Introducing a new Rebellion staff member to AvP-Galaxy

[DoomRulz]

It does deplete your energy, but you can recharge and set more.

[DamianPage]

Oh Im aware of host migration resulting in a kick. Im also awar of other issues. The issue Im talking about is on the xbox 360 of the game. And every time I get a full game either 3 people are kicked or the lag Is Unplayable!

[draken161]

Will you guys be using the pre-load feature provided by steam for your game?

Just wondering.

[VEF214]

It does deplete your energy, but you can recharge and set more.

Kinda pointless seeing as you only can have a max of five, if you set your sixth one, your first explodes on its own and so on. Unless you just want to change the position of the mine you could do that I guess.

[VEF214]

I have another question. In Predator Hunt, when you are a Marine and you have just killed the Predator, do you transform right where you are into the Predator, or do you disappear and spawn somewhere else?

Watch this video at 0:42 -- 0:45.

Answer? In the video it seems like you transform on the spot, do you have invincibility or something so Marines don't just blast you right away when you transform? If you do have invincibility, how long does it last and why did you come to the decision to let the Predator get free kills? I really want this answered! 

[Drewid]

I have another question. In Predator Hunt, when you are a Marine and you have just killed the Predator, do you transform right where you are into the Predator, or do you disappear and spawn somewhere else?

Watch this video at 0:42 -- 0:45.

Answer? In the video it seems like you transform on the spot, do you have invincibility or something so Marines don't just blast you right away when you transform? If you do have invincibility, how long does it last and why did you come to the decision to let the Predator get free kills? I really want this answered! 

You instantly respawn somewhere else.

[MrBrokenTusks.]

In sp is healing your self use energy in sp videos there are three tab things above the health bar ? And in mp its not there. I think i have seen a  hint (sometimes) when you start a game saying in multiplayer you use energy to heal not health shards ? just a bit curious.

[Inferno]

In sp is healing your self use energy in sp videos there are three tab things above the health bar ? And in mp its not there. I think i have seen a  hint (sometimes) when you start a game saying in multiplayer you use energy to heal not health shards ? just a bit curious.

Health shards (pickups) = SP
Energy Depletion = MP

[Dachande]

I do have one question, Eric.

I notice in the demo, if the Predator sets a mine, they disappear if that player dies. I find this extremely irritating especially when I've set up over 5. Will this be changed at tall?

I don't think that would be a good idea. Otherwise you'll end up with preds grabbing the mines, laying them down, dying, getting more mines, laying them down, and so on, and eventually the place would be covered with mines, making for a very unfair battleground, so i think removing them once you die makes sense, although to balance i suppose all the mines could explode upon death, as it seems they are tied into the preds wrist comp.

[VEF214]

Yeah, they should explode not just disappear. The explosion would cause damage of course.

[[REB]Trigger]

Hi All,

Hope you had an enjoyable weekend with the Demo!

Straight to the questions, since I doubt you want to read my ramblings...

The game is obviously in its final state at this point, but could you generally give us an indicator of how much the final build has changed compared to the demo? Graphics, movement, weapon balance, on a scale from 1 to 10?

We can't actually answer this in a simple 1-10 type scale, sorry!  Suffice to say, that the final build is further along than the demo, but that the balance is mostly if not exactly the same.

Also, I'm relieved to hear that Rebellion plans to continue their support for the game in the future.  Will the future support simply be weapon balances, or will it include all-new mechanics to smoothen gameplay? A little example would be the ability to adjust the amount of smoothing the camera for the Alien has, or cleaning up the Marine's movement so it's a little less sticky.  A big example would be a kill-cam option, or an auto-tracking(and possibly third-person) ability for the alien.

Without knowing what issues, if any, we would like to change it's hard to say at this point what we will or will not do.  As we don't want to be in the position where we say "we will do X" and then not deliver for one reason or another, we cannot comment any further on questions like this at this time.

That reminds me; why was Deathmatch picked for the demo? Any particular reasoning for that I(/we) might be unaware of?

The press release for the updated PS3 demo, has an explanation from Jason.

"There has been some confusion online as to why we chose to release a Deathmatch multiplayer demo. We chose Deathmatch as the mode for the demo as it's very familiar to all FPS gamers and we wanted players to focus on getting to grips with the controls of the three playable species, without having to learn a new multiplayer mode at the same time," said Jason Kingsley, CEO and co-founder of Rebellion. "We have plenty of new modes in the game and players only have to wait a matter of days before they can play them when the game launches."

One more short question: will there be vents for Aliens to crawl through in any of the multiplayer maps?

No, none of our MP maps have vents for the Alien.  This decision was made because we wanted the Alien to be powerful enough to be able to live and succeed outside of vents – if we had them in, there would consequentially need to be an adjustment of the Alien balance.  Nor did we want to effectively say to the Alien players "camp a vent, that's pretty much all you can do"

Hi Eric, thanks very much for taking the time to answer our questions.  And to you or any Rebellion staff who read my angry first impression of the demo last week, I was drunk when I played it, so I didn't do very well.  I'm rather fond of it now.

Drunk, sober, good or bad – you're free to express yourself within the established rules of this forum  .  We're glad you're liking it now though!

4) About that whole "persecutor" thing in multiplayer...can we get rid of that?  I hate having a damn skull floating over my head.

