Getofmeland's Review of Rugby World Cup 2011

[HB_AJ]

Guys, to be clear, under the RWC license we are permitted to include the country names, flags and kits in the colours of the teams participating in Rugby World Cup 2011. The Intellectual Property that belongs to the national unions, i.e. official kits, player likenesses, logos and in some case stadia, all must be licensed by the national union.

New Zealand and Australian licenses have been a priority for us since day one. I know that fans of our game in New Zealand and Australia will be disappointed - hell, Rugby 08 was up in the charts in NZ as recently as 2009, so I know how big a deal it is down there, not to mention the passion coming from the NZ contingent of this forum. But I actually feel worse for the players than the fans. I know many of these guys have grown up playing our games and now that they have reached the pinnacle of their playing careers and are hosting the World Cup at home and they're not going to be in the official game of the tournament. Believe me when I say that this responsibility has weighed heavily on me this year.

We learned over a year ago that the NZRU and the ARU had granted an exclusive license to HES before they knew that HB was going to be making a game independently of EA. Up until then, all that was known was that EA appeared unlikely to be making another Rugby game in advance of the World Cup. I don't say that to suggest that things would have played out any differently had our plans been more widely known, but that's the timeline. I have tremendous respect for how these two unions have supported their licensee. What I will tell you is that there has been a lot of blood sweat and tears that has gone into trying to secure the rights to have New Zealand and Australia in the game - we have literally gone to the mat on more than one occasion in our efforts to do so. On more than one occasion, I had great hope that we'd found a way, but in the end it was not to be.

Player creation tools are extremely time consuming to design, build and test all of their permutations. I've said from the outset that we would be very rigorous in how we would prioritize the features we would put into production this year. A player creator did not make the cut.

 

[tomascole]

HB AJ i do really hope wales are liscenced

 

[OnTheBall]

Will player postion and attributes be taken into account when attempting to perform sidesteps, shoulder charges etc.?

 

[David Smith]

Guys, to be clear, under the RWC license we are permitted to include the country names, flags and kits in the colours of the teams participating in Rugby World Cup 2011. The Intellectual Property that belongs to the national unions, i.e. official kits, player likenesses, logos and in some case stadia, all must be licensed by the national union.

New Zealand and Australian licenses have been a priority for us since day one. I know that fans of our game in New Zealand and Australia will be disappointed - hell, Rugby 08 was up in the charts in NZ as recently as 2009, so I know how big a deal it is down there, not to mention the passion coming from the NZ contingent of this forum. But I actually feel worse for the players than the fans. I know many of these guys have grown up playing our games and now that they have reached the pinnacle of their playing careers and are hosting the World Cup at home and they're not going to be in the official game of the tournament. Believe me when I say that this responsibility has weighed heavily on me this year.

We learned over a year ago that the NZRU and the ARU had granted an exclusive license to HES before they knew that HB was going to be making a game independently of EA. Up until then, all that was known was that EA appeared unlikely to be making another Rugby game in advance of the World Cup. I don't say that to suggest that things would have played out any differently had our plans been more widely known, but that's the timeline. I have tremendous respect for how these two unions have supported their licensee. What I will tell you is that there has been a lot of blood sweat and tears that has gone into trying to secure the rights to have New Zealand and Australia in the game - we have literally gone to the mat on more than one occasion in our efforts to do so. On more than one occasion, I had great hope that we'd found a way, but in the end it was not to be.

Player creation tools are extremely time consuming to design, build and test all of their permutations. I've said from the outset that we would be very rigorous in how we would prioritize the features we would put into production this year. A player creator did not make the cut.

That makes me wanna cry. It feels like you begged for them but they just showed no mercy. Don't worry Hb im sure i'll live with it and I'm going to love playing as NZ and smashing those pom at twicks. Peace out.

 

[ratchit]

Inside passes ?

 

[TRF C A Iversen]

Guys, to be clear, under the RWC license we are permitted to include the country names, flags and kits in the colours of the teams participating in Rugby World Cup 2011. The Intellectual Property that belongs to the national unions, i.e. official kits, player likenesses, logos and in some case stadia, all must be licensed by the national union.

New Zealand and Australian licenses have been a priority for us since day one. I know that fans of our game in New Zealand and Australia will be disappointed - hell, Rugby 08 was up in the charts in NZ as recently as 2009, so I know how big a deal it is down there, not to mention the passion coming from the NZ contingent of this forum. But I actually feel worse for the players than the fans. I know many of these guys have grown up playing our games and now that they have reached the pinnacle of their playing careers and are hosting the World Cup at home and they're not going to be in the official game of the tournament. Believe me when I say that this responsibility has weighed heavily on me this year.

We learned over a year ago that the NZRU and the ARU had granted an exclusive license to HES before they knew that HB was going to be making a game independently of EA. Up until then, all that was known was that EA appeared unlikely to be making another Rugby game in advance of the World Cup. I don't say that to suggest that things would have played out any differently had our plans been more widely known, but that's the timeline. I have tremendous respect for how these two unions have supported their licensee. What I will tell you is that there has been a lot of blood sweat and tears that has gone into trying to secure the rights to have New Zealand and Australia in the game - we have literally gone to the mat on more than one occasion in our efforts to do so. On more than one occasion, I had great hope that we'd found a way, but in the end it was not to be.

