New Screen Shot From ChinaJoy?

[Kenbark]

New Screen SHot?

Is this new or am I just out of it?
http://photo.mmosite.com/huxley/2007...r538eeh7.shtml

More info on top of that:
This will answer from questions... The Following is taken from 1up from some interviews with the lead producer for Huxley.

"GFW: Who controls the setup and conditions of the matches? Players or Webzen? Are the maps and matches level-based, as in World of WarCraft's Battlegrounds, so that, say, only players of a certain level range can enter? Or is it totally open?

KI JONG KANG: Imagine a master server of sorts, much like what you find in current FPS games. Players can sign up for a match, much like WOW Battleground queues, allowing for specific parameters to be set and met. There aren't many "open" battles that players can just randomly jump into, as they have already started within certain parameters. That's not to say that players can't be notified via an ingame system that their faction is at risk of losing a battle and a ship is at the ready waiting for volunteers to be brought to it via dropship."

interesting so it will be instanced Battle grounds like WoW. that should help with lag and latency problems.

"The game pits three races against each other -- the Sapiens and Alternatives (both of which are playable races), and the Hybrids (the non-playable race). This triangle serves up Huxley's story dynamic, in which the three battle for control of the planet's energy source, while providing the setting for both PVP (player versus player) and PVE (player versus environment) conflict. Functioning similarly in structure to NCSoft's Guild Wars, the towns and cities in Huxley are where commerce and casual social interactions take place, while instanced areas offer battlegrounds in which Sapiens and Alternatives meet 'n' greet, guns a blazin'. Quests that advance the story are hosted in other instanced zones that are better for small parties or soloing."

SO PvE will be alot like Guild Wars... rather than open fields most of the PvE will be instanced and open only to you and your team. WIll help fight spawn camping and KSing.

The following is from GameSPy interviews:

"The Battlezone is a PvP area, where players compete in a variety of match types: CTF, Deathmatch (both traditional and Team), Radar Capture, and Parts Pick-Up. The first two are pretty self-explanatory to anyone who's ever booted up an FPS for online play. Radar Capture is a fancy name for matches that focus on capturing and holding objective points -- rather than hoist a flag or wait for a red circle to turn blue, you actually crank a radar station to a friendly orientation. Parts Pick-Up is a team deathmatch with an extra-spicy step: the creation of a spiffy mech. Parts for this mech continually fall from the sky, and players work to snag those parts and bring them back in order to construct the mech and have it win the match. Kang promises that the Battlezone is scalable, with matches being as intimate as one-on-one and as large as 100-vs-100. Whether one or one hundred dudes kill you, you respawn at a friendly capture point and also suffer a slight armor penalty."

This Parts-pick-up game mode sounds like a blast! I hope that is true!

"After selecting a race, players are divided into three basic groups: Enforcers (heavy armor), Avengers (medium) and Phantoms (light armor). Appropriately, each armor type is better at certain combat mechanics than others; Enforcers are able to duke it out close and personal, Avengers are flexible, and Phantoms tend to shoot from far, far away. Kang assures us that the three basic armor archetypes (with lots of variations; Kang claims 900 total) plus nine types of weapons (again, with lots of varieties within each type) and the five-skill limit will result in a lot of unique-looking players. Additionally, players can choose trade professions, like a mechanic who can fix up vehicles both in and out of combat.

Once you've got yourself a character and a nice chunk of armor to strut around in, you can partake in one of three basic gameplay modes: Quest, Battlezone and City. The Quest mode is an instanced PvE environment, where it's you or some co-op buddies taking on missions for loot and XP. Kang says that with the controlled environment of the Quest mode, players can experience scripted events and special encounters that couldn't be guaranteed in an MMO environment. Much of the Quest mode (heck, the game overall) is optimized for a four-man squad. For example, buffs are most beneficial when the squad stays together. In theory, you can try to lone wolf these quests, but when your screen is filled with weird, buglike Hybrids, you'll want some compadres to back you up. Since this is PvE, being clipped just means respawning at your last checkpoint."

