Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Racing MMO
Zutha
Member Posts: 15
I'm very curious on what style of Racing MMO would everyone prefer?
Would it be a simulation style? Tune up your car, taking the corners, every millisecond counts.
Or Arcade Racing. You must remember the old Mario Kart days wheere you jump round corners and throw that banana 
Tweak up your car with weapons etc tracks, streets or cross country.
Would you Prefer to be flying down the tight tunnels doing 360 rolls dodging pipes?
On a boat floating over the ski jumps
On a bike (motor or bmx), flying through the air, doing stunts as you go
Other: Animal riding etc ... what ever tikkles your fansy 
Or a mix of all the above 
You decide 
Comments
The potential for a racing simulator MMO is great, but who knows when well see one.
Itd be cool youd have to hire a professional crew etc. But id like it to have a lot of racing styles: from the GT races to drag race all the way to drift. You would need sponsors and perhaps even do commercials for em lol. There should be player housing and a professional garage you go to.
I like BF2 even though the game isn't MMO but driving robots/cars/aircraft and shooting thing is like fun^2.
Yep and it looked gr8 at the time...if it ever launched i dunno
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
if I were to kill a titan tomorrow and no CCP employees showed up to say grats I would petition it.
Waiting for: the next MMO that lets me make this macro
if hp < 30 then CastSpell("heal") SpellTargetUnit("player") else CastSpell("smite") end
Wipeout, Pole Position, Spyhunter and Mariokart are some of the best racing games I've ever played. I'm leaning towards a preference to arcade style games but it would be cool to have some of the level of customization and car management found in simulation games.
But a racing game doesn't need to involve cars it can also involve other vehicles. Would love to see a game involving aircraft.
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
so as a summary, people would prefer an arcade racing game, but with high customisation.
What about weapons etc? would you prefer more futuristic? or current car designs?
I wouldn't want one with guns and whatnot, because that would take away from the racing. I don't want Auto Assault with a finish line, I just want to race. Although it would be quite interesting...would the racing have an open-ended world where the challenger was able to choose the start/finish spots in the world (imagine the criss crossing race routes and the crashing), or would the tracks be instanced, somehow?
If you couldn't get it by now...I was thinking street racing. I got NFS:U for my inspiration.
------------------
Champions Online Fansite
Hmm guess people wanting racing can go for Auto Assault. It's more like Twisted Metal Online, but hey it does have cars ya know.
I also agree that the racing would have to be arcade style and not simulation. With issues with framerate, latency, etc you couldn't have the game require too much sensitivity when taking a corner. I know I'd hate to lose a race just because my antivirus suddenly updated at an inopportune moment.
I've been waiting for a long time also for another racing MMO. I actually played upon release MCO (Motor City Online). I dont know if anyone ever heard of it or played it. It was EA's first MMO I believe. It lasted for about 3 years. That game rocked!! You had a garage you can store all your cars, you had thousands of parts you could use/buy/sell. You have sooo many diferrent options for seting up a car... you could pick to the fine detail, what engine, what suspension, what tire size. You could even pick diferrent makes of pistons.
I would spend days sometimes without racing just sitting in my garage building a car. It was awsome!!
I think poor publicity and a lack of interested from players finally made EA shut that game down.
I am waiting for another one. I wish EA would make it again.... they had that game fixed so well. It was based on the Need For Speed model.
You had drag racing (racing for pink slips) you had track race, circuit race, and street racing.
Turf wars was the "PVP" concept, which was amazing. People able to "control" certain zones if their team had top records that week.
It was in 2002 around.... right after I joined Swg.
Yesterday Test Drive Unlimited was released, I wouldn't necesarily call it an MMO, but it has an online mode where you can race all over an island in Hawaii with Bikes and Cars, buy houses, upgrade and tune cars. It doesnt have the amazing customization that MCO had, I think its more like Gran Turismo where you buy kits basically, but it sounds like it could be pretty good. No damage model though and arcadey style racing.
I played Motor City Online from the time it came out to the time it closed down as well. Out of every MMO I have ever played it was the best by far. The community in it was amazing, the cars were great, it was a very unique game. If you've ever played Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed, I believe it was based on the same engine with the same detailed parts available like it had.
I personally would love another simulation style game similar to MCO, there is sort of an MCO revival in a project called Motor World Online, which shows some promise. http://www.motorworldonline.net/
I dont know if it will ever get off the ground, or if anything like MCO will ever exist again, but those who played it would most likely agree it was a game that still has not been surpassed in fun, realism, and a sense of community.
*shrugs* No you aren't mistaken, nor is this a revelation for most people posting in this thread.
I think it would need a balance though between Simulation and Arcade. The driving could be of a sim flavor..but the car tuning/setup should be more arcade. Maybe "level up" to get a better suspension, or engine package...but dont require the players to make 500+ adjustments on the car when 480 of them most players wouldnt understand unless they were either engineers or huge race fans.
Driving - Sim
Setup - Arcade
In my opinion, for a racing game to make it big time as an MMO and to be successful, I think the following would be required.
1- First and foremost. DAMAGE to the car. No damage just inst real and if it doesnt have a real fealing to it, you can be sure people will get bored. MCO had damage and it was awsome. Also damage meant at the end of the race, you had to pay for repairs.
2- Simulation or Arcade, this is a fine line. Cause if it is too much like the Nascar series or the Formula 1 simulation games, the average Joe wont be able to immerse himself in the game... cause not everyone is good in games. People do suck, unfortunatly. BUT they must be accomodated. Every game needs players that suck cause they make the majority of the people. (In my opinion). So the driving needs to be somewhat easy. Need for Speed is a great example. The races are fun, you dont need to be a real race car driver to be able to play and its fun for all ages.
3-Being able to modify the car with a great amount of detail is paramount. There is nothing like the feeling of building you car and taking it for a race only to discover afterwords, that perhaps using a diferrent air filter / exhaust combo would work better. Or figure out that the suspension ratio should be harder in front, softer in back and being able to make the adjustments. Most people here will say but I dont know anything about cars. NO PROBLEM, MCO had a very easy and user friendly interface that even a total noob was able to build a car using 200 parts for a single car and this allowed the die hard mechanic fans to also enjoy the game and find the game a challenge. Its all about making a simple approach so people can understand and play with (the focus needs to be on making an excellent Tutorial, thats all) without skipping the fun that thousands of parts would bring to the game.
4-Rare cars you can wins or unlock. Nothing like having a rare care to show off. Also using real car models and old car models is the way to go. It is a real acoomplishment to own a GT40, but does anyone care about the futurist looking car? No. ... Real cars, its simple.
5- NO WEAPONS. You put weapons in the game... you killed it. If you want weapons go play Auto Assault. And while your at it, look at why it failed as a game and then come back
. NO weapons, its simple.
6- PvP needs to be in a form of a competition amoungs racing teams or factions. Giving people the ability to race for land (which gives a bonus or prices or something) or some other concept that will make peopel battle for first place.
Anything else, will simply not be a racing game.
*shrugs* No you aren't mistaken, nor is this a revelation for most people posting in this thread.
Very true mate