Diva
09-30-2007, 12:57 PM
not sure if this was posted yet but this is the source
http://www.gameriot.com/news/4266/Infinity-Ward-talks-competitive-CoD4-MW/
The competitive Call of Duty 2 community has been through quite a bit of change over the course of the game’s two year existence, however, the past few months, christened with the cancellation of the World Series of Video Games, have left many players longing for something more than what Call of Duty 2 can offer. With the plethora of first person shooter games coming out this fall, including Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Team Fortress 2, players are eagerly awaiting the next game they will embrace and hope tournament organizers pick up for professional competition.
Of all these games, however, one stands above all others: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Many players are skeptical about the game as CoD1 and CoD2 didn’t amount to any competitive significance, but CoD developers, Infinity Ward, are taking huge strides to make CoD4 the best CoD yet, with the most obvious of these the change from the World War II setting to Modern Warfare. Despite winning a plethora of awards at E3 such as Best First Person Shooter (GameTrailers), Best Action/Adventure (Game Critics Awards), and highlighted finally by Best Game (in Show) of E3 2007 (G4 TV), much of the competitive community is still quite reluctant to embrace the newest Infinity Ward title. Sparing no expense we went straight to the developers Infinity Ward themselves to talk one on one with Robert Bowling, the studio Community Manager about the competitive nature of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and what the community can expect come the release on November 5th.
Gameriot: A lot of people are talking about the big focus IW is putting on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s multiplayer aspect, claiming that you are pushing for CoD4 to be a huge competitive eSports title. Is this true that you are pushing for CoD4 to not only be a great multiplayer game, but also a competitive eSports title as well? How important is CoD4’s competitive aspect to the development of the game?
Robert Bowling: It’s very true that we’re pushing to make Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare not only an amazing multiplayer game over all, but to really embrace the competitive community as well in it’s own right with the multiplayer and some new additions that were taken straight from the community feedback and even from community input in Call of Duty 2.
For example, we’ve brought a number of competitive players to the studio to check out the game early to do Kleenex testing, as well as provide us with suggestions on how we can improve or add options specifically for competitive players and communities. Some additions to the game which came from those community summits include the addition of ‘Hardcore Mode,’ which the PC community would relate to more as Realism mode, with increased weapon damage, no HUD, etc. In addition, we’ve added the inclusion of Half-time in objective based game types, which was inspired by some popular competitive mods for Call of Duty 2.
Gameriot: In the listed game modes there are many of the old standard ones such as death match and search and destroy, however, there are two others that haven’t been revealed yet. Could you possibly divulge a little more information about these two new multiplayer gametypes?
Team up with your friends to complete team based objectives in game modes such as Domination.
Robert: There are more than just two new gametypes; we have a large variety of playlists that are going to be available in the final version that we haven’t even hinted about. As you said, we of course have old classics like Team Deathmatch and Search and Destroy, but we also have some newer ones like Domination which most players will be familiar with. However, the rest of the playlists you’ll just have to wait and see. In addition to gametypes, there are also game modes which can be played over-top of the gametypes, for example, you can play all the gametypes or you can play those gametypes in a different gamemode.
So say you want to play standard Team Deathmatch, you also have the possibility to set it up to play Hardcore Team Deathmatch, which is the same gametype only in Hardcore mode. There are a few more surprises like that we have yet to announce and will probably leave as a surprise all the way to launch.
Gameriot: In an early forum post, it was said CoD4 would have anti-cheat out of the box? Can you possibly comment more on the type of anti-cheat or any other information?
Robert: We were pleased to announce a few days ago that EvenBalance will be providing the anti-cheat for CoD4 out of the box. EvenBalance has been at the studio for quite a while now working in-house with the game so that they can have it up, running, and flawless by launch.
We’ve been looking at a lot of innovative ways to discourage hacks and cheats and keep the community as clean as possible when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare launches in addition to the built in anti-cheat support. We’re looking to take a ‘heavy’ approach to people who like to ruin the experience for everyone else with CoD4:MW.