Player creation tools are extremely time consuming to design, build and test all of their permutations. I've said from the outset that we would be very rigorous in how we would prioritize the features we would put into production this year. A player creator did not make the cut.

That's really great of you to explain to us AJ. To be equally clear, I'm still going to support your product. There's no question at all about it.

As much as you wouldn't have been doing your job if you hadn't tried your level best for those licenses (which it totally seems you have), I wouldn't feel I'd been representing the other fans from my region if I hadn't been asking so persistently as I have the last few days.

From the tpye of people you all seem to be at HB, I can just imagine that you guys have put every effort imaginable in to acquire the rights, so I have to say "Thank you very much for your efforts in trying".

I'm sure that if the fans can support you guys in making this ***le profitable, that this project hasn't put you guys off and given the assets that you guys have put together in making this game on the newer platforms, that you guys would try your best to make it a priority for any future rugby ***les.

If that situation does come to pass and some likeness licenses are again not something you guys can acquire, I'm pretty sure that many here are saying that even a more limited editor would be gratefully accepted.

Thanks again.

 

[RedRoseDave]

England are currently in equal if not better form then the All Blacks. Ashton is argueably the best and fastest player in todays rugby, I cant see Rokocoko being able to keep up in the long term.

It would be a great match to watch for both fan bases but if the ABs can make it to the final (finally) then we may see it happen.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

England are currently in equal if not better form then the All Blacks. Ashton is argueably the best and fastest player in todays rugby, I cant see Rokocoko being able to keep up in the long term.

Haha, what?


Sent from my HTC Incredible S using Tapatalk

 

[ds_cru]

I'm sure u could go thru the entire 30 man squad, find a player of similar build and height 'n' change their info, stats and position to suit. No doubt there'll b loads of pages on the forum to help out with this.

My biggest issue so far tho has to do with the running game. If its similar to '08 as stated, I'm not much looking forward to it to b honest. Especially when HB wanted the game to b fast flowing running rugby - i'd thought a top priority would've been to better this aspect of play.

(In 06 n 08 the animations took over about a sec before side-steps/hand-offs and some tackles took place, which meant u knew what was gonna happen (successful or not) well before it actually did.)

Even if this pre-cog game mechanic is still there, I hope the animations have changed, and there's more variety of them

 

[10Stormer]

@ HB_AJ

Are there new backline attacking moves?

Are there new tackle mechanics?

Thanks

 

[OnTheBall]

England are currently in equal if not better form then the All Blacks. Ashton is argueably the best and fastest player in todays rugby, I cant see Rokocoko being able to keep up in the long term.

It would be a great match to watch for both fan bases but if the ABs can make it to the final (finally) then we may see it happen.

Wrong section perhaps?

 

[kusta]

Any refs or Touch judges and a man of the match feature?

 

[Ong Bak]

the same old running moves does not sound good at all,i hope we have evolved from the same old boring animations everytime.i am a 08 addict at the mo with the 2010 mod.

So what about future DLC,if there is any?what would you say might be store in the future?player editer lol, (give you time to do it lol)
is it possible for you to aquire future licences and give them too us?
for a small price, if needed.


on a side note the only truly way to recreate a realistic rugby game is with the backbreaker euphoria engine.
by the way if you had anything to do with that game,major props, (greatest sporting gameplay ever on a game) i would by 50 rwc11,to fund BB2.

also madden 11, is a great way to ply rugby lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6LkQkd-P2o

[h=1][/h]

 

[10Stormer]

My biggest issue so far tho has to do with the running game. If its similar to '08 as stated, I'm not much looking forward to it to b honest. Especially when HB wanted the game to b fast flowing running rugby - i'd thought a top priority would've been to better this aspect of play.

(In 06 n 08 the animations took over about a sec before side-steps/hand-offs and some tackles took place, which meant u knew what was gonna happen (successful or not) well before it actually did.)

Even if this pre-cog game mechanic is still there, I hope the animations have changed, and there's more variety of them

I agree with you, I don't think rugby 08 animations and mechanics will be suitable enough for a 'next gen' rugby union ***le.
It would be really disappointing if they've kept more from Rugby 08 than they've changed. With the use of only International teams and the Rugby World Cup campaign being it's main feature, i don't see much replayability after the actual World Cup competition, especially with an abundance of familiarities from a previous ***le featured 4 years ago.

 

[spies8]

is there a little trailer for us soon ?

 

[TVH11]

That vid of madden is insane, didn't even know u could offload mid way through a tackle If RWC 11 is half as good as that, then i'll be "Fap Fap Fapping"

Im very appreciative of every little details from HB and Getofmeland keep it coming. Also i like the hint towards gameplay vids in next few weeks love it

 

[ds_cru]

I agree with you, I don't think rugby 08 animations and mechanics will be suitable enough for a 'next gen' rugby union ***le.
It would be really disappointing if they've kept more from Rugby 08 than they've changed. With the use of only International teams and the Rugby World Cup campaign being it's main feature, i don't see much replayability after the actual World Cup competition, especially with an abundance of familiarities from a previous ***le featured 4 years ago.

