Reflex Kickstarter

[Mr Whippy]

Games like this are all about gameplay, they always were, and still are.

So why not fire up Quake 2 or UT and enjoy them rather than pay for the same thing again with added eye candy you'll increasingly overlook?
What is the usp here? Just new graphics over an old concept?

It needs something new to be great Imo.

I remember a cool mod for HL1 where the winner was the one who was on the train longest. Bonkers but utterly addictive just like CS was at the time just starting out!

USP required for anything these days Imo, and it has to be a gameplay usp.

Hopefully this game will find it's gameplay usp soon, beyond just an old school arena shooter

Dave


I wish all the best of course, how it plays will be the acid test in this genre I suppose.

Dave

 

[SeekaX]

Games like this are all about gameplay, they always were, and still are.

So why not fire up Quake 2 or UT and enjoy them rather than pay for the same thing again with added eye candy you'll increasingly overlook?
What is the usp here? Just new graphics over an old concept?

It needs something new to be great Imo.

I remember a cool mod for HL1 where the winner was the one who was on the train longest. Bonkers but utterly addictive just like CS was at the time just starting out!

USP required for anything these days Imo, and it has to be a gameplay usp.

Hopefully this game will find it's gameplay usp soon, beyond just an old school arena shooter

Dave


I wish all the best of course, how it plays will be the acid test in this genre I suppose.

Dave

Change just for the sake of change isn't necessarily a good thing. Usually it's even a bad thing. Reflex takes the gameplay that has been proven to work best for over a decade, mixes in a few new bits and for the most part it adds features games like Quake or UT are lacking which are considered necessary these days. Matchmaking, an easy access map editor, better graphics, etc..
People keep saying that they could just play quake instead, but nobody complained about csgo either and that was just another rehash of the original CS with a couple of added features as well. It's not even a good remake.
Reflex isn't just eyecandy, reflex adds all the features the genre needs to fit in with today's demands. Good luck trying to get a match in Quake 2. The game will be like 25 AUD which is a pretty good price considering the effort they have to put into it and what the competition (i.e. Quake Live) is charging.
I play Quake 3 on a daily basis, i am the last person to get excited over good graphics, the same applies to the devs and the other big supporters of the game. We support the game because it is the only chance for arena FPS to appeal again to new players and revive the genre by mixing the gameplay which couldn't be improved upon for 15 years with what is expected from an up to date competitive game.
Without 'copies' like reflex franchises like CS or Starcraft wouldn't be nearly as popular as they are.

 

[Mr Whippy]

I agree, but there has to be more to the recipe than just a specific style of game-play.

I used to play Quake 1, Q2, Q3 a bit, Unreal and UT, HL and loads of HL1 mods, CS beta, CS, CS Source, yadda yadda.
Cripes, the hours I invested over all those years haha.

But looking back each one had something that drew me in over all the other games out there at the time.

Unreal had the fantastic weapons, UT had space-age environments and maps. Quake had the kinda halls of hell feel, and some brutal crude kinda weapons. HL had the sci-fi guns in Black Mesa, kinda "Area 52" setting with aliens coming along too.
Duke Nukem, with the shrink ray, and those laser trip mines on lifts haha. No escape!
CS was just totally new at the time, there were games using a similar subject matter, but none using the great fast paced deathmatch/team deathmatch style.


I'm not sure what this game is offering in the back-story regard, single player, why the weapons are the way they are, why the maps are the way there are.

So far I just see railgun and rocket launcher, and grenade launcher. It looks like Quake 2 to me, with some portals thrown in for some reason!?



I'm not wishing to be negative, but I think it needs all those gaps filling in to make sense.
No maybe it doesn't matter in the heat of a fight, but how many things are vastly improved due to aesthetics that don't really matter? Nearly everything.


Maybe have different weapons for different maps? Gothic have hand to hand combat and bows?
Industrial have blow torches and flame throwers?
Futuristic have railguns and lasers?

All these back-story elements and cool design choices are what make the games appealing imo.

I watch the video and want to play it, but I want to feel a part of a story too. What am I even fighting/dying for?


