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SOCOM Confrontation - The thread (bringing back the REAL!)

D

Doel

Member
SOCOM Media Day is today. I'll be home updating here and therealsocom.com blog as quick a I can, and hopefully I'll also record episode 3 of the podcast tonight with Hellman on everything we saw today.
 
D

Doel

Member
This was too funny not to post. Saw it on the Playstation.com boards (the media event today is in Vegas encase you didn't know:

Picture from Media Event

mediaevent.jpg
Click to expand...

:lol
 
T

TTP

Have a fun! Enjoy!
Doel said:
SOCOM Media Day is today. I'll be home updating here and therealsocom.com blog as quick a I can, and hopefully I'll also record episode 3 of the podcast tonight with Hellman on everything we saw today.
Click to expand...


All I need to know is the frame rate. I dont care about anything else. It's THE deal breaker.
 
A

andycapps

Member
Have they stated when the beta will be available to those that purchased the June Qore issue? Didn't see any info on this in the OP.
 
D

Doel

Member
Finally a clearer answer on how team-switching will work. Still leaves me with a few questions though.

Hey Slant Six, why add team switching?

That's a good question. The decision to implement team switching stems directly from the core premise of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation; pure online competition. The ranking system in Confrontation is meant to truly reflect individual skill and teamwork, and in order to do that all other variables must be controlled. If a team only plays one side of a map then we can’t determine who truly is the most skilled, flexible and capable team. Would anyone claim that they have played a game where all the weapons, attachments, maps and game modes are 100% balanced in every way (including the previous SOCOM? Does that stop people from taking advantage of those subtle imbalances and aiming to play under the most advantageous conditions? Not a chance.

In order to make a game truly competitive it must be as fair as possible and that means leveling the playing field. There is a reason professional sports have the competitors switch sides part way through a game. Surface irregularities on an ice rink or tennis court could unbalance a sports competition, so the players always switch ends. We don’t want people walking away from a match attributing their win or their loss to the location of their spawn or the weapons their team had. In addition, we feel that players will have the greatest investment in their Clan-specific Special Forces character, or at least have a preference for playing Commandos or Mercenaries and we want to ensure that in ranked games everyone gets equal time with their preferred character.

In ranked games players can expect to play a total of 10 rounds, each round being 6 minutes long. At the 5 round mark the teams will switch sides and the players reverse roles. This is the reason that each player has two avatars: your Commando (Special Forces) and a Mercenary. You will be playing with these two characters each time you jump into a game. Players will be able to create multiple preset loadouts for each avatar which can be easily selected during the course of a game. At the beginning of each round players will be able to choose the loadout they want to use.

If at the end of the 10 rounds both teams are tied at 5 rounds each then the team with the best overall performance is awarded the victory. This is where individual skill blends with being a team player to tip the balance in close matches. So if you have a camper playing with you, hanging back and not pulling his weight you may want to persuade him to change his play style.

Finally you can disable team switching in custom matches.
Click to expand...

My comment to the blog post was:

I understand what you're saying, but I'm not yet convinced.

And you can't blame me for feeling this way when no one complained about how this was handled in previous SOCOM games. We've been waiting for a true SOCOM experience since SOCOM 2, then we finally are offered what seems to be one...yet now you guys want to change aspects of the game that was never broken to begin with.

My big problem with your method here is that in classic SOCOM, it was all about those heart-pounding come back victories. Your team was down 4-0, but then you all agreed on a new strategy, banded together, and came back to win 6-5. This is what classic SOCOM is about.

Are you making us play 10 rounds in every match, even if it's not needed? If a team wins the first 6 rounds, are they going to have to play the next 4 as well? Your explanation is hazy in this regard.​

Someone else makes a great point I wanted to mention:

Voo Sneaky:

How about 11 rounds Allen... this "better performance" mumbo jumbo is over what? Bombs planted? Kill Counts? Total Earned Points? The game should just flip a coin, and put teams accordingly to that if the overpoweredness of a side is that big of an issue. By then, each team has seen each others strategies on both ends, so I don't see the problem in having one last round to decide it all.

