Merc Elite Shows off the heavy gunner

September 3, 2013 8:50 ( F2P News ) 0

Merc Elite Shows off the heavy gunner

 

We sat down with Jeff Lydell, Producer of Merc Elite at Bigpoint, to talk about this new military-themed MOBA. Check it out!



<Q>. Could you introduce yourself?

Hi my name’s Jeff Lydell and I’m a Producer at Bigpoint here to talk about Merc Elite.

<Q>.  How would you describe Merc Elite?

Merc Elite is the first military themed MOBA game, so that’s a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena title, pitting five players against five players in intense online action, featuring tactical combat, cover, line of sight, higher ground, all sorts of awesome strategic options and really cool military weapons.

<Q>. What can you say about character progression?

Unlike other MOBAs we have all our progression outside of the game. You build up a rank of soldiers, you put awesome equipment onto them, unlock new equipment, unlock new guns, unlock new upgrades for your weapons and choose three of them to take into a battle and fight online with your enemies.

<Q>. How is Merc Elite different from other MOBA games?

There’s several things that we’re doing different to all the other MOBAs. The first is we’re the only one targeting military themed combat, and to that we’ve done tactical combat, cover is super important, line of sight is super important, everything feels realistic when it comes to the interaction between the soldiers. The other is we’ve aimed for a really short session, we don’t have a forty five minute long game, we have a fifteen minute intense action awesome game. The last thing is that we’re not just one map, we have lots of map, there’s three maps right now and we’re going to be making more and more of them because we know gamers want more than one map.

<Q>. Do you have e-Sports in mind?

We’re definitely thinking about competitive players, our plan right now is let’s build one of the best MOBA games that we can for military fans, and then we’re gonna build that up, so that’s going to include eSports in the future. Right now were in a limited beta so not a whole lot going on right there, but we will be doing a whole lot more.

<Q>. What can you say about the free to play business model of Merc Elite?

We know that skill based combat for competitive gamers is the most important thing, so you cannot buy the power in this game, you have to earn it. We make our money off progression boosters, things that will make you get access to higher level gear faster, but then you’re going to be matched up against other people that have that same gear and it’s fully possible to play up to that level for free, it just takes a little more time.

<Q>. What are you most proud of?

I’m super proud of a lot of things, but the direct fire controls are awesome. The graphical look, we’re one of the best looking browser games that you’re going to see. Also, the really fast intense sessions.

<Q>. Tell us about the different available classes.

We have five classes in total, I’ll talk about a couple of them. We’ve got an assault class, who is one of your damage dealers; lots of grenade attacks, really mobile, needs to use the cover to stay safe. We also have guys like a heavy gunner, really big gun, lots of ammo, shoots a lot, not all that mobile and he’s fairly slow and needs to count on his teammates to protect him. Lastly we have a really stealthy recon class capable of cloaking himself and sneaking up and knifing the enemies.

<Q>. What’s your favourite class?

My favourite class is definitely the assault, straight up guy with a gun, fast, dangerous, someone you have to watch out for.

<Q>. Would you like to add something?

We’ll be rolling out open beta in about two months, commercial launch before the end of the year.

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