Wipeout Fusion's new rating

[JABBERJAW]

== F Why you ask? welll, I got over it not having race records and decided to try and get some myself and just keep track of them. Started on alca vexus 2. got a 2:42.xx with piranha and didn't hit much. I then tried with tigron and noticed something very amiss. In order to make the corners properly without hitting, it is much slower than just lightly tapping the brake and scraping quite hard around the corner. compare a lap of 1 minute flat making corners without hitting much and trying to hit the brake as lightly as possible as opposed to a 57.5 lap basically just running right into the corner with no brakes or lightly hitting them and always hitting the wall. this is complete f-ing bullshit. I know it has to be catered to the masses more, but this is assinine. Why not make it scrape like f-zero?(you slow down alot but keep moving)l. I don't know if I'm going to get the american release now. I'll probably get it to have the whole collection and play zone mode, but will probably join you guys back in the ranks of wipeout 3. Rob, does anyone at your place of work know that the game performs like this?

[JABBERJAW]

I am not complaining about the feel of the game, just stupid stuff like this that completely ruins it. this is like hydro thunder or artic thunders cpu assist in multiplayer. this ensures both players to be within 1 second of each other no matter how well one performs or how poor the other does. Doesn't this stuff get tested!! I had seriously be a tester for the next game, and I'm really not kidding this time. :

[lunar]

I agree - you have to drive very badly indeed not to win a race. Apart from zone mode, Fusion just doesn`t demand high standards. Its fun enough, but it doesn`t test your skills like the old wipeouts. Regarding wall-banging, the WO3 system was perfect I think, you could get away with scraping walls but there was no scope for driving poorly.

I don`t think making it easier will make it more popular, once you`ve mastered it you`ll move on to something else and forget about it. Its the challenge of Wipeout, the fact that its a "hard but fair" game, that has made it one of the greatest game series ever.

[AmishRobot]

Personally, the opponenet AI was one of the very few things in the previous games I hated. They were rarely aggressive at all, never took advantage of the more powerful weapons, and they raced a predetermined line at a set speed, only diverting when forced to. They weren't very challanging, either. XL/2097 was ridiculously easy. WO3's only challange was it's length, and the fact that it forced you to race with crafts you weren't comfortable with (I HATE Auricom!). I'm looking forward to checking out the one thing in Fusion that Foxy keeps praising.

But that's not what kept me playing. Between TT, Elimination, and Zone modes, I think I'll have plenty to do. Hopefully they've fixed the record-keeping for the US version.

One question: Is it possible to down-grade ships stats after completing the game, to provide a greater challenge?

[lunar]

Yes it is possible to downgrade ships a bit without the AI ships downgrading too, but you`ll still win quite easily unless you choose to race with a team that`s not much fun to fly.

If you found 2097 easy then I think you`d do Fusion with one arm behind your back. The AI of the enemy pilots is good in that sometimes they behave a bit like people would, but they just don`t fly fast enough. Its very annoying to be in an EGR and to find yourself catching an AI Piranha on a straight, when the Piranha is supposed to be a faster ship. At least in 2097 you had to fly the corners well to catch the opposition, though I agree they had no AI at all.

The racing and TT sides of Fusion are disapointing, but this is being a bit too critical of course. I`ve spent 90 hours on fusion, and at a cost of £35 that means its cost me just 38pence an hour to play - fantastic value by the standards of any game or any "leisure activity" at all (don`t know if zone mode can be called "leisure" though). And I`ve only done 30 hours on zone so there`s still a long long way to go. I can`t think of many other games that would take up so much of my time, unless SSX Tricky had an online league of course. And on that subject the zone leagues should get even more scary when Fusion makes it to the US.

[infoxicated]

Al, it's all been said before, man... and I agree - for the true fan, Wipeout Fusion is a flawed product

The situation I'm in, I cant really be too forceful because it never comes across as constructive. It only gets interperated as whining about something that cant be changed. I haven't played the game seriously in well over a month now, and to be honest I need a bit of a rest from the whole deal.

