WARDOGS New Gameplay and Details Looks Amazing...

Since its big reveal over a month ago, Warogs has certainly set some tongues wagging and started to generate serious hype for the game. On the surface, this game looks to be a very appealing mix for Battlefield and armor players alike, filled with a satisfying amount of gameplay depth and teamwork, all strung together with an interesting economy system meta that is intrinsically connected to the gameplay, encouraging teamplay actions and altruistic behavior. If you've played some of the older Battlefield titles or the armor mod King of the Hill, there might be a lot to look forward to here. Recently though, the developers have started to reveal much more about the game, discussing new mechanics, game modes, and additional questions through a couple of different videos. So, I thought that we take a look at these today as they show some new gameplay clips and get into the weeds about many of the deeper systems here. I quite like these videos, too, because I feel like the developers are being very transparent and honest about their product, which is refreshing to see. So, the first video is an explainer of what the game is and what the main game mode is because I think some people were a bit confused about this initially. Let's take a look. Warogs is a tactical warfare FPS. But 100 players split across three teams fight over one control zone. Every 30 seconds, the team with the most players in the control zone earns one point. And the first team to reach 100 points wins the match. That's a very simplified look at the game. Of course, there's much more nuance to that as we'll find out, but pretty basic, easy to understand. Three teams, 100 players, huge objective area on a big map, and the first team to 100 points wins. Previously, the devs told me too that games can run from 30 minutes if it's a walkover to 2 hours if it's a close game, depending on how things go for each team. A core aspect of Warogs is the underlying persistent economy. Every life, you're able to build your own custom loadout, purchasing whatever equipment you want to use before heading into the control zone. So, each team has a deployment, which is safe. You're at your base, and there's a vendor. You've got your own personal bank of money. You spend whatever you want for that particular life of the game, as much or as little as you want to. During a match, players earn in-game cash for completing any teamplay actions such as killing enemies, reviving teammates, or even skillfully piloting friendly players into the control zone. Everything a player does to help their team earns cash with profits from each game banked into their account to spend in the next match. Spending big on better equipment is always a risk as you might not always make a profit, but the right choice at the right time could turn the tide of the battle and yield massive returns. In Warogs, we don't just encourage team play. We actually reward it. Teamwork always pays and cash is king. So, this is one of the main reasons that I think Warogs is going to be a big hit because I don't think we've seen this level of commitment to a persistent economy system at this level of quality in this type of arcade/millsim FPS game. Every round is a gamble essentially. And that's quite the hook rather than just being an XP bar that's always going up. Your in-game cash flow has an impact here and it's driven by being a good player and a good teammate. Yes, there are exploits I'm sure that will pop up, but this will definitely hook a lot of players and be something new for them. And at the end of each season, the cash that you have is converted into gold bars which you can buy cosmetics with. So, there's even more systems on top here. The underlying goal here, I feel, is to ensure that when players are spending hours and hours each night on the game, the time investment they're putting in has a lot more value to it. To maximize your profits and your team's chances of capturing the control zone, you can opt to chase down the hot zone, a moving sub zone within the larger control zone that pays out double cash when inside it. Whilst within this hot zone, players also count a double towards their players team count, meaning you have the potential to swing the outcome of a match and influence explosive firefights with the game's more competitive players. So, if you want to make more cashing around and potentially win the whole match for your team, you'll want to be in that double scoring zone as much as possible. This is a great way to bring enemy teams together within that larger objective area. And the fact that it moves, too, provides players with reasons to move and predict where it's going to go. Maybe you make a good prediction, build a little base, and lock that down for a bit. There's also towers and magnets that you can make, too, that will pull the hot zone in your direction for a limited amount of time for big scoring moments. There's a lot of depth here. Roles in Warogs are entirely player defined with every item you add to your loadout offering unique ways to earn cash and experience points. XP is earned across six progression tracks and unlocks access to purchasing additional items for your loadout at the inmatch vendor. Being a medic, a sniper, artillery or ground support, a tank commander, or a humble builder. No matter how you want to play, Warox gives players the tools to play in their own way and shape a 100% playerdriven sandbox. Okay. While there aren't any hard to find classes in Warogs, you can buy role or spec kits that will enable you to do or be better at certain things. You want to be a full-on combat medic, a logistics driver, an attack pilot, or maybe a hybrid between an assault player and a builder, you can do that. you can spend that money and build the kit however you choose. And also, they did mention the XP system there. So, as well as the cash, there is a persistent XP that goes up and some passive things that you can earn, too, that we'll learn about a bit later on in the video. Squad sizes in Warogs are unlimited, so no friend ever gets left out when you're trying to decide what game to play in your evenings. Squatting Up also provides additional UI, vehicle squad locking for better coordination and more communication tools, including squad voice chat on top of the There's also proximity chat 46 northeast to help you communicate with your teammates around you or just mess with your enemy's heads. 