Awsome proffesions... room for medics and all sorts of things! Squad benefits as well! the more you stay together the more "buffs" you will get for doing so. Keeps run and gunners down to a min. and will add an element of strategy never before seen in a game!


"Finally, the social aspect of an MMO is fulfilled via the City mode; similar to the town hubs in Guild Wars. Inside the various cities, players wander around in search of trade (both with NPCs and other players), group gatherings (for either Quest or Battlezone squad groupings), and even housing. Basically, any community activity that doesn't involve shooting people takes place in the city. Heck, you can go down to the Chinatown district of any city and create quests for other players, so if you're too lazy to go out and earn some ammo or items, you can post a quest that outlines what you need and what you'll give."

Oooo... can anyone say bounties? Make your own missions for others to do to gather items for you. You could throw a hit on someone in there! And possible proof of the need to buy ammo. And keep a plentiful stock.

"Interestingly, Huxley will be more gear-emphatic than most MMOs, as it's your gear that gives you skills and levels. Each piece of body armor has a set of skills attached to it, and allocating skill points to these helps define your in-combat abilities. For example, helmets will contain vision modes (infrared, hitpoint scanning, and sometimes a rear-view window!) and even anti-headshot protection (thicker armor, a warning system) that increase in effectiveness based on skill point allocation. On the other hand, your boots determine whether you have a rocket jump or a stealthy stride.

An additional tactical mechanic is the fact that you can only have four weapons and five skills active at any match or mission; meaning you make choices like whether you outfit yourself with heavy weaponry and minimal non-shooting skills, or maybe load up on stealth and vision skills to be a sneaky but weak spotter. While the skills are attached to armor, the actual player character have license points, which determine things like what vehicles they can drive or whether they can be a squad commander."

Cool a new armor slot ability Rear-view mirror like ability! Squad command lisense? and some more confermational info.

"At press time, Kang said that players can have one character per server, and Webzen is still figuring out just how many servers/characters you can have total. That's just one of a few smaller details that will reveal itself when Huxley is in a more playable state. So far, what Kang has shown and talked about sounds pretty neat, but everything is still quite controlled and not quite ready for public scrutiny. That said, we still can't wait to get onto a live server, if only to see how well the game's many unique ideas are pulled off."

One character per server... that will keep the equipment farming balanced possibly... cant have "alts" that you give super weapons to and destroy others with them. Will add a sense of balance in a way to the game and its mechanics. Considering it seems like any race/class can do anything just some can do it better than others.

Awsome find! I hope it was mostly new and interesting to everyone. I appologize for the long read but some cool info in there and not much else to do while you wiat for more info eh?

Well add stuff if you wish and tell me if all this is old news too!

[The Walrus]

Well it says March '07 under it so I guess its old, but I've never seen it.

[Guyver]

The image is photo shopped. The sapien and Alternative have their own separate pictures like that if I'm not mistaken.

[InsaneRussian]

Have to say sorry bro, i've read the same article somewhere already, seen those pics long time ago from the link you provided. I believe i've posted about that somewhere too, so nothing new to me sorry =)
Still good that you are happy with your find since you got bigger understanding for Huxley =)

[Stncold]

Squad benefits as well! the more you stay together the more "buffs" you will get for doing so. Keeps run and gunners down to a min. and will add an element of strategy never before seen in a game!

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.

This only promotes clans running several of these squads for a long period and ruining an entire battlefield or raid.

Please I hope this whole thing is false.

[connnnn]

Well that's going to happen regardless... 2 or 3 squads that are all on voice comms together will always have an advantage vs random individuals running around. At least (in theory), giving incentives to being in squads will increase the likelihood that non-organized people would join together in frays, which will help make everything seem a little less chaotic.

[Stncold]

Originally Posted by connnnn

Well that's going to happen regardless... 2 or 3 squads that are all on voice comms together will always have an advantage vs random individuals running around. At least (in theory), giving incentives to being in squads will increase the likelihood that non-organized people would join together in frays, which will help make everything seem a little less chaotic.

