Even if Huxley ever came out,(People have been saying "any day now" since about 2006) it is NOT an MMOFPS. Instanced! Instanced! Instanced!
And Face of Mankind? Well it could have been a true MMOFPS. I was playing the beta for 4 months a few years back. The game was just horrible though. If it ever "comes out" again it will go right back to being dead in no time.
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.
Yes, I totaly agree... but it seems developers have no clue what they are doing. They clone WoW, fail at it, then try to keep their dead game floating.
Fallen earth look like crap and will probably play like crap as well.
Huxley is instanced... a bad copy of Unreal tournament.
Sadly PlanetSide hasn't been very "massive" for quite some time now. Even when I quit (for good this time) around the middle of 2007; there were rarely "massive" battles going on. On off-peak hours there were typically less than 300 folks on the entire server. You spread those out across 10 continents, account for the people who are AFK- not very massive.
Folks would TRY to get one big fight going where everyone could participate in such circumstances but it frequently did not happen easily. It often took a lot of effort to get a 3-way battle going. When you need to struggle for an hour or more to get a foothold on a continent, just so you can get some "quality time" in- you realized it wasn't worth it.
I'm aware of the server merge but it's way too late to make any difference. PlanetSide is dead and there's a void that needs filling for westerns/europeans.
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.
2. Less comparative desire for the model of play. FPS players would usually rather JUST play a FPS game, a complete fragfest like UT/counterstrike, where there is already plenty of saturation of the market.
3. Latency. Very complicated to explain all the problems associated with it, but needless to say, it is a huge hurdle to overcome in a FPS. I havent even seen a FPS deal effectively with disperate pings, let alone a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER FPS.
So, difficult product to make, high risk investment even if you do make it, and a market that's largely saturated makes the propsects for MMOFPS pretty meager.
If only SOE realized Planetside was ahead of its time and still today can be great fun, but is in need of an upgrade. Darkfall really is Planetside with a fantasy theme that has outfit bases and resource gathering for those bases, as well as resource gathering for weapon construction.
Now imagine a Planetside 2 that expanded on this. Planetside was some of the best Mass MMO PVP I've ever experienced. I still didn't get the same buzz in 200+ Darkfall battle because it doesn't have the range of things that allow the tactical depth Planetside has with Foot, vehicle and air, at one point the dev were thinking of adding navy too, but that never happened.
If only SOE would give the current PS a graphical upgrade, allow prone, layer in some dx9 lighting as I do believe PS is still dx 8.1. Or realize the time for a planetside 2 is now. What made people bored of PS besides big walking robots was the lack of anything else to do besides cycle conts and bases, this design wasn't the greatest for long term repetition of capturing them just to cont lock, outfits didn't have a base they could call their own.
There was nothing but going from base to base in a loop from cont to cont. So if a PS2 would have outfit bases that could be constructed, but resources had to be gathered like it was an RTS game of command and Conquer. Adding resources in the world to fight and for and control as it's needed for weapon & construction outfight base construction and maintaining. Add areas with MOB's that have decent AI for something different to do. A sandbox SCI FI FPS MMO, seamless or huge zones with no instances like current PS.
I think you're almost there, but not quite. Many players like BOTH kinds of games. For example, I've spoken with countless MMORPG players, that also like to play Call of Duty, or Battlefield games, and other First Person Shooters. Most don't see the need for a MASSIVE first person shooter. Why? Well, a typical FPS online is 24 vs 24, or 48 vs 48, sometimes bigger. You have all the players you need for targets, and all the players you need shooting at you to make it challenging, PLUS the lag is minimal. Can you shoot a THOUSAND players at once? Probably not, so what's the point really in having more than 48 vs 48? But, people ALSO like playing Role playing games, which means the CHARACTER is more important in determining the outcome than the PLAYER. It's enjoyable to build a roleplaying character in games like KOTOR, a single player RPG, or in games like MMORPGs. So it's not that people can ONLY play RPGs because they have no twitch skills. It's that people like BOTH kinds of games, not just one. I played Call of Duty till my fingers hurt, but would not want that combat style in my MMORPG. I play MMORPGs to take a break from First Person Shooters, and vice a versa.