100 players, three teams fighting over one control zone. Create unique and personal loadouts with whatever weapons, gear, and vehicles you want to use to play your own way. With no restrictions on squad sizes and no traditional lock roles, you're free to play however you want. Capture the control zone or take the hot zone to earn even more in-game cash and bank it into your account to spend the next time that you play. This is Warlocks. unlimited squad sizes, so you're not going to be restricted or have to leave anyone out. Like in Battlefield sometimes with only four players per squad. I know that people who have big communities and platoon have definitely been affected by that in recent Battlefield titles. I remember in BF2, we used to have six players per squad, which was super cool. And squad play used to be very impactful in those older Battlefield titles, and I hope we see that come back here. I like the vehicle locking, too. squad voice chat, proximity chat for friendly and enemies. It opens up so many doors and it's great to see those features. Now, the next new video is a Q&A where they got questions from the community and they actually picked some good ones. They're being quite transparent and candid in this, too. It's the kind of stuff that you don't usually get from the big AAA studios and there are new gameplay clips and info in here. Let's take a look. Is it going to be an arcade shooter like Battlefield and Call of Duty or is it going to be more like a realistic shooter like Tarov Squad and Armor Reforger? It's somewhere in the middle. Everyone's trying to label it as it's this plus this or it's that meets that. It's kind of its own thing. There is certainly an element of arcade, how the game feels, how it's responsive, how it's fluid, how it's reactive, and potentially something like the UI, how it kind of shows as a the kill has happened. We don't want you to be fighting the game when you're playing, but for for the general gameplay, realism is is the way that we lean. So, I know that they got this question a lot based on what I read in comments on my video, and sounds like it's somewhere in between milim and arcade. Based on the information and footage, I reckon that you'll feel the more arcade side in the gunplay, the movement, because they keep saying look, they want this to be a realistic game, but they still want it to be fun and be a game. Yeah. You're not going to be diving around like COD. Obviously, it's not that kind of game. To me, the movement, the gunplay, it kind of reminds me of BF3. And perhaps the more realistic side of things will be everything else in there in terms of like the depth and all of the possibilities on this big map with the vehicles, the building, etc. I like that they aren't labeling it too and going in with the angle. Look, it's its own thing. Try it. See how you feel. Progression system. Will we be able to unlock things playing the game outside of just buying gun accessories and other things in the match? Yeah, pretty much everything in the game is behind a progression system. Depending on the style of play that you like or the way that you like playing, you'll be able to unlock content that will be somewhat related to that style of play. So, the more you play, the more you can unlock. And the way you play determines what you unlock. So, if you like playing a certain way, you'll be rewarded for playing that way consistently. Makes sense to me. If you're building your own loadout, your own kit, obviously the more stuff that you're doing with that particular weapon, utility, tool, vehicle, whatever, you're going to make some progress there. Will there be a cash shop and ways to buy in-game money with real money? No. No. The answer is no. We're not like a big AAA studio where we need like millions and million millions of dollars to to keep the lights on, but we can't pretend that we don't need money to keep going. We're not trying to be this hugely massive playerbased game. We're not trying to beat Battlefield or take on Call of Duty. We're not trying to do anything like that. We're making a game that we want to make cuz we want to play it. In terms of monetizing it, like I'm staunchly against us having paid skins in the game. When you see a player with skins, you should know that that player has earned that through their actions in the game, not they have more money. I think just keep delivering good content for players and keep being transparent and you guys keep coming back. That's That's the plan. Absolute W. I know a lot of people are going to be happy to hear that you can't just buy the thing and be better or look better. You've got to earn it. This is how games kind of used to be. And it appears that Warogs is vehematly pushing back on that new wave of monetization, which I appreciate. And it genuinely sounds like they just want to make a good game here that's fun to play and has a load of depth and variety that it brings in enough players and sales from people just buying the base game. I'm sure at some point there might be pay for DLC or something like that, but for now it's really great to see them take this route. 