Garet (PAM/COD2 )

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:09 pm Post subject: Garet (PAM/COD2 )

First Impresions of COD4 from Garet

Taken from Garets Post @ CAL forums

"Hey all,

I was at IW tuesday and wed to go to their Community Day and see CoD4.

I posted a quick post on the IW site after being up for 35 hour here
http://www.infinityward.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,496.msg5928.html#msg5928

Post all your questions and I will try and answer them. I think I will try to get a post up on gotfrag as well.

Garet

"I really wanted to wait until I got some sleep so I could make a better post but I'll try and cover some of the biggest mp things I saw during the Community Day since only Rudedog and Sparks have posted so far that I have seen. I got up at 4am to go fly to IW, went to bed at 5:30 25 1/2 hours later, got like 3 hours sleep, and I haven't slept since but here it goes:

First off, I really want to thank IW , Activision, and Step-3 for making it happen. They were amazing hosts. We got quality face time with Grant, Jason, Vince, Todd and the rest of the IW crew.

Ok on to the game (I am probably going to ramble before I pass out):

First impressions:

- The "Saving Private Ryan" immersion factor is back bigtime. I think I forgot how I felt the first time I played CoD1 and CoD4 totally brought back that feeling and then some. If CoD1 was a 6 on the immerision scale, and CoD2 was a 5/6 (not as high since it wasn't the very first time seeing CoD type gameplay), CoD4 is an 11. Yes Nigel, this one goes to 11.

- Amazingly smooth - both SP and MP. Graphic details close to Chrysis using DX9. We didn't know what hardware they were using and never saw an FPS indicator. (everything we saw was in Dx9)

- The mp map was big Smiley

- Bullet penetration !!! Yes like CS but CS was clunky - in CoD4 every brush will have a set penetration value and every weapon will have its own penetration power (can you say less random unlike CS). This will add a whole new level to the game because with 30 weapons you can come up with lots of strats.

- Nades They are using a key again and you can cook them. It looked like you couldn't throw them outrageous lengths. They now have smoke, stun, and flash nades. You can now throw nades back at the enemy. I told them all about how many leagues limted them. Crap I forgot to ask if we can get a dvar or two to make smokes smaller or shorten their time.

- Perks For pubs they will add a lot of variety and be a blast. From the competitive player's view I am not sure what to make of them. I spent a lot of time with Grant, Jason, and 402 talking about competitive play and how leagues in the past have done polls on what to limit etc and usually ran a preseason to see how things were working before trying it in a regular season.

If handled right perks could add another layer of strategy - yes almost like buy round strategy a buy in CS ie what to you go for? A few examples of perks are more penetration, more health (ie longer health bar), or faster sprint etc. I think leagues will really need some long preseasons to see if any of the perks are overpowering and may need to be limited like weapons ie sniper rifles. For example, in Search in Destroy if every player had airstrikes could they use them to pretty much eat up most of the round clock on the enemy - or just carpet bomb the bombsites for the last minute so it was impossible for the other team to plant.

- I talked to Grant, Jason, and 402 about PAM, what it does, and about CoDTV. They have already put some of PAM's features into the game - its still up in the air if they will be able to do more or if a Pam for CoD4 would be needed. Grant really liked the idea of bash rounds for choosing sides - except with CoD4 you could have knife rounds as well.

- I talked to them and to Activision about how great it would be to get some tournaments.

- I went over about the whole global ban list (ie like steam) and how it would be so much better than having to let the community try and handle it. (not sure if I can talk about what they said - will have to ask first).

- I asked them about getting better stats support (talked about gotfrag's stats and I had given them a link to it before) which is a necessary thing if they want to compete with CS etc - it makes Esports like baseball where you can track your favorite players or track yourself to see if you are improving etc.

- Everyone made it very clear about wanting cvar/dvars so we could turn anything/everything off.

- There was a good discussion with Rudedog and some others with IW about server features. (linux is a must, http redirect, web based admin like Unreal tournament would be awesome, etc etc). Rudedog also asked them if we would get a true server install where we wouldn't have to upload 4gb or more from a game CD. The importance of having http working and infostring etc was made clear.