Its not about shooting 1000 at once...i can tell you never played PS.
Its about the whole battlefield, the fighting for the campaign, and having a persistent character you can progress. in your regular trash FPS games, you fight, teams rotate you go onto the next map...how fun...In Planetside the battles mean something, If you take this base from the enemy you push them off the continent an are one step closer to capturing the map. Doing rapid resecuires,10v80 was epic fun and if you managed to pull it off you got a sense of achievement from it and you just screwed over the enemy hardcore...and you know they're gonna be pissed.
Its also the epicenes of the continents and the maps, planetside continents are capped at about 180v180v180, and you have a HUGE amount of weapons and vehicles available to you...you see tank collum, massive air squadrons, infantry footzergs and you see massive airborne transports dropping off squads at a time, you have bombers, with anti air to counter them...Planetside is EPIC and there is really nothing close to it or anything planned.
as for the lag? Yea planetside and COD4 are the only games i can play on American servers (that’s with 200-300 ping, I'm from Australia) and there are players who are quite good. though warpy they maybe, who play from China with 15% loss. Planetsides netcode while not perfect, its superior for compensating for lag and dealing with stress than all the other trash out there.(besides COD4)
The one thing to do the most damage to the genre so far has been SoE. They made PlanetSide and introduced it to a handful of MMORPG orcs and dorks gamers who couldn't care less- so right from the get go it was, and remains- an extremely obscure title. They never actually marketed the game. Running a bit on your shitty launcher software to people who are already your customers to get them to sign up for a more expensive all access package IS NOT marketing.
To make matters worse they severely neglected the game. They only allocated the minimum amount of resources to keep the game functioning. Many issues were never resolved and the sporadic, meager handfuls of "content "did nothing to make up for that. The game was never improved upon or refined.
When SoE did focus some attention on PlanetSide, they hurt it more than helped it with horrible design decisions that caused community uproar and cancellations.
It becomes very easy then to blame the genre as a failed concept instead of blaming the half-hearted, shallow attempt of SoE.
Maybe the young kids are still amused with quicky death matches. But there are MILLIONS of us in our 20's, 30's- etc. who are very fond of these gams; we've just been playing them for so long that we are ready for something else and we demand a little more.
I'd wager that if you gave any veteran FPS gamer of 10 years or more a taste of MMOFPS, in the resemblence of PlanetSide, they would be insantly hooked on the premise.
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 one thing to do the most damage to the genre so far has been SoE. They made PlanetSide and introduced it to a handful of MMORPG orcs and dorks gamers who couldn't care less- so right from the get go it was, and remains- an extremely obscure title. They never actually marketed the game. Running a bit on your shitty launcher software to people who are already your customers to get them to sign up for a more expensive all access package IS NOT marketing. To make matters worse they severely neglected the game. They only allocated the minimum amount of resources to keep the game functioning. Many issues were never resolved and the sporadic, meager handfuls of "content "did nothing to make up for that. The game was never improved upon or refined. When SoE did focus some attention on PlanetSide, they hurt it more than helped it with horrible design decisions that caused community uproar and cancellations. It becomes very easy then to blame the genre as a failed concept instead of blaming the half-hearted, shallow attempt of SoE.
Maybe the young kids are still amused with quicky death matches. But there are MILLIONS of us in our 20's, 30's- etc. who are very fond of these gams; we've just been playing them for so long that we are ready for something else and we demand a little more. I'd wager that if you gave any veteran FPS gamer of 10 years or more a taste of MMOFPS, in the resemblence of PlanetSide, they would be insantly hooked on the premise.
I understand what you are trying to get across and I think you are correct; Howevever, Planetside is a game that should be mirrored after and approved upon rather then rejected. Maybe we are in agreement on that aswell.