Gameriot: A lot of people are concerned that CoD4 could turn into a more Battlefield type game where there is so much going on at once, making it very unappealing to the competitive audience, how are you addressing this issue?
Robert: I’m not worried about that at all. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a completely different play style than any past, present, or upcoming Battlefield title. Each has its own style and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare still has its Call of Duty style of gameplay.
Players will be able to take advantage of powerful weapons such as this rocket launcher or customize their own server to suit their favorite style of play.
Especially in the PC version of the game, we’ve focused heavily on control and choice, giving the player control and choice in what type of game he wants to play at a given time. It’s not about being purely a competitive game, or purely a casual game, or purely a realism game, it’s about giving the option to be all of them based on what the player is most interested in.
We do this by giving server admins and players control over the game in a big way, allowing them to turn on and off a large number of features. So if you want to set up a match and feel like the multiplayer perks don’t work in your specific tournament, then turn them off.
You’ll have plenty of options and choices when it comes to setting up private games and servers, so I have little worry that players will feel forced to play a style they don’t like. That’s probably one of the biggest things that has come from the community input into Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare with our increased focus on community.
Gameriot: It has already been announced that CoD4 would have a lot more support for modders, allowing them to do more than they have every done with any CoD game. Can you explain some of the features you hope to allow modders to control? In a forum post it was said admins could almost make the game specifically to their own liking in their server, could you possibly explain this a little more?
Robert: We’ve talked to a lot of server admin, modders, and community scripters about what they’d like to see in the game, several have come out to the studio, seen the game, and will be coming back more before launch to provide even more feedback on how we can make the game more accessible. Some of those suggestions we’ve been running with is the concept of an ‘uber-config file’ which as I touched on earlier, will allow server admins and players a lot of control in what they play. So if you’re a competitive gamer you can tailor your server towards that, or if you’re a more casual guy you can not be forced to play with the hardcore players and just play stock. It’s all about choice and control. We’ve worked to really make Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare mod friendly, both from a programming stand point and a user-interface stand-point. We’re going to try and have mod tools available sooner and support for those more robust after launch.
Take advantage of the terrain in the life-like map environments to steer clear of enemy fire, hide under cover, or reign chaos from above.
Gameriot: The new multiplayer feature perks, have been the sort of pride a joy of CoD4 multiplayer, allowing players to practically customize the soldier they are playing. How do you hope to keep the perk system balanced to prevent a combination that outweighs all others?
Robert: There has been an extensive amount of play testing performed on the perks in multiplayer, from daily frag fests here at the studio, to bringing in gamers off the forums in for one-off Kleenex testing of multiplayer, to the public beta we released to get feedback on all of it.
However, the way the perks are set up and chosen in multiplayer really balances it out overall. For example, you can assign three perks to your custom class total so you’re limited to three at a time, which means you have to make a pretty decisive choice when it comes to deciding which perk works best with your style. To balance it even further, the perks are divided into three categories (Perk 1, Perk 2, Perk 3), and you can only take one perk per category. We did this so we could separate some of what we feel are the most powerful perks, making it so you have to give up a powerful perk to take another. For instance, if you want Stopping Power, you’re going to have to give up Juggernaut, this way they all have their pros and cons.
Gameriot: Another big issue many people have with CoD4 multiplayer is talk about earning experience. Can you please explain how this experience will work in online play and if and how it will affect competitive play?
Robert: Experience Points plays an essential role to the stock experience of what Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare multiplayer is, especially on the console, but on the PC it plays a bit differently. However, you’re more than welcomed to play the stock version of multiplayer in Ranked servers and level up your rank through gaining experience, but players who don’t want to rank up or who play competitively and need an even playing field for tourneys and matches will have the option to play unranked and essentially set it up as they need.
Players will have the choice to play with custom classes traditional for stock play, or choose to turn off custom classes for competitive play.
For example, you can play with one-off custom class, where everyone has anything they like to their disposal and will pick their custom loadout for that match on instead of saving a profile like normal, or play it where everyone is forced to use the same default classes. Essentially, there will be options for those interested in branching off from the stock game or need it for special needs such as competitive play.
