Sticky: Why a 'Battlezone 3' is unlikely REPLY

[Killer AK]

Even if the name 'Battlezone 3' had been acquired, or sidestepped by making 'Combat Commander II', the bigger problem was the lack of sales. We were released at an inopportune time -- December 28th, 1999 in the US, when consumer's attentions were elsewhere. Marketing had more or less dried up months before. Yes, stability at release was fairly poor as well, and BZ2 demands a whole lot more system than most people had at the time. And, the reaction by the public wasn't great. A lot of people who had played Battlezone 1, and were expecting exactly more of the same, with larger assets, turned against the game. We saw letters written to the editors of gaming magazines, dissing BZ2; an unofficial online campaign attacking the game was also seen on forums and the like. All of these factors helped make sure that BZ2 died a quick death at retail.
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Great article i really enjoyed reading this. i have more to add.
you are right the fan base turned against the game.
most players were geared towards the FPS aspect of battlezone and didn't touch the strategy at all.
And i don't care what die hard battlezone 2 has, death match is still ten times better in bz1 with then times the competition.
but the strategy is better in bz2. I am more a strategy player but i do enjoy the deathmatch side as well.
Battlezone 2 was a mistake all through it's creation. In the days it came out everyone here in Canada was still using 56.6 k modems. The strategy play would lag my modem out. And at the time of it's release battlezone 1 was way more 56.6k modem friendly.
Battlezone 2 wasn't released world wide, nearly to the scale Battlezone 1 was. i don't see nearly the selection of world wide people bz1 still has.
Most consumers didn't have the hardware.
The multiplayer aspect was released and people were flying up in the sky scouts for years and that killed any hope of any long term bz1 player to playing bz2. i only know what guy named Xc DarkShadow that played for years.
Secondly the multiplayer was missing that third army, which makes things really interesting.
i miss the flags you could have in bz1 that shows clan-faction support.
The sad part about it all that really hurt the series was that when we have that die hard in bz1 fan wanting to drive a wolverine or tusker, that's what he wants to drive.
He doesn't want to drive a modern rocket tank. My dad refuses to play bz2 because he went from bz1 to that floaty feeling bz2 has with it's ships and he cant stand it. So GSH was correct they just wanted larger assets. It would have made more sense to make another independent expansion pack for bz1. Even the graphics for bz2 doesn't look as realistic to bz1, bz2 to me looks more like a cartoon.
If bz3 was going to exist. Their team would need a few big fans in order to help bringing both games closer together. Bz2 still has some things thing wrong but it's still pretty good with the public beta patches. And i like bz2.
Bz2 was pretty complex to learn i remember my first tries at the game i felt overwhelmed just to go on multiplayer and have someone do something cheap and kill my base like fly into the control room, or fly on that flying scout over my recycler and kill my recycler . Bz1's strategy was pretty complex as well and has oodles of secrets battlezone 2 doesn't have. but because the deathmatch side for bz1 is so much better they were able to maintain a healthy strategy following.
It would take real fine tuning in order to get bz1 and bz2 and RO fan base to pick up bz3.
But to make money out of it now a days i don't know if that's possible because everyone is pushing towards xboxes and playstations, and in my case wii u.
Not only that some of these fights between community members still go on, since the release of bz1 when everyone met each other in 1995 lol
You get those die hards that want no change in battlezone 1 to improve the game dispite how stupid things are like how easy it is to blow up the recycler, or the SP cannon using less ammo than the AT cannon. I think weapon linking in bz1 was insanity and killed the strategy but ask a death match player in bz1 and they love the split shot so for me i think the HP for each building should have been raised. It would have solved some issues.
anyways that's my rant.

[Killer AK]

What eventually happened with battlezone 2 was we took its ships and imported them in battlezone 1. We couldn't use assault tanks or walkers but we did have the bomber reduced in size and the saber and scout until that fad wore out.
i think the bomber file is still playable in battlezone enhanced for the bomber matches the old timers like to play.

[Ded10c]

There were several articles in the British gaming magazine PCZone about BZ2 that commented particularly on how hardware-intensive it was. I've seen several websites from around the time comment on this too - it was well-documented. It needed a lot of power, but it was pretty clear about it.

I'm not sure where you got the point about not getting a worldwide release from; I've encountered players from six continents. It was pretty widespread.

