Player-vs-Player combat, Player-vs-Environment solo and co-op content
In a way, the MMOFPS genre is an oxymoron. I’ve played a few games that tried to do it, and they’ve been horrendous failures. MMOs are generally RPGs, which means they have persistent stats, items and upgrades, and the best characters are the most relentless grinders. FPS games are generally in the Quake mould. You connect, and everyone is automatically placed on a level footing, equally able to win the single-instance round. Inevitably, the two don’t mix. So I can scarcely believe what a tremendous job Hi-Rez Games has done of combining them.Character levels in Global Agenda don’t, in themselves, count for anything. Instead, they provide that mainstay of RPGs – the upgrade point – so you can, for instance, boost your melee damage by 10%. Vitally though, all of the upgrades are fairly minor, so whilst they are beneficial, a new player won’t be blown away in battle by someone with a 200% damage boost. Hi-Rez Games takes a similar approach in terms of equipment. As you might expect, you can collect different pieces of armour and weapons, and craft upgrades for them, but again the benefits are quite small – perhaps 2% stronger armour, or a 4% faster rate of fire.
It’s easy to belittle this, and say they’ve just rendered the RPG aspect pointless, but it isn’t true. The dedicated players of Global Agenda are always looking for any bonus they can get over their enemy, no matter how small, so they’ll chase the best upgrades and boosts in exactly the same way they would if they were more powerful. The big difference is for the more casual gamer – no longer do they have to give up at the first hurdle, accepting that if they can’t to dedicate 8 hours to dungeon raiding they can’t compete against other players. Instead, they can compete on a fairly even playing field, right from the off.
This theme continues with one of my pet hates – paid boosters. Instead of saying that someone who pays will get better items, or be a stronger character, instead it just accelerates progress. Earnable tokens and credits are capped per day, but courtesy of a paid boost, you can reach the cap in half the time it would take a non-paying gamer to accrue them. Effectively, you’re not paying for a stronger character – you’re paying for convenience. If you’d rather not pay for the boosts, you can play for twice as long each day and there’s no difference between you and a boosted character, so for once I’m actually not that bothered by their presence.
Continued overleaf...
