Montag, 14. Dezember 2020

Warface (PS4) 2020 Update Review

 

This is a short Update article for the FPS Warface, in which I want to talk about some of the major additions to the game since my review of Warface in early January 2020.

Warface has introduced a new fifth class in terms of the SED through its Titan Update. The SEDs (Synthetically Engineered Double) have previously been in the game as enemies in some of the Special Operations like Blackout or Sunrise and were first playable in the Mars Operation. The Titan Content Update now made them a regular class for all PVE and PVP modes alike (BR being the exception, since it wouldn't work with the SEDs weapons). SEDs use only heavy machine guns as their standard weapons. Their weapons don't have to be reloaded, but they can overheat and SED players can not aim down sight (Interestingly the heavy machine gun begins to automatically zoom in closer to the target the longer its shooting). Heavy weapon power, but less precision, make the SED a good fit for close combats, but will give him a little disadvantage in other combat situations. Other advantages of SEDs are their ability to climb up hills without the need for a climbing partner, their increased stability, that prevents them from falling to the ground due to explosions and their heavy armour. Some of the disadvantages on the other hand are their lower health bar, that can also not be redeployed by medics and their decreased mobility. SED players run slower and their slide distance is reduced in comparison to the other classes.

Overall the SED class was a great addition to the game. Especially in Operations are the SEDs contributing to a better class balance. SEDs are the perfect tanks, while Rifleman can focus on damage-dealing, Medics and Engineers resupply Health and Armour and Sniper players are the backups. It is now easier than ever to organize the team through the selected classes. The SEDs are also a good addition to the other PVP modes, where they are raising the diversity in playstyles.

On the PC-Version of Warface there have also been two new special operations, which later on also released on consoles. Operation Hydra continues the story from the Sunrise and Mars Operations. A Warface Squad gets send in to infiltrate the Blackwood mobile naval base 'Hydra'. All other operations are played by groups of 5 players, but Hydra is limited to only 3 players at a time. The total operation features 20 rounds, in which the players have to defend themselves on the naval base. They can use different turrets, shields and lasers to assist them, which can be purchased between the rounds. Random events can also occur during the match (like power outages or poisonous gas appearing) and after round 10, 15 and 20 boss enemies will appear. The more rounds the team was able to survive, the better rewards they achieve (higher rounds usually only reward longer possession times for earned weapons/items).

Operation Blackwood is another mission that directly continues the previous storyline. The operation is once again being played by regular group sizes of 5 players, but Operation Blackwood got a twist. This time players switch sides and join Team Blackwood to fight against their former Warface comrades. They have to try to recapture a former Blackwood base from team Warface and during some parts of the mission players can take over SEDs again, very similar to the Mars Operation. Operation Blackwood plays a lot more like the classic operations than Hydra, which reminded me more of the wave based HQ operation. Both operations offered fun gameplay, even though I personally liked Blackwood a little more, but Hydra certainly also provided a strong atmospheric immersion.

The aspect that I disliked about both of them was that they could only be played on the highest difficulty level, which made the later parts of these operations pretty frustrating and it also benefited paying players stronger than usual. I personally would very much prefer the old scheme with 3 difficulty levels, which allows players of all skill and equipment levels to enjoy and complete these missions.  

It is still important to note the delay between the PC and console release of new content. Usually there are around 3 to 4 months between content updates arriving on the PC version first and later getting ported to console. This can partly be explained by the fact, that there are two different development teams responsible for PC and console. On PC the original Blackwood Team (Former Crytek Ukraine) is in charge, while the Allods Team takes care of PS4, Xbox One and Switch. Nonetheless, these multiple months delays are difficult to explain. Since the Battle Pass system started earlier on PC, it makes sense that there is a different schedule than on the console versions, but new Operations shouldn't require longer than 1-2 weeks additional time to port over to consoles. 3-4 months just seems excessive. The Hydra Operation for example released in December 2019, but only in August 2020 on console. This is simply not explainable!

Warface has also started to introduce a Battle Pass system, which nowadays seems to be getting extremely popular in all kinds of games. These Battle Passes can usually be purchased for either 500 or 1000 Kredits (5 or 10 Euro/Dollar; Only early BPs were 1000K). They feature various weapon skins, multiple emblems, Kredits (BP always contains as many Kredits as its costing as rewards), some special grenades, Bonuses like Resurrection Coins or timelimited XP-Boosters, some few exclusive weapons and some season specific Character skins as ultimate rewards. The first 10 Levels of every Battle Pass feature the free rewards, while the other levels contain the Premium rewards for Battle Pass owners only. The way to earn XP can vary greatly between the different seasons (some focus on weekly challenges others on dailies or a mix of them), but I felt it to be pretty frustrating, that a lot of matches outside of the challenges don't contribute any progress to the BP, which seems a bit discouraging and time consuming. (Battle Pass Tiers can obviously also be bought for money...)

Battle Passes started to release on PC first, but were later also implemented on console. Some of the PC and console Battle Passes were identical, but some also very different. The one they called Season 1 was actually console exclusive and released in May 2019. It featured a Jungle Theme and had no subtitle. What I found a little disappointing is, that it only featured 2 actual weapon skins (Jungle and Kiwi) who had to be unlocked for each weapon separately. The character skins in the BP were all at the very last levels, but there were also some of them hidden behind the season challenges. It is nice, that they offered both PVE as well as PVP challenges in this Battle Pass. Season 1 was also the only BP without Daily Quests, which made the progression even slower than usual.