Your professional sports metaphor fails if you don't have tiebreakers. The only sport that comes to mind that doesn't have an overtime if there is a "tie", is boxing, which is PURELY controversaly decided by judges. Some of my favorite moments on SOCOM 2 were the nailbiting tiebreaker rounds on Xroads which would determine the outcome of the whole clan war... but the way you guys are making it doesn't revive this feeling at all. Instead, everyone will focus on planting the bomb to get those "free bonus points" to ensure they get the winning edge in case of a tie.
Click to expand...
 
B

BirdBomb

Banned
LOL every time i read info on this game it is less and less like the throwback to "real" SOCOM it was supposed to be. no tie breaker? "performance score"? fuck that noise :lol
 
T

tuco11

Member
"If at the end of the 10 rounds both teams are tied at 5 rounds each then the team with the best overall performance is awarded the victory."

If thats the way it is going to be it is just laughable. What an abortion.
 
T

The Take Out Bandit

Member
Sounds interesting to me. IMO SOCOM was always a team game, it just got played like Quake / Halo by a lot of spazzes.

Oh wait, "the real SOCOM" is SEALs raining grenades on terrorist side and sweeping the terrorists; then calling the opposing team "scrubs" and "fags" in the lobby. :lol

I'm tempted to pick up Qore just to give this a whirl, see if it's actually worth paying money for.
 
J

jester

Neo Member
TTP said:
All I need to know is the frame rate. I dont care about anything else. It's THE deal breaker.
Click to expand...

It has already been confirmed on one of the Q&A's on Socom.com (I think that is where I saw it) that the game is going to be 720p/30fps.
 
G

GQman2121

Banned
The beta is going to make or break these "new" ideas being presented in this "new" version of Socom.

What's going to happen if they don't change things up, is that everyone is going to play custom games, having no ranking system. It's that simple.
 
D

Doel

Member
On second pass, I don't think there changes to the round-based system is as bad as it may sound at first. Either way we'll have a chance to check it out in the beta.

BTW, ETA on new info hitting the web - 2 hours (12pm EST, 9am PST).
 
S

Sol..

I am Wayne Brady.
lol everybody has a strange sense of dealing with winning and loosing in round based games these days.

Switching Teams is fine and is necessary. Like everybody does it.

However no tie breaker seems kinda stupid. Sort of destroys the concept of a "ugly win" against a stronger team. I spose it can't be any worse than stalemates in Team Fortress 2 tho eh?
 
T

TTP

Have a fun! Enjoy!
There are a few issues, though. Throughout the various matches we played, the framerate struggled to hit 30 fps. Oftentimes, the game hovered in the 20s, especially during the larger matches. Developers noted that they're aiming for 30, locked.
Click to expand...

I'm seriously concerned.
 
J

J-Rzez

Member
TTP said:
I'm seriously concerned.
Click to expand...

Alpha. I'm sure they'll tune that up as it's absolutely crucial to get that at 30fps. Just like the lag, I'm sure that'll get tuned up as well.

The sixaxis controls sound great though. Motion control done right in a game, "enhance" the experience, but don't make it the only way to use the moves in case you don't like it.
 
T

TTP

Have a fun! Enjoy!
J-Rzez said:
Alpha.
Click to expand...

Killzone 2 is alpha as well and is butter despite looking as good as it does. I dont really know what to make of that codename anymore. I hope they can achieve 30fps in less than 3 months. But it doesn't look like it's a priority for them.
 
J

J-Rzez

Member
So far it looks like it has that "SOCOM vibe", i'm happy with what they've shown up to this point. Obviously, I'd like locked 30fps/super low latency, which I'm sure the final retail copy will provide.
 
D

Doel

Member
SOCOM Confrontation music and how they're innovating

They are doing really interesting stuff with dynamic music for an online title.

Hi SOCOM folks,

I'm a music editor at SCEA, and I wanted to share with you some of the cool stuff our department is doing with Slant Six on the music for SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation.

Our main goal is to musically score each player's experience in the game on a personal level without being too informative or distracting. When the battle does heat up though, expect some incredible tracks from Justin Burnett to accompany gameplay. I've included one in this post to give you a taste. Also, if you preorder from Amazon, you'll get 5 more.

