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The only reason MMOFPS hasn't crushed MMORPG yet...
goneglockin
Member UncommonPosts: 706
Say "MMOFPS" was a nice piece of tail. Big bright eyes, very sexy, so full of tantilizing potential for hot and nasty FPS action. She's having a rough time lately finding suitors. Her last boyfriend, Playnet Inc. left her unsatisfied. Between me and you, let's just say his equipment was less than adequate. Desperate, she mingles in seedy dives looking for bad boys. Then one night SOE steps up to MMOFPS at a bar...
"Hey baby, how'd you like to come home with me and get produced tonight?"
MMOFPS is cautious- she knows SOE's dangerous reputation. But- after several drinks she gives in to desire.
"Ok honey, I'm all yours."
SOE takes MMOFPS back to his place where he ravages her in an alcohol fueled act of depravity. He leaves in the middle of the night after the booze gets the better of MMOFPS and she passes out. Time flys by, and she soon discovers she's pregant with SOE's baby- PlanetSide. Unfortunately- PlanetSide is destined to be MMOFPS's bastard child. SOE will not return her calls; and wants nothing to do with her. Later SOE refuses to offer any kind of monetary support.
It wouldn't all be so bad if MMOFPS could just find another man; a provider- someone to take her in and nurture her... But the word is out that MMOFPS and SOE did the dirty, had a bastard child- and now SOE is sick- slowly wasting away from disease; a disease SOE has passed to MMOFPS.
Everyone knows it; and all the strapping lads in town like Vivendi, EA, Mythic, Blizzard, Origin and CCP want nothing to do with her. They don't want to catch the SOE disease; and they don't want to take in her bastard children.
Destitute and disease ridden, MMOFPS dies alone before life has hardly begun for her.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
Comments
The moral of the story? Don't sleep with SOE... but seriously.
The MMOFPS genre has tremendous unrealized potential. Getting it going has been like trying to set water on fire though. The biggest reason it hasn't seen a single successful launch yet is SOE's willful ignorance and bungling of PlanetSide.
Basically- Imagine what would have happened to MMORPG had Ultima Online and EverQuest been flops that could have made it with help. But their parent company's ignored them in favor of other ventures; and shot themselves in the foot with every small effort they did put in to their failing MMORPG project. When an industry leader screws up venturing into new territory; most everyone else shys away from it.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
Large amounts of players love playing FPS, be it single player or in on-line frag fests, so there could be a community out there interested in an MMOFPS.
It might be difficult though to translate the experience FPS players are used to into a perpetual world.
I support Belgiums efforts to get noticed ... at all.
------------------------------
You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
lmao, that's one of the funniest posts i've seen in a while.
yeah, i think SOE could've done a lot better with planetside. it's nowhere near the same experience as playing a normal, balanced FPS game.
i was really looking forward to Twilight War, but i think it died... then came back to life.. then died again... or something.
i truly hope there is a company that can successfully mix:
an FPS and it's good qualities: fast-paced, reflex- and skill-based action, realism, tactics/stealth/aim, and balanced gameplay,
along with an MMORPGs good qualities: massive world, immersion, and some form of character advancement while still maintaining balance (having an MMOFPS where someone can level up and get an uber-gun and kill anyone in one hit, kind of destroys the balance of an FPS.)
hope someone does it right.
But in my book a true FPS blended with true MMO persistant world = drooling.
Another game that promises FPS/MMO blend is Fallen Earth.
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
www.twitter.com/mlwhitt
www.michaelwhitt.com
Why do I want to pay for a game I can currently play for free?
1) Because no free server will ever support battles with hundreds of people; and they are usually run by other players- who's shit you'll have to put up with- and in which you'll typically play the same people... over and over again- forever and ever; until the game dies and you have to go out to by the next FPS game that's going to be "hot" for a few months before it too dies.
2) You may not have to. In fact you may never have to pay to play an MMO ever again once commercialism becomes socially accepeted in them. (and it will, because rich people can get richer by doing so) Games like WoW with 7 million "viewers" could make more money in a month selling in-game advertising than they could on an entire year's worth of subscriptions.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
From another forum: Me ranting about PlanetSide.
PlanetSide suffers from a lot of problems; but dumbed down FPS gameplay is one of the biggest turn offs for lots of people have been regulars of the FPS genre for years. PlanetSide is designed in such way as to minimalise "skill" or player input as much as possible in determing the outcome of every fight; both on an individual and group level.