This is exactly it. The only mention Getofmeland give in his review was that players had a more natural movement. This sounds nice, but if there aren't tons of ways to break thru tackles (for a nxt-gen), then i'm afraid ur right about the replayability factor.

I know most of the talk on the forum has been about licences and the rucking system, but personally, i hope the running game has had a major overhaul.

Hope to get some 1st hand feedback on this if possible from HB_AJ or Getofmeland.

 

[TVH11]

This is exactly it. The only mention Getofmeland give in his review was that players had a more natural movement. This sounds nice, but if there aren't tons of ways to break thru tackles (for a nxt-gen), then i'm afraid ur right about the replayability factor.

I know most of the talk on the forum has been about licences and the rucking system, but personally, i hope the running game has had a major overhaul.

Hope to get some 1st hand feedback on this if possible from HB_AJ or Getofmeland.

I'm hoping the same as you I'm hoping theres a few different "steps" and "Shoulder charges" etc
Fingers crossed

 

[raziel_eire]

Been having login/password issues all day so not had a chance to read or get involved in all that was said today... some of it reads well, some other concerns or questions remain unanswered.

Now I know this may be flogging a dead horse (I love flogging so I'll continue), but I believe it could be a fairly straight forward and workable solution to the missing player likeness issues that have been long discussed and debated, be they for unlicensed teams or legitimate licensed teams (both of equal merit I might add).

Alastair, how feasible is it to include an extra pool of players in the game that are not associated with any team... a list of Free Agents so to speak?

1. This would be a large pool of players with no nationality assigned to them (they are "nation-free" we might say)
2. The players in this pool would be a list of randomly generated names, positions, skills and attributes.
3. The Free Agents players would however be comprised of a range of player models of pre-defined height/build/skin colour/hair colour types (more detail on these types later down below).
4. The Free Agent players may only be modified in the same way as any other player in game, e.g. name, position, attributes, special abilities
5. Within the player editor, an extra option should be added to assign/swap a player into a RWC squad for one of the games default RWC squad members. (If nationality is an attribute or variable used in the games coding or ingame, then this "assign/swap" option is only available on Free Agents and not players assigned to the default RWC squads.
6. The player who has just been swapped out from the default RWC squad (be they licensed or unlicensed) does not become a Free Agent, he's simply dropped from the default squad until the squad reset option is used. (By making HB's created players unusable from this point on protects the rights of the players or unions that have endorsed their license for use or those who did not).

The player models to be used in the Free Agents pool would all have the same generic face but otherwise be simply copies of already created player models (this should remove the need to create any new models, more a copy and paste multiple times job, hopefully meaning little development time needed/used).

In terms of the options needed to cover the majority of player builds, here's what I think would be needed:

Height:
from 5'6" up to 6'6" increasing in increments of 2" to keep the quantity down, which would give a total of 7 height variants.

Frame/Build:
Bulky (prop-esque)
Strong (showing alot of gym time there buddy!)
Normal (run of the mill rugby physique)
Lean (you need some carbs!)

Skin Types:
White
Black
Maori
Oriental

Hair colours:
Blonde
Black
Brown
Red
Bald
Scrum Cap

Now, taking each section as a multiplyer (7 x 4 x 4 x 5) gives us the total number of player models needed, albeit only one of each variant, which is 672.
This number could be trimmed back considerably as there are very few 6'6" Bulky Oriental Red-heads (and other such extreme combinations) to provide a more workable number of Free Agent player models to include.



An obvious major concern is the quantity of players needed to cover all bases and the actual disc space that their models would take up - as there is quite a limited number of teams, players and game modes shipping with the retail version of the game I would be hopeful that enough space does indeed exist on the retail disc (I hate to do comparisons but Sidhe are able to include 95 different teams with I expect similarly sized squads, so that would take up arguably even more space, but will still fit on a game disc).
In the event that disc space is an issue, how about releasing further Free Agents for this pool as DLC, to then take up HDD space instead?

So, in summary, a system like the above would allow me for example to swap into my England (fully licensed) RWC squad a player type that would be representative of Delon Armitage's (who will need included as a last minute replacement to the squad after the game has hit retail shelves) appearance from an ingame gameplay camera viewpoint. On closer inspection it could be seen that this player looks incomparably different to the real Delon Armitage and so not infringe on his or his Union's IP, in addition to the fact that it is a home user modification and no profit can be gained from their likeness use.

What say you HB-AJ (or any other HB rep), is something like this possible? And if not, I'd love to know your thoughts and reasonings behind it.
What if we did a poll on TRF and requested it as DLC, with enough interest would you guys consider it then?

Anyways, apologies for the length... the result of a days worth of not reading/posting on the forum now rendered in text format!

 

[RoosTah]

England are currently in equal if not better form then the All Blacks. Ashton is argueably the best and fastest player in todays rugby, I cant see Rokocoko being able to keep up in the long term.

It would be a great match to watch for both fan bases but if the ABs can make it to the final (finally) then we may see it happen.

Wrong section and hilariously delusional ...