Planetside is truly a gem in the coalmine. I will just say that I bought the game for $5 and two expansions for less then $10. Truly a shame, because this game expanded into areas of online gaming that no other game had previously done. I truly believe that mmofps are a viable and profitable genre. RPG elements have already been implemented in many FPS games that have player run servers. The results are AWESOME. But this marks amatuer progression. Imagine what a real studio with strong financial backing can achieve.
Planetside was ahead of it's time because before WoW the mmorpg genre was was niche and only for the "hardcore" and Planetside is a game that appeals to the FPS fan. If it launnched now, obviously with better graphics then it would have done really well because WoW opened up the eyes of alll people who play games to mmo's and most do infact want an mmofps cause they hate the WoW like combat and PVE.
However that said Planetside was always in decline because SOE never marketed it like CCP does with EVE and SOE never fixed the issues the community had with it. Instead the team got made to make an expansion ready for release 3 months after launch with added caverns to it noone cared about. So people who were tired of capturing the same base over and over left cause it wasn't what they wanted. Planetside stayed the same, unchanged until mid 2004 with BFR's and the bending. However BFRs ruined the game and the new Oshur didn't play well and noone ever goes there. BFRs I remember causing the subscription base to drop like the NGE and it never recovered. Planetside then remained unchanged ever since really and the bugs from back then are still there today and I saw the patch notes and there wasn't a patch from like August to December :
The same story for all SOE's games really only EQ and EQ2 still get crap expansions for them. Don't forget though that Planetside did make a profit and it wasn't a failure because it provided alot of use with a few months of amazement... until SPE ruined it with CC and I quit.
Planetside is a game that should be mirrored after and approved upon rather then rejected. Maybe we are in agreement on that aswell. Planetside is truly a gem in the coalmine.
Absolutely. The game was light years ahead of it's time.
In may of 2003 it had top end graphics, it had the programming tricks to allow hundreds of players to cram into the same areas, and the netcode provided very reasonable responses in most instances considering the massive scale of the game.
This is one of the reasons SoE never really imrpoved upon the game as I understand, the code was proprietary and the original developers moved on. The "maintenance team" couldn't really fix one thing without breaking another.
When I think of MMOFPS though, PlanetSide is without question the model and basis by which to judge all others. There's lots of room for variation and improvement- but PlanetSide is MMOFPS's "rock."
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.
Does anyone remember the mmo mechwarrior game? It was in beta for about a year about 5 or 6 years ago. I remember having a blast playing that game but they pulled the plug during open beta. I still don't understand why, I think developers think that the mmofps market just isn't big enough to make a profit.
I don't see the value of a MMOFPS. If there is no char progression, then it would not be very different from an online FPS. Given online FPS can accomodate so many people (32? 64?) .... it makes no difference if i can see more real people on screen.
If you add in char progression, then it becomes an action RPG.
I don't see the value of a MMOFPS. If there is no char progression, then it would not be very different from an online FPS. Given online FPS can accomodate so many people (32? 64?) .... it makes no difference if i can see more real people on screen. If you add in char progression, then it becomes an action RPG.
... Who says there can be no character progression in a first person shooter. Sigh.
More importantly though, in a MMOFPS, you get to fight in a world, instead of a random and enclosed map. The experience is dynamic and epic, something you don't really get in regular shooters. You could take a modern MMOFPS in any direction, and most certaily create a fantastic game.
I just don't think the gaming companies are ready for it. They look at Planetside and say "oh well that didn't go too well did it?" and give up on the idea.
I think you're almost there, but not quite. Many players like BOTH kinds of games. For example, I've spoken with countless MMORPG players, that also like to play Call of Duty, or Battlefield games, and other First Person Shooters.uld not want that combat style in my MMORPG. I play MMORPGs to take a break from First Person Shooters, and vice a versa.
