With Modern Warfare 2 breaking sales records and its developer, Infinity Ward, in a state of collapse, following the highly publicized departure of the studio's founders and many of its senior staff, all eyes are on Treyarch to pick up the torch and deliver the most robust and polished multiplayer experience the franchise has seen yet.
But how far does Vonderhaar look to find competition? "The benchmark is always the last game that the studio's made, or that Activision's published," he said. "Multiplayer CoD games command three of the four top spots on Xbox Live right now. We're filling stadiums of people every night with players." And that fan base, which is shared across Infinity Ward's two Modern Warfare titles along with Treyarch's zombie-infused World at War multiplayer, hasn't shied away from upgrading annually.
But first, there's a challenge that Vonderhaar notes: A lot of different kinds of gamers buy Call of Duty games and never go online click read more for the rest of the story
thing that was really important to us going into this game was that we
really had come to understand the diversity of the people who play MP,
or want to play MP, and what happened for us was we had this
opportunity to create this game that can spread that spectrum of player
and personality and type." Even in Treyarch's own ranks, Vonderhaar
notes that "there's lots of different people here and they like lots of
different things" about
of Duty multiplayer.
Vonderhaar cites three main reasons why some players don't take their
of Duty game
online. The first, and most obvious reason, is of course the toxicity
of the online community. "The atmosphere, the environment, is pretty
hostile in some cases," Vonderhaar admits. "Mom jokes. Lots of dick
conversations. Lots of hatred and racial bigotry." Yup, that sounds
like Xbox Live to us.
The second reason "is that the difficulty level of a single-player
campaign game" doesn't always prepare players for the multiplayer
experience. "Some people just want to be told a story; they want to go
watch the movie version," Vonderhaar said. "Those types probably aren't
ever going to be big into MP, but I'm going to sure as hell try to get
them in. There's so much to the game that's not in single-player; it's
a real shame to leave those people behind."
And lastly, "you have to string together a lot of mechanics [in
multiplayer] that you don't normally have to do." Whether that's
throwing back grenades, sprinting or calling in killstreaks bonuses,
you'll need to juggle these actions in any round of multiplayer -- and
many campaign-focused players will be unaware of these mechanics. A
frenetic round of
ideal place to learn about them.
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style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Enter:
Combat Training. This new, bot-equipped mode is designed to ameliorate
many of these concerns. Worried about the toxicity of the online gaming
environment? There's no matchmacking, so play with friends against
bots. Online play too difficult? Set those bots to Easy (which is
"pretty easy" we're told!). Don't know about those multiplayer
mechanics? Combat Training has a "tutorial tips" mode that will walk
you through the basic multiplayer mechanics. So the idea is that you
can level-up and skill-up in the Combat Training kiddie pool before
dipping your toes into the shark-infested waters of competitive online
play.
When asked why
Ops doesn't
include a skill-based matchmaking system like Bungie's
3,Vonderhaar explained, "There is no skill-based matchmaking.
There never has been in any
tradition, the reason for that is simple: speed. "Speed of matchmaking
is more important than anything else," he said. "There's already a lot
of stuff that you have to do outside of the game [...] waiting around
to play? Not fun."
When pressed on the topic -- after all, Bungie has managed to execute
skill-based matchmaking for some time -- Vonderhaar admitted, "We've
thought about it. We've talked about it. Of course we have.
so much to the game that's not in single-player.
David Vonderhaar, TreyarchAnd that's why we have Combat Training, because it's still super fast
and you can still play with your friends if you're not very good at the
game [...] It's really important for us to get players into the game as
fast as possible."
Another feature that Treyarch discussed, but didn't include, in
Ops was a clan
mode. Like skill-based matchmaking, Vonderhaar said clan support didn't
make the cut because it was "overly complex" and got in the way of that
pursuit of fun. "For us it was important to keep the Party system
simple so you go into the lobby, you invite your friends, [...] you can
all move around the parties and go to wager matches and go over to live
games and [...] when you back out, you can take your whole Party with
you," he explained. "We studied it, we looked at it. [Clan support] is
too hard. You start fighting with having to create all this stuff. Are
clan tag names reserved? Are they not reserved? And you get into this
loop of questions that appeal to certain players but then isolate so
many more, and it's really important to us to not isolate and carve off
sections of the game that other people can't enjoy because they're not
clan types."
Treyarch is less worried about carving off and isolating one particular
group of players: cheaters. Watching the team at Infinity Ward struggle
with
griefers, Vonderhaar said, "There's a whole layer where those exploits
come from that you have to move down deeper into the code so that
they're not as forefront." Some of what cheaters exploit is actually
some of the "same tools that game designers use to help balance the
game," we learned. It's left high-level and gets exposed. Part of
Treyarch's strategy is simple: "push those things deeper and put them
behind the wall, and that will take care of a lot of [the glitches]
right away."
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style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Another
tool in the Treyarch anti-cheating toolbox: The new Theater mode.
Combining the game's reporting structure with the ubiquitous
game-saving structure gives Treyarch -- and specifically Treyarch's new
full-time employee tasked with looking at the reports -- the ability to
investigate purported cheating through the eyes of the cheater. If it's
a bug, the team can learn how to reproduce it and, as a result, fix it.
If a player is abusing a bug, then they can also take punitive
measures. The end result of both courses of action should be the same:
a more reliable experience for those of you who don't cheat.
In fact, Theater "started as a bug tool," Vonderhaar said. A funny bug
was being sent around the office -- specifically, a guy's face was
"stretched out and distorted"– and the team loved it and thought, "We
have to share this with people. This is too good. We cannot hold this
as a bug tool. This is something we can give to people to use." And so
they did!
The Theater provides players with six slots to store clips and
screenshots to share with friends. While Vonderhaar said, "I'm sure the
business people are kicking around various ideas" for more slots, "the
six slots you see on the floor, that's what comes with the game."
Curiously, the stations we saw at the event listed 18 slots in some
areas and just the six in others.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/03/call-of-duty-black-ops-multiplayer-takes-aim-at-cheaters/
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