Squad a new hope for the tactical FPS genre.

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clakclak
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Squad a new hope for the tactical FPS genre.

Post by clakclak »

EDIT: V8 is out. Performance has been increased a lot.

Today I want to introduce all of you to a game if have played a lot lately.



What sets Squad appart form other FPS games?

Really the main difference can be summed up in one word: Teamwork.

And more importantly, Teamwok on public servers, which is something similar games like ARMA often struggle with.


What does gameplay look like?

For this Question I would like to link to a video, because text is not the right way to give you an idea of what the game feels like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hdeLOn0JXg


Key feature?

- Combat based on small groups acting as part of a larger team
- 72 player servers (will be expanded to 100 players)
- large maps
- ingame VOIP with three different channels (local channel, Squad channel, Squad Leader channel, will possiable be expended to feature more channels like command channel and direct Squad Leader to Squad Leader channel)
- Rounds with objective based combat (many game modes are very similar to Battlefield)
- Vehicles (so far Logistics Trucks, Transport Trucks, different Jeep style vehicles, Artilery (rocket technical) one APC (BTR-80), will be expanded),
- FOB building with emplaced weopens and spawn points
- Supply system for FOB's
- a lot more already in, and a lot more to come


Where does Squad come from?

Squad is a tactical FPS game, based on the Project reality mod for Battlefield 2. Many of the modders behind the PR mod formed a company name "Offworld Industries" and are now working on Squad.


What makes Squad unique?

You can jump into a game fast (unlike in Arma) and play very tactical as a team that almost always uses VOIP (unlike in BF or Planetside 2).
Leaving aside the actual gameplay here for a moment, the way Squad is developed makes it very interesting. Squad is still in Alpha. There is constant feedback and exachange of ideas between the community and developers and everything is done to engage the community. Each month the developers upload a Monthly recap, to let the community know what exactly they are working on. And Squad is one of only 2 games based on Unreal Engine 4 to already have released a development kit for modders.


What else do I need to know?
- If you are new, LET PEOPLE KNOW, the community is over all extremly helpfull towards new players, but does not like people who show no interest in teamwork. Read the manuel, watch maybe a few guides and do not pick the position of Squad Leader and you should be fine
- Squad is a full price game (next sale 50% off November 11-13, 2016)
- A microphone is more or less necessery to play
- Teamplay is a must, many servers will kick out people who try to play Rambo
Last edited by clakclak on Tue, 8. Nov 16, 22:58, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Stars_InTheirEyes »

Sounds like Planetside 2 to me
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Post by clakclak »

Stars_InTheirEyes wrote:Sounds like Planetside 2 to me
I played a lot of Planetside 2. The difference really is on the focus of the game. Planetside is a lot faster a lot more chaotic and very different when it comes to weopen mechanics. Get hit in planetside...shield regenerate. Get hit in Squad once, you bleed and have to bandage, than get healed up by a medic. Get hit with two bullets (or to big of a bullet) you might already be dead. Squad also puts a huge emphasis on mechanics like supression, which as far as I am aware do not even exist in planetside. Also planetside is not round based.

Squad is actually a lot closer to Battlefield than it is to Planetside now that I think about it. (Which makes a lot of sense, given the history.)
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Post by clakclak »

I know double posts are normally wrong, but there is a big even, that I think is actually pretty good regarding this game I'd like to let you know about. In the words of one of my clanmates (going by Saint Sasius) who plays a role in organizing this event.
Saint Sasius wrote:Hey Gents,

This week I've been working closely with Squad to get donations for a cause they are raising money for, stackup.org.

Tomorrow night I will be running a charity stream on behalf of CCFN along with streamers from around Twitch, Developers. It will be hosted on the front page of twitch along with others who are raising donations.

Every $5 donation, you will go in the draw throughout tomorrow night to earn Squad Keys + Squad Merchandise. If you guys want to donate feel free to donate below. If you guys want to read up on stackup.org and there cause, I will provide some information below and there website. This charity supports all veterans around the world.

Tomorrows Schedule:
https://tiltify.com/events/squad-up-4-stack-up

Donations to either:
https://tiltify.com/events/ccfn-for-squadup4stackup
https://tiltify.com/events/squad-up-4-stack-up/

Prize List:
http://joinsquad.com/readArticle?articleId=129

About StackUp.Org:

Stack-Up.org is about using awesome power of gaming to support US, NATO and Australian/New Zealand veterans around the world! CALL TO ARMS is a Stack-Up's year round drive to help us support our video gaming programs:

SUPPLY CRATES: giant boxes of the latest in games and gear sent to combat zones, humanitarian missions or to troops recovering in military hospitals
AIR ASSAULTS: flying deserving veterans to gaming and geek culture conventions, such as Penny Arcade Expo, Comic Con, or E3
THE STACKS: Our local volunteer teams, coming together to support military personnel on bases and around their community

For more details, head to our website at https://stack-up.org/!