I don't doubt that at all. You can see that in programs like XFire where the same crowd that plays WOW and EQ2 is also heavy into TF2 and other FPS games. I beleive the comment you are contesting is this one:
"Most MMO gamers really do not want a game that is based on player skill because it means an unlevel playing field."
It still holds true. I should have clarified that they do not want an MMO based on player skill, but since we were talking about MMOs I didn't think that was necessary.
CoD, BF and other FPSs provide the perception that it is a level playing field. Whether it is or isn't is another story. However, in an MMO there are too many other 'excuses'. You will very rarely hear someone say their opponent in an MMO simply outsmarted them. You *will* hear that
- they chugged pots
- they had better gear
- they were higher level
- they use an OP class
- they had imba weapons
Alos, in an FPS, you are in a constant state of battle. Here's the key: You are only battling when you choose to. In an MMO, even in a combat situation, it is very easy for a player to drop his guard or become unaware. They then become susceptible to ambush, sneak attacks, or plenty of other legitimate tactics that they will file under...
They ganked me.
FPS gameplay is usually tied to more active gaming and constant awareness - not necessarily what most MMO gamers are looking for in their MMOs, but something they accept and enjoy in FPSs because they have logged in with the intent to do battle and in an environment where the perception is that there is nothing extraneous that can unlevle the playing field.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
For the few weeks back when it first launched, the only thing I was thinking about while playing PS, was why do I have to waste the time to travel & level up when all I want to do is fight. Theres nothing else to do except fight. The amount of progress I saw was mimal at best and the next night it rarely progressed anywhere. Or, any progress we made was then lost . So I wasn't seeing much progress for a MMO. That got pretty boring after a few weeks.
Since fighting was the whole point, what did PS offer me the UT2k3 didn't? Not much. The gameplay was nowhere as fluid as UT. The rush wasn't there. You weren't really aiming in PS. You just targeted people by holding the reticle over them and stats determined hitting and missing. It wasn't really an FPS. Just a regular MMO from a 1st person perspective with no autoattack. The graphics weren't comparable. The battlefield was quite boring. Just open empty space with a rather generic base here and there. There wasn't much communication, so whatever epic feel they were going for was lost. It was just a big free for all. NO real strategy at all. Compare that with your average UT map and it felt stale, slow and boring.
The overall art design in PS was boring sci-fi. Not creative looking at all. The weapons were boring. All the suits were boring as well. The bases were as generic looking as they came. Not inspiring.
So, I was paying a monthly fee to travel to a fight that wasn't nearly as exciting as UT. I had to deal with downtime between deaths, travel time, LAG and latency. My skill didn't matter really at all. Aiming and missing was frustrating since when I'm playing an FPS, I don't expect to keep missing when it looks like I'm hitting over and over again. I know it was still an RPG, but the "feeling" wasn't there. I wasn't seeing 100s of people on the map at the same time. In UT I could play 40 vs 40 and really see everyone without much lag at all. WHen lots of people were near eachother in PS, there was LOADS of lag and rubber banding. Not fun.
I understand it probably got better over the years, but I didn't care. All that mattered was that 1st month and it failed to devliver anything I wasn't already getting from UT. Thats the reason PS failed. The experience was too lackluster to bother investing the time. I'm not investing anything in an FPS. I log in. I play. I have fun. I log out. PS just didn't fit anywhere. It wasn't a good RPG and it wasn't a good FPS. It was just a bad mixture wrapped up in a pretty boring wrapper. SOE didn't support it because the players didn't see anything worth supporting.
I've been waiting for another mmofps for along time now. I played WW2 Online and Planetside and I enjoyed both of them. WW2 online had lack of players for it to be casual friendly and was pretty tedious. Planetside was great until they added the BFR's and made it super imbalanced.
All they need to do is make a MMOCOD or something where it is set in a time of war. Have there be 2 sides, allies and axis, with 3 or so countries fighting for each side. Same set up as most games now with RvR or alliances and enemies. Then you can fight over land and control over another country.
Have it set up just like CoD but in a seamless world.