Gameriot: In many people’s eyes for an FPS to be a successful eSport, it has to support spectators through scorebots, but mainly through a TV spectator mode like we have seen with HLTV and SourceTV. Will we be seeing a developer supported spectator client such as HLTV for CoD4 such as CoDTV? If not, how possible is it for an outsider coder to create such a client?
Robert: We’ve been looking into CoDTV very heavily, we had Garetjax out to the studios fairly early in development to check out the game and talk with us about CoDTV and how we could incorporate it into Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It’s something that we’re looking at, something we’ve been seeing what’s the best way to approach it, and something we’re still working on, personally I totally agree that it’s a great resource for competitive play.
Gameriot: A lot of people have criticized Infinity Ward in the past for not listening to the community and not supporting their games very much after the release, usually only releasing a patch or two. Already you have shown great strides in taking a ton of community input; however, will we see an increased developer support with CoD4 after its launch?
Robert: Yes. Period. There’s no straighter way to put it. I feel past criticism of Infinity Ward is unjust, as these guys we’re just busting their balls to put out amazing games and never had someone such as myself who was focused solely on Community Development, Expansion, and Relations. My main goal in my role at Infinity Ward is to ensure that community not only has a major role in the development of the game, but has the proper channels of communications and inside contact to ensure that post-launch this game has the proper support it requires to be the game we all (community + IW) knows it can be and become THE game to be playing.
Gameriot: Personally, where does IW/Activision want to see Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare go as a competitive eSports title, if at all? Do you personally feel with the hype and quality of the game to be released it will succeed as a competitive title?
Robert: It has been our goal since day one to see Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as the best game on every platform we release it on, with lots of love and focus going into the PC version of the game to make sure that we not only accomplished that, but as well as to make it so it was a viable choice to dot he same as a competitive title as well. I have ultimate faith in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as a top competitive title with the multiplayer we’ve crafted. We’ve had a team working solely on multiplayer since the first day of development and had a fully running MP up within three months of the dev cycle which has allows us a huge advantage to just keep building on it throughout the entire development.
http://www.gameriot.com/news/4266/Infinity-Ward-talks-competitive-CoD4-MW/
The competitive Call of Duty 2 community has been through quite a bit of change over the course of the game’s two year existence, however, the past few months, christened with the cancellation of the World Series of Video Games, have left many players longing for something more than what Call of Duty 2 can offer. With the plethora of first person shooter games coming out this fall, including Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Team Fortress 2, players are eagerly awaiting the next game they will embrace and hope tournament organizers pick up for professional competition.
Of all these games, however, one stands above all others: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Many players are skeptical about the game as CoD1 and CoD2 didn’t amount to any competitive significance, but CoD developers, Infinity Ward, are taking huge strides to make CoD4 the best CoD yet, with the most obvious of these the change from the World War II setting to Modern Warfare. Despite winning a plethora of awards at E3 such as Best First Person Shooter (GameTrailers), Best Action/Adventure (Game Critics Awards), and highlighted finally by Best Game (in Show) of E3 2007 (G4 TV), much of the competitive community is still quite reluctant to embrace the newest Infinity Ward title. Sparing no expense we went straight to the developers Infinity Ward themselves to talk one on one with Robert Bowling, the studio Community Manager about the competitive nature of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and what the community can expect come the release on November 5th.
Gameriot: A lot of people are talking about the big focus IW is putting on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s multiplayer aspect, claiming that you are pushing for CoD4 to be a huge competitive eSports title. Is this true that you are pushing for CoD4 to not only be a great multiplayer game, but also a competitive eSports title as well? How important is CoD4’s competitive aspect to the development of the game?
Robert Bowling: It’s very true that we’re pushing to make Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare not only an amazing multiplayer game over all, but to really embrace the competitive community as well in it’s own right with the multiplayer and some new additions that were taken straight from the community feedback and even from community input in Call of Duty 2.