Hopefully all these things are to come, and I'm excited to see where it'll go. But I can't think I'd support this at this stage.

If they come up with something really amazingly innovative then I'd be up for it!

Ie, who remembers the grappling hook in Worms 1 multi-player. No one does a grappling hook in lan gaming. Rocket jump in Q2, or jump pack in HL1 yes, or a 'portal' in this game... but how about some other innovative way to get around a map faster?

All the best games had cool innovative at the time ideas/concepts and weapons. This needs it's own too

Dave

 

[SeekaX]

I agree, but there has to be more to the recipe than just a specific style of game-play.

I used to play Quake 1, Q2, Q3 a bit, Unreal and UT, HL and loads of HL1 mods, CS beta, CS, CS Source, yadda yadda.
Cripes, the hours I invested over all those years haha.

But looking back each one had something that drew me in over all the other games out there at the time.

Unreal had the fantastic weapons, UT had space-age environments and maps. Quake had the kinda halls of hell feel, and some brutal crude kinda weapons. HL had the sci-fi guns in Black Mesa, kinda "Area 52" setting with aliens coming along too.
Duke Nukem, with the shrink ray, and those laser trip mines on lifts haha. No escape!
CS was just totally new at the time, there were games using a similar subject matter, but none using the great fast paced deathmatch/team deathmatch style.


I'm not sure what this game is offering in the back-story regard, single player, why the weapons are the way they are, why the maps are the way there are.

So far I just see railgun and rocket launcher, and grenade launcher. It looks like Quake 2 to me, with some portals thrown in for some reason!?



I'm not wishing to be negative, but I think it needs all those gaps filling in to make sense.
No maybe it doesn't matter in the heat of a fight, but how many things are vastly improved due to aesthetics that don't really matter? Nearly everything.


Maybe have different weapons for different maps? Gothic have hand to hand combat and bows?
Industrial have blow torches and flame throwers?
Futuristic have railguns and lasers?

All these back-story elements and cool design choices are what make the games appealing imo.

I watch the video and want to play it, but I want to feel a part of a story too. What am I even fighting/dying for?


Hopefully all these things are to come, and I'm excited to see where it'll go. But I can't think I'd support this at this stage.

If they come up with something really amazingly innovative then I'd be up for it!

Ie, who remembers the grappling hook in Worms 1 multi-player. No one does a grappling hook in lan gaming. Rocket jump in Q2, or jump pack in HL1 yes, or a 'portal' in this game... but how about some other innovative way to get around a map faster?

All the best games had cool innovative at the time ideas/concepts and weapons. This needs it's own too

Dave

Just like Quake 3 Reflex has no real background story (well, let's ignore that weird story they put in the box back when Quake 3 released), no singleplayer, it's just supposed to be a multiplayer game. That way they can do whatever they like with the gameplay and not be restricted by loopholes in the story.
The movement is straight from CPMA, it's already incredibly fast, making it any faster makes no sense. There have been attempts to tamper with CPM movement before, e.g. Warsow and nobody really liked it. More gameplay features would overload the game.
The grappling hook has been done before in Q1 mods, but it doesn't really add to the movement at all, it rather diminishes it.
Different guns for different maps remove consistency, imagine they did that in CS. They need to find a middle ground between casual and competitive players which pleases both parties, just like Quake 3 did.
Don't get me wrong, a couple of new ideas would be nice, but i like that they aren't trying to reinvent the genre because a lot of games tried that in the past and not a single one of them was successful. It's better to base your game on a solid basis and then seeing where you can add to it.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Re-inventing the genre will always go wrong because it's not something new.

All the games that defined the genre at the time were completely new at the time.



But if you're just re-building something we've already all seen and played and million times I'm guessing the appeal and breadth of that market is going to be fairly narrow.

I played all these games at LANs at the time they came out and was blown away and loved them. 12hr straight sessions in Quake 1, or even longer in Q2, CS etc.

But for me personally I never stayed playing those old games after a few years... I just moved onto the latest new thing.