- The new lighting system will make players shadows a big part of the game so people that dumb down their graphics too much to get higher fps will be at a disadvantage.

-The nightvision stuff was really cool - night maps could be a really fun diversion.

- New physics. In competitve CSS everyone hated the new physics / objects and many leagues removed them. Most players also turned off ragdoll to increase fps. In CoD4 you can shoot out a cars tires, windows, and eventually it will catch on fire and then later explode. You can sort of use cars as you would an explodeable barrell in HL2 Deathmatch for example. However with HL2 barrells you can explode them in just a few shots while a car in CoD4 can talk a long time (with some of the guns we saw it would be hard to try and kill the enemy as the walk by it etc.) Will leagues want them to explode easier (ie take less shots to do it) or will they want remove exploding cars completely - who knows - again that is what preseason is for.

Glitches - Several of us talked with Grant / Jason and 402 about left lean, vertical left lean, the slide etc and they said they want to make sure none of those bugs are in CoD4.

There is a lot of other stuff I didn't go over - some I should probably make sure we can mention but that can be a part 2.

Again it was great meeting everyone from the community (there were a few other mapper/modders and reps from all the big CoD sites) and all of the IW / Activision, and Step-3 people. The console guys I met were pretty cool too. It was interesting to hear some of them say CoD4 is going to blow away halo 3 Smiley
"

Edit - While eating breakfast I remembered a very important chat I had with the head MP designer - Todd. I was talking about competition with him and he told me a story about he and a few other IW guys had played on a CS pug team at a CPL. Before IW 23 of them came from 2015 who made medal of honor. The 2015 guys were at a CPL and he hopped on a pug team and made it to the second round. The match had been tied and i think it was OT or the the other team had gone up a round and only needed 1 round to win the match. They had a 3 v 1 (3 IW guys) on Dust 2 and they figured out the enemy was in the little alcove by the double doors. He was in the lead and he didn't know that the other 2 IW guys decided to follow right behind him in a nice line. The guy in the alcove popped out with an Awp and killed all 3 with one shot to win the match and go to the next round."
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Author of PAM - the CoD/CoD2 Competition Mod
Author of CoDTV "

ADDED a few minutes later

The sub-title for this is: Grant Says “Sorry” to the Community for All the Mistakes He’s made.

I have tried to make this almost verbatim, although I admit I took only a few notes. It is however pretty accurate, as I have a form of eidetic (photographic) memory, and find I can recall what people say almost word for word (although not perfectly). However, I am sure it will contain mistakes and omissions, as I consumed a large amount of alcohol that night. For those mistakes I apologise in advance.

Some ommissions have been also deliberately made, as we were sworn to secrecy due to the sensitive nature of what was said.

Some may find it overly long, but I wanted to give a blow-by-blow account, as Grant said some things which I feel have been long overdue in being said. I feel what he said at this dinner party will help to even further reinforce the general feeling in the community that IW have indeed turned over a new leaf as far as communication with us goes. They seem to be listening to us at long last. Something a great many people in this community have wanted for a long time.

Two such people are rudedog and myself. We both are of the same opinion, that the difference between good customer service and excellent customer service is the level of listening and communication you do. Rude told me he has campaigned long and hard to get from Grant the answer’s Grant just gave up that night, with an open and frankness that I for one felt honoured to be a witness to.

I also apologize in advance for the poor humor. Its one of those "you needed to be there" type situations to really appreciate. But anyhow, here you go

COD4: the Dinner Party Meeting with Grant Collier as Host

Tuesday 26th June

I arrived in LA for the COD4 preview at 1.30pm local time, and got to the superb hotel where they were housing us all by about 2.40pm. Waiting for me at reception was a letter of introduction from Activision, and an invite to a dinner party thrown for us all at 6.30pm at the El Torrito Grill, which is a Mexican restaurant located in the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

Grant Collier (Studio Head, Infinity Ward) was the host for the PC guys, along with Rob Taylor (Publicist for Activision). They met us (i.e. Sparks, rudedog, garratjax, Shifty (Ryan, from File Front), and myself) in the lobby of our Hotel in Sherman Oaks.

