[Keithustus]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and I apologize if this has been discussed ad nauseum, but I did search for both "versus" and "competitive" and only see one thread from last October.

What information do we know about competitive versus modes? As a long-ago player of ALIENS ONLINE and as someone who has been playing LEFT 4 DEAD 1 and 2 since each was released, I expect Aliens: Colonial Marines to have the next great competitive multiplayer. Here's what I expect:

o team-based: Like Left 4 Dead, I expect lone-wolf players to suffer disproportionately compared to those who work together.

o asymmetric: Like Aliens Online and Left 4 Dead, I expect the marines to play completely differently from the aliens.

o multiple winning conditions: Like Counter-Strike, I expect marines to be able to win in different ways. Maybe either through either destroying all the eggs in a hive, by killing the queen, or killing a certain number of drones? (Very much influenced by Aliens Online) Likewise, the drones should be able to win by killing enough marines, or perhaps by securing the marines' landing zone or respawn point, or something else?

o Large battles: Aliens Online enabled something like 20 v 20, and that was over 10 years ago. Whereas PC games have far surpassed that by now, I would still expect 5 v 5 or more on consoles. 4 v 4 or smaller seems antiquated nowadays, since it was done so close to perfectly for L4D 1 and 2.

o Customizable competitive modes: Is the game too easy for marines or aliens to win much of the time? Are the competitive-level players complaining that there are too few ways for one side to kill the other? Then make sure that before a game is set up, that the amount of health items, # of respawns, weapon-spawn probabilities, etc. can be adjusted, to make it more tense and fair for both sides.

. . . . . .

What do we know about the competitive game modes now, and how does that info stack up against my expectations? Thanks!