I don't see the value of a MMOFPS. If there is no char progression, then it would not be very different from an online FPS. Given online FPS can accomodate so many people (32? 64?) .... it makes no difference if i can see more real people on screen. If you add in char progression, then it becomes an action RPG.
I'm confused even FPS now have char progression. Ever play BF2142? Call of Duty 4??? Rainbow Six? They ALL have some form of char progression. It's just a lot less sucky then traditional MMORPG. Newbies got fair chance against a vet- rather then totally getting raped by vets like you see in Level based mmos
if you think UT2k3 > PS tell me why UT2k3 is long forgotten, is also worst of all series and ppl DONT WANT TO PLAY IT ANYMORE unlike PlanetSide? In fact PS lives still while UT2k3 is dead already - says enough. And yes - i know what im talking about, since im playing original Unreal Tournament for 8 years now, and it has biggest community from all Unreal Tournament series games.
There is a place for decent mmofps. I think there would be plenty of FPS players playing game like this if there was good balance between rpg and fps attributes innit. I would play such game for sure.
... I wasn't seeing 100s of people on the map at the same time. In UT I could play 40 vs 40 and really see everyone without much lag at all. WHen lots of people were near eachother in PS, there was LOADS of lag and rubber banding. Not fun. ....
Comments
Even if Huxley ever came out,(People have been saying "any day now" since about 2006) it is NOT an MMOFPS. Instanced! Instanced! Instanced!
And Face of Mankind? Well it could have been a true MMOFPS. I was playing the beta for 4 months a few years back. The game was just horrible though. If it ever "comes out" again it will go right back to being dead in no time.
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.
0 for 3, good try though. None of those are MMOFPS.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
/sigh
Yes, I totaly agree... but it seems developers have no clue what they are doing. They clone WoW, fail at it, then try to keep their dead game floating.
Fallen earth look like crap and will probably play like crap as well.
Huxley is instanced... a bad copy of Unreal tournament.
etc etc etc...
There is no hope.
-------------------------------------
Before: developers loved games and made money.
Now: developers love money and make games.
Wish Mythic would bring Magestorm back
I loved Planetside also, Terran Republic for me.
Would love a sequel, or a Mechwarrior game using the same mechanics, where you work up the ranks from grunt to mech pilot, or other specialised role.
Plaetside is pretty much and MMOFPS with vehicles and the such try it out.
Sadly PlanetSide hasn't been very "massive" for quite some time now. Even when I quit (for good this time) around the middle of 2007; there were rarely "massive" battles going on. On off-peak hours there were typically less than 300 folks on the entire server. You spread those out across 10 continents, account for the people who are AFK- not very massive.
Folks would TRY to get one big fight going where everyone could participate in such circumstances but it frequently did not happen easily. It often took a lot of effort to get a 3-way battle going. When you need to struggle for an hour or more to get a foothold on a continent, just so you can get some "quality time" in- you realized it wasn't worth it.
I'm aware of the server merge but it's way too late to make any difference. PlanetSide is dead and there's a void that needs filling for westerns/europeans.
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.
No thanks I have never been a big fan of FPS .
Ah thanks I didnt know about this. looks really good. Sad, it appears if we want different stuff it comes from overseas.
Main reasons for the dearth of MMOFPS:
1. Lack of success for the genre.
2. Less comparative desire for the model of play. FPS players would usually rather JUST play a FPS game, a complete fragfest like UT/counterstrike, where there is already plenty of saturation of the market.
3. Latency. Very complicated to explain all the problems associated with it, but needless to say, it is a huge hurdle to overcome in a FPS. I havent even seen a FPS deal effectively with disperate pings, let alone a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER FPS.
So, difficult product to make, high risk investment even if you do make it, and a market that's largely saturated makes the propsects for MMOFPS pretty meager.
If only SOE realized Planetside was ahead of its time and still today can be great fun, but is in need of an upgrade. Darkfall really is Planetside with a fantasy theme that has outfit bases and resource gathering for those bases, as well as resource gathering for weapon construction.