Grant had clearly been making sure the keg of Stella Artois Activision had sourced for us was up to the high standards he expects from his beer, as he had obviously been sampling it, and was in fine spirits (pun intended) even upon arriving (and no, my first impression of him wasn’t that he was a lush. That impression came much, much later ).

We all wondered down to the Galleria on foot, which wasn’t very far from the hotel. One of the topics of conversation on the way down was how little he had posted over the years at IWNation (64 posts) in comparison with myself (which is nearly 4000), and was slightly embarrassed about that, as IWN was/is, to all intents and purposes, his forum.

I pointed out that, on release of COD1, he was on all the time, tabling questions, answering support stuff, and generally keeping up with the forum posts and community members. Then, shortly after the release of the 1.4 patch, he practically disappeared. As did the other Devs. I asked him why that was?

Without knowing it at the time, this question actually set the scene for most of the nights conversation, and hence why I have specifically mentioned it.

We were seated in the restaurant El Torrito around a huge Round Table, which had semi-opaque net curtains which afforded us a certain degree of privacy.

At that moment, another invitee turned up out of the blue: JD (CODHQ/Unbound Forces), and he was followed shortly after by John (Step 3 [Activision’s PR company]) and his fiancée.

After ordering the first (of many) rounds of drinks (mine was a fine dark colored Mexican lager, who’s name escapes me for now, but it was recommended by Robert Taylor, who turned out to be something of an expert on Mexican beer’s), Grant told us that, as we were going to spend all the next day talking about COD4, he would take questions/criticism/comments on COD2, as he was aware that the community had been very critical of the way IW had handled community relations with that title, both before and even after the arrival of Rob Bowling (402).

This is where it got good. The very first thing that Grant did, after saying we could get down and dirty with him on all things COD2 for the night, was to utter the immortal lines many critics of the title had wanted to hear from him for a long time:

He apologized profusely and unreservedly to all members of the community for letting us down on that.

I can’t quote him verbatim, as it was peppered with so much cussing about how lame that sounded, but how nevertheless he really meant it.

Rudedog got down to brass tacks with him, about how he personally had always been concerned with trying to get IW to improve the level of their customer service, and admitted that, whereas he had in the past called for Grant’s head on a silver platter, he was encouraged by what he was now seeing from IW with COD4.

Most of us nodded in agreement with that, and murmured under our breaths about how true that was.

I piped in and said that Grant had told us he was going to tell us “why” his online presence had petered out so dramatically between the release of COD1 and after the 1.4 patch.

Garratjax also joined in and concurred that it was a question which he personally had found perplexing.

So, for the next half hour or so, we sat back while Grant explained how several factors had lead to this sorry state of affairs:

The first was how the start of the planning for COD2 had been a bit up and down between IW themselves and Activision, as they (Grant, Vince, and Jason) had originally wanted to do a Modern Warfare FPS (what is now COD4) right after COD1, but Activision had come to them with the Microsoft offer to produce the release title for the 360, and that essentially was the condition that brought about COD2.

Grant explained that, while working on COD1, IW had pretty much been able to do as they pleased as they were completely independent. If they hadn’t been acquired by Activision as they had, they would have been able to turn the offer down, even though Grant admitted that the prestige attached to producing the launch title for something like the 360 was pretty attractive. As he said: “who wouldn’t want to do the launch title of the 360, with all that it promised to offer?”

But, still, IW essentially wanted to move away from the WWII theatre and do a modern warfare one instead. Grant said:

“With COD1, we had achieved the goal we set out to do, which was to make a better WWII FPS than Medal of Honor, which out performed it and out sold it by a mile. There didn’t seem to be any other goals left to reach for as far as WWII was concerned.”

The second factor was the rapid growth rate of IW’s developer staff, which Grant explained made him feel out of his depth at times, as he had never handled such a big team before, and certainly not at the rate it grew at. Practically over night, he told us, the work force grew from 23 Devs to over 80.