I wish the devs all the luck in the world though. It's great to be passionate about what you like to do... as long as they can make a living from it too then that is great

Dave

 

[SeekaX]

Re-inventing the genre will always go wrong because it's not something new.

All the games that defined the genre at the time were completely new at the time.



But if you're just re-building something we've already all seen and played and million times I'm guessing the appeal and breadth of that market is going to be fairly narrow.

I played all these games at LANs at the time they came out and was blown away and loved them. 12hr straight sessions in Quake 1, or even longer in Q2, CS etc.

But for me personally I never stayed playing those old games after a few years... I just moved onto the latest new thing.



I wish the devs all the luck in the world though. It's great to be passionate about what you like to do... as long as they can make a living from it too then that is great

Dave

Well try inventing completely new gameplay which doesn't suck. Most games these days are based on old gameplay and just add new things, the quake 3 type of gameplay hasn't been done in over a decade. I think it's okay to pick it up again.
Millions of people buy CoD and Battlefield each year. Hundreds of thousands of people play csgo and none of those games have offered anything new in years. Usually they even strip away features.
You said you didn't stick to the Quake games for more than a few years, how long did you stick to more recent games? A couple of months maybe?
Funding is going to be a problem though, people can't appreciate simple games anymore these days.

 

[Mr Whippy]

I agree that it's worthwhile trying... but I'm just curious how big the market is to invest the time in the HQ content and game engine... will it be possible to make a ROI?


But yes games have gone crazy now. I genuinely would like to see more community made projects that are entirely free, but designed to be long-lasting.


Paid for games is a tough one though. Half the time you feel like you're just feeding the trolls, which are modern game production companies.

There are the odd ones who use kick-starter but I've seen far too many games under this whole pre-alpha/pre-release/kick-start approach that are just turning out crap in the end as the sheer vision and workload way outstrips the capability of the money/budget/time-frames.


So I'm now sceptical of those approaches to game development.

Which is why the free community built stuff is more interesting. Great mods ontop of commercial games (look at the 'free' mod DayZ vs the paid one for example)... or CS when it came out for HL1... etc.


I think people can appreciate simple games these days, and even games like this one being planned here.
But the markets are much smaller... so the game scope and approach and income streams needs to be different to suit that.


Hmmm

Dave

 

[SeekaX]

I agree that it's worthwhile trying... but I'm just curious how big the market is to invest the time in the HQ content and game engine... will it be possible to make a ROI?


But yes games have gone crazy now. I genuinely would like to see more community made projects that are entirely free, but designed to be long-lasting.


Paid for games is a tough one though. Half the time you feel like you're just feeding the trolls, which are modern game production companies.

There are the odd ones who use kick-starter but I've seen far too many games under this whole pre-alpha/pre-release/kick-start approach that are just turning out crap in the end as the sheer vision and workload way outstrips the capability of the money/budget/time-frames.


So I'm now sceptical of those approaches to game development.

Which is why the free community built stuff is more interesting. Great mods ontop of commercial games (look at the 'free' mod DayZ vs the paid one for example)... or CS when it came out for HL1... etc.


I think people can appreciate simple games these days, and even games like this one being planned here.
But the markets are much smaller... so the game scope and approach and income streams needs to be different to suit that.


Hmmm

Dave

Free games don't mix well with competitive FPS games. You can't punish cheaters and exploiters well enough, scamming is too easy. I think 20$ is far better for games than f2p + microtransactions.
So far considering what the devs managed to achieve in their spare time over a year with their own money there is no doubt on my mind that their plans are going to be successful with funding. All of them have far over a decade of experience in their field of work, the engine they made i'd consider the best ever made for FPS games. The features they implemented and their knowledge of every aspect of the genre and the industry are exceeding pretty much every other KS campaign i ever heard of. Chris Roberts had impressive knowledge and skills when he started the Star Citizen KS, but who ever went through the trouble of making their own engine from scratch tailored for one game fitting the specific needs of a niche community.
Just look at the new Unreal Tournament, Unreal Engine 4 is no good for FPS games, the input is just horrible, the devs seem like utter amateurs compared to the Reflex devs, still they get hyped a lot more.