Well, first some congratulations are in order if you are consistently persecuting other players!  There are currently no options to have a match without the persecutor mechanic.  Our feeling is that it adds to the gameplay, if not the "roleplaying" and as such have no plans to add this ability at this time.  Personally, I've lost matches round the office, because I've been so focused on trying to kill my persecutor that I end up doing worse – so it can go both ways!

Was there in the development of the PS3 version of AvP any problems, many developers have difficulties even with the Cell chip and the programmable on the PS3? And are there technical differences between the XB360 version and the PS3 version of AvP?

There are always technical differences between any platform, but in terms of feature set, both gameplay and rendering, the X360 and PS3 versions are identical.  How they are implemented may be different on both platforms but that is more of an "under the hood" type change and not something visible to the user.  All platforms have their challenges, and the PS3 is no different in that respect.  It was no more challenging to develop the game for the PS3, than it was for the X360.

1) Will the skins change anything else besides the look of the character - i.e. if a praetorian will there be a new model to represent this and will the alien in question be slower and have more health etc... than the other options?

No, the skins in MP only affect the look – they do no alter gameplay in any way.

Should Rebellion wish to do something as described above, how feasible is it to fix something like that?

It needs to be looked at on a case by case basis.  When/If we look at any balance tweaks, it will of course be determined primarily by the question of "can it be done".  We cannot comment on the feasibility of a balance tweak without knowing what we want to do, and to avoid a flood of "can you change this then Rebellion?" type questions, will not comment on the feasibility of your requested tweak.  Sorry!

Most of the other questions posted already echo my own thoughts, so really, my only question at the moment is: will the Hunter Edition be released in Canada at all?

I am just so confused with that, because around here, there has been endless discussion surrounding European and American versions, and with it, mixed messages. Can you confirm or deny this?

I'm afraid we do not set the price, edition type, or where the game/editions are sold.  This needs to be directed at SEGA I'm afraid.

Life Cycle
I know this was answered in a recent interview, so I'll ask it in a different manner.
Was this mode ever seriously considered, and if so...would you be willing to create it if you had the opportunity to create a sequel? I realize you may not be able to answer this question, but its absence disappointments me as it was very fun back in AVP2. So if you can at least comment on this it would be much appreciated.

It's one of those features that end up being on the wishlist.  To do this properly (and it would have to be done properly for it to feel good) is almost like adding a 4th campaign to the game – something that requires that much effort, is wasted on just one level.  Conversely, doing something small simply ends up feeling tacked on and cheap.  The short answer is that we didn't have the time, sorry!

Stealth kills
Sometimes I can perform these on a enemy that's half way down a hallway. Any plans to reduce the distance needed to perform the move?  Also, I've been stealth killed before by players that I'm actually facing head on. Can anything be done about this?

The part of your question that is related to balance, will not receive an answer at this time.  Regarding the other parts, it's not setup to work like that, we can only assume that there was some Latency in the match(es) you we're playing where you saw this.

Predalien
I understand that this was answered also, but I feel its a issue.
If I remember correctly the aliens actually have 1 less skin to use than either the predators or the soldiers.
So I would like to ask why the predaliens model wasn't reworked to fit the role of a regular alien?
I understand its in the story, and I don't know how long it may have taken to adjust the model for MP, but I'm very troubled by its exclusion. Is there any hope that it can be done as DLC?

The model used in the SP game is considerably larger in dimension than the MP model, and as such we would have had to scale the Predalien down.  That's obviously not impossible to do, but we felt that it wouldn't look as visceral had we done it.

how many levels can we expect in the single player game for each species?

Marine: 6
Predator: 5
Alien: 5

one question i do have is similar to the request for death counts, could we have people's species marked on the final scoreboard at the end of the round too instead of just a picture of the species the winner was playing as? i forget who was what

It's something we could look in to – but no promises can be given at this time

I was wondering if Rebellion has any plans to implement simple online statistics? I was thinking around these lines (below). It's would be a nice way to keep track of your progress and get a general overview of your stats.

We do have an online leaderboard (accessible within game only) where statistics are tracked.

How old is the demo build?

It is approximately 6 weeks older than the main game.



Cheers,
Eric

[The Demon]

This probably won't be answered but I was wondering if there is or could be another way to unlock skins. Because I'm not a big multi player person but I do enjoy using different skins and who like to for the campaign mode.

[Xenodog]

Hmmmm...is there individual online ranks for each species?
Or not?So, if I play constantly as a marine, I unlock ALL the skins, including Alien and Pred?

[XenoVC]

Were any of the sounds for the Aliens taken from the AVPR PSP game Rebellion worked on?

I just noticed if so.

[Valheru]

I know this is most likely a gameplay issue and so won't be responded to but after just playing the marine then, I was quite annoyed after collecting 4 grenades for my pulse rifle, I then dropped it and picked up the smart gun...stayed in the immediate area and expended the SG ammo and went to pick my PR back up with 4 nades, lo and behold its gone!!

I really hope that this doesn't happen in the full version as it's part of tactical gameplay to me. Im guessing it may have been implemented to stop weapon hording but you can still only hold 2 primary weapons, one with SG and you could always have the dropped weapons dissapear once the player moves a certain distance away to stop them going and getting more weapons to stock pile in that spot.

I mean it would really add to the realism of the marine game in MP as in real life your quite capable of dropping you current gun and using another you come across then picking up your original gun again and this happens in the movies too...so why is this not followed through in the game?

Cheers!

Valheru