Season 2 released in July/August 2019 on console and was previously introduced as the 'Syndicate' Battle Pass on PC in November 2018. The first season featured the military group called Kiwi and Season 2 featured an organization called the Syndicate. Same as the previous season it also only featured two different weapon skins (Syndicate and Carbon) for a variety of different equipment. Season 2 brought the introduction of daily quest in addition to the PVP and PVE season challenges for the Battle Pass progression.

Season 3 was first introduced to consoles in October 2019 and had previously been released as Season 'Armageddon' on PC in May of the same year. That season featured rather generic greyish and metallic looking weapon skins and switched the PVE and PVP season challenges into challenges for each of the classes to unlock the Armageddon armours.

Season 4 released on consoles in December 2019 and had previously been published as the 'Berserk' Battle Pass on PC in September 2019. Weapons skins were mix of the golden Berserk versions and some more generic variants. The class challenges allowed BP owners to unlock the yellow 'Salamander' armour parts.

Season 5 started on March 2020 on consoles and had previously been released in November/December 2019 on PC. The theme of the season was Blackwood and it introduced both the fancy black and red Blackwood armour as well as weapon skins with matching colours. A big change was the removal of the season challenges and instead the focus was on completing daily challenges and winning matches, which apparently awarded more BP progression than before. The character skins were also rewarded at Level 100 of the Battle Pass instead of the season challenges like in some of the previous seasons, but this time the BP offered less new weapons and items to unlock.

Season 6 released at June 2020 on consoles and in March on PC. This season featured the all female 'Gorgon' Squad. The season kept the focus on daily challenges, but offered more weapons in the Battle Pass than in the previous season. The weapon skins were very colourful with a green and purple theme (I personally think it is a bit too shiny and therefore not that well looking). A great feature of the Battle Pass however was that it offered 4 unique lightly dressed women of the Gorgon Squad within the first 25 levels and rewarded players with special tattooed versions upon reaching Tier 100.  

Season 7 released exclusively on console in August 2020 and featured a 'Hidden War' theme. The amount of Battle Pass levels was decreased from 100 to 50 and the amount of free tiers was halved as well. The amount of unlockable weapons however remained the same and the new camouflage skins were also separated across the entire BP instead of being just at the last tier. The weapon skins were very colorful again with neon-purple variations, which didn't fit my taste (There are however certainly a lot of people who like this kind of weaponskins).

Season 8 began in October 2020 on consoles and had previously been introduced as the 'Dark Samurai' Battle Pass on PC in July 2020. The Battle Pass system remained nearly identical to Season 7, only that there was only 1 skin for all classes and it was located at the final Level 50 Tier. The weaponskins feature a pink lotus flower, which is again probably a controversial choice (I didn't like it that much). The character skin in form of a golden Samurai skin however is likely one of the best in the entire game and probably worth the price of the BP itself for a lot of people.

The PC version of Warface also received an additional Battle Pass called 'Mutiny' in September/October 2020, which might be the Season 9 in December on the console versions (No official confirmation yet, but the trend seems to indicate it). The BP offers camouflagge skins of the Peacekeeper squad (different camouflagge than in the Hidden War BP) and also camouflagge weapon skins, which in my opinion look a lot better and more fitting than the shiny ones with neon colours. Mutiny Battle Pass also seems to offer more than 50 Tiers, but that may just be a difference between console and PC versions of the game.

Warface also organized an ingame Halloween event, which introduced two new maps to Multiplayer ('Farm' and 'Street Wars', which are spooky Halloween versions of previous maps) and also some event exclusive cosmetics for players to unlock. The new maps could be accessed through the event mode 'Halloween Wars'.

The next PVE Operation of Warface is also already being planned. It is going to be called 'Swarm' and it will feature a lengthy mission to infiltrate a hive of monster creatures and how to get rid of them. The operation will feature multiple acts, a variety of brandnew enemy types and it will even receive its own thematic Battle Pass. Apparently the Warface developers want to start to link the PVE Operations/Story to the Battle Pass content in the future, which seems like an interesting improvement. I would expect that it will take at least 2 more months till this update is also going to arrive on consoles.

(Edit: I have now tried the Swarm Operation on PC and have to say, that it is indeed an entertaining new mission, which reminded me a bit of Operation Blackout. The new enemy type seems to be a good addition, but I am not sure what the 'multiple acts' claim refers to. The operation is not short, but also not really much longer than the others like Mars, Blackout, Anubis or Pripyat. Unfortunately Swarm also features only one difficulty setting and therefore seems to be designed for the most experienced or paying players.)

 

Most of all I enjoyed the introduction of the new SED class, which in my opinion enriched the Warface gameplay without any noticeable flaws (Which is quite odd, since most additions to the game feature both improvements as well as changes for the worse). The Hydra and Blackwood operations were also fun additions to the game. I would have just preferred them to offer more difficulty settings and to release much sooner. The Swarm Operation seems to be heading into a similar direction, even though I enjoy its setting the most of the new Operations.

Battle Passes generally seem to take a bit too long to grind and I would also prefer new weapons being available to all players (This however is more of a general issue in Warface and plays a big part in the P2W issue. I recommend reading my original Warface review for more insights). Nonetheless, I did like the cosmetics from the Blackwood (S05) and Dark Samurai (S08) Battle Passes quite much.

The updates during 2020 were either decent to good (New Operations and BPs) or really great like in the form of the new class, but I still wouldn't change my original rating from my Warface Review since structural problems of Warface (Mostly P2W imbalance across all modes; aged graphics; Occasionally clunky hit detection) haven't really been addressed and therefore the overall experience hasn't been improved enough to justify a 6.5/10. Warface can still be good fun in some moments and extremely frustrating in others, but at least there are now more Classes and Operations in the game than before.  

6/10

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