When you're looking forward to something as much as I was with Wipeout Fusion, and it turns out that all the hype - some of it I helped to create on here - far outweighs the actual end experience, well, it kind of puts a dampner on your motivation to keep up the interest.

I'll concede that maybe there was no chance of the game living up to the expectations I'd built up. But some of the stuff with 'Fusion just leaves me feeling sick with frustration - graphics and audio wise I think it's a great game - I love the look of some of the courses. Gameplay wise, well... it's best I say nothing.

I'm not being gagged on this - I'm choosing to gag myself, as it's not really worth the hassle, to be honest. I could rant all night and piss people off and it's not going to transform the game into the experience I thought it would be.

There are plenty of games that will fill the void that I thought Wipeout Fusion would fill for me. And I'll just have to be content with them - heck, some of them might even end up meaning as much to me as Wipeout 3 does. For the time being, though, it's just counter productive to keep picking over the autopsy of Wipeout Fusion.

The best we can do is hope that when the next sequel surfaces in a few years time, we'll all still be here to play it and that lessons have been learned from the mistakes made this time round.

[JABBERJAW]

went around the track (alca vexus 2) not using the airbrakes at all. just as fast as a perfect lap!! the only thing good in this game for me now is zone mode, but that doesn't cut it. I wish I had noticed this before the fixes for the ntsc version. maybe they could have made the wall scraping mean something. As much as I hate to say it, xg3 and kinetica blow this game away(but shouldn't, that is what is so frustrating!)

[Wamdue]

lets hope Quantom Redshift has better gameplay, even its ships look aweful.

about fusion, I think it is a very very good game, but a poor sequel to wip3out. As infox, i had expected it to perform more like wip3out, and prove as challenging. But, it wasnt.. I cant say I didnt enjoy playing thru the game first time, it was a great experience.. but wip3out has me hooked still.. and Ive quit playing Fusion months ago.. its just no fun anymore to be honest.. still adore the good parts in it, track design and so on, and the previous wipeouts.

[oggob]

not from seeing this topic, but under my own influence, have been racing in arcade, i downgraded the ships, just to see what it was like again...

anyway, started flying around in van-ubers, tigrons, eg-r's and everything else, and did notice what has been said, in the feisar and van ubers, while struggling, caught up to the piranhas way to easily! the only races that I didnt win, was ones that i was messing around trying to get special weapons and trying to fire on a ship, was slowing down so they were in front of me, etc...

but from the start, the game was challenging as it was difficult to get used to the computer ships firing off weapons they never did, but once a certain level of experience is made, there is long term satisfactory thing, zone does it for me, while everyone else returns to WO3 for race times and things like that... which I can totally understand!

so basically i am in agreeance, its flawed, but as infox has said - "For the time being, though, it's just counter productive to keep picking over the autopsy of Wipeout Fusion."

Al - mate you have to be tester.... just wondering... you need an assistant? lol

[AmishRobot]

If Al were to test the next one, the rest of us would never be able to finish it! :

[JABBERJAW]

Some of the wipeoutzone community should definitely be testers. If not I would say sony would be making a huge mistake.

[zargz]

well then I'm in!

[Vasudeva]

Arr pirates, count me in as well. Especially if they need me down at the "office of ideas" :-).

Nuff' dreaming.

About the AI:

What frustrates me the most is that the CPU ships never fire weapons at each other, unless they do so by accident (or unless they do it in Fusion?). And actually, compared to WO3, WO2097 does have AI that is not that easy to beat... Well, it just takes you longer to catch up with them, actually that's the only difference.

By the way, Al (on those things you were going to send me), don't flog yourself, I'm a patient man :-).

Peace,
V.

[Dado]

In order to make the corners properly without hitting, it is much slower than just lightly tapping the brake and scraping quite hard around the corner. compare a lap of 1 minute flat making corners without hitting much and trying to hit the brake as lightly as possible as opposed to a 57.5 lap basically just running right into the corner with no brakes or lightly hitting them and always hitting the wall. this is complete f-ing bullshit.