Correct. However I don't think it's really going to help. Those clans will definitely stay together longer than your average pug, and there is a higher probability of people in the clan squad not leaving for various reasons. IE idiots, inept leader and such. My main reasoning behind this is that while I applaud Webzen for this effort, in the long run it will only do more harm than good for their average player.

The last thing I want to see on this game that has so much potential is for it to cater more to hardcore-dedicated clans playing constantly than your average guy who doesn't have much time to play. It would be stupid for them to do that also as in any game there is always more of the latter than the former.

My real point being is that, there will be these clans that keep these squads going for probably days, maybe weeks at a time. I wouldn't be surprised if they enforce it so that when one player goes afk or to sleep, they stay in the squad and just afk or autorun around to beat the automatic log-out if there is one.

Your average joe squad won't do such things, there will always be people coming and going.

Eventually it will get to an even WoW-sort of status about it. This clan all buffed up from being in the same squad forever is tantamount to that WoW guild that has Illidan on farm status. No competition whatsoever in a PvP situation, they will obliterate everything in their path. Easily controlling an entire battlefield with the regular guys not being able to do a thing about it.

I realize that this sort of thing with clans dominating happens in pretty much every single game, however in most of those games a zerg can eventually wipe them out. However if that clan is tightly organized, buffed to high hell with great gear and most of the zerg has no to little buffs, crappy gear and even some organization. The probabilities of the clan winning is high the way I see it.

Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am. If I'm not I think Webzen is going to lose a good deal of customers once they realize that hardcore clans that dedicate their lives to the game run it. This dude with a job, family etc can't even have a good time with the two or so hours a day he has to play because a clan that's been running the same three-four squad for days is ganking everybody and controlling everything.

That's one thing I've always loved about Planetside. While one good outfit can effectively raise some hell and make a big impact on the dynamics of the battling, in the end those normal dudes CAN fight back because when it comes down to it they basically have the same gear, armor, certs that they do.

If there's even one thing I want to see on Huxley that was on Planetside, it's that.

[connnnn]

Er I read the comment as saying that there were specific skills that would only benefit players also within your squad, and thus it would behoove people to join squads that way everyone benefits from their "buff" skills. I didn't really think it was saying that people would get a benefit for being in squads longer.

Just a basic off the top example: say a heavy gunner type guy has a skill that adds +damage or +rate of fire or whatever to everyone in his squad, well obviously it would make sense for him to join a squad rather than running around alone, that way he has teammates with higher damage, and it of course would also benefit others to join his squad. That's how it sounded to me at least.

The thing is, if people don't play this game that much, they won't (or at least, shouldn't IMO) end up even being placed vs well-organized highly-experienced groups in the first place. I would think that most organized clans/whatever would steer toward direct inter-clan fights rather than the huge "open" things, because clan v clan would "matter" more. But I guess ultimately it comes down to what incentives Webzen places in the game for doing different types of battle engagements.

[Stncold]

Originally Posted by connnnn

Er I read the comment as saying that there were specific skills that would only benefit players also within your squad, and thus it would behoove people to join squads that way everyone benefits from their "buff" skills. I didn't really think it was saying that people would get a benefit for being in squads longer.

Possibly, but the way it reads seems to me as if it means the longer a squad has been together, the more buffs they have. A comment such as " Keeps run and gunners down to a min" doesn't particularly strike me as one directed towards people with abilities such as you said. Who knows though.

Originally Posted by connnnn

The thing is, if people don't play this game that much, they won't (or at least, shouldn't IMO) end up even being placed vs well-organized highly-experienced groups in the first place. I would think that most organized clans/whatever would steer toward direct inter-clan fights rather than the huge "open" things, because clan v clan would "matter" more. But I guess ultimately it comes down to what incentives Webzen places in the game for doing different types of battle engagements.

I agree on the clan v clan thing. What are they going to do when they get bored of it, easily beat other clans or have no other clans to go up against though?

It does depend on what Webzen does regarding such things. We don't really have that much information and until something like this is confirmed by Webzen I'm only going to be wary of it. It's just not something I really see boding well for the game overall.

[Slimjim]

I wanted some world pvp, I still might have to see if im even interested once this game is released being its ALL instanced.