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The end of twitch based space combat games.
Dellyo
Member Posts: 16
Alright, to my understanding, the space aspect of SWG is like any other MMPORG but worse - to get better guns/ships/etc you have to gain experience. Ok, there's nothing wrong with that - if there were 1500 models of the Tie Fighter. Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the idea of being in a ship was that it took SKILL TO KILL THINGS and not time(like eve-online).
This is the downfall of any MMPORG that attempts a standard system for space flight with twitch based controls. I want some smacktard that logs on with insane pilot skills to start player killing with their pretty super ships they spent weeks getting, but of course that'll never happen because then the long-term degenerates that spent 90% of their life getting ShieldXII SuperMart Booster Plus will whine.
The gaming community needs a massively online space sim where everyone has the same grades (but different styles) of ships and it actually takes piloting skills to be decent. I want any 3D space trading(like elite or privateer) game that involves twitch based(as in using a joystick as well) controls, along with semi-newtonian physics with 250+ people. If that was to happen, is the day I become a truly happy gamer.
Comments
Join the club.
I see at least 2 posts in here a week asking for a decent sci-fi game other than that G0d-forsaken Eve
And the cold hard truth is that there isnt one, there isnt even a good sci-fi game out there when your looking for a specfic genre (space fighting) the only closest thing ive seen coming out to what you ........wait
On secnd thought there is nothing like what you want coming out, not even on the drawing board, sucks dude.
I feelya though but if you'll settle for a sci-fi twitchbased combat with out the space ships, i say give planetside a try.
www.planetside.com
Here is what I think star wars galaxies should have done from the start.
Have the space based portion of the game play like twitched based sim ( like star wars tie fighter game) but when you dock at a space station or on a planet you switch to the mmorpg part of the game where what you decide to do with money and skills factions etc. determines what ships you have available to fly when going into space.
as much as i would like for space combat to be done in the eve way having played eve it just does not feel the same and is nowhere near as much fun as the twitch way ... I think a sci fi game in the future could really be successfull if it follows the above model.... it is actually what i expected star wars galaxies to be like when i first heard about it.
Dellyo i'm playing the game your talking about.
It's called vendetta online. It's got a free trail to so you ain't guna lose anything for trying
www.vendetta-online.com
It's got both arcade and phyiscs flying styles
arcade: X-wing alliance style
Phyiscs: fly in any direction with momentum etc
Theres trading, mining and factions to raise rep with.
But the nicest thing of all is that after the intial training in about 3 hours your able to take on any other pilot no matter how long they've grinded
JOYSTICKS FULLY SUPPORTED
Jumpgate
http://www.mightygames.com
much more faster and intense than VO, and if you got elite-flying-skills you can kill the people with the best equipment.
Player skill is everything in Jumpgate.
its so funny, as soon as someone posts a link to vendetta within two posts there is a link to jumpgate...
i really didnt like the sound of 'realistic physics' in jumpgate, its a layer of complexity i dont want. The other game to look out for (though development seems to be taking forever) is eschaton, it mixes group fleet battles with first person fighters.
the funny thing is that in vendetta the best pilots can kill you with the worst equipment....
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PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...
ok the problem with jumpgate is:
1. i live on the north america content
2. the player base on the US server rarly reaches 50.
and yeah vendetta online is not popular either. i beta tested it a few months ago and was not satasfied because teh flight system was like real slow.
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You are confusing MMORPGs with FPSs. In a FPSs setting, it is not about the skills of your character, it is about the skills of the real life person at the keyboard. In a MMORPG, it is more about the skills of the character and less about the real life skills of the person at the keyboard. "RPG" aka Role Playing Game. RPG is about the real life person at the keyboard taking on the role of a character, and the ingame skills of that character. If your character is an Architect/Musician/Miner and in a spaceship, you will have lousy dogfighting skills. No matter if the person sitting at the keyboard has the most perfect eye-had coordination in the world.
When I play Counter Strike, I have a hard time hitting anyone. When I play SWG, I ... my character... easily hits anyone.
BTW, you should check out Jumpgate. It is another space online game. Jumpgate has a lot of what you claim you are looking for. Technically it is a MMORPG. See, SWG is NOT the only space MMORPG out LOL!
You might want to also check out Starport. It is a hardcore PvP space MMORPG.
