At last year’s E3, style="font-style: italic;">End of Nations
got a bit of a guarded reception. While most loved the MMORTS world
domination premise, few who played the demo felt at home with the
game’s busy interface.



Petroglyph went back to the drawing board, and arrived at E3 2011 with
a much cleaner product that’s both true to their vision and
just as innovative. Ten Ton Hammer spoke with Lead Designer Chris
Rubyor.


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Stepping Up the RTS factor

The most obvious change was the new user interface. Gone was the screen
eating button fest of last year’s E3, and in its place? A
traditional, tried and true RTS UI. In the left corner was a radar map
that elegantly tripled in size with a keypress.. Spread over the bottom
center of the screen is a clickable, groupable units roster and
structures monitor ( style="font-style: italic;">EoN
now allows the placement of forward turrets,
repair stations, and the like).  Skills , superweapons, and
structures were placed on the sidebar. The number of skills and weapons
was much more manageable – 4 total at level 15 - 
and aside from a few small menu and status buttons, that’s
pretty much it for the newly streamlined UI.



The persistent base players could visit between matches is a thing of
the past, and in it’s place we find the Armory, a place to
customize unit looks and loadouts. Petroglyph is in the process of
adding a robust itemization scheme, right down to mod-able joints and
armor for infantry units. Players can orchestrate a factional color
scheme, or choose from a number of pre-made patterns (like an American
flag or camoflage) or “skins” for their unit.


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Perspective also received some much needed attention. style="font-style: italic;">EoN
now allows
players to take the “satellite view” –
zooming out to a commander’s maptable perspective. Zoom in
far enough and you’ll find a new horizontal perspective
– good for determining line of sight and elevation
differences.



The class structure Petroglyph explained at last year’s E3
– assault, artillery, etc. -  is no more. Instead, style="font-style: italic;">EoN’s
as-of-yet unnamed classes will take a slightly more combined arms tack
in terms of what units each player is allocated. My class seemed to be
heavier in air units, but also had enough armor and infantry to capture
portions of the map and hold my own on the ground.



Which brings me to my favorite change in style="font-style: italic;">End of Nations
– air and infantry units.  Helicopters and VTOL
aircraft now allow players to ignore terrain and bring the hurt to
their enemies in a hurry, though aircraft can’t be used to
capture and are more than a little vulnerable to turrets and other air
defenses.



On the infantry side, we’re talking mechs. Mechs! Not only do
we get a game with mechs at long last, but infantry has a number of
strengths all its own, according to Chris: “Infantry can go
over terrain other units can’t. Our game is very capture
point centric, and infantry captures faster than other
units.”


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Infantry is near to Chris’s heart. When I asked what one of
his favorite units in the the game was, he responded by showing me a
hulking infantry unit strapped with a massive minigun. “This
is the Guardian. When I was designing this one, I was inspired by Jesse
Ventura from Predator.  He carries this massive minigun, so
he’s on the slow side, but when he deploys, he can lay down a
ton of fire on the battlefield – he can mow through armor
like there’s no tomorrow. Plus, he goes into a defensive
state, so he’s very difficult to kill.”





War Never Changes

Yet many popular aspects of the game remain unchanged. 
It’s still red vs. blue, though without some of the
nationalistic schmaltz. Accordingly, the names have changed:
it’s now Shadow Revolution vs. Liberation Front, and you can
probably guess their autocratic vs. democratic leanings.



Other familiar features include drop-in gameplay, a world domination
territory control format (separate from the co-op campaign, and lasting
), observer mode, and superweapons such as tactical nukes made the cut,
though players will have a lot fewer skills and weapons to worry about.
At level 15, I only had 2 skills and 2 superweapons to worry about, and
that was plenty.


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Petroglyph has also upped the personality level. Chris let me in on a
cutscene for the Great Sandy Desert campaign in Western Australia. From
the fully voiced flyover vid I learned that the uranium deposits of
this region transformed it into a flashpoint for global conflict, and
what’s more, if we can believe the Internet,
there’s plenty of href="http://uraniumfree.wordpress.com/campaign/uranium-hotspots-in-wa/">real
world truth to these claims.



Also, Chris bade me put on the headphones for an early audition of the
game audio. Vehicle noise and explosions sounded spot on, but what RTS
would be complete without rancorous audio clips when each unit is
selected? End
of Nations
already has this
covered.


Deep Hammer

I japed that “Deep Hammer” was my name around the
shop, but not for the reason you’d expect (I read poetry),
but the joke didn’t seem to carry. Diving into the hotspot of
the same name in Western Australia, I asked Chris how matchmaking would
be done in the live game. “Battles will be separated by
tier,” he responded, “but contributions of every
player will affect the overall outcome. It would be very difficult to
pit higher level guys with heavily modded units and access to more
technology against lower level guys and expect everyone to have
fun.”



This particular map type was 2v2, but Chris noted that PvP map types
can range in scope (and size) from 1v1 to 26v26. Each player could
field 16 units at level 15, but Chris warned that this number is in
flux: “The idea is that the player would start off with fewer
and then, as they progress as a commander, they would unlock more
slots.”

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My first PvP match was a win. After bull rushing the enemies control
center, an elongated white dome
building that looked like a SETI
project to find aliens in the earth’s crust, I nearly wiped.
As it turns out, following the blue guidance arrows to knocking out the
enemies resource nodes, turrets, and factories around the periphery is
a healthy way to build towards attacking the big enchilada. Dodging the
big red circle that indicated an inbound nuclear strike, I unleashed a
superweapon missile strike on the control center, and soon victory was
ours. It was a good way to end a demo.


Countdown to the End (of
Nations)

Don’t believe everything you read in magazines, an August
release date seems unlikely. Chris wasn’t keen to talk
timelines right now: “We’ve got a great partner in
Trion, they told us to make a great game and not worry about pushing it
out the door.”



Thanks to Chris Rubyor and the Petroglyph team for their time, and we
look forward to hearing more about style="font-style: italic;">End of Nations
in the months ahead.



To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our End of Nations Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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