'Mavericks' Promises 1,000 Player Battle Royale

[Crunchy Dragon]

Battle Royale upcomer Mavericks plans to dethrone Fortnite and PUBG.

 

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 Mavericks: Proving Grounds is a hugely ambitious game. Fortnite, PUBG and similar battle-royale titles currently cap out at 100-player deathmatches. Automaton is promising 200- to 400-player bloodbaths at launch later this year. Five-man teams will compete in 1,000-person gauntlets soon after, according to the company. The matches will supposedly take place on a 10-by-10 kilometer map, dwarfing those offered by its competitors. And as players creep around the world, they'll find destructible buildings similar to Rainbow Six: Siege and realistic fire that can quickly spread across fields.

Just going by this last bit alone, I am intrigued. And then Automaton brings this in:

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Players will leave footprints and blood trails, according to the studio, which can be spotted by other competitors. Empty med kits, weapon magazines and bullet casings will also lie in the grass, waiting to be uncovered. As you hunt down other people, roaming wildlife will come into play, providing cover or, if you're not careful, giving away your position during crucial sneak attacks. Paired with a day and night cycle, these features, the team hopes, will provide more intense and strategic combat scenarios to give players more information and flexibility in how they approach each match.

I don't know about everybody else, but this sounds pretty dang promising.

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Mavericks' battle-royale mode will sit inside a vaguely-defined MMORPG experience. The game will have a town called The Capital, which acts as a lobby for the last-man-standing matches. Here, the company says, you'll be able to customize your character and upgrade your weapons before heading into the fray. There will also be banks, shops, auction houses and a range of quest-giving NPCs. The Capital will be part of a "persistent open world" that launches in 2019. What you will do beyond battle-royale matches, though, is unclear right now.

Getting a Hunger Games vibe a bit from this, but whatever. I liked those books.

 

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The MMO element is important to contextualize the violence, according to Automaton CEO James Thompson. Books and movies that use the battle-royale format -- the original Battle Royale novel by Koshun Takami, for instance, and The Hunger Games -- often wrap the bloodshed around larger political stories. They give the hero a reason to survive and provide consequences for their actions outside the ring. "Mavericks: Proving Grounds provides that broader narrative," Thompson said. "It's more of a simulated world. One with narrative, and one that's more believable. That setting, we think, even if you're focused on session-based games, makes it a richer experience."

 

Automaton has some MMORPG experience. Many of its staff worked on Runescape, the popular but visually primitive browser game, and Eve: Online, the deep-space-economy simulator, before joining the company. Furthermore, Mavericks isn't the team's first game. The studio released Deceit, a multiplayer horror title, through Steam Early Access in 2016. That title, though, is based around a small group of players trying to escape a house or, if they're chosen to play a disguised monster, kill their fellow competitors. It's a far cry from a 1,000-player battle royale.

Deceit is still on my Steam wishlist.

 

Going by what's been shared so far, this seems like it could be quite a success. I personally like the fact that there will be better ways to track players, I feel like that could add a lot to the strategy of the game and thought process behind how a player would play it.

 

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The way you’ll play Mavericks compared to current battle royale games is different because you’ll be able to use the world to your advantage. Persistent environments means players will leave tracks wherever they go, and if you track them all the way to a building, you’ll be able to blow the f---ing walls off to get to them.

 

All these in-game factors will fundamentally change how you approach certain situations. For example, you’ll know if a player has passed peacefully through an area by seeing footprints in the grass, but a burnt-out section or spreading fire might indicate that they engaged in a firefight. Knowing the environment is changing based on your movements is a powerful behavioural influencer and will undoubtedly introduce far more gameplay variety into the genre.

Automaton has a closed beta planned to start in August of 2018:

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Automaton is aiming for a closed beta in August. The 400-player battle-royale mode will launch publicly later this year, followed by the 1,000-person matches and, finally, the persistent world and MMO trappings in 2019. If the team can deliver on its vision, Mavericks has the potential to dethrone Fortnite and usher in a new generation of battle-royale titles. One with larger environments, an MMO backdrop, and stories that provide greater meaning for your actions.

 

Honestly, I'm pretty excited for this. Here's hoping my rig will be up to the task.

Sources:

https://www.pedestrian.tv/gaming/we-got-to-demo-that-1000-player-battle-royale-game-mavericks/

https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/28/mavericks-proving-grounds-1000-battle-royale-game/

[bellabichon]

I just hope Logan Paul doesn't sue them.

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, bellabichon said:

I just hope Logan Paul doesn't sue them.

That guy ruins everything.

[Macimoar]

As long as I don't have to build stuff I'm in. I can't get used to that particular aspect of Fortnite.

[Okjoek]

Planetside 2

 

(1,200 players per map IIRC)

[themctipers]

flashback to 100 player minecraft UHC lag

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, themctipers said:

flashback to 100 player minecraft UHC lag

That was mostly server-end. I'm pretty sure Automaton will have better servers to handle this kind of mayhem.

[Spotty]

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Five-man teams will compete in 1,000-person gauntlets soon after, according to the company. The matches will supposedly take place on a 10-by-10 kilometer map

Players will leave footprints and blood trails, according to the studio, which can be spotted by other competitors. Empty med kits, weapon magazines and bullet casings will also lie in the grass, waiting to be uncovered.

Persistent environments means players will leave tracks wherever they go, and if you track them all the way to a building, you’ll be able to blow the f---ing walls off to get to them.

Are they planning on hiring out all of Amazon's servers to run this?

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

Are they planning on hiring out all of Amazon's servers to run this?

They're gonna need quite some stuff to run this, that's for sure.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, bellabichon said:

I just hope Logan Paul doesn't sue them.

With the name Mavericks I wouldn't be surprised if Apple sued them. I wouldn't put it past Apple if the game gets money. 

[Dylanc1500]

2 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

With the name Mavericks I wouldn't be surprised if Apple sued them. I wouldn't put it past Apple if the game gets money. 

It'll be Mark Cuban or Tom Cruise.

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

It'll be Mark Cuban or Tom Cruise.

Val Kilmer needs the money. 

[Dabombinable]

Designing the netcode to handle 1000 players must be a nightmare.

[Orangeator]

What kind of servers is it going to take to run 1,000 players on a single map... Jesus...

[PlayStation 2]

The engine better be able to handle it just fine.

[Froody129]

Playing Fortnite and PUBG the last thing I was thinking was "this needs more people"...

 

I'd rather have a polished 100 player that actually works than 1000 players where I won't see anyone most of the time. 

 

If it runs better than PUBG with kinda the same graphics everyone will move regardless. 

[The Benjamins]

43 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

What kind of servers is it going to take to run 1,000 players on a single map... Jesus...

this and also real time tracking of all footsteps, blood drips, bullet shells, mags, used medpacks, and animal NPC. That is a CRAZY amount more client to server data then PUBG and fortnite.

 

Also  PUBG dessert map is 8 x 8 Km so this map is not too much bigger for 10x more people. 

 

Here are the people desnity of PUBG maps vs this game.

 

PUBG Miramar (Desert): 6.25 Players per 1Km^2

PUBG Sanhok (Desert): 14.28 Players per 1Km^2

Mavericks (1000): 50 Players per 1Km^2

Mavericks (400): 20 Players per 1Km^2

 

2 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

Playing Fortnite and PUBG the last thing I was thinking was "this needs more people"...

 

I'd rather have a polished 100 player that actually works than 1000 players where I won't see anyone most of the time. 

 

If it runs better than PUBG with kinda the same graphics everyone will move regardless. 

 

If you played Sanhok imagine having 3x more people near by.

 

This is going to be hard to run smoothly server wise.

[Rainbow Dash]

How are they even going to be able to run the servers at 60Hz with that many players? It probably would be like 5-10Hz and that would be unplayable.

[Quadriplegic]

Oh my, it's not going to be pretty. 

Got flashbacks of my younger days, playing SRO in servers with over 3000 people. The lag was pretty impressive.

[xAcid9]

Can we start a campaign to not pre-order this ??️? 

 

I don't remember any games that capable of doing even half of this without massive performance drop. 

[xtroria]

There’s already something like this, released 5 years ago, called planetside 2

[Dylanc1500]

4 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Val Kilmer needs the money. 

After batman, I'm not too surprised.

[AlexGoesHigh]

So beside planning a game with a shit load of players they are also planning to track everything the players are doing in real time?

 

Boy I hope those guy developing the server code know what they got into cause that sounds its going to need a lot of resource

 

[ScratchCat]

3 hours ago, Rainbow Dash said:

How are they even going to be able to run the servers at 60Hz with that many players? It probably would be like 5-10Hz and that would be unplayable.

Minimum Spec: 100Mbps Connection

Recommended Spec: 1Gbps Connection

Playable Spec: Dedicated 100Gbps Fiber Backbone to server. Requires resettling to server location.

[Ginger_]

This sounds like another no man's sky style of promising.