Every time that EA starts work on a new Command & Conquer game, they host a summit to get fan feedback for devlopment of the game. This December was no different.
EA flew down 12 community heads to their LA studio to come and test out the new C&C game, and if the video they posted on YouTube is to be believed, it looks like EA has struck gold.
Among those invited was Game Replays' Methusalah, who wrote his opinions of the experience. NeoGAF user Nirolak was able to distill the article into a few key points, which you can check out below.
- Almost all the senior staff from the old team is gone, replaced with the team JVC built when after he launched the studio.
- The game will be treated as a service in the same sense games like Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, League of Legends, and other high profile f2p titles are, as in it will be expanded with a large number of additions, balancing patches, new modes, etc post launch. The base version will launch with Generals content.
- C&C will be a traditional RTS with base building, resource collection, and three unique factions. It also presumably features a very prominent annihilation mode.
- The game features a fragile, harassable builder unit, and killing that unit will cause a building to stop constructing.
- Resource nodes now have a maximum optimal number of harvesters, meaning that the rate at which you can collect resources from any given location is gated, which in turn helps promote creating expansion bases.
- There's a new resource that serves the same purpose as vespene gas (as in it's used for higher tech tree units and structures). The vespene gas resource (oil) however is autocollected by building an oil derrick on it as opposed to requiring more workers.
- Supply Drops and Black Markets have been removed so that it is actually possible to run out of resources on a map, meaning that you can no longer have indefinite late game income.
- The way each faction techs up is unique, and the tech tree variety was compared to Red Alert 3.
- While the infantry units have the appearance of squads, this is simply an aesthetic, as the squad functions as a single unit (like, when they get killed, all the units will die, and they don't have different weapons or things in the squad like in Dawn of War or Company of Heroes).
- Building placement is currently grid based and uses 90 degree rotations, but this is still in progress.
- Their game balance philosophy is that they want to balance the title from both a numeric (damage/unit cost) and usage (strategy) perspective, so they built tools to collect a gigantic amount of data that will help them analyze both on a large scale.
- Victory has claimed that they've actually not yet decided how to monetize the game outside of the fact that it will be F2P. They did note though that they believed basically no one would actually want to play the game if it had anything the RTS community would consider pay 2 win or imbalancing, thus causing them to have essentially flushed all the money they spent down the drain. To their credit, they are trying to hire a monetization designer
- While Skirmish is present (and presumably what they played), the game will also feature additional PvP and PvE modes.
Obviously, this third hand account of factoids may not be enough for C&C die hards, so make sure you head over to the official C&C site to sign up for the beta.