Cheers
Sainty

P.S: Prices

If any of you are curious about the game or the work stackup does, simply tune in. :)
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Post by ATTACK_HAMSTER »

I think you advised me to jump back into squad when V8 was released and you were right! The overall optimisation has improved the frames per second i was getting and there are now more vehicles to have fun with, although a little buggy. I must say the audio is second to none, the gun cracks, bullet whizzing and voice coms are excellent - I especially like being indoors and hearing a slight echo to everything, and when it kicks off, it's deafening!

I can see it needs a lot more development so wouldn't outright recommend it to a mate just yet, but it's going in the right direction and i look forward to it's future evolution, particularly if they get it somewhere near what they achieved with project reality. (If anyone wants to see what they are trying to achieve with Squad, check out the project reality game for free, it's based on the BF2 engine and is pure awesome!)
clakclak wrote:
Stars_InTheirEyes wrote:Sounds like Planetside 2 to me
Squad is actually a lot closer to Battlefield than it is to Planetside now that I think about it. (Which makes a lot of sense, given the history.)
I have to say Squad is what Battlefield should of become.... :D
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Post by clakclak »

ATTACK_HAMSTER wrote:[...]

I can see it needs a lot more development so wouldn't outright recommend it to a mate just yet, but it's going in the right direction and i look forward to it's future evolution, particularly if they get it somewhere near what they achieved with project reality.
[...]
You are certainly right I needs more development, but I am also really happy with the direction it is going. They also managed to hit some milestones now and I think the next big challenges (Mortas, tracked vehicles and helicopters) might be a bit easier now that they have a solid framework to work with. There is also a lot of new players comming in because the game is 50% off at the moment and I just did a "new players" squad to teach some of them the basics and it ended up beeing a really good round (we even won with 160+ tickets left). Now I am looking foreward to the features that gonna come in one of the next patches. (Most likely that will be a breacher class, maybe new vehicles and with a lot (loooooooooot) of luck, mortas.)
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Post by Morkonan »

How does Squad differentiate itself from competing titles, like Arma?

On another note, it's my experience that as a title surges/grows, the amount of @$$baggitry increases as players flock to join it. Early players tend to be more serious, especially Beta players. To this point, one thing that I think is needed in games that wish to be "serious" simulators are not only tools to allow self-policing, but structured play that doesn't reward @ssbaggitry. It appears Squad developers know this, but I wonder how well these mechanisms will cope and if they will provide the range of play most players would enjoy. And, on self-policing - That can be dangerous for a game when members so empowered begin abusing or misusing it.

I love team-based objective PVP. But, I also like games that don't take themselves too seriously. I also detest Tyrants who see their leadership role, either mechanically enforced or Clan/Guild enforced, as a means to self-actualize... Combine these things and it comes down to this - I don't find a lot of such games that are altogether enjoyable and it takes a dedicated cluster of routine gaming companions to make it so. :)
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Post by clakclak »

First up, this weekend you can download Squad on Steam and play it for free the entire weekend. Just be aware that because of that most players you come across will be new and not the "usual" audience.

This ended up beeing longer than I wanted it to be, but as you might already know I am a big fan of this game, something you want to keep in mind when reading all this.


Morkonan wrote:How does Squad differentiate itself from competing titles, like Arma?
Well Squad, unlike Arma, is round based. It also focuses a lot more on Team vs Team while most Arma clans I know (and I am part of one) play Arma as a coop experience against the computer. When comparing Squad and Arma, think of Squad as the more casual game. Over all the game will remind you a lot of battlefield when you first fire it up, just with bigger maps and generally more teamwork. It also plays a lot slower than battlefield and you can't just run in and gun down 5 people on your own. The player limit per server at the moment is 72 (36 vs 36), but will be 100 in the final version.
Morkonan wrote:On another note, it's my experience that as a title surges/grows, the amount of @$$baggitry increases as players flock to join it. Early players tend to be more serious, especially Beta players. To this point, one thing that I think is needed in games that wish to be "serious" simulators are not only tools to allow self-policing, but structured play that doesn't reward @ssbaggitry.
Btw Squad does not aim to be a simulator. I think the term they used was "tactical FPS", which is often used when certain parts of the community want to get more "realistic" mechanics into the game. Mods will eventually cover that area, Squad will have its own development kit and is over all very mod friendly.
Morkonan wrote:It appears Squad developers know this, but I wonder how well these mechanisms will cope and if they will provide the range of play most players would enjoy. And, on self-policing - That can be dangerous for a game when members so empowered begin abusing or misusing it.
Right now it is actually mainly self-policing, there are very powerful admin tools in the game already (know this for sure because I have admin powers on one server). The way the community makes it works can be a bit confusing for new players. Generally speaking different servers have differently strict rules. The strictest one right now are probably implied for events hosted by "Squad Ops" who sometimes do 1 live events for whitlisted players. Over all if you do not follow the rules of a server you will be kicked. If you do something to bad you will be banned. And beeing banned is really bad for you because most of the "big" clan servers share ban lists. When it comes to abusing power I'd say the system by which control is applied to a certain degree is very subtle. Squad Clans who host servers know each other. Many participate in weekly events like the CCFN and Wednesday Warzone. Beyond that many clan members will switch to servers of other clans when their own servers are down or not seeded (have no players on them). Because of this almost all the time servers will have in players from other clans. Now imagne a certain clan and or server would abuse it's power. That would give the clan and server a bad reputation with other clans and servers. After the clans make up the core player base a bad reputation spreads fast and has some real consequences. If it gets to bad "JoinSquad" developers will revoke your license (first the offical listing licence, so that your server only shows up in the "custom server tab" and than if it is to bad maybe even the entire server licence, but that is really beyond what I know.) There are also more server slots than active players, so if you do not like a server switching is easy.

