Dec 7, 2011 9:54 PM
An Open Letter to Lightbox Interactive on Behalf of the Warhawk Community
The signers of this letter would like to formally and respectfully voice our concerns about Starhawk by bringing the most critical issues to your attention.
In the past several years, the video game industry has become extremely stagnant, especially in the shooter genre. But one game stood out from the rest: Warhawk. Warhawk dared to be different; dared to color outside the lines. Warhawk showed the world that you don’t have to conform to be great. Warhawk built a large, tight-knit community that is still active over four years later. These dedicated fans trusted you, Lightbox Interactive, to deliver a sequel that maintained the addictive and entertaining qualities that Warhawk first brought to the market while introducing new gameplay elements and features that build onto these qualities. However, fans have been woefully disappointed by your readiness to implement the very features and gameplay mechanics that Warhawk had stood up against. Starhawk, in its current form, is a direct contributor to the static nature of modern games and has been taken as a revilement to the Warhawk Community.
As you read this letter, please keep our intentions in mind. We are not here to insult what you’ve spent years creating; we are here to help you make Starhawk the best it can be. Without further ado, we would like to present an inexhaustive list of necessary changes on behalf of the Warhawk Community, in no specific order:
1. Add aim-assist: One of the major gameplay mechanics that made Warhawk unique was the fast-paced combat. By using the auto-aim, players could focus more on the strategy of combat, and less on aiming. While this did make ground combat easier, it did not make it easy by any stretch of the imagination. The reason this feature is so often blasted is because other games focus solely on the skill of aiming well. However, the gameplay of Warhawk was so much deeper than aiming a gun. To be a successful shooter in Warhawk, there was a very complex strategy which took hundreds of hours to master. You were running, jumping, dodging, throwing grenades, and switching weapons. By removing the auto-aim in Starhawk, you have forced players to focus on aim, and have effectively eliminated the strategy of ground combat. When you see an enemy, you simply scope in and shoot. The winner of every battle is the one who can aim better. Combat is dreadfully slow and doesn’t allow any sort of “running-and-gunning” because players are restricted to crawling duels.
2. Improve the grenade: Warhawk’s combat was so quick in part due to the grenade. They were plentiful, powerful and fast, but they still required quite a bit of skill to be used correctly and effectively. The biggest flaw in Starhawk’s implementation of the grenade is the delay between pressing L2 and throwing the grenade. This slows down combat and makes the grenade only a minor threat. Another problem is the detonation conditions. Grenades don’t explode on contact, which makes even the most accurate of throws powerless against an enemy.
3. Add visible health bar, remove health regeneration: As we’ve already illustrated, Warhawk’s ground combat was multi-dimensional. Every decision you made was based around things like your location, objective locations, bases, weapons, health, etc. Any seasoned Warhawk players knew the importance of knowing what your health level was and could make critical decisions based on that information. By making health so unimportant that it doesn’t even have its own indicator and by allowing players to regain health by doing nothing, you’ve make ground combat even less exciting and fun.
4. Reduce importance of kills, increase importance of objectives: If we’ve learned anything from modern shooter games, it should be that making kills and individual statistics important decreases team-based play and teamwork exponentially. In Warhawk, the most rewarding in-game accomplishment was capturing a flag, worth 25 points, while kills are worth only one point. This system encourages players to complete tasks that benefit the entire team instead of playing for themselves. In terms of XP, Starhawk offers little reward for capturing a flag, little reward for building helpful structures, and therefore encourages players to play for themselves and their kill-death ratio. This leads to practices such as camping, and further simplifies ground combat by encouraging players to do whatever it takes to stay alive – even if it hurts the entire team.
5. Fix flight: Perhaps the most atrocious changes in the eyes of Warhawk fans are those to Starhawk’s flight. Like every element in Warhawk, flight was an art: there was not a single person who truly mastered it. No matter how long you had played, there was always more strategy to learn; more skills to improve. However, the Hawks in Starhawk throw away the fluidness and intuitiveness of the Warhawk. Hawks are clumsy and their implementation feels forced. They’ve been weighted down with unnecessary changes and unnatural motion. They are no longer the dynamic force they were. Of course, this is not to say Warhawks were perfect. Warhawks were overpowered and riddled with bugs. But there were just that: balancing problems and bugs. The fundamental mechanics of the Warhawk were fantastic and intensely fun. They simply needed some new paint, not a total makeover.
6. Don’t add perks: “Perks” are yet another way you have sculpted Starhawk to be like every other shooter on the market. As players spend more time in the game, they acquire skill and strategy that make them better players. Allowing them to use different equipment or have different skills than everyone else is unfair and only serves to make the talented players more “talented”.
In addition, we do not condone the approach you have taken to conducting Starhawk’s private beta. You have shown no respect to the loyal supporters and veterans of Warhawk who know better than anyone how to make Starhawk successful. After all, we were and are your customers. We were and are the ones who pay your salary. Josh Stuphin himself said, “The Warhawk multiplayer community did a lot of things for us.” Don’t we deserve (and wouldn’t it be in your best interest) to be heard and respected above anyone else? And yet, you have disregarded us and have instead recruited your beta testers through social media. The majority of your beta testers are the ones who have driven the stagnation of this industry and continue to promote the same gameplay that has kept games from evolving. You have treated this critically important private beta as a demo and as a public relations stunt. The true criticisms of Starhawk that deserve and require your attention have been muffled by the roar of those unfamiliar with the Warhawk franchise. Do not let them ruin this game.
Beyond these glaring problems there is a gem of a game. If these issues can be worked out, then Starhawk will become a true sequel to Warhawk. The addictiveness and the fun are there; it’s just hidden under a desire to please everyone and to conform to the standard shooter game.
We would like to request a public, official, and direct response from you, Lightbox Interactive, as to what you will be modifying to address our concerns.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Signed,
Sonic42 & ButteredScones