Some of them are in the form of technical limitations like CSHD, Hitboxes that are literal boxes where hits can be scored up to a foot away from the actual avatar (air space around head/shoulder area), and poor net coding that sometimes leaves movement prediction up to a figurative "dice roll."
Others are in the form of limitations in the role of infantry- the core element to good FPS gameplay. Infantry battles can't really thrive anywhere for one. Outdoor areas are vehicular grunt farming zones that offer virtually no vertical cover from aircraft. While there is cover in the form of trees on the horizontal or plane level; there are very few places that ground vehicles can't get to which makes it a losing game of ring around the rosy.
Indoor areas are horribly designed. Made up predominantly of tight corridors; compounded with indoor AOE weaponry- they serve as a double-ended meat-grinder; where whoever has the most meat wins. The indoor presence of AI max units also is a constant disruptionfrom infantry centered gameplay.
On top of all that; in the rare instances where infantry fights do go unmolested- they leave a lot to be desired.
The run speeds are slow. Twitch gameplay is not a dirty word- it is one of the biggest factors behind FPS gameplay. Speed is skill. Low-speed is for low speed gamers.
The jumping and stamina is limited. Jumping in many FPS games is considered advanced movement- where well timed jumps serves to evade, access short cuts across a map, or to launch unexpected attacks. Limiting jumping is limiting skill.
The CoF expands when hit; which is contradictory to the principle of the viewing area being moved from "bucking with the shot." A skilled player can recover from a buck depending on their counter-input; a game that aims to equalize all players will just expand the CoF- where the only way to recover is to give up time and/or movement; and limit skill.
The CoF expands during sustained fire instead of a "recoil effect" where the gun travels up and left or right. Over-reliance on CoF is just a substitute for a dice roll. Recoil can be controlled by someone with skill.
The average grunt on grunt TTKs are exceedingly long compared to other FPS games. In a skill driven FPS game with a TTK of 0.5 seconds; you can kill 3 people in under 2 seconds. Less than 2 seconds is a fair amount of time for at least one of these players to react; but it's still fast- and still requires players to be alert and aware. In PlanetSide it will take you almost 2 seconds to kill ONE person outside of the special circumstances surrounding the jackhammer. At least one of those 3 people is going to get about 6 full seconds to kill you- and even the most low-speed gamer could pull that off.
Third person instead of leaning. This pretty much flies in the face of every PvP FPS game ever made. Many of which are made after a decade's worth of experience in the market place. But SOE knows FPS gaming right? Because they're so great at making auto-click on combat RPGs???
Stacked respawn timers that penalize aggressive behavior. You may laugh saying they only punish noobs who die too much- but do you think that's what they really want to do? Or do you think given this trend of their anti-FPS gaming features- that they really have it in place to oh... say... PUNISH AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR. If that's not a limit on skill I don't know what is.
There's also facility benefits that give ridiculous advantages to one side or the other; radar being a big no-no- but basically this turns PlanetSide into nothing more than a parallel to a PvP session in WoW or some other MMORPG where specially acquired equipment that has no equal (in the form of benefits in PlanetSide) determines the fights.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
The problem is you've got two divergent gameplay styles. In FPSs, the player's abilities are the important thing since they all get the same character, while in MMORPGs the amount of free time a player has is the important thing since grinding out more stuff makes your character fight better. FPSers don't want 'character advancement' where if someone plays 10x as much as you their character is far better, MMORPGers want to get an advantage from a huge grind.
Forget about the RPG. MMO does not have to be attached to RPG. Just think of it as BOAOFPS... Big Ol' Ass Online FPS. We want thousands of people online at once; with many battles raging across a vast world- scaling in size from hundreds in a single fight with opportunity for small skirmishes. We want variety, and availability. We want to be able to never have to sit through several "rounds" with the same jackass who has the same moves over and over again; and we want it 24/7/365. A field of death and destruction at your fingertips whenever you're ready.
This is the primary drive behind this genre. RPG elements are of secondary concern. It doesn't need an economy, or crafting, or housing, or especially items of +20 ass kicking. I could go on all day about how to theoretically incorporate RPG elements without dragging down or interfering with the FPS gameplay; and about what exactly a MMOFPS without those RPG elements needs to offer to have staying power.
But just know the primary drive.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
Could not have said it better myself.
