Uncharted 3's Tournament Mode, New DLC

Been looking for a reason to get back into Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception multiplayer? Developer Naughty Dog is giving you more than 140 reasons to do it.

Today, patch 1.13 arrives for the multiplayer mode for IGN's PS3 Game of the Year 2011. It brings a number of additions -- a new mode, 137 pieces of downloadable content, and 50 Trophies -- and we were lucky enough to talk to developer Naughty Dog's Robert Cogburn about them.

THE TOURNAMENT SYSTEM

The biggest 1.13 addition is that of the Tournament System. Each week, you're awarded 10 tickets you can use to enter Team Deathmatch, Three-Team Deathmatch or Hardcore tournaments. However, these aren't tournament brackets like you might be expecting. Instead, you redeem one of your tickets before a match begins and then your individual performance earns you points in the tournament standings -- if your team wins; players on the losing team are awarded zero points.

When the week ends, the points are tallied and you find out where you stand. Do well enough, and you'll be placed in one of the three reward tiers. Players who earn one of these three distinctions are awarded in-game items (costume pieces for bragging rights) or weapons (skinned weapons with mod slots) to use for next week's tournament. Hit the gold tier six times, and you'll be awarded a special skin to rub in your opponents' faces.

"I'm really interested to see the type of gloating that's going to occur from this in our community," Cogburn said. "There's going to be a lot of trashtalking."

If you burn through your weekly allotment of 10 tickets and want more, you can buy them from the PlayStation Store. And fear not -- the number of points earned decreases based on party size (so no rolling groups of badasses) and you can never lose points.

137 PIECES OF DLC

Starting August 14th, 137 new pieces of downloadable content will start rolling out for Uncharted 3's multiplayer. You can unlock this content in game by earning levels in the game, completing treasure sets or simply purchasing it from the PlayStation Store. Yes, microtransactions have come to Uncharted.

"The microtransaction stuff is sort of Naughty Dog's way of testing the waters with these ideas and sort of seeing how this is going to pan out for us," Cogburn said. "Because these are inevitably, I believe, systems we're going to have to have in place. We kind of see Uncharted 3 right now as a way for us to see how we're going to internally do this stuff."

However, the DLC isn't just for show -- well, the taunts and emblems are, but the new hats like the buffalo helmet actually augment stats. Each head item comes with a unique pro and con, so you might be able to reload faster, but your health regeneration might be slower.

BLOCK MESH MAPS

As long as people keep logging on to play our game, we'll keep supporting it.

Since Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Naughty Dog has been using The Lab, a multiplayer option where the developers have players try new modes and multiplayer ideas. Once patch 1.13 is live, the stage will be set for Naughty Dog to add new "block mesh maps" to The Lab. Every Uncharted level starts as a block mesh map -- a basic geometric shape with no art and simple color -- before becoming a full-blown map. These original creations will be blocky arenas that have been designed to provide "some wild and distinct multiplayer gameplay."

"The thing that's pretty awesome about this system that we created for this patch is that these block mesh maps can be updated in real time," Cogburn said. "So the idea is we'll upload a map that people will be able to play for two weeks, we'll play it for, say, a week, get some feedback from people in the community, and then we'll be able to actually change the geometry in that map when people log back in to play it."

TROPHIES

Patch 1.13 also brings about the much desired Uncharted 3 multiplayer Trophies. There are 50 in total -- three Silver and seven Bronze for each DLC map pack. Check out our Uncharted 3 Wiki for the full listing.

THE FUTURE

It's not every day that a game as old as Uncharted 3 gets such a massive update, but Cogburn said that the team is far from done -- especially considering how the Drake's Deception community is still so active.

"As this goes out and we address any problems that come up with this system we'll be introducing a number of other things coming out for Uncharted 3 multiplayer that people should be pretty excited about," Cogburn said. "As long as people keep logging on to play our game, we'll keep supporting it."

Source : feeds.ign.com