was a good game as was quake, but those were the finished products. Chances are tribes blowed balls in the beta and they then stepped it up to make it the game you know and love. Just remember that when you play beta your playing crap so it can be made into gold.

No, when you're playing a beta it means you damned well better be playing something passably close to a finished project or they better be altering their release schedules.

If you were playing an Alpha or pre-Beta, maybe. But I digress.

Everything they've shown since the beta has not been a "step up". It has been the same run of the mill videos/screenshots that they've been showing, and that the Sony fanboys have been shouting from the rooftops as the saviors of the console FPS and the Halo killer apps.

And really. Comparing Call of Duty to this? That's reaching between "genres", quite simply. Your Battlefield 2 comparison is okay. But honestly:
Play Frontlines. That is what MAG is aspiring to be. All-out war with all the trim.

It does not work well when you have to actually deal with random players.

I agree to a point Halonachos, I've always been aversed to 'twitch-FPS' like Unreal or Quake Arena, and I've always liked more team-based games (TF2 FTMFW).

However, I do like the Modern Warfare games online alot, particularly the Hardcore and S&D matches. The MAG Beta is nowhere near as tactical as you'd like to be (sometimes it just degenerates into walls of bullets with some Fether screaming orders at you over the top of that, never good)

And the Bad Company 2 Beta is fun, but sweet merciful Emperor, you have never been truly annoyed at a Spawn Camper until you have experienced the Spawn Camper in the abrahms tank. lol. I've always found that the Battlefield games, whilst fun, have always had less impact than the MW games, they feel quite sludgey and soft by comparison.

That's what I love about battlefield. You don't know life until you jump out of a helicopter, onto the roof of a mosque, kill the two guys on top, and throw C4 on the door in order to cap a point. Its moments like that that I love. Also, only in battlefield 2 can you kill all 8 members of the opposing team with 1 sniper shot.

@Kanluwen.
I have no idea whos been calling it the "saviour of the console FPS", or saying that its a halo killer. Halo's been killing itself for awhile now. I see MAG as battlefield 2 on steroids with everyone invited. Now they just need some helicopters.



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I haven't tried the bad company 2 demo yet, but I hope you can move just a tad bit faster. I loved how things would explode for fun in Bad Company and the multiplayer was fun just cratering the ground with artillery.

Kanluwen wrote:It seems like it will behave as Chromehounds did, where you can probably play skirmishes against the AI that will count towards your faction's win totals and the like...
But won't get you, yourself anything interesting in way of reward.

Ugh. I despised Chromehounds. A game that gives me a subpar experience because I can't/won't go online is worthless to me.

halonachos wrote:That's what I love about battlefield. You don't know life until you jump out of a helicopter, onto the roof of a mosque, kill the two guys on top, and throw C4 on the door in order to cap a point. Its moments like that that I love. Also, only in battlefield 2 can you kill all 8 members of the opposing team with 1 sniper shot.

@Kanluwen.
I have no idea whos been calling it the "saviour of the console FPS", or saying that its a halo killer. Halo's been killing itself for awhile now. I see MAG as battlefield 2 on steroids with everyone invited. Now they just need some helicopters.



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I haven't tried the bad company 2 demo yet, but I hope you can move just a tad bit faster. I loved how things would explode for fun in Bad Company and the multiplayer was fun just cratering the ground with artillery.

...
"You have no idea who's been calling it a halo killer"?
Title of thread meet Halonachos.

And wow. I can't say I'm surprised from the fact that, like most BF2 players, jumping out of a perfectly serviceable vehicle or turning it into a jihad jeep equivalent is considered "tactics", as is laying C4 everywhere.

I've only seen video of MAG but I think it looks fine. What I saw did not look like pre-rendered footage. It looked like it was recorded from people playing the game.

I'm not a huge fan of attempted photo-realism in videogames. I don't think it ever really works. I prefer games with a more stylised character artwork like Team Fortress 2 or the Final Fantasy series.

There are three issues to lag in online games.

1. Basic latency in the network. This is never going to go away because of the speed of light. It is made worse by the way the Internet works to send packets, but it can be helped by tricks to try and lock all players to the same timebase.

2. The amount of data which has to be sent between players and/or to the server and back. The more data, the more chance of dropped and slow packets.

3. The speed of the player's machine to interpret the data, display it, and interpret the player's reactions back into an outgoing packet.

Obviously the focus of MAG is on really big battles, so they have limited the amount of graphics displaying the console has to do in order to minimise problem 3.

As for the command system, obviously the squad leader cannot compel obedience from his subordinates. His value will partly come through control of the air-strikes etc.

However, the larger the battle, the better one side will do if its players coordinate properly.

Everyone who has played TF2 on PS3 knows how major a difference it makes to have only two or three players on a side coordinating with headsets. You can just rip apart the opposition.

I don't know what the MAG maps look like. If they are big and offer many routes, then tactics like flanking, ambushes and local counterattacks will be very important and will be more easily organised by the commander having a high level view of things.