Massive Action Game (MAG) Megathread - Move support and BETA coming!

Jan 29, 2009
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Basic battles will take place within ongoing, faction-based campaigns to encourage the player to actively play, with at least three factions being considered for inclusion; including American, European and Middle Eastern factions.

The game's E3 unveiling trailer featured large landscapes, tactics such as air strikes and parachuting, and a variety of vehicles, from tanks and APCs to airplanes. The game will boast numerous classes for players to specialize in; including medics, commandos and field demolition specialists. It has not been announced if the game will be a third person shooter, like Zipper's previous SOCOM games, or a first person shooter.

MAG: Massive Action Game is the tentative name for an upcoming MMO shooter exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in development by Zipper Interactive. The game was announced at Sony's E3 2008 press conference, and will be released sometime in 2009. Various subtitles are being considered for the game, including MAG: Shadow War, MAG: Zero, MAG: Global Assault and MAG: Final Hour.

MAGboxart.jpg

A PS3 exclusive, the game will utilize a new server architecture to support online battles with up to 256 players, with users divided into 8-player squads. Each squad will be led by a player who has advanced through the game's ranking system. Character statistics and development will also increase with frequent gameplay. The players most advanced in rank will be able to either direct the battle or participate directly in combat.

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Official Website: http://us.playstation.com/mag
 
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that actually would work out great, cause i hate it when i wanna play and the mic is out of batteries then i gotta wait 2 hours for it to fully recharge.

my mic doesnt take that long maybe 10-20mins and it will last the rest of the night.. You can also use the mic while its charging...
 
We know you’ve got questions about MAG.

When we asked you what you wanted to know about a rather large list of our upcoming, exclusive games, questions for developer Zipper Interactive far outweighed the rest. That’s why the following Q&A video lasts a whopping 12 minutes (!)

http://www.viddler.com/explore/sceablog/videos/336/

But know that I had to have a light hand on the editor; any shots cut are readers’ queries going unanswered - and where’s the fun in that? First up, Zipper VP Michael Gutmann gives us the overview, before Lead Designer Andy Beaudoin breaks down the gameplay in detail.

OK, even with all of those questions deftly addressed by Zipper, I’m wagering that you now have a few more things that you’d like to ask. That’s why the team will be joining us LIVE on the Blog this Wednesday at 2pm Pacific/5pm Eastern for a chat. Please join us!
 
thats two late emails i just got. BB reward zone sent me a triple points coupon for my bday to use this month. too bad i already spent $100 there two days ago :mad:

now i have to go back there and make them apply it to that purchase
 
PSM3 Magazine (Based in the UK) seems to be getting alot of new details in. First with the new Modern Warfare 2 Details 2 days ago, and now we have some new MAG (Massive Action Game) Details. The details were published in PSM3's latest magazine.

- Top Rank = Officer In Charge (OIC)

- OIC's will be able to call in Airstrikes, Reveal enemy positions or jam their radar.

- 'Platoon Leaders' control a team of 32.

- 'Squad Leaders' control a team of 7.

- No in-built class system. (See Below for more info)

- Skill Points (SP) will be rewarded for for working with team-mates. (See below for more info).

- The game was originally third-person but switched to first to 'increase-immersion'

No in-built System?
There is no in-built class system in the game because you have the ability to create a player to your own playing style. You can be a demolitions expert, a sniper, or an all-rounder - pretty much anything you want to be.

Skill Points?
Skill points will be rewarded for working with your team-mates. The MAG Developers don't want you to just think about ditching your squad and going rogue.

So there you go. It's sounding exciting. The inspired experiance system should keep things civilised in the game. If your worried about the graphics from the first screenshots, don't worry they will be better when released. It could turn out to be the PlayStation 3's premier online shooter, well, it certainly has the potential at the moment.
 
MAG to be playable at E3

Zipper multi-shooter MAG is to be playable at E3 next week, SCEE has just confirmed to VG247.

Journalists are to be allowed to play as part of a an eight-man squad, led by one of the devs, in a 256-player game.

source: vg247.com/2009/05/27/mag-to-be-playable-at-e3/
 
MAG Hands-on

MAG, or Massive Action Game, stunned the masses when it was revealed at E3 2008. The game promised intense 256-player battles – not just skirmishes, but full-out wars. When the first MAG gameplay was revealed, however -- I’m not going to lie -- I was a bit underwhelmed. Sure, the fact that it ran at all was miraculous, but I was skeptical that the gameplay would be enjoyable. Now, however, I’ve had hands-on time with the game, and Zipper Interactive has convinced me that MAG will be magnificent when it arrives this fall.

The first thing to know about MAG is that, as the title implies, it is a massive experience. The war-torn, semi-urban map I played on with 255 others felt like an area from an MMO, not an online shooter. When you switch to the overhead map and view the buildings and terrain Google-earth style, the scale of the battle is astounding. That’s what MAG is all about: scale. From the basic soldiers to the eight-person squad leaders to the four-squad platoon leaders to the four-platoon company commander, everyone plays a role; some are simply more essential than others.