Which "third army" do you refer to? All of the BZ games have had two factions - not counting TRO, obviously, but to my understanding that was extremely rare until BZ Gold came out.

There was an article by Carey Chico on the BZ2 website about why they chose the art style they did. It's in my archive folder somewhere (not easy to find), but there's a copy on web.archive.org at pandemicstudios.com/bzii.

Re your comment about another independent expansion... grab a controller and a copy of Project64 and look up Rise of the Black Dogs. Interesting stuff.

[Killer AK]

I'm not sure where you got the point about not getting a worldwide release from; I've encountered players from six continents. It was pretty widespread.

~Forgive me, normally im used to seeing a wider variety of players. i actually have met one russian player. but in bz1 had a lot of russian players. a lot of isreali's and new zealanders. a lot of australians as well.

battlezone 1 had the black dogs. if you select the blackdogs you will see the units change.

as for n64 rise of the black dogs it was so very bad. i couldn't even drive my ship in a for one minute. i still own the n64 version for my collection but i would have to watch youtube and let someone else play it. it did the pc version no justice.

[MrTwosheds]

I think a BZ3 would be radically different from both 1 and 2, assuming that strategy features in it at all. Any developer brave enough to produce 3, after 2's commercial failure, would be looking to make a far more "player friendly" multiplayer game, probably for a far higher number of in game players. The Combat Commander structure bz2 uses, would not survive that, even at only 16 players a bz2 style of command would be too much for all but the most dedicated commanders, at 32 it would just be impossible.
There is also a far higher need for developers to control their product now, centralized servers and copyright protection would be important features for them. Basically I don't think any major developer is going to make a BZ3 now, that even remotely resembles 1 or 2 in any way.

[GSH]

There's a line: "the perfect is the enemy of the good."

BZ1 fans, as much righteous indignation they might have felt, could have supported BZ2 instead. Instead, they chose to attack it, and there went any chances of seeing more of what they wanted.

-- GSH

[Ded10c]

My mistake on the factions thing, I should remember not to write posts unless I'm fully lucid.

Your issues with RotBD might have come from the emulator rather than the game itself, as Project64 can be confusing to set up unless you know what you're doing (though it sounds like you might have an original). The thing to remember about it was that it wasn't a straight port; most of the content had to be completely re-created. the limits imposed by the Nintendo64 system were massive, and that makes Rise of the Black Dogs a spectacular achievement. It doesn't come close to the PC version but it's an utterly fantastic game for the platform and the time.

As GSH points out, the communities are the problem with the Battlezone games. They're incredibly stubborn and conservative and aren't known for liking things done differently. They can also be incredibly hostile at times. It's not an easy community to work with, something Ken, GSH and most large-scale modders can attest to.

[blue banana]

In all honesty, I would attribute this "whole thing" to BZ2's initial release. I would expect the BZ community (remember, only one at the time) was super ecstatic over the impending release of a sequel, however upon playing it out-of-the-box they noted the numerous bugs; goes without saying. From there I bet that's where BZ2 got attacked.

Too bad 1.1 wasn't out on release.

[MrTwosheds]

Yeah, they would have been expecting a 2, more of the same+ a bit more, but what they actually got was very nearly a whole different game altogether. Personally I was just an unwired consumer at the time and was unaware of any community reaction. I thought bz2 was magnificent!

[Red Devil]

most gamers don't want to think - they just want to point and shoot like in quake/cod/whatevers wso they can get their micro-rewards of their micro-bragging rights.

bz/bz2 is a niche game that requires thinking and planning on top of the pointing and clicking, so the players they appeal to tend to be a little more picky/passionate due to the amount of work required to play them.

there's more money to be made keeping the herd of simpletons happy and fed.

[Ded10c]

There was a *lot* of community hype coming up to BZ2's release. Whether it lasted or evaporated I can't tell, having found no reliable source on it. Evaporated seems to be everybody's best guess.

[Red Spot]

I think a BZ3 would be radically different from both 1 and 2, assuming that strategy features in it at all. Any developer brave enough to produce 3, after 2's commercial failure, would be looking to make a far more "player friendly" multiplayer game, probably for a far higher number of in game players. The Combat Commander structure bz2 uses, would not survive that, even at only 16 players a bz2 style of command would be too much for all but the most dedicated commanders, at 32 it would just be impossible.
There is also a far higher need for developers to control their product now, centralized servers and copyright protection would be important features for them. Basically I don't think any major developer is going to make a BZ3 now, that even remotely resembles 1 or 2 in any way.

