Homefront - coming 15th March 2011

Yea no local servers yet, Fragnetics has not been willing to offer public servers for games not coming from EA or Valve. I am sure if we pay for a server they can host it but i would prefer we hold our horses and wait for a week before discussing any hosting possibilites. In any case i think the game has been released to the U.S. players first and the rest of the world will only get to play from the 18th so you might not be able to play it now even if you bought the game.

Hypernia an Australia GSP has started offering hosting for Homefront at USD$30.90 (about $38 SGD) for a 32-slot server per month. Their locations include Perth or Sydney. I think we can look into this hosting package with them if the game is really good:

https://members.hypernia.com/signup.php?clienttype=46&package=628

This is for Wind -> Sniper Montage:

He makes sniping seems so easy lol. Hosting from other countries really turn me off, really dont want to play in laggy servers and still paying for it. Cant see the price for Homefront on fragnetics website, how much would you guess it to be anyway?

Sniping is actually quite easy in HF now as players have remarked. There's no weapon sway and it's 1 hit kill to the head or chest, 2 shots to kill at other places. However the game has an excellent spoting mechanic to counter this in the form of scout drones and from the MP video i posted above you can see how the scout drone picks up enemy players easily for the team.

Fragnetics is not likely to be hosting this game as they have a working relationship with EA. They are hosting Crysis 2 from EA which is due out 22nd March and hosting HF would cause conflicting interest. Anyway if they do really accept orders for hosting HF it would not be cheap, considering one BC2 slot is $8.50 at a discounted rate 32 slots for HF would amount to $272.00 per month for local hosting. Looking at this staggering figure you can see why Aussie hosting at $38 per month is a really attractive deal.

HF is not as bad as BO or BC2 at launch, at least they dun have:
- excessive player and server lag (think BO)
- server crashes (think BO)
- missing auto-teambalance (think BC2 and BO)
- buggy server browser (think BC2)

Most of the user complaints have fallen into the following area:
- SP campaign is too short
- snipers are overpowered and everywhere (isn't this the same complaint when BC2 and MOH came out?)
- objective points are too near to each other
- matches are too short such that there's not enough time for players to chalk up enough battlepoints to roll out the tanks and choppers.
- awkward spawn points
- damage level is too high (like hardcore)
- graphics looks dated
- no team chat
- VOIP not working well and player chat is relatively absent

What HF delivers at launch:
- autoteambalance
- relatively equipped server browser
- stable running server

Soon to come in 2 weeks will be steam dedicated server files for lan play and player own hosting, plus mod tools in the near future.

Albeit the problems at launch i still think HF plays in a better shape than BO or BC2 at launch.

This is the Homefront dedicated server guide, will be useful for us in 2 weeks time when they release the steam public dedi server files:

http://wiki.homefronter.com/wiki/Dedicated_Server_Setup

Perhaps can ask Dennis if he has the resources to host a dedi server for us.

thx zero for the link.. and i already played the game at the place that i work at which my company main computer system have the games already

Based on feedback from Wind who had some hands-on with the game i would suggest everyone who wants to get this game to hold off your purchase until at least after the 1st patch. The game at the moment is a sniper fest with little teamwork. Most of the teams go sniper as it is very easy to snipe in the game. Not many players go for the objective as such. I have also seen reports of hackers and even server hack surfacing for the game. It would be good to see if the developers can fix these issues in their first patch.

yes i agree with zero we have to wait and see =D

yep.. let's wait!!

hey guys i check out already if on aus server will be smooth without any problem

Wind wrote:hey guys i check out already if on aus server will be smooth without any problem

Did you test for both Perth and Sydney servers? And which gaming service provider were they using?

I still want to wait for them to release a patch before considering getting the game. Don't really like the way snipers are overpowering the game now, esp. with their thermal scope.

nv really try cos whenever manager just told me enter aus server lol

PC Patch has come! Heard that there's a great FPS improvement in the game and sniper damage has been nerfed. Time to consider getting the game. Who's interested?

=========================================================================
The latest patch is now available on Steam and will be downloaded the next time you start Homefront.

FEATURES
Ban list rework
· We now store two separate ban lists on servers; a local ban list, and a global ban list. The local ban list is for bans that originate on the server (via kickbans, etc). The global ban list is for bans that are initiated by a trusted ban list authority. The ban lists store the date of ban, the name of the admin who initiated the ban, the reason for the ban, and a URL field for any relevant ban evidence (demos etc).

New Feature – DEMO URL
· A DemoURL can now be specified in the server playlist, this is used to indicate the location of stored demo files to user’s in-game (see the multiplayer options screen). A good practice for server admins would be to share the demo folder via FTP, this would allow users to grab demos of games they starred in, and also (very importantly!) allow users and anti-cheat authorities to download evidence for cheat reporting. Incidentally, it is now possible to dump all users unique steamID's from both in-game, and in-demos to the console or text file (this will make reporting abusive players and enforcing bans incredibly easy).

GAME BALANCE
· RPG's now deal additional damage to HMMWV's.
· Lowered m200 and m110 sniper rifle damages. The only 1 shot possible is now headshots.
· Flak jacket now has a lower BP cost, and a slight effectiveness buff.
· Diablo damage adjusted.
· Weapon is taken out of ADS and accuracy decreases when jumping.

OPTIMIZATIONS & FIXES
· The Rhino drones weapon attachment was not being properly moved with the Rhino drone on dedicated servers, causing the rockets to fire incorrectly. This is now fixed.
· We have added some animation optimizations for large player games.
· Several UI related improvements were added for large player games.
· Fixed scaling text zooming on Battle Commander when opening up the battle chat or squad UI.
· Switched the buttons around on the load out rename confirmation dialog to better abide by conventions.
· Improved SLI/CrossFireX support.
· A few reported issues with WinXP 64 bit edition have been addressed.
· Improved menu navigation with analogue controls.

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS
· User feedback for kicks and bans has been improved.
· The intermission lobby now displays clan tags.
· Text chat is now possible in the kill cam, spawn selection, and intermission lobby screens.

NEW SETTINGS & CONTROL OPTIONS
· EnableD3D10/11 is now accessible via the system settings menu.
· Mouse acceleration is now accessible via the controls menu.
· Mouse smoothing is now accessible via the controls menu.

=========================================================================

Another Homefront gameplay video, showing the variety of gameplay and use of drones. This is prer-patch gameplay, sniper shots have since been nerfed (no longer 1 shot kills unless the shot is to the head).

i think still have the possible to 1 hit lol + y not they just make the sniper having breathing part much better -_-

Now all the snipers complaining sniping is useless and assault rifles rules the day. I pity the developers, they patch for this camp the other camp will whine.

So Wind how's the gameplay now, feedback!

i haven try today i not working.. tomorrow i try =D tomorrow i working ^^

u mean u play at work??

i hear my manager say still lots of hacker lol not the sniper useless.. is they got no skill

Public dedicated server files have been released and seems there's an SG server up for Homefront already:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1833371