I was too late for the beta, but I am in the "Early Start", which is live server playtime for people who purchased the game before release. (We're capped at Level 10, and there's no Conquest (Alliance vs. Alliance) play as of yet.) I'll address comma's questions/comments.
commasplice said:
I was wondering about this, myself. If Faction A controls 55% of the territory, Team Omega controls another 40% and Canon Fodder Platoon can only manage to hold on to 5%, where's the incentive to join up with CFP or start my own Agency? Why not sign up with one of the groups that has the monopoly and, well, help them keep it by sheer force of manpower? I admit that I've only played one MMO with guild v. guild mechanics, but on our server, the same guild won every week and the only reason any of my buddies or I could think up to even challenge said guild was, "Because they're assholes and need to be taken down a peg."
First and foremost, GA's Conquest mode is very politically oriented. There are two sets of groups: Agencies (clans/guilds) and Alliances (groups of Agencies working together to some unknown degree, presumably sharing territory and resoures). Just as you can join an Agency at any time, I presume you could get in and out of an Alliance at any time.
It's unlikely that any one Agency would control 50% of the gameworld; defending each hex would require fielding at least 10 players - 10 good players - to play a match and win. (A loss equals loss of that territory.) It is more likely that Alliances would control large swaths of territory.
This is where the backstab element comes in: you can leave or join an Alliance at any time. One hypothetical scenario would be Cannon Fodder somehow manages to sway an Agency of the Faction A alliance to join them, thereby redistributing the power to say Faction A 40%, Team Omega 40%, and Cannon Fodder 20%.
The devs will likely not intervene in Conquest in the sense that they would break up a big Alliance controlling much of the map, but they have the option to open new chunks of territory. To buy territory, you have to bid on it, so economic power is important here. Once you buy it, you then would build a facility on it to exploit it for whatever reason - mining, a factory, etc. In the case of such a large distribution of territory, the devs might decide to open up hexes near Cannon Fodder to better give them the opportunity to grab it.
Even so, controlling a large chunk of territory is very, very difficult. My Agency leader related a story in the beta to me. One particular Agency used a Zerg sort of strategy and captured something on the order of 30 hexes, whereas the next largest Agency had around 20. This "Zerg" Agency had something like 490 members. However, when it came time to defend, they were ill-equipped in both tactics and skills and they got steamrolled. They lost all of their territory in one day because they expanded quickly and had no capability for defense.
So any Alliances or Agencies controlling a huge chunk of territory is really unlikely IMO. I guess we'll find out Tuesday when Conquest goes live.
commasplice said:
I was also wondering about the "balancing" of PvP. Sure, I think balanced gameplay is great and all, but how the game is balanced is important. Does the matchmaking system only allow a certain number of specific classes for each side and try to even out each team's average level? Is the PvP tuned in such a way that a level 3 character could stand as much chance against a level 64 character as a level 70 one would? If so, what's the point in leveling in the first place?
The gameplay is a good bit like WoW in that a Level 64 will steamroll a Level 3 because of the level of damage they put out. (Incidentally, the max level is currently 50.) The Level 3 could, in theory, win with better tactics, but its highly unlikely. As you level up you unlock more varied equipment (for instance, a more powerful rifle that has half the range of your default gun). Higher levels can also equip better items. So yes, there is a point to levelling.
commasplice said:
The PvE is another point that's got me curious. When Harris said that PvE featured four-player co-op, did he mean that it only had four-player co-op or could you, say, be out in the Post-Apocalypse Dead Zone, killing T-888's with a friend when some griefer comes over and snipes your mob? When I hear "action MMO" or "MMO shooter," I think of a game with the combat mechanics of Half-Life 2 and the open-world exploration of WoW and, well, every other MMORPG out there. In my mind, it doesn't quite qualify for Massively Multiplayer anything unless you could, theoretically, have 50+ people standing in the same 30 foot radius. Larger-than-average PvP and a level-up system does not an MMORPG make.
PvE is instanced. There is no large game world to go running around in. In WoW terms, every single game is a battleground or raid. It's one team against another team; there's no way for a third party to bust their way into your instance.
I think the cap on servers right now is 10v10, but there's talk of raiding Agency bases involving 60 people. Whether this means 60 people in one instances or 6 instances of 10 each, I don't know.
All that said, the game is definitely addicting and fun. The class balance is mostly right, every class has its role (and two distinct builds you can go with), and there's a ton of customization. One of the best bits is that bonuses are not tied to armor but rather implants. Every Level 50 Medic will not look the same; your armor (and its color) are 100% superficial.
As they said in the video, the game is worth the retail price for its standard gameplay alone. Whether Conquest is worth it, well, everyone who buys gets a free month of Conquest play. We'll know Tuesday when it debuts. d:
