September 06, 2010
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[PC] No local LAN mode? Or will there...
Sad, sad news for the PC community. In an interview with @pcdev he made clear that there will be limitations to the local PC gaming experience in Black Ops. It's not all bad though...
Josh from Planet Call of Duty » had the chance to interview Cesar (@pcdev) at the multiplayer reveal event last week. It wasn't all bad, not at all, but one thing really disappointed us. Because of the enormous Call of Duty userbase on Steam, Black Ops will once again be a Steam exclusive (with VAC as cheat protection again too). This means you will need an internet connection to play, and local LAN will not fly... So no get-togethers at your friends house playing local LAN games? Well, Cesar tweeted » "To clarify: you can play MP on a LAN as long as everyone on the LAN has internet connectivity. #codblackops #pc"... So you can, but only via Steam.
The other thing we're a tiny bit sad for is the fact that Treyarch has appointed Gamerservers.com to be exclusive provider of the dedicated servers. Reason for this, Cesar states, is pure quality wise. Treyarch has been working with them since Call of Duty: World at War, they are big, they're great, and they will have a huge number of official servers for everyone to play on on day one. With Gameservers.com they know that every dedicated server is going to be running on top quality hardware on a great infrastructure and great bandwidth. You got one of those yourself? Yep... Well, that's something Treyarch won't be able to test, but they do want to deliver a quality product that won't be run on half-baked hardware they did not approve off. It might be a wise decision from Treyarch's point of view, but there are large portions of the community that are very disappointed by this. On the other hand, look on the bright side.., no more IW-NET and matchmaking!
These servers will be highly customizable unranked servers, though. "So if you want to play no killstreak, no perks, shotguns only, go for it, if you want to have higher player counts? Go for it, knock yourself out." [...] Due to technical reasons it is not yet determined what the ceiling on number of players will be on PC, "But we're going to have higher player counts than the 360...Did I say that?", jokes Cesar.
As can be read in the Post-Multiplayer Reveal PC FAQ » we posted the day before yesterday, there are still a lot of things to be excited for in Black Ops for PC. It has everything consoles do, only more...
There will be mod-tools after release but unsure is in what form, you've been told that many times now. The reason for this is that some difficult issues need to be solved before it can be released to the masses. Cesar didn't feel like making promises as he really has no idea what it will be. For example, one of the most difficult (purely technical) issues is in creating Map Tools, because of the way Treyarch has rewritten and changed the shader and lighting system. "Moving this tool from an in house tool to a tool you can put in the hands of our players is definitely not there yet", says Cesar.
Theater Mode will also be featured in the PC version of Black Ops, but if you want to record old school you can still use the /record in the Dev Console to client side demo record you matches.
One other improvement that has been made to the PC multiplayer experience is an improved Server Browser that PC gamers will love. Treyarch did various things to improve the usability for it, like a tabbed interface, tool tips, context menus, and it performs a bit better. When you don't feel like browsing you can just ask the game to pick the server for you with the click of a button.
So what do you guys think, still excited about Black Ops?
