-SCoLD- wrote on 07/27/15 at 20:41:19:
There will be a TM PS4. It's inevitable.
I just hope they give it to a rockstar team like Sony Santa Monica or something.
I certainly hope a new TM is in the works, and I definitely consider all of the recent promos to be an indicator. I can't see it being worth the effort to cross a character from an inactive IP as merely a bullet point to drive sales. Especially for a title like Rocket League that's available free for most, I think Sweet Tooth's presence has a greater purpose, being to keep the series relevant for something larger in the future. That's my hope, at least. It's wishful thinking, but at least it's decently logical.
However, I wouldn't want to see Santa Monica Studios as the dev, or even involved at all to be honest. Nothing against them since they're certainly a talented group, but I would really prefer to see a dedicated studio work on the project. I believe SMS's involvement in other projects was a factor in 2012's lack of polish, and how poorly they supported the game following launch, as Eat Sleep Play's contract was fulfilled by then. Seeing that Sony's first-party devs likely wouldn't be suited for developing a new TM, the most likely scenario would be contracting an external studio to develop it, like was the case with Eat Sleep Play. This could be good if that studio's contract extends past release, seeing that TM is a competitive multiplayer game that really needs post-release support. Just as another Rocket League reference, it's awesome how well Psyonix has done supporting and promoting its game, with that being its sole project. It had early hiccups at launch because of the massive number of players initially playing, but Psyonix was on top of the issues and resolved them quickly, as opposed to TM 2012 where most things weren't really resolved until a couple months later and the servers were under less strain. TM as a series has every component to potentially to be a massively competitive game if balanced, supported and promoted properly, and I want it to be developed by a studio that can elevate it to a larger stage.
*Off Topic Below This*
Luis wrote on 07/30/15 at 00:22:59:
I wonder if flying is overpowered in that game too.
I wouldn't say flying was ever overpowered, disregarding the homing mega gun era. Flying with Sweet Bot is practically just a defensive pussy tactic; it's annoying, but not game breaking. The thing about Talon is that playing it takes such a high level of situational awareness that really none of modern-day Talon scrubs have. In my opinion, there's only one player who ever mastered Talon and made the vehicle appear questionably overpowered, being LuisoAssassin. He was the type of player you struggled to even get a remote bomb lock on since he was so conscious about staying out of others reticles, even when they were purposefully targeting him, and knew how to fly at the proper angles to dodge anything that was avoidable. Talon functions really similar to Reaper, in that it's extremely easy to use against clueless players, but extremely difficult to use against competent players, but was balanced by the fact that it had virtually limitless potential when mastered. And as the majority of Reaper scrubs rely on freezes or RPG antics, most Talons can only use pussy tactics, and don't understand how to offensively counter when someone competent targets them.
With that said, that doesn't mean that flying vehicles had any purpose being in a vehicle combat game. Twisted Metal is fundamentally designed to play on a horizontal axis, so the existence of two vehicles that can travel on a vertical axis messes with the pressure balance. In team games you need a player to constantly target a Talon, because a Talon's usefulness greatly diminishes when being harassed. The thing is, it's not fun to play Talon when being harassed, and it's not even fun to be a Talon hunter really, because aside from the need to mostly rely on auto-aim weapons (which I believe is a major reason why overpowered homing is such an issue in this title), the depth that exists in land-based vehicle teamplay is stripped as well. Therefore, we don't use Talon or Sweet Bot competitively, since it's simply not fun. In ranked TDM where scrubs can freely use Talon, I'll take my turn targeting a Talon to ensure the match is enjoyable for the rest of the lobby, but in FFA, it presents even more of an issue, since it's in nobody's interest to target a competent Talon because in DM, it hardly returns decent points for the time and inventory you may invest in targeting them. That means in DM, either, Talon is unable to accomplish much because of being pressured by someone competent, or by virtue of how newbstreaks work, it entirely dominates the match with nobody bothering to pressure it. There's not much competitive middle-ground.