He explained that IW was only a small team when it produced COD1, but they had nevertheless still managed to produce “the” premier FPS game of 2003. He told us that the process of creating COD1 had set many of the bench marks for the standards which IW always intended to strive for. He confessed that, with the larger work force, he often felt that they as a studio weren’t always achieving them now, but even still, he said, with a look of satisfaction and pride on his face, their “low standards” were still far better standards than any other studio around, and how he would take the Pepsi Challenge against any of those other studios when it came to producing a first-rate FPS.

But nevertheless, the sudden climb in man power numbers essentially meant that the number of “missed targets” also grew with it, and how he, Vince, and Jason were often left pulling their hair out in frustration as a lot of the work force were new graduates in Gaming Science, and didn’t seem to fully understand the concept of working in a team which relied on them taking a lot of initiative themselves, rather than having their hands held and baby sat by them.

These, Grant explained, were the factors that kept him away from the forums: he was just too busy, too stressed, too everything, to want to go to a forum and start posting when what he really wanted was - yes, you guessed it - a drink! (man after my own heart)

To this, I made a funny, by asking: “so you’re essentially saying that you couldn’t cope with all these new dev team members, and that this is the reason you didn’t talk to us. What’s the matter”, I asked, “have you not heard of the concept of “delegation”? If you had done that, you wouldn’t have had to take the whole burden on your own shoulders”

This became a bit of a running gag for the rest of the night, as I ribbed Grant about it several times.

We then got to the subject of the community feelings leading up to and just prior to the first COD2 patch. Almost all of the tensions which were running around the forums (mainly IWN, but not exclusively) were caused by this complete – almost deafeningly so at times – silence from any Dev from IW on any of the important questions which we the community had been asking about: why no AC out of the box?; why did COD2 have bugs in the code tree which had been patched in COD1?; was the game engine really new? Or was it, as some have been claiming, just a bit of salesman hype to try to sell an essentially unfinished title?

Grant was again remarkably candid in his replies. He admitted that AC was never really factored into the planning time-line precisely because the 360 didn’t need it, and no deal with any AC maker had been negotiated before release. He surprised me again (and, I felt, many of the others gathered there) when he said:

“Sorry to all the community for that. It should have been higher on our list of priorities.”

I think by way of thank you to Grant for making that apology, rudedog added: but at least IW have now recognized how important it is to the community, as they are giving COD4 AC out of the box.

Grant then apologized again for not communicating with us on IWN forum more than he did do on this subject. I told him that is essentially when I came onto the scene, and my name first got to be known: at precisely the point of having to deal with all the squabbles and fights between the CCA supporters, and the Anti-CCA supporters on the IWN boards.

Grant asked me to refresh his memory what the CCA was, and we had a good laugh at that, as it was clear the amount of alcohol he had consumed (though, still not as much as me ) was beginning to affect his memory (even he laughed when we reminded him what it was): the CCA, garret and rude explained, was the group that called for server shut downs to take place in protest to IW’s failure to answer when/if/how AC would be implemented in a patch.

Grant said that was around about the time that he, Jason and Vince had decided to get a professional PR person on the team – to field exactly that type of question and community situation. I quipped, “so you had learnt what it is to delegate after all?” We all laughed and then Grant admitted to us all that at that time, it was a bit of a joke in the studio that none of the Devs dared show their face on IWN, as the users just took to completely slating them all.

Grant said even he couldn’t stand to read the personal attacks and criticisms made on him by the CCA; that it was too depressing to read how low the morale in the community had gotten.

I quipped again: “so why didn’t you delegate someone to do it? Remember that concept I told you about? Delegation?” – which produced a laugh. Grant came back with: “no one would do it even if I had delegated. No one would go down there.”

I can’t rightly remember who said it, but someone at the table remarked that the report of this dinner party (I had already said to Grant that I wanted to cover it, as the things said there would go a long way to help healing the wounds opened up at that time) will make the IW Devs, and Grant in particular look like right wooses. To which we all laughed. Grant freely admitted: “Yeah, Im a real woose”.

I pointed out to him, that I had learnt very early on in my time at IWN, that the community can be very forgiving, as long as you are prepared to at least acknowledge them. It’s ignoring them, or seeming to, that upsets them, as it smacks of arrogance. Even if it’s just to say, “hey, lay off a bit guys”, or “sorry for not speaking much before now”, or even just “hi”.