But I digress, for scale means very little without great gameplay. Zipper has quite a record of solid tactical gameplay with the SOCOM series, and the studio hasn’t disappointed here. That basic, fundamental satisfaction that comes by besting others in great shooters is present in MAG. Each time I got a kill and “+5 XP” popped up on screen, I felt an immediate sense of gratification. That is due to the tight, Call of Duty style aiming mechanics in conjunction with the massive arsenal of weapons spread across the three factions.

The factions are S.V.E.R., Raven, and Valor. S.V.E.R. (pronounced Sever) is composed of rogues who scrounge up whatever they can get their hands on, Raven is a high-tech, futuristic fighting force, and Valor -- the faction I joined -- is similar to the U.S. army. All factions have their own strengths and weaknesses, but I didn’t spend enough time with the game to really see that in action. I was promised, however, that no faction will be inherently “better” than another; all will be meticulously balanced – the MAG beta should help with that.

With such mammoth maps, foot soldiers and handheld guns can only do so much. There are a bevy of vehicles at players’ disposal, like jeeps, tanks, and helicopters. Additionally, once a team secures a particular point on the map, the team’s commander acquires the ability to call in airstrikes, which can really strike an opposing team’s weak point for massive damage.



At any given time, there are several team objectives on-screen, such as capturing a certain point, or, adversely, repelling the enemy. In a game as immense as MAG, communication and teamwork are integral to success. Of course, as you and Zipper both know, gamers aren’t always the most cooperative people. To generate that elusive cooperative environment, Zipper rewards squads that do work together and communicate to complete objectives with additional XP, as opposed to punishing players who don’t work alongside their team.

Visually, MAG is no Killzone 2, but to expect that level of graphical fidelity from a game eight times the players (of Killzone 2's 32 players) online is unreasonable. In the E3 build, I experienced some framerate drops when the action got heavy, and witnessed an animation bug or two upon death, but for an unfinished game with 256 players, it looks quite nice. Zipper will continue to work on the game over the coming months, and should be able to release a polished product at launch. I also expect heavy post-launch support, as it is an online-only game.

MAG is a quality experience, even at this early stage. Don’t worry – I’m not simply being magnanimous. From the half-hour I spent with the game, I’m confident that it will be a dominant force in Sony’s 2009 line-up, and will be played for many months -- if not years -- to come.


psu.com/MAG-Hands-on-Preview--a007507-p0.php
 
Unless you're talking techie-geek stuff -- bits, bytes, and all that -- 256 isn't a very practical number. Yet that's the magical number of players that MAG (which previously stood for "Massive Action Game") supports. With each match lasting 20 minutes or longer, it seems that "practical" is an impossible concept with so many people playing this shooter at once.

Can it work? We had a ton of questions and concerns...and we found the answers at this past E3:

Why 256 players?

For the techie geeks out there, 256 is a good number for server packets.

Also, on the lowest level, you can organize eight players in a squad, 32 players (four squads) in a platoon, and 128 players (four platoons) in one company. Have two opposing companies and you end up with 256 players.

What about the lag?

MAG will be running on dedicated servers, which means many fewer problems related to other players' bad connections. Also, the game will be running on a unique network architecture, where it'll do more local updating -- that is, it'll send info back and forth more often for everything nearby than for faraway action, optimizing the data pipeline.

This doesn't mean you won't see any lag, mind you. We won't know until we're playing under real-world, at-home conditions. But lag is something the developers are obviously very mindful of.

MAGCan you join as groups of larger than eight players?

Not when MAG launches, no. But developer Zipper is looking at support for larger group sizes as a possible post-launch, downloadable update. But you might be able to trick the system into letting all 127 of your friends into the same game (though probably not all in the same side/company), if you all try to join at the same time, because...

How will the system fill out 256-player games without forcing people to wait forever in lobbies?

All players looking for a game at any given time will be thrown into a single master queue. Therefore, instead of having dozens or hundreds of open lobbies looking for players at one time, the system will keep pouring players into one massive game until it fills up or a certain time limit is up (for those slow nights). Then, that game launches and a new queue opens up. It's sort of like an amusement park line.

This seems like a very smart system, but we don't know if that'll make for a huge mess when it comes to player ranks and matchmaking.

How will voice chat work?

The eight players in a squad can chat, and the platoon leader can chat with all squad leaders, while company leaders can chat to platoon and squad leaders. Company leaders can also broadcast to everyone at once if he chooses to do so.

Zipper hopes that the ranking system will help to put the right players in those leadership roles to avoid assholes from taking over the airwaves. You can lose experience points for team kills, bad play, losing, etc., so on paper, only the serious, dedicated players will rise up to leadership positions.