The main way we determine when and how to play music is by what we call the "Combat Intensity System". Game events are tracked - enemies letting off rounds, bullets whizzing by your head, someone chucking a frag grenade - these are all factored into the combat intensity. When the value of intensity reaches a certain threshold, combat music kicks in to accompany the ensuing chaos. Over time the total combat intensity value goes down so that events from too far in the past don't affect the system.

The analogy we like to use is it to imagine a bucket. Whenever something exciting (gunshots, explosions, etc) happens in game, water gets poured into the bucket. Now imagine that this bucket has a small hole in the bottom that water leaks out of slowly. If enough water is thrown into the bucket at one time, the bucket overflows and at that point we play music.
When you're not engaged in serious combat, the music largely goes away to give some breathing room. Because, let's face it, you're going to be playing this game for hours! When things have quieted down even further, the Combat Intensity drops below what we call the "mood threshold". Here we play brief ambient clips every once in a while to heighten the experience of being in these exotic and richly detailed North African spaces. In a multiplayer FPS, music does have the potential of interfering with being able to hear important audio cues like enemy footsteps. As a competitive gamer, this was a big concern - especially after Scott, in the office next to mine, ran up behind me in game and put a few rounds in my back while a mood was playing. Something had to be done! Now the mood music will not play when enemy footsteps can be heard. (Bring it on, Scott!) Also, combat music will only kick in when there are enough gunshots and explosions going on around you that you wouldn't be able to even hear something subtle like footsteps.

Another cool thing we do to further tailor the score to the game experience is to create multi-layered pieces of music. We start with getting what we call "stems" from Justin, the composer. The stems are separate audio files each containing a different instrument that makes up the song. The song gets sliced and diced then we recombine the instruments to make two different arrangements - one for a medium intensity combat and one for a higher intensity combat. If a battle is exciting enough, the audio file containing high intensity instruments gets played on top of the already playing medium combat music. Again, this is all determined by the Combat Intensity System.

One challenge with designing music implementation systems for video games is that they can become too literal and lose their musicality. So there are all kinds of other things going on that take into account issues like music ping-ponging between intensities with game states, number of players on the map, differences in weapon fire rate, etc. Ultimately, we try to find ways in which to track the game experience musically, but we also allow the great music that our composer delivers be heard and 'breathe' in the way it was intended.

It gets pretty deep, but at the end of the day I think music is going to add a lot to the SOCOM: Confrontation experience.

Cover of Night.mp3 (2.75 mb)

Cheers,
- Ernest
Click to expand...
 
H

HoTHiTTeR

Member
I kind of expected the Beta to drop before the next "issue" of Qore came out. Any word on when we can expect the Confrontation beta to be available?
 
R

rollingstart

Banned
HoTHiTTeR said:
I kind of expected the Beta to drop before the next "issue" of Qore came out. Any word on when we can expect the Confrontation beta to be available?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I am getting curious. To download the beta, you need to go through the Qore episode, but apparently it gets rewritten when the new issue is out, right?
 
S

Sol..

I am Wayne Brady.
TTP said:
I'm seriously concerned.
Click to expand...

me too, back in the day it was ok because it was commonplace. Now i'm spoiled and can't stand sub 30. Even if the gameplay is built to handle 30 frames or less.

Is something wrong with the name SOCOM? is it like hard for the playstation to comprehend the name SOCOM. Cuz it really doesn't appear to be pushing major shit.
 
T

tuco11

Member
A true frame rate test will be at the beginning of a round on Desert Glory when the grenades start flying from both sides and my m63 fired one shot at a time due to slow down :lol
 
D

Doel

Member
Proof the SOCOM Private beta is at least done:

2646138163_452ca74030.jpg


Take a look at the top left corner.

Originally posted on SOCOM.com

EDIT: :lol They took it down

EDIT 2: They photoshopped it out of the picture:

2646959685_034e07f221.jpg


Too late, the SOCOM boards on Playstation.com are going crazy :lol
 
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