100 players over three teams. The math ain't mapping. This is probably the question that we knew we would get asked the most when designing this game for 4 years. Really, it's up to 100 players is actually what we say. Server admins could set the server cap to 80 anyway, or 81 or whatever you wanted, right? Because of the length of the game, players will drop in and drop out of the session and won't be there for the entire match. The likely chance is for the majority of the game, the team numbers will be swapping between around 27 to 33 people per team. But you are right. If it does have 100 players, one team will have an extra player. So, they cleared that up then. I did see that comment a lot in my videos, too. It makes sense as a server won't always be full. And I think from a marketing perspective, saying 100 players just looks a lot better than saying 99. Also, they said there that they've been working on this for four years. I'd say that seems a bit longer than your typical multiplayer FPS game, but they are a smaller team. They told me there's around 70 to 80 employees right now. And I think most of us as gamers, we would just rather wait for a good game than one that isn't fleshed out or finished, but gets rushed out of the door to make money. So, I don't really care how long a game takes as long as when it releases it's good. What kind of stuff will be looted? Ammunition, meds, literally anything. All items, but no loot like in the sense of like an extraction shooter. Anything that you can buy. Anything that anyone can buy, you can loot. Anything can be looted off bodies, vehicles, storage crates. If you need some bandages, ammo, check if the guy that you just killed had some. This is also pretty cool for the players who do lowc cost runs. Maybe you just buy a basic pistol. Hypothetically, you could do a nice flank, jump a squad who's got good gear, kill them, loot their armor, weapons, steal their stuff, and upgrade their own kit in a round in that way. 100 player multiplayer games on a gigantic map in UI5. Got to have a 5090 with three times frame gen minimum to run this at 60 fps probably. Ultimately, as this guy says, it's 100 player game and there is a lot going on in a very localized zone. We are doing our best efforts. We've been thinking about performance from day one. We actually went to a local PC shop and said like, "What's your standard gaming PC that like somebody's mom would buy their kid?" And we shoved it under a desk over there. That's our like base spec because we come from a time releasing games, competitive games where frames that are high, input latency being low. These are kind of some of the most important things for us. This is one of the biggest concerns for me with War Dogs. Can they get it to an acceptable performant level where you've got so many players, destruction vehicles? Is the frame rate and net code going to hold up? I hope so. Like they said though, this has been a consideration from day one. But of course, the proof is in the pudding. I know that there are a few ex-pro FPS players in that dev team though who will strive to achieve that. So, I wish them the best of luck cuz frames, latency, net code, it's got to be locked in for a multiplayer shooter regardless of the scale of the game. Will Warogs be a Battlefield killer? No, it will not be a Battlefield killer. I don't think Battlefield's really going anywhere. No, it's going to stand on its own two feet. We can coexist with them. But would we like to provide a different experience in a similar vein? Absolutely. Our goal is to have a consistent dedicated player base of 3 to 10,000 players coming and playing the game every night. It will not be a Battlefield Killer, but we wouldn't mind having a little a little dig at it. I think it's interesting that they put this question in there. It's kind of setting expectations in a way. I reckon that they will have a lot more than 10,000 players every night if they pull this off. Obviously, Battlefield isn't going to go anywhere. It's got huge mass appeal and it's EA's biggest FPS title. But honestly, based on what I'm seeing, War Dogs has a lot of mechanics that we used to get to play with in previous Battlefield games that have been dropped when those games had more depth and teamplay and when DICE used to care about separating themselves more from titles like Call of Duty and be a bit more unique and individual. Those mechanics for me, they made the game better, more interesting. And I hope that in the next BF game, we see some of that stuff return, but I don't know if that's going to happen. Warogs though, it is supporting that more in-depth gameplay, which I can really appreciate. And that's going to appeal to those older Battlefield players who want that again, who are craving that, but also to new players who maybe have been on COD, modern Battlefield for five or 6 years, and they're looking for something with a bit more depth. How will matchmaking and team balance work? I'm worried that people might quit lobbies where they're getting steamrolled. I mean, matchmaking, we only use server browser. There's no skill-based matchmaking or aggression based matchmaking or anything else. There's always a bigger fish and there's always a little fish. And uh without skill-based matchmaking, sometimes