I hope this answered your question, if not please keep asking.
Morkonan wrote:I love team-based objective PVP. But, I also like games that don't take themselves too seriously.
So you like games that take themselve to serious or not? The phrasing confuses me a bit.

It is like this. Ingame when there is an actual "hot"/"dangerous" situation like a firefight people will more often than not concentrate on actually playing the game and the will use the typical game chatter: "contact at 243, infantry, 100 meters" or something along those lines. But whenever the situation is relaxed people will simply have some chit chat (more often on the US server though, over all I'd say the US-americans are a bit less serious about the game compared to the europeans.)

Morkonan wrote:II also detest Tyrants who see their leadership role, either mechanically enforced or Clan/Guild enforced, as a means to self-actualize... Combine these things and it comes down to this - I don't find a lot of such games that are altogether enjoyable and it takes a dedicated cluster of routine gaming companions to make it so. :)
You get Tyrants at times, but they are mostly disliked and once again you can simply leave their Squad and join another one. There is however a difference between someone playing themself up and someone giving orders simply because they play the role of Squad Leader. If you don't want to follow orders than this game is not for you. If everyone just goes of and does their own thing it does not work. Listining to your Squad Leader is actually important. But they generally only want to play the game like it is meant to be played and nothing more. I am gonna use myself as example here. When I lead a Squad (doesn't happen that often because it is really stressfull), I will kick players from the Squad if they don't listen after a couple times I told them to do something, unless of course they talked to me and told me that they can't do it. So as long as they communicate and try to play as a team I will not kick anyone, no matter how bad they might play. Playing bad is not a problem, not trying to play as a team is. You have a bunch of people who come in, don't listen or talk, grab the marksman kit and go of to play John Rambo (they have to join a squad, because otherwise you can not select special classes, like marksman and so on). I will kick these types to make space for someone who actually wants to play with us.


When it comes to clans than I can say that clan members tend to intermix with public players rather well. They will often open Squads that carry their clan name, but I have never really seen any clan squad you couldn't join as a public player if they had spaces left. And clan members will also join squads set up be non clan members. An example of how a normal game at a week evening looks like, in terms of clans and mixing: http://i.imgur.com/tQJ3Ulz.jpg (You can also see that the players with the most points are not the players with the most kills.)
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Post by Memnoch »

Squad can be fun until you end up on a team with someone like Bluedrake42.

He's really into the team work and what not, but can be very childish. And to top it all off the things he bitches and moans about others on his squad doing he does himself and turns a blind eye to it, even when other squad leaders call him out on it.

Avoid him and his ilk and the game can be fun.
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Post by Morkonan »

clakclak wrote:<gave excellent feedback>
Thanks for answering those questions and responding to those points!

As far as "taking itself too seriously", what I'm stressing is that some games or gamers promote extreme levels of competition in PVP play. I, too, can be highly competitive, but I no longer really seek that sort of thing, since I can create whatever levels of stress I would like, on demand, all by myself... :) There was a time when I was really into team/clan/guild competition, ladder-climbing, pushing PvP play to the limits because I enjoyed it a great deal. But, even then, we'd have to take time off to go goof off or we'd all end up with brains of mush and nerves of glass.

I'll keep my eye on this. If it continues to look like a team objective PvP game that can be "fun" rather than "work", I might be interested in trying it out. Mission dedication, following orders, leadership, completing the objectives, all of these can be "fun" for me, in the right environment and, importantly, in the right game.

If it's technical enough to attract the right people and fun enough to attract the right people out of those sorts, then it might be a great PvP game.
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Post by Memnoch »

That's the key to having a good game of Squad. Find a good group to play with and have fun and stick with them. If you find one who starts acting like he/she is in the military and taking things a bit too seriously just move on and leave them to it.

It's a game and some people have forgotten that.

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