------------------------------
You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Current FPS have a few advantages over MMOFPS:
1) Player mods
Dungeon/level editing, reskins, and tweaks to the damage metrics have created versatility in games like Half-Life. When you create a "massive" format where everybody plays in common, the ability to do that will be taken away, or limited.
2) Peer selection
If you play against people you don't like, you can continue to play, and just not play against them in the future. If the only way to play is to logon to a centrally planned service, then if the people you play against disgust you, the only way to rid yourself of them is to forfeit your enjoyment of the service.
3) Single Player mode
Many people who play FPS never play online. They play in single player mode exclusively, and even people who play online also have single player mode. This goes away when you have the constraints of a "massive" format.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Also, to answer the title concern...
MMOFPS has already crushed MMORPG. Why? Because all of the MMORPGs today are bending over backwards to give FPS fans what they want, both by eliminating RPG elements, and by making combat more twitchy.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
MMOFPS suffer because of just that.... the low fps rate of gameplay.
Most MMORPG's can't handle raid content without some lag. In a genre like the FPS, where twitch mechanics and precision are essential, large-scale lag isn't going to cut it.
As soon as technology gets to the point when 300 vs. 300 is feasible, I expect the MMOFPS to be great. However, while current FPS have problems running 50 vs. 50, the concept of MMOFPS should remain just a concept.
My 2 cents.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
I agree, the AI gets older quicker within FPS games than within MMOs. But in both PvP will always be more entertaining because of the unpredictablity of human players. No matter how good the AI is, it is still basically following a set pattern which even an average player can figure out after enough playtime.
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
www.twitter.com/mlwhitt
www.michaelwhitt.com
Cheap Conroe chips are out now- great AMD and Intel dual cores are subsequently available at even cheaper prices. I don't really think framerate is a concern. It certainly wasn't when PlanetSide was released. Before the game became bogged down from a multitude of updates by a rotation of different programmers- many people ran the game well above 40fps in some of the largest battles the game had ever seen. 500 people max in one zone at a time I belive.
It's not a question of frame rate on the user's end anymore; it's just an issue of networking and how much a company is willing to put in to it's servers.
I think if you have any real point at all it's this and I'll make it for you- MMOFPS is not something an "indy" company can pull off AT ALL. It's going to take resources; and it's going to take risk.
You're a multi-million a year production team- you can keep on knocking off EverQuest clones that are guaranteed to turn a profit from all the level maxed suckers jumping ship from the last such clone...
Or you can take a chance on something that will require a lot of time, effort and resources- something that has very little to show for in the market thus far. To make matters worse- SOE failed abysmally; and unless you are Blizzard or SOE- you don't have the resources SOE had- and SOE failed.
What would you do? Stick with EverQuest Clones- or take a chance?
That's what's really hurting MMOFPS. A complacent industry fueled by people addicted to the EverCrack formula; and the exclusion of the main source of innovation that comes from Indy companies.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
As you said as well though, Networking is critical.
How many people possess an internet connection, or rather, a networking card that is capable of really utilizing an MMOFPS properly? I've never played an online game that didn't have moderate network lag. Most of the time, location is a factor, but other times, it's just the inconsistent and fluctuating latency of various connections.
The main point I'm making is that I would not want to play an FPS without laser precision. I get discouraged playing games like Battlefield 2 when I hit over 100 ping, because suddenly, bullets don't register as often, my movement is slightly hampered, and sometimes, that guy I just shot a clip at isn't even standing there, even though it appears he is. What I'm getting at is that I just don't see an MMOFPS being technologically feasible at the moment.
However, I do agree with the part about the genre. The first company that really steps up to the plate, and swings for the homerun, they're going to make something marvelous. It's just a matter of who will have the fortitude and the resources to take such a risk.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I remember I posted something in the design section concerning the MMOFPS, but it got deleted.
My biggest question is what do FPS fans want that they need a FPS/RPG hybrid to get, that they can't get from a better, bigger FPS?
It seems to me that they want more players, a bigger map, and a bigger variety of weapons and equipment options. That seems easy enough.
The problem is that an MMORPG usually has a lot more than that. It has economics. Resource acquisition. Travelling. Character customization. Roleplay tools. Decoration and homes. Lore. Those are not things that are action packed, or tactical; but they are the things that many players come to the games to experience.
So it seems to me that this whole FPS/RPG hybrid in the "massive" format will either create a very boring FPS for FPS fans, or a very bland and counterintutive platform for roleplay.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE