[TOTW] The Status of MAG

MAG was released quite sometime ago, the game gained its momentum but where does it stand out now?

The game was released in January 27th, 2010, roughly 1 year and a couple of months ago. The game saw its momentum shortly after with a big influx of players fighting for glory and their PMC, but like all the FPS in consoles the community dies, fast and MAG is no exception. So how is MAG now? Is it still playable?

In my opinion its a definite maybe, so let me walk you through why I think this is a maybe you should buy it game, I played extensively from the beginning, took a break and went back in I know of the changes that the game suffered.

The Bad

The players

Gief Leadership or Kick!

- Since the beginning, this game was poisoned by people who aren't team players and prefer to grab a resurrection kit and going all by themselves trying to get the maximum points by kills. Although the game can sustain this kind of gameplay, if there are too many people doing this, its a sure lose for the team. Now, it's still the same but even with lesser players, most people just jump in the action and don't want to know about teamplay, its extensively annoying when people need healing but they just ignore your pain and cross icon and go for the kill, which turns quickly into him dying as well, now I'm not talking about strategic clearing the place before resurrecting, I'm talking about those times where you see yourself lying next to a person with a rez kit and just looking at you almost like he's trying to solve a puzzle so hard he could just stare at you for hours before taking action.

-One of the worse things in this is people who actually don't speak English, now I'm Portuguese and I'm pretty comfortable when it comes to talking English, but some people get a headset and start speaking some unpronounceable language to the section that makes people go nuts and either mute the hell out of him (which is bad if he's the section\platoon\company leader or just kick him so fast he won't even have time to see that he is being kicked. 

- Besides the weird languages flowing around (which is not his\her fault for not knowing) and bad teamplay, there is also the "I Want" player, the player who stops at nothing to be leader and when he achieves such feat by kicking his teammates and so on, he does nothing, or he does but only for his own gluttony, its amazing to see a mortar fire just to kill the one guy who is probably sightseeing in the game like one of those tourists that a big volcano might erupt and he would just keep doing his business, like it was nothing,  just because he\she is in front of him\her.

 Anyway, its not the games fault it's the people and every game is poisoned by this to an extent, but people are the core of the game and unfortunately there is a lot of this going on. 

Zipper

MAG? Oh you mean that old thing?

- Before I delve into Zipper, i felt tempted to send them an e-mail with some questions before I started writing and I'm still tempted to do this, but I almost certainly know that the e-mail will be in the trash bin quicker then I can spawn in the game without lagging and waiting for the next timer to go down. Zipper was a staunch supporter of the game in the beginning, we had everything, marketing was good, constant chatter in podcast and blog forms which would entail what would be next for MAG. Now we barely hear them saying anything, they just moved on to another project and unfortunately MAG went into the forgotten recesses of the development teams mind, of course once again, this happens all the time, but this game was a 256 player based game, and they just took a huge dump forgotten the community. Now I know we had an update a couple of months ago, but after that update, the news just look like a huge pile of nothing, SOCOM is back and now they focused all the attention on it, I can relate to that in a way, but something that was groundbreaking like 256 player maps, can't just be locked and throw away the keys. My questions to Zipper would be the following:

• Are you planning anything new for MAG in the upcoming months?
• Is there any plan on clan activities? Bonuses? Partnership with any professional league, like Clanbase of WCG? Anything besides competing with one another for... nothing?
• Do you have any plan on fixing the remaining bugs of the game?

I'm sure more would come to mind when I was actually writing but while I wrote this here, I started to depress myself to the state the game came to, and dreams of what it could've been..

The Maps

Night Maps? Do they even exist? Why the art?

In the beginning, our PMC was identified with the maps we played in, when defending it would be our maps and when attacking it would be the opposite PMC maps. In the middle of the run, sabotage changed to all around maps, Valor could defend S.V.E.R maps, or Raven could defend a S.V.E.R. map and I could get along with it, fine it was a sabotage map, and the maps were pretty boring to begin with. Now its in all modes? Why would the community agree to such a thing, now the only thing that separates the PMC's are the weapons and skin models, something that, even with the weapons difference, its more or less the same, It was really a bad move from Zipper to do this.

The Clans

I already typed a question that I wanted to really know when considering the clans. What the hell are they for? did anyone played a Clan War? does it even work? It's a mystery beyond me that I couldn't even begin to understand, much like how the toilet seat works. Clans were introduced with the promise that the game would have something to fight for, so where is it? what's that big thing? You mean the contracts? Isn't that, the same while playing around with friends?

Much like World of Warcraft Guilds in the beginning, they only served the purpose of maintaining the members in a position that would be located to raid an instance and get loot, but in MAG, there isn't even a clan page (please don't get me started on that thing people call a clan section, its pathetic). By now I would've thought we had a special section for it, with chatting window there, prizes, league, competitions, anything, but no, not even a decent page and completely useless.

The "New" system

I payed for this, but I don't even wear it that much...

- With the introduction of the new system, players who wouldn't chose a certain path can now have any weapon available to them while enhancing their abilities in the new level tree's, nothing wrong here, taking out the, ALL THE PEOPLE HAVE ACCESS TO WEAPONS THEY AREN'T SUPPOSE TO GET!

Seriously though, its almost a good idea, but the fact that most people are going for example to assault tree and chose other tree's except the sniper tree, and a person buys a sniper rifle and plays with it, will be outmatched to a person who does have the sniper tree available, worse of all, the deposit almost makes the evolution tree's obsolete, why would you spend something in a certain talent tree if your going to unlock the weapon without it, and possibly play reasonably the same as much of the other gamer, whats the point? Sure it can enhance the selected tree, and it has "faster sprint", etc, to chose and make your own personal choices and characters, but one of the qualities of the previous tree's is that you could actually achieve something when reaching a certain level, not now though. Shame.

The Bugs

We are here and waiting for the right opportunity to f*ck up your game!

- From knifing a couple of meters away (I'm aware of the skill that can increase the length of the knife swipe, and trust me not even the man with the biggest arms in the game can reach sometimes players) to the horrifying homing bullets, I can't even tell about my frustrations when I'm getting hit, and I run to a wall and still get hit, it's annoying and it's probably lag, but who knows?! I've seen so many people while playing getting fed up with this its ridiculous and sometimes unplayable. Other bugs? Well, the hit detection is almost off pace, sometimes the walls are a bit invisible and are bigger then previously thought out to be.

The Good

The Players 

- Now we have seen bad things in players, but its not all bad, some gamers really know what they are doing and help out as much as possible, and even communicate (RARE!) strategies and common chatter which is good from time to time, so kudos for those who really know what the game is all about. Even though the community is decreasing with each passing day, a few remnants faithful of the game's true nature, stick around, they know its fun and intuitive, they know that it has a lot of potential that isn't even scratching the surface

The "New" System

- While being in the new system of leveling, you can actually chose which weapon suits you best and go from there on out, this is good for those who are at mid-level and want to specialize in something but haven't got a clue where to start with, but then again its up to the intelligence of the player to figure that little miracle.

There are plenty of things I could talk about MAG, for one, despite all the bad things I talked about it, I still play it, I get frustrated from time to time, but its OK, it happens in everything game, and this shouldn't be excluded. Sometimes I do wonder if they got this game right and if it could change the fate that its going to have in a matter of a year or two. I would really love to see Zipper still getting a hand on this game, it has a lot of potential and it shouldn't be discarded.

Remember that the game isn't actually bad, its extremely fun if you see it from the right angles (and grab the right PMC) and you can make yourself known pretty easily, just don't think the game will be funnier while the time passes because, like all FPS in the console world, it has a timer, and its ticking faster then when it started. 

See you on the Battlefield!