Didn't see a thread yet on the closing video and announcement of the newly announced 'MAG: Massive Action Game', a war based FPS with air and ground combat and support for up to 256 players at once.

This is being developed by Zipper Interactive.

edit: Here is the CGI trailer (yeah this won't be out for awhile):
http://www.gamespot.com/video/950933/6194180/mag-official-trailer-1

Thoughts?

ok, guess no one gives a ****.

I just worry about lag...

I reserve judgement until we see actual gameplay.

I missed the later half of the Sony presentation, as I had to go run some errands.

I'm interested in hearing/seeing more, but it sounds like it was a CGI trailer.

I'll wait for more info.

when i heard about Zipper during the presentation and when the guy walked up i thought it was about Socom 4, but was pleasantly surprised to hear a totally new IP.

I still hope Zipper still makes Socom 4 though, Socom confrontation by slant six isn't the real sequal to the Socom franchise.

I'm really looking forward to this.

Other than it having 256 player combat, what else exactly do we know about this game?

The more players, the more fun it is!

Right? Right?

ok, guess no one gives a ****.

What's weird is that I only clicked on this thread because when I came home tonight I got a message from a person not on my buddy list about this game. Never heard of him or the game before :confused:

I'll insert an analogy here though: number of players online can be just like talking about video game resolution...the bigger the number doesn't mean the better the gameplay/visuals. Many more things go into it.

Brandon

Other than it having 256 player combat, what else exactly do we know about this game?
The trailer makes it look like different teams are working to accomplish specific tasks. There's an infantry/spec ops team that plants charges on the gate to blow it open, thereby allowing an armor team to storm into the fortress. Looks like this could be a great combo of Wolfenstein Enemy Territory and Battlefield.

The more players, the more fun it is!

Right? Right?


I've played 60 player Call of Duty 2 on PC, and yes it is more fun.

The more players, the more fun it is!

Right? Right?

Potentially. Ever played in a FPS with 255 other live players in a single battle? No, neither have I or anyone else.

If done right, this would be as close to a coordinated battlefield simulation as we've seen.

We've got a hundred small scale FPS with multiplayer all pretty much doing the same thing, this ups the ante considerably, in theory.

Well for one thing, don't be surprised when this game looks NOTHING like the CGI concept.

256 people on screen at once? Oh man....

I can't watch the trailer yet, but the words "256 player online" and "FPS" in one sentence REALLY intrigue me.

In my head, I'm picturing warhawk with 256 players and slightly bigger maps. That would be SICK as that is my biggest complaint with warhawk - not enough players at once for the map sizes IMO.

Potentially. Ever played in a FPS with 255 other live players in a single battle? No, neither have I or anyone else.

Yes plenty of people have. Look up Planetside. I am happy to see another company taking some of that game's ideas, it was really ahead of its time.

This type of game is VERY doable and considering Zipper is a pretty good, experienced team I am sure it will turn out very well.

MAG definitely has some lofty aspirations.

I really hope this 256 multi-player atmosphere works well, if so think of the carnage, the sheer scale of the battle: infantry, air support, vehicle support...etc...the fun factor would be through the roof! I can't help but wonder though, with 256 players the chances of lag are vastly increased....this title would have to have dedicated servers, no p2p here I'd imagine.

Zipper alluded to the fact that this game has been in development for about two years right, so I guess we'll be getting this sometime in 2010? Pure speculation of course.

Yes plenty of people have. Look up Planetside. I am happy to see another company taking some of that game's ideas, it was really ahead of its time.

This type of game is VERY doable and considering Zipper is a pretty good, experienced team I am sure it will turn out very well.

Oh it's very doable.

WWIIOnline has been doing it for 6-7 years. Problem comes that it can be very laggy, and that technologically it looks 3-4 years behind everything else, as it needs to keep assets free for the computations and netcode it needs to support large maps and groups of players.

Make my word, it will come about, but it won't look anything close to the CGI trailer.

With that said, it's not a bad thing if the focus on gamplay and if they have a good idea on how to reward and encourage group work, vs rambo'ing.

This is going to run into the same issues Planetside did, I think. But, I think it's still one to look out for, ya never know, it could end up being a classic.

am i the only one that thinks this 256 player thing is bogus? my guess is that yes, there will be a "war" with 256 people playing in the same realm, but it will be split into different battlefields, probably with ~64 people per battlefield, and the outcome of the battles may influence other battles, but at no given time will you be able to actually fight 128 people on the other team. i really got this impression after seeing the map they showed in the teaser @ e3

just IMO

It seemed like you might fight in "waves" since they had that bit at the end with air support dropping some guys in. Maybe a part of the team leads the charge while the others watch and strategize where they'd be most useful once they're called in? I dunno; either way, I'm really interested to hear more.

Looks like this could be an awesome game! But....

128 players per team... sooooo... 128 open mics :eek: :eek:

except that its on the ps3, so maybe 20 mics?

either way, I'm really excited about this, and not to worried as I'm sure they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't think it was possible and would run well

I'm sure mics would be only connected to your squad.

128 mics would be too crazy.

Yeah, from what I've seen of the ranking structure, it seems like you'll only be able to speak to people you've been grouped with. Then the officers will only talk directly to the squad leaders, and so on. It's a little early to guess, but I think I saw the makings of an RTS-like overhead view that a couple generals could scheme over.