Now imagine a Planetside 2 that expanded on this. Planetside was some of the best Mass MMO PVP I've ever experienced. I still didn't get the same buzz in 200+ Darkfall battle because it doesn't have the range of things that allow the tactical depth Planetside has with Foot, vehicle and air, at one point the dev were thinking of adding navy too, but that never happened.
If only SOE would give the current PS a graphical upgrade, allow prone, layer in some dx9 lighting as I do believe PS is still dx 8.1. Or realize the time for a planetside 2 is now. What made people bored of PS besides big walking robots was the lack of anything else to do besides cycle conts and bases, this design wasn't the greatest for long term repetition of capturing them just to cont lock, outfits didn't have a base they could call their own.
There was nothing but going from base to base in a loop from cont to cont. So if a PS2 would have outfit bases that could be constructed, but resources had to be gathered like it was an RTS game of command and Conquer. Adding resources in the world to fight and for and control as it's needed for weapon & construction outfight base construction and maintaining. Add areas with MOB's that have decent AI for something different to do. A sandbox SCI FI FPS MMO, seamless or huge zones with no instances like current PS.
Its not about shooting 1000 at once...i can tell you never played PS.
Its about the whole battlefield, the fighting for the campaign, and having a persistent character you can progress. in your regular trash FPS games, you fight, teams rotate you go onto the next map...how fun...In Planetside the battles mean something, If you take this base from the enemy you push them off the continent an are one step closer to capturing the map. Doing rapid resecuires,10v80 was epic fun and if you managed to pull it off you got a sense of achievement from it and you just screwed over the enemy hardcore...and you know they're gonna be pissed.
Its also the epicenes of the continents and the maps, planetside continents are capped at about 180v180v180, and you have a HUGE amount of weapons and vehicles available to you...you see tank collum, massive air squadrons, infantry footzergs and you see massive airborne transports dropping off squads at a time, you have bombers, with anti air to counter them...Planetside is EPIC and there is really nothing close to it or anything planned.
as for the lag? Yea planetside and COD4 are the only games i can play on American servers (that’s with 200-300 ping, I'm from Australia) and there are players who are quite good. though warpy they maybe, who play from China with 15% loss. Planetsides netcode while not perfect, its superior for compensating for lag and dealing with stress than all the other trash out there.(besides COD4)
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
The one thing to do the most damage to the genre so far has been SoE. They made PlanetSide and introduced it to a handful of MMORPG orcs and dorks gamers who couldn't care less- so right from the get go it was, and remains- an extremely obscure title. They never actually marketed the game. Running a bit on your shitty launcher software to people who are already your customers to get them to sign up for a more expensive all access package IS NOT marketing.
To make matters worse they severely neglected the game. They only allocated the minimum amount of resources to keep the game functioning. Many issues were never resolved and the sporadic, meager handfuls of "content "did nothing to make up for that. The game was never improved upon or refined.
When SoE did focus some attention on PlanetSide, they hurt it more than helped it with horrible design decisions that caused community uproar and cancellations.
It becomes very easy then to blame the genre as a failed concept instead of blaming the half-hearted, shallow attempt of SoE.
Maybe the young kids are still amused with quicky death matches. But there are MILLIONS of us in our 20's, 30's- etc. who are very fond of these gams; we've just been playing them for so long that we are ready for something else and we demand a little more.
I'd wager that if you gave any veteran FPS gamer of 10 years or more a taste of MMOFPS, in the resemblence of PlanetSide, they would be insantly hooked on the premise.
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 understand what you are trying to get across and I think you are correct; Howevever, Planetside is a game that should be mirrored after and approved upon rather then rejected. Maybe we are in agreement on that aswell.