Grant agreed with this, and jokingly asked “Ive already apologized three times, what do you want from me? Blood?”, and I think it was rudedog who quipped “no, just your head on a platter”.

This segued nicely into the game engine issue. I explained that it had become clear to me that a couple of unguarded remarks by certain people from IW had lead to this “accusation” levied at IW, that the COD2 engine wasn’t really “new” but a beefed up Quake3 engine. I pointed out that I had spent the last six months teaching myself game engine theory, Direct3D (D3D), and the history of the Quake3 engine precisely so that I could be in an position to make an informed opinion about it.

As it is, I said, I now understood that it was new, but I made the point that, if only one of the IW Devs, or Grant or Jason themselves, had posted to explain more fully what it meant to be called “new”, to explain what was actually new in it, how it started life etc, a lot of the suspicion would have been alleviated from the start, as it is ignorance that fuels rumor and suspicion. Communication with the community is the secret to nailing rumors to the floor. And IW shouldn't expect the "average" online user to know all about game engine theory. IW themselves should have laid it out in laymen's terms.

Grant agreed, and surprised me by telling me he had read my posts about it. I must have looked visibly shocked by what he said, as Grant played with me, and said: “what? you think I don’t take the time to read one of our biggest fanbois posts?”

Garratjax made some valid points here, when he pointed out that when you get into the files, it looks so much like COD1 (=Quake3 engine) that it was understandable that people were doubtful.

It was at this point that Grant answered what was for me a nagging question I have long had: how did all the bugs and glitches get back into the COD2 engine after they had been patched in COD1?

Grant explained that the game engine designers that worked on the COD2 engine were from Quake backgrounds. And they just stuck with what they knew. They didn’t start with the COD1 engine, and build on it. COD2 was indeed a new engine, but it used the Quake format as a starting point, as that was what they knew and were comfortable with. Grant said something to the effect that there was no need to start from a blank sheet. Just take something as a basis, and make it how you want.

I pointed out an analogy: Like Carmack did with Doom3, where he used the Quake format as a starting point and made a whole new engine?

Grant agreed, as did garratjax (garrat actually elaborated on it but I missed what he said as I someone was whispering in my ear)

I quickly sought clarification on this point: so they didn’t use the existing patched COD1 engine? No, said Grant, they used a Quake engine that IW purchased the full rights to from EA (I confess I lost track of the conversation again here, as I was getting my beer glass refilled. Perhaps rudedog can fill in the blanks here if he remembers).

I asked directly: so that explains why all the old Quake bugs were in COD2 on release? Because they didn’t use the patched COD1 engine? Yeah, said Grant. But he went on, “those guys are gone now, and no longer work for us. We have a new team of guys who made the COD4 engine.”

I asked: “Did they use the COD2 engine as a starting point?”

“Yeah”, said Grant, “but these guys are f**** awesome at what they do. The COD4 engine f**ks any other engine out there when it comes to quality of features”

At this point, the dinner party had to break as the table had another booking for it, and anyway, Grant wanted to go outside at that point to give himself and me lung cancer with some Marlboro Lites (something else we found we had in common).

(we actually got chased out of the Galleria twice by security as we insisted on smoking outside of buildings, but still in the Galleria itself. In the end, we got pushed all the way down to the sidewalk)

============================

Doing my post about what I thought about MP next.

Then, I'll make a post about an exciting idea which involves certain members of the community working closely with IW themselves. Something I bashed out with Grant and Jason West (although there are still loads of details to work out).

Another attendee's perspective...

http://map.planetmedalofhonor.gamespy.com/callofduty/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=845&st=0#entry5399

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 12:05 am Post subject:

far too much to read... Summarize everything in one word for me.
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Humanism- Less Filling, Tastes Great.

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 7:31 am Post subject:

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 7:32 am Post subject:

If most of us can run this game on our hardware, this could be the next big thing... Sounds really impressive.

Eagle
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 10:11 am Post subject:

I`m in

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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 7:37 pm Post subject:

It does siound good. The CoD games have been fun. Hopfully the new time frame will bring back the love.
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Keep doing what you're doing and you'll keep getting what you're getting...