For example, we’ve brought a number of competitive players to the studio to check out the game early to do Kleenex testing, as well as provide us with suggestions on how we can improve or add options specifically for competitive players and communities. Some additions to the game which came from those community summits include the addition of ‘Hardcore Mode,’ which the PC community would relate to more as Realism mode, with increased weapon damage, no HUD, etc. In addition, we’ve added the inclusion of Half-time in objective based game types, which was inspired by some popular competitive mods for Call of Duty 2.
Gameriot: In the listed game modes there are many of the old standard ones such as death match and search and destroy, however, there are two others that haven’t been revealed yet. Could you possibly divulge a little more information about these two new multiplayer gametypes?
Team up with your friends to complete team based objectives in game modes such as Domination.
Robert: There are more than just two new gametypes; we have a large variety of playlists that are going to be available in the final version that we haven’t even hinted about. As you said, we of course have old classics like Team Deathmatch and Search and Destroy, but we also have some newer ones like Domination which most players will be familiar with. However, the rest of the playlists you’ll just have to wait and see. In addition to gametypes, there are also game modes which can be played over-top of the gametypes, for example, you can play all the gametypes or you can play those gametypes in a different gamemode.
So say you want to play standard Team Deathmatch, you also have the possibility to set it up to play Hardcore Team Deathmatch, which is the same gametype only in Hardcore mode. There are a few more surprises like that we have yet to announce and will probably leave as a surprise all the way to launch.
Gameriot: In an early forum post, it was said CoD4 would have anti-cheat out of the box? Can you possibly comment more on the type of anti-cheat or any other information?
Robert: We were pleased to announce a few days ago that EvenBalance will be providing the anti-cheat for CoD4 out of the box. EvenBalance has been at the studio for quite a while now working in-house with the game so that they can have it up, running, and flawless by launch.
We’ve been looking at a lot of innovative ways to discourage hacks and cheats and keep the community as clean as possible when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare launches in addition to the built in anti-cheat support. We’re looking to take a ‘heavy’ approach to people who like to ruin the experience for everyone else with CoD4:MW.
Gameriot: A lot of people are concerned that CoD4 could turn into a more Battlefield type game where there is so much going on at once, making it very unappealing to the competitive audience, how are you addressing this issue?
Robert: I’m not worried about that at all. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a completely different play style than any past, present, or upcoming Battlefield title. Each has its own style and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare still has its Call of Duty style of gameplay.
Players will be able to take advantage of powerful weapons such as this rocket launcher or customize their own server to suit their favorite style of play.
Especially in the PC version of the game, we’ve focused heavily on control and choice, giving the player control and choice in what type of game he wants to play at a given time. It’s not about being purely a competitive game, or purely a casual game, or purely a realism game, it’s about giving the option to be all of them based on what the player is most interested in.
We do this by giving server admins and players control over the game in a big way, allowing them to turn on and off a large number of features. So if you want to set up a match and feel like the multiplayer perks don’t work in your specific tournament, then turn them off.
You’ll have plenty of options and choices when it comes to setting up private games and servers, so I have little worry that players will feel forced to play a style they don’t like. That’s probably one of the biggest things that has come from the community input into Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare with our increased focus on community.
Gameriot: It has already been announced that CoD4 would have a lot more support for modders, allowing them to do more than they have every done with any CoD game. Can you explain some of the features you hope to allow modders to control? In a forum post it was said admins could almost make the game specifically to their own liking in their server, could you possibly explain this a little more?
Robert: We’ve talked to a lot of server admin, modders, and community scripters about what they’d like to see in the game, several have come out to the studio, seen the game, and will be coming back more before launch to provide even more feedback on how we can make the game more accessible. Some of those suggestions we’ve been running with is the concept of an ‘uber-config file’ which as I touched on earlier, will allow server admins and players a lot of control in what they play. So if you’re a competitive gamer you can tailor your server towards that, or if you’re a more casual guy you can not be forced to play with the hardcore players and just play stock. It’s all about choice and control. We’ve worked to really make Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare mod friendly, both from a programming stand point and a user-interface stand-point. We’re going to try and have mod tools available sooner and support for those more robust after launch.