you get to be the big fish. What I would say is winning in Warogs is not the most important thing. It is obviously great, but it's really about your cash and how much you've done in the game and how you're helping the team. So even if you are on the losing team, you can still have really good runs where you're making a lot of money, potentially more money than the people that are on the winning team. Server browser, it's great to see. No matchmaking at all. No SPMM. I don't know if that means no quickplay option though, cuz I think it would be nice to have the server browser and a quick play option for new players, for example, who can just click a quick play button on the main menu and it will put them in any match that's low ping and starting or just started. That would be a nice feature to have as well. and the no skillbased matchmaking thing again. This hawks back to how games used to be. Just a toy to be entertaining, to waste some time, pick up and play, have a laugh with your mates before all of the big publishers started separating all of the players to maximize engagement and play time. So, I like that Warogs is actually taking that stance and just being like, hey, it's a game for the sake of being a game and there will always be a wide variety of skill in each server and in each team. and what they said about winning not necessarily being the most important thing, too. You could be a great team player, reviving, healing, but then you could still lose the match, but because you've played so well, you could still come out with more cash in your bank than when you started. Or you could be a supply truck guy who spends the whole game driving a mobile gun shop around and selling guns and bandages to players, making a big profit. So, winning to one person might be winning the game, getting the highest KD, getting the most kills, but winning to someone else could look completely different. There's lots of different ways to play and succeed, which is obviously the appeal here. Will it be PC only or will it come to PS5 and Xbox? We absolutely want to come to Xbox and PlayStation. Don't worry, we haven't forgotten about you guys. We're coming to console. That's our plan. We just don't know when. Okay, so confirmation there of a console version. I'm sure there's a lot of people who would love to play this kind of game on console. How broad is persistence? Full cash plus inventory, match to match, or is it session based? How do you lose your stuff? Losing a life a match? I would say that the persistence that we have is probably the first level that we intended to release with throughout our designs. At early access launch, it's keeping your cash. That's the persistence. It's just your cash. But the plan for full release is the metag game. You're able to engage with mini games outside of the session itself and make sure that you're collecting equipment, items, and tools you need like overnight while you sleep, while you're at work. And we've got some other really cool things around player skills, being able to be better at the things you want to do and push your character to feel really like your character. But right now, um, early access is is cash. That's the persistence. So, they're just reiterating the importance of the cash, your bank level, and how it's connected to the gameplay, but they did show a glimpse of the passive skills there. Kind of looks like our graders. They told me previously that the design for this from a basic example would be if you're somebody who revives a thousand players in a season, you're going to be slightly quicker at reviving than somebody who didn't revive anyone. And they also showed these meta missions which appear to be timegated to go on while you aren't playing. But when the game launches in early access, cash is where it's all going to start. Early access release time frame. When when is the play test? So then this guy says when in massive caps. I'm not sure I'm supposed to be saying that on camera because we haven't publicly said it, but it is this year, but is later this year. Play test will start before that, of course. And in terms of early access, how long we're staying in there, we're going to stay in there between 12 months and 24 months, right? It really depends on how you guys feel about the game. We don't want to rush something out that isn't ready, but we do want to get it in your hands at this point. This is the time where we work together with players to kind of morph it into what it should be, what it could be, and ultimately what it will end up as early access then sometime this year on Steam. And they said it could be 12 to 24 months of play testing with this before they're happy to release. And I'm sure that they will get a ton of feedback from players in that time frame that will help them shape and improve the game. If I was them, I'd be looking to get this out in early access before GTA and COD in the fall. So maybe August, September, I think from a business perspective. That makes sense to me, providing that the game and the gameplay is in a good enough state for early access. Because as we all know, you get one shot at a first impression in the games industry, especially in the shooter genre. And there's certainly a lot of hype for War Dogs. The spotlight will be on them, no doubt. So fingers crossed they deliver and they don't feel pressured by anyone or anything until they're ready to go. With that said, that's about all the new stuff that I got for you today. Let me know your thoughts about the game below with a comment. Thank you. Drop me a like. Subscribe if you're new here. And I'll see you next time.