Try playing some tribe/clan based browser games. I ended up becoming the leader of a 50 member tribe that eventually took control of our gameworld by purelly using a very basic strategy. You just need people to respect the ingame hierarchy and point the lot in the proper direction. It even works in FPS games but is more difficult since there usually isnt much hierarchy in those.

[MrTwosheds]

What game?

[Zero Angel]

I think a BZ3 would be radically different from both 1 and 2, assuming that strategy features in it at all. Any developer brave enough to produce 3, after 2's commercial failure, would be looking to make a far more "player friendly" multiplayer game, probably for a far higher number of in game players. The Combat Commander structure bz2 uses, would not survive that, even at only 16 players a bz2 style of command would be too much for all but the most dedicated commanders, at 32 it would just be impossible.
There is also a far higher need for developers to control their product now, centralized servers and copyright protection would be important features for them. Basically I don't think any major developer is going to make a BZ3 now, that even remotely resembles 1 or 2 in any way.

Try playing some tribe/clan based browser games. I ended up becoming the leader of a 50 member tribe that eventually took control of our gameworld by purelly using a very basic strategy. You just need people to respect the ingame hierarchy and point the lot in the proper direction. It even works in FPS games but is more difficult since there usually isnt much hierarchy in those.

BZ2 gameplay (strat) has always been a very tactical squad-based game form. Adding more players complicates the matter and things would have to be redesigned nearly totally. Replacing ships should not burden the commander as much as it does now (as he will be replacing ships often). Buildings would have to be harder to destroy but also much harder to construct (perhaps taking an entire minute).

That is assuming that you're gonna have something like a 15 v 15.

The other route to go would be larger scale team FFA (hotseat style) but this would be harder to set up and would probably need dedicated servers. There would be 5 commander slots per side, and 5 thug slots under each commander. (in essence a 50 player game at max capacity). The objective would be to hold control points on the map. Each team on a side can operate independently but they must claim these points for their side and win points (or diminish the enemy's 'reinforcement' counter). If a team's base is destroyed they must wait a certain amount of time before they can send a dropship to a designated DZ. In order to remain balanced the tech trees must be relatively flat (max tier being only, say 75% more powerful than first tier rather than several times more powerful) and an upkeep mechanic must be put in place to prevent long-standing players (in the game) from easily ganking the ones who have just recently deployed by overwhelming them with a lot of highly tiered units.

In fact, in order to keep it tactical the players should be noticably more powerful than the AI units, so that each thug is effective as an individual.

At least that's the way I would envision a large-scale BZ2-like game to work.

[Nielk1]

I consider BZ1 and BZ2 as fundamentally different games and would treat them as different eras if I ever participated in some form of spiritual remake (which I think is the direction we would need to go). You can think of the difference like that between different wars, such as The Great War vs World War 2. Bot these ares are very different in execution, and yet can cover various generas equally. You can have a WW1 FPS where you charge from trench to trench or a WW2 FPS where you take out Nazi tanks in a field or soldiers in urban combat. You can have WW1 slow and flashy air combat, or WW2's quick and horrific.

In this way I consider the Cold War Era to be a time of minimalistic cells that can create forward operating bases and the Later Era as one of monolithic bases with large armies, even on the front-lines (an interesting subversion of this might be to have BZ1 style forces that lead the front and BZ2 style forces in more entrenched situations, but that makes balance far more difficult).

Other styles that one could consider is a variation on BZ1 where all ships are human piloted. BZ2's system would not support this well, as at the larger numbers it would require a Battlefield style squad system to group forces in manageable squads. The idea of fixed bases that you do not build but capture is also a workable idea, but then you have to have a generalized technology between both sides and begin to favor a thrall of human flack under poor direction rather then actual tactics (unless you can muster the numbers like Planetside 2 to control actual armies).

That's my thoughts on the subject. Both BZ1's and BZ2's systems are valid but are different eras.

If you tried to make a BZ3 you would probably have to extend the transition from BZ1 to BZ2 and go to a full commander vs soldier dichotomy in style of Natural Selection.