Splash Damage's next update for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will include a training mode to ease new players into the multiplayer action.
"The single greatest hurdle to ensuring great game-play online, is getting new players to understand the basics of team-play, and the subsequent amazing buzz that comes from coordination", the developer has said in a detail spill on the upcoming 1.4 update.
"The new Training Mode helps achieves this by teaching new players how to make effective use of the Mission System, how to pursue the team's Objectives, how to deploy on the battlefield, requesting health, capturing and liberating spawns, understanding revives, using their Radio, etc, while playing with Bots that are a little more forgiving - they'll focus on your support, while leaving you to complete the Missions you're on, until such time as the match really needs to move forward."
The developer adds that it's recorded actor voice-overs "for tons of additional Tool Tips", in addition to including a pause feature "that will help guide new players by pausing the game and then pointing them at important way-points to better understand the geography of each map".
On top of the new training mode, v1.4 boasts new user interface features, ETQW: TV for spectator action, auto-downloading of user-made maps and general gameplay balancing improvements.
Splash Damage says it hopes to have the new Quake Wars update out before Christmas. You can read a review of the game here.
I wish they had done this earlier. I found it difficult to get into this game and use all the features as I had no clue as what to do, the instruction manuel was vague. Lots of trial and error later and I'm now really enjoying the game.
Cool. There is a perception 'out there' that ET:QW is a hard game. It's not really, it's just not a straight forward online shooter like CoD/TF2/BFx etc...
The hardest aspect to grasp, yet the easiest and perhaps, most rewarding role to play is supporting the team vice going for the objective.
I'd recommend any new player to take the Soldier & Rocket launcher option (GDF or Strogg), sit back from the fight and destroy deployables and aircraft - you'll be making a massive contribution (although no-one will notice it, they'll just think the enemy are crap) without putting yourself in harms way too much.
The soldiers explosives are one of the most underused items in the game
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