Take advantage of the terrain in the life-like map environments to steer clear of enemy fire, hide under cover, or reign chaos from above.
Gameriot: The new multiplayer feature perks, have been the sort of pride a joy of CoD4 multiplayer, allowing players to practically customize the soldier they are playing. How do you hope to keep the perk system balanced to prevent a combination that outweighs all others?
Robert: There has been an extensive amount of play testing performed on the perks in multiplayer, from daily frag fests here at the studio, to bringing in gamers off the forums in for one-off Kleenex testing of multiplayer, to the public beta we released to get feedback on all of it.
However, the way the perks are set up and chosen in multiplayer really balances it out overall. For example, you can assign three perks to your custom class total so you’re limited to three at a time, which means you have to make a pretty decisive choice when it comes to deciding which perk works best with your style. To balance it even further, the perks are divided into three categories (Perk 1, Perk 2, Perk 3), and you can only take one perk per category. We did this so we could separate some of what we feel are the most powerful perks, making it so you have to give up a powerful perk to take another. For instance, if you want Stopping Power, you’re going to have to give up Juggernaut, this way they all have their pros and cons.
Gameriot: Another big issue many people have with CoD4 multiplayer is talk about earning experience. Can you please explain how this experience will work in online play and if and how it will affect competitive play?
Robert: Experience Points plays an essential role to the stock experience of what Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare multiplayer is, especially on the console, but on the PC it plays a bit differently. However, you’re more than welcomed to play the stock version of multiplayer in Ranked servers and level up your rank through gaining experience, but players who don’t want to rank up or who play competitively and need an even playing field for tourneys and matches will have the option to play unranked and essentially set it up as they need.
Players will have the choice to play with custom classes traditional for stock play, or choose to turn off custom classes for competitive play.
For example, you can play with one-off custom class, where everyone has anything they like to their disposal and will pick their custom loadout for that match on instead of saving a profile like normal, or play it where everyone is forced to use the same default classes. Essentially, there will be options for those interested in branching off from the stock game or need it for special needs such as competitive play.
Gameriot: In many people’s eyes for an FPS to be a successful eSport, it has to support spectators through scorebots, but mainly through a TV spectator mode like we have seen with HLTV and SourceTV. Will we be seeing a developer supported spectator client such as HLTV for CoD4 such as CoDTV? If not, how possible is it for an outsider coder to create such a client?
Robert: We’ve been looking into CoDTV very heavily, we had Garetjax out to the studios fairly early in development to check out the game and talk with us about CoDTV and how we could incorporate it into Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It’s something that we’re looking at, something we’ve been seeing what’s the best way to approach it, and something we’re still working on, personally I totally agree that it’s a great resource for competitive play.
Gameriot: A lot of people have criticized Infinity Ward in the past for not listening to the community and not supporting their games very much after the release, usually only releasing a patch or two. Already you have shown great strides in taking a ton of community input; however, will we see an increased developer support with CoD4 after its launch?
Robert: Yes. Period. There’s no straighter way to put it. I feel past criticism of Infinity Ward is unjust, as these guys we’re just busting their balls to put out amazing games and never had someone such as myself who was focused solely on Community Development, Expansion, and Relations. My main goal in my role at Infinity Ward is to ensure that community not only has a major role in the development of the game, but has the proper channels of communications and inside contact to ensure that post-launch this game has the proper support it requires to be the game we all (community + IW) knows it can be and become THE game to be playing.
Gameriot: Personally, where does IW/Activision want to see Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare go as a competitive eSports title, if at all? Do you personally feel with the hype and quality of the game to be released it will succeed as a competitive title?
Robert: It has been our goal since day one to see Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as the best game on every platform we release it on, with lots of love and focus going into the PC version of the game to make sure that we not only accomplished that, but as well as to make it so it was a viable choice to dot he same as a competitive title as well. I have ultimate faith in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as a top competitive title with the multiplayer we’ve crafted. We’ve had a team working solely on multiplayer since the first day of development and had a fully running MP up within three months of the dev cycle which has allows us a huge advantage to just keep building on it throughout the entire development.