Planetside is truly a gem in the coalmine. I will just say that I bought the game for $5 and two expansions for less then $10. Truly a shame, because this game expanded into areas of online gaming that no other game had previously done. I truly believe that mmofps are a viable and profitable genre. RPG elements have already been implemented in many FPS games that have player run servers. The results are AWESOME. But this marks amatuer progression. Imagine what a real studio with strong financial backing can achieve.
Planetside was ahead of it's time because before WoW the mmorpg genre was was niche and only for the "hardcore" and Planetside is a game that appeals to the FPS fan. If it launnched now, obviously with better graphics then it would have done really well because WoW opened up the eyes of alll people who play games to mmo's and most do infact want an mmofps cause they hate the WoW like combat and PVE.
However that said Planetside was always in decline because SOE never marketed it like CCP does with EVE and SOE never fixed the issues the community had with it. Instead the team got made to make an expansion ready for release 3 months after launch with added caverns to it noone cared about. So people who were tired of capturing the same base over and over left cause it wasn't what they wanted. Planetside stayed the same, unchanged until mid 2004 with BFR's and the bending. However BFRs ruined the game and the new Oshur didn't play well and noone ever goes there. BFRs I remember causing the subscription base to drop like the NGE and it never recovered. Planetside then remained unchanged ever since really and the bugs from back then are still there today and I saw the patch notes and there wasn't a patch from like August to December :
The same story for all SOE's games really only EQ and EQ2 still get crap expansions for them. Don't forget though that Planetside did make a profit and it wasn't a failure because it provided alot of use with a few months of amazement... until SPE ruined it with CC and I quit.
Absolutely. The game was light years ahead of it's time.
In may of 2003 it had top end graphics, it had the programming tricks to allow hundreds of players to cram into the same areas, and the netcode provided very reasonable responses in most instances considering the massive scale of the game.
This is one of the reasons SoE never really imrpoved upon the game as I understand, the code was proprietary and the original developers moved on. The "maintenance team" couldn't really fix one thing without breaking another.
When I think of MMOFPS though, PlanetSide is without question the model and basis by which to judge all others. There's lots of room for variation and improvement- but PlanetSide is MMOFPS's "rock."
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.
Does anyone remember the mmo mechwarrior game? It was in beta for about a year about 5 or 6 years ago. I remember having a blast playing that game but they pulled the plug during open beta. I still don't understand why, I think developers think that the mmofps market just isn't big enough to make a profit.
PBBG List.
I don't see the value of a MMOFPS. If there is no char progression, then it would not be very different from an online FPS. Given online FPS can accomodate so many people (32? 64?) .... it makes no difference if i can see more real people on screen.
If you add in char progression, then it becomes an action RPG.
... Who says there can be no character progression in a first person shooter. Sigh.
More importantly though, in a MMOFPS, you get to fight in a world, instead of a random and enclosed map. The experience is dynamic and epic, something you don't really get in regular shooters. You could take a modern MMOFPS in any direction, and most certaily create a fantastic game.
I just don't think the gaming companies are ready for it. They look at Planetside and say "oh well that didn't go too well did it?" and give up on the idea.
I don't doubt that at all. You can see that in programs like XFire where the same crowd that plays WOW and EQ2 is also heavy into TF2 and other FPS games. I beleive the comment you are contesting is this one:
"Most MMO gamers really do not want a game that is based on player skill because it means an unlevel playing field."
It still holds true. I should have clarified that they do not want an MMO based on player skill, but since we were talking about MMOs I didn't think that was necessary.
CoD, BF and other FPSs provide the perception that it is a level playing field. Whether it is or isn't is another story. However, in an MMO there are too many other 'excuses'. You will very rarely hear someone say their opponent in an MMO simply outsmarted them. You *will* hear that
- they chugged pots
- they had better gear
- they were higher level
- they use an OP class
- they had imba weapons
Alos, in an FPS, you are in a constant state of battle. Here's the key: You are only battling when you choose to. In an MMO, even in a combat situation, it is very easy for a player to drop his guard or become unaware. They then become susceptible to ambush, sneak attacks, or plenty of other legitimate tactics that they will file under...