Yes but... HItting/Scraping the walls damage your ship and this changes the ship's handling ... You get better times, but you must cope a different handling...

But generally it's true, you get better times scraping, and...yes... this isnt too good...

[JABBERJAW]

ok so it's not an F, but a C. Zone mode is really good. My concern wasn't about a really light scrape like xl but the real hard ones on the sharp turns. It is frustrating as hell to not get a good time with a perfect lap. Scraping could easily have slowed you down a lot without stopping you so a perfect turn was much faster. Many games have done this. And there is a best way to get times, but I don't feel like playing like that, it is just not wipeout. Even f-zero and xg3 are quite user friendly on the hit department, but a perfect lap is much faster than scraping. Maybe wipeout should have taken a cue from these games, which is a shame to say. The real reason I'm pissed is because I was going to do times tables for all the tracks for full races, but now I find it is kinda useless.

[JABBERJAW]

Yeah it does change the handling, but you easily have enough shields for all three laps anyways. Maybe the ship could have slowed down with more damage under the current way it handles, but then the game would need to be sped up overall. I think just slowing the ship down on hits more is all it needed, and maybe higher lateral stabilities for all the ships, and possible don't have one brake be able to bring the ship to a complete stop, but perform like zone mode.

[AmishRobot]

I'll have to wait a couple weeks to comment fully on what you're saying, but I do have a couple questions:
- Are the ship upgrades all-or-nothing, or can you upgrade specific aspects (speed, shield, etc.)?
- Does Fusion have turbo scraping? I have a hard time understanding how a few hits into walls can get a faster lap time than a perfect lap, without turbo scraping. (Or is that what's pissing you off?)

[lunar]

you can upgrade in five areas if I remember rightly: speed, thrust, lateral stability, weapon strength and shield. They can all be upgraded and downgraded seperately in fairly small increments.

There isn`t turbo scraping, but what I find is that the walls just don`t slow you down enough when you hit them, even hitting them hard. I find that to get perfect laps in Fusion requires plenty of airbrake.The time lost by using the brakes can be greater than the time lost by taking a few hits on the walls, therefore there`s not as much motivation for good flying and punishment for bad flying as there should be. Within reason, you can bump and grind your way around the track and still go fast enough to win races and get good times :-? . To be honest I think I`ve only done three or four perfect laps in races in Fusion, you just don`t need to get them, going fast and blasting the opposition is more important. Its a cool experience, its just not as deep as WO3.

I don`t know if this answers your question, you`ll probably need to play it to know what I mean, and better pilots might not agree with me anyway.

[oggob]

If Al were to test the next one, the rest of us would never be able to finish it! :

Bring it on!

Having read what Al said about the Tigron, tried it out on Alca Vexus 3 as there are some really tight corners on that track, and having a shield of over 150 is all that you need, all you have to do is turn with the corner and just make sure that you hit head on, and the corner does all the work, it's still not faster than a Piranha though...

it's not turbo scraping it's just that it doesn't slow you down enough...

while trying the above Tigron thing overnight, I had a thought (don't get many) that could probably get added to Al's plan... for a possible sequal, WHEN race times are brought back, expand the stats further, with overall records, but also ship by ship, some people aren't great with the Icarus (me included!) and excelled better with the AG or Assegai, so why not keep ship records, that way everyone can see what everyone excels at plus adding more gameplay through more possible records oppotunities... just a thought

[infoxicated]

We used to have stats like that on WipeoutZone... but I couldn't be bothered re-designing the page when I re-jigged the site.

It told you what ships had been used most to gain records - like a bar chart (oldies will remember it (Wamdue, Al, Thrusty, Newie, etc...).

I might see about resurrecting it, as it will be a useful thing to have if I ever get Wipeout Fusion records on here... not that there seems much point with what Al says above.