Hawken Bringing Update Filled With Destruction

WMDogma

New member
Jul 28, 2009
1,374
0
0
Hawken Bringing Update Filled With Destruction



Since going into open beta in December of 2012, the team behind Hawken, the beautiful-looking free-to-play multiplayer title that lets players battle it out with uniquely designed mechs in an industrial dystopia, has been hard at work bringing in new features and listening to community feedback to help improve upon the game. At PAX East 2013, I had the opportunity to sit down with Evan Berman, Meteor Entertainment's senior community manager, and Senior Producer Paul Loynd to hear more about some of the new features the Hawken team will be launching over the next few months.

The most impressive new feature that was previewed at PAX East is an upcoming update that uses Nvidia's PhysX to integrate destructible environments into Hawken's game world. Scheduled to debut in full later this year, the new update adds to the chaos of a firefight between dueling players by letting them turn Hawken's concrete and industrial landscapes into full-on warzones with crumbling buildings and broken bridges. In the demo I played, it was possible to use missiles (or your own mech) to punch through walls with ease, letting you chase down opponents down through parking garages or a create a quick escape route through a rooftop. Plus, if a target goes for the high ground, it's possible to destroy the very floor they're standing on, sending them dropping to the streets below and hopefully into your waiting gun sights.

Loynd explained that the tech for destructible environments works within the game, but the Hawken's team next step is to make sure everything with the new destructible environments works smoothly before it goes open to the public. Along with fixing any remaining bugs, Loynd explained that the Hawken dev team is looking into whether Hawken's gameplay will need adjustment to ensure everything remains balanced with the addition of destructible environments. After all, when the walls players used to hide behind can be destroyed in one click, setting up ambushes or dashing for cover becomes a whole lot trickier.

Currently, Hawken's players have about a dozen mech classes to pick from, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses on top of a level system that lets players use the experience and in-game materials they earn in matches to pick up new abilities and equipment. A patch scheduled to arrive in April of 2013 will introduce a new class called the "Technician", the first "Support" class mech that focuses on assisting team members and hindering enemies. Equipped with a Nanobot rifle, the Technician is capable of firing a repair beam (think a mech-sized version of the Medigun from Team Fortress 2) that repairs friendly mechs to keep them in the action. For the more devious players out there, the Nanobot Rifle can also be used to leech the health away from enemies. During my interview with Paul Loynd, he explained that the new support class is aimed at not only introducing new gameplay but also making Hawken more accessible to people who may not be as skilled at using the more complex classes of mechs available.

You can check out Hawken for free here [https://www.playhawken.com//].

Permalink
 

Daemascus

WAAAAAAAAAGHHH!!!!
Mar 6, 2010
792
0
0
Having played a bit of Hawken, destructible terrain sounds like a great addition, and will shake up the gameplay. Even if all the maps will be turned to rubble by the end.
 

Johnson McGee

New member
Nov 16, 2009
516
0
0
Hawken is OK but I feel like I may have ruined it for myself by playing the beta, at this stage it's still fairly uninteresting. If they keep adding interesting features like this it will get a lot better but I still won't feel like going back to it.

Their main issue IMO is the painfully slow unlocking and levelling process. I get they want to encourage people to buy in but creating such a huge barrier to entry for new players and handing massive advantages to experienced players isn't a good model for a game trying to get established.
 

Jdb

New member
May 26, 2010
337
0
0
Here's a video of the destructible environments in action.


Destructible environments and a support class might fix Hawken's biggest problem - Balance. Currently, the game is dominated by classes with big burst damage that rely on cover, such as the Scout, Raider, and Sharpshooter. Every map has so much cover, it's easy for them to do high damage with minimum risk of counter attack. Take their cover away, and you take away their defenses. Add a support class, and their huge damage is no longer that much of a concern.

Some other interesting observations about the Technician - The Nanobot Rifle is not the Repair Torch, which means players can expect a second support class to eventually release. Also, another weapon the Technician is supposed to have is a sub machine cannon that applies a stacking damage debuff. The damage debuff increases damage an enemy receives.