Probably you can just talk to your 8 man squad, and maybe the squad commanders can hold a button to talk to each other to coordinate their movements, etc?

This is going to run into the same issues Planetside did, I think. But, I think it's still one to look out for, ya never know, it could end up being a classic.
actually the beta for planetside was almost perfect (I was in it). There were easily 256 players at once on a map.

Only when the final release went public did the net code break down. I've been told it was also greatly improved later, but the bad release killed any chance of big popularity.

MAG has potential, but its still too early

Should be fun to see how this pans out.

am i the only one that thinks this 256 player thing is bogus? my guess is that yes, there will be a "war" with 256 people playing in the same realm, but it will be split into different battlefields, probably with ~64 people per battlefield, and the outcome of the battles may influence other battles, but at no given time will you be able to actually fight 128 people on the other team. i really got this impression after seeing the map they showed in the teaser @ e3

just IMO


I'm going to agree. I'm guessing they're going with something like Test Drive Unlimited.

This looks cool, but it all depends on the map and gameplay. The number of players is a distant third.

Take SOCOM for example. SOCOM 2 was fantastic with 16 players because the maps were genius and gameplay fantastic. SOCOM 3 was a virtual bust because the maps were huge for huge-nesses sake and even though most of the gameplay carried forward it failed even though it doubled the number of players to 32.

I really hope this game can live up to how fun Day of Defeat was. that was the only online game I was ever truly addicted to.

This is how I see it unfolding. Your squad of 8 talk to each other. The leader talks to the next leader up and so on. But I don't see people wanting to do what they are told when they just want to go shoot someone.
Part of it reminds me of Chromehounds. You have all these different battles going on but you are only part of one. Then go on to the next. If this turns out to be the case then that is like cheating to say you will have 256:)

First screenshot is out:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3080/2692312381_5ac00f8f69_o.png

Planetside was by SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) so this could be possible. And after talking to one of my pc gamer buds, he loved planetside and he said only down fall for him for the game was cheaters, and glitchers and not lag. So Sony just added SOE to their console side and this may have something to do with their addition to the console side of Sony, SOE mainly dealt with the pc side of gaming for Sony prior to this announcement, and thats why DC Universe Online is coming to the ps3 aswell, and its a MMO.

Also isn't one of complaints about the cell is that it's not good for gaming code but alot better as a server based processor? Wonder how much of a help could the cell be on the server side of this?

Potentially. Ever played in a FPS with 255 other live players in a single battle? No, neither have I or anyone else.

Ever played in FFXI with a PS2 & 1,255 other live players in a single world?

Thanks Martez. Hopefully it's the start of a lot more media to get a better feel for the actual game. I like the whole massive battle theme it's going after however.

This is how I see it unfolding. Your squad of 8 talk to each other. The leader talks to the next leader up and so on. But I don't see people wanting to do what they are told when they just want to go shoot someone.
Part of it reminds me of Chromehounds. You have all these different battles going on but you are only part of one. Then go on to the next. If this turns out to be the case then that is like cheating to say you will have 256:)

we'd do that in battlefield 2:combat. it was more of a league though. that game is very squad based and i find more fun like that. you'll generally get the crap kicked out of you if you are a single player going up against good squads. if everyone is all by themselves, you might do fine though. i really like this concept. i wish BF2 would have been 128 players like it was originally going to be. that was 3 years ago, and we haven't even gotten passed 64 players yet. :(

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/07/22/first-look-at-mag/comment-page-1/#comments

There is where it came from.

I didn't buy bf2, but i played the crap out of the demo level...to be honest the demo never got boring, and i didn't see a need to buy the whole game because just playing the one demo level was so fun!

Anyway, I also liked how BF2 did it...there were certain perks to being in a squad...the game wasn't as chaotic, you could easily talk to the guys around you, you could get resupplied/healed faster, you could ask your squad leader to call in airstrikes/uav's, etc...plus you could respawn near your squad. If they stick to that model with this game hopefully enough people would want to stay in squads, and hopefully do what the squad leader tells them.

To be honest, i would think it would be pretty tough to go out by yourself against 128 enemies. The only way to do it would be to go sneaking around/sniping in camo. Too many people are in the battlefield for you to be alone...if you're just running around by yourself with some kind of close range weapon you'd probably get ripped to shreds.

I was pretty in to PlanetSide for a time. It's a fantastic idea, and was really fun when you could get your squad to cooperate. We used to run double dropship missions on bases that almost always netted us a capture. The problems came when certain sides had heavy number advantages.. and they never could get the balancing act right. There was an advancement system in that game too, but all it really got you was orbital strikes.
If they can do the chain-of-command thing right is this game... like giving generals a map overview, and platoon squad commands, there's a lot of potential here.

I'd like to see how the development of this game will go.

Based on 2nd hand information that I've received, it sounds like this game may take awhile before we start to see any gameplay video. Or we get a product that was rushed to the market.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/07/22/first-look-at-mag/comment-page-1/#comments

There is where it came from.

In the blog he confirms that the game will not be part of the SOCOM franchise. So if they do a name change I guess the popular brand won't be ever be a part of it.

The best way to get a game like this to work is to greatly reduce the awards for kills and greatly increase the awards for completing objectives and winning the game. I really hope deathmatch and team deathmatch aren't even gametype options. It may seem counter to what is often found in shooters but as they say "what gets measured gets done." The scoring system will play a big part in determining if this game is fun to play or not.