They ganked me.
FPS gameplay is usually tied to more active gaming and constant awareness - not necessarily what most MMO gamers are looking for in their MMOs, but something they accept and enjoy in FPSs because they have logged in with the intent to do battle and in an environment where the perception is that there is nothing extraneous that can unlevle the playing field.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
For the few weeks back when it first launched, the only thing I was thinking about while playing PS, was why do I have to waste the time to travel & level up when all I want to do is fight. Theres nothing else to do except fight. The amount of progress I saw was mimal at best and the next night it rarely progressed anywhere. Or, any progress we made was then lost . So I wasn't seeing much progress for a MMO. That got pretty boring after a few weeks.
Since fighting was the whole point, what did PS offer me the UT2k3 didn't? Not much. The gameplay was nowhere as fluid as UT. The rush wasn't there. You weren't really aiming in PS. You just targeted people by holding the reticle over them and stats determined hitting and missing. It wasn't really an FPS. Just a regular MMO from a 1st person perspective with no autoattack. The graphics weren't comparable. The battlefield was quite boring. Just open empty space with a rather generic base here and there. There wasn't much communication, so whatever epic feel they were going for was lost. It was just a big free for all. NO real strategy at all. Compare that with your average UT map and it felt stale, slow and boring.
The overall art design in PS was boring sci-fi. Not creative looking at all. The weapons were boring. All the suits were boring as well. The bases were as generic looking as they came. Not inspiring.
So, I was paying a monthly fee to travel to a fight that wasn't nearly as exciting as UT. I had to deal with downtime between deaths, travel time, LAG and latency. My skill didn't matter really at all. Aiming and missing was frustrating since when I'm playing an FPS, I don't expect to keep missing when it looks like I'm hitting over and over again. I know it was still an RPG, but the "feeling" wasn't there. I wasn't seeing 100s of people on the map at the same time. In UT I could play 40 vs 40 and really see everyone without much lag at all. WHen lots of people were near eachother in PS, there was LOADS of lag and rubber banding. Not fun.
I understand it probably got better over the years, but I didn't care. All that mattered was that 1st month and it failed to devliver anything I wasn't already getting from UT. Thats the reason PS failed. The experience was too lackluster to bother investing the time. I'm not investing anything in an FPS. I log in. I play. I have fun. I log out. PS just didn't fit anywhere. It wasn't a good RPG and it wasn't a good FPS. It was just a bad mixture wrapped up in a pretty boring wrapper. SOE didn't support it because the players didn't see anything worth supporting.
I've been waiting for another mmofps for along time now. I played WW2 Online and Planetside and I enjoyed both of them. WW2 online had lack of players for it to be casual friendly and was pretty tedious. Planetside was great until they added the BFR's and made it super imbalanced.
All they need to do is make a MMOCOD or something where it is set in a time of war. Have there be 2 sides, allies and axis, with 3 or so countries fighting for each side. Same set up as most games now with RvR or alliances and enemies. Then you can fight over land and control over another country.
Have it set up just like CoD but in a seamless world.
I'm confused even FPS now have char progression. Ever play BF2142? Call of Duty 4??? Rainbow Six? They ALL have some form of char progression. It's just a lot less sucky then traditional MMORPG. Newbies got fair chance against a vet- rather then totally getting raped by vets like you see in Level based mmos
@ Josher
if you think UT2k3 > PS tell me why UT2k3 is long forgotten, is also worst of all series and ppl DONT WANT TO PLAY IT ANYMORE unlike PlanetSide? In fact PS lives still while UT2k3 is dead already - says enough. And yes - i know what im talking about, since im playing original Unreal Tournament for 8 years now, and it has biggest community from all Unreal Tournament series games.
There is a place for decent mmofps. I think there would be plenty of FPS players playing game like this if there was good balance between rpg and fps attributes innit. I would play such game for sure.
UT3 allows 40 vs 40??? I dont recall seeing this