Last, if you had been following SWG during its development, back when the old SWG forums were around, you would know that there was a TON of discussion about what you are now posting. It went on for months. The SWG game DEVs finally decided on the current system. SWG has now been out for almost 2 years (in 4 more months it will be 2 years.) Complaining right now about their space mechanics is a wee bit too late, since it was discussed, and then decided roughly 2 1/2 years ago what it would be like.
But I think that's what he is saying. He wants an online MMO (not an MMORPG) that is a twitch-based space combat game. In other words an environment where twitch-based pilots can go head to head against each other (rather than against AI) based on their out-of-game skills with the keyboard and/or joystick. Sort of like is the case with Halo and Halo2 (in their online versions), except with spaceships and not strictly FPS. Like Freelancer or Privateer in an MMO format. Folks who like that kind of game generally get *very* frustrated with an MMORPG because the MMORPG does not reward them for their joystick skills really.
It's true that this type of game would not be an MMORPG, because as you rightly point out the point of an RPG is that your out of game skills are not the key to success in character in the game -- that follows from the pen-and-paper RPG model where your own real life strength does not determine what your RPG character can do with a sword!
I wonder why thehre are not more of these twitch-based MMOs. Part of the reason might be that some of the more popular standalone twitch-based games have online modes that involve competitive PvP play without the rest of the accoutrements of an MMO (like Halo's online version, for example). I would think that most of the folks who like twitch-based online PvP couldn't care less about the rest of what would comprise an MMO world. I mean, it's not as if online twitch-based space combat games have not been attempted ... they have been (Vendetta and Jumpgate are the two that come to mind), but they don't seem to attract many players as compared with more MMORPG type games that are not twitch based (even EVE, which is not one of the most subscribed MMORPGs by far, has a great deal more subscribers than the current twitch-based space MMO offerings). I don't care for twitch-based games myself, but it's curious that there are so few subscribers for the ones that have been attempted.
Hang on.
You guys remember the big daddy- Elite?
In my book that's an rpg. Without doubt.
Your saying an Elite mmorpg (ie. with twitch combat) updated for 2005 with politics and complex economy wouldn't be an rpg??? I can just imagine a thargoid invasion ripping through the galaxy destroying whole solar systems - drool...
The problem seems to be that the 'space simulation' genre was almost entirely the work of a handful of companies - the Roberts brothers at Origin (Wing Commander series, Privateer series) then later at Microsoft (Starlancer, Freelancer), the guys at Lucasarts (later Totally Games) who made the x-wing franchise, then there were a couple of other popular space sims like X, Tachyon, Freespace (1&2).
from Totally Games' website:
maybe there will be more space games coming...we can only hope...
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PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...
maybe there will be more space games coming...we can only hope...
Thats not even a game. It's reality, and please don't mix this with space based games.
Anyways, I think I discoverd a game that may seen to be mmo but a single player at the moment. Like plantshift as a free mmo, this one is called Vegastrike.
If anyone else cares.
It sounds like you are asking for an RTS game rather than an action orientated game.
But really, it was a lot more fun for me to fly the ship using a flight engine a lot faster than freespace style(see starshatter) and use a joystick(or mouse not freelancer style) to get the flight lead indicator into the crosshairs rather than playing a space game from a spectators view or even tactial space flight combat.
If you are looking for a twitch based space MMO with some RP elements, try Vendetta Online.
I have been playing it for quite some time (i was an alpha and beta tester) and find that it covers most of the things you appear to be interested in. I will warn you however, the game has only a small user base at the moment.. we usually average about 50-100 players online in the evenings.. up to about 150 weekends. Part of this is because the developers are still working on making it more complete, and are not pursuing an agressive marketing campaign for precisely that reason. The game is constantly evolving, and I know at least one person said they tried it but was unimpressed a few months ago. My advise is to check back with it a few times. give it a month or so between trys because the game is still evolving at a rapid rate.
What the game does have is a very solid engine that has huge potential, and a team of developers that are dedicated to making it work. you can download the whole game and get an 8 hour free trial, (you dont even need to put in a credit card number to do so) to see what you think of it. If you decide its what you want to play, its only $10 USD a month (less if you buy multiple months at once)
i dislike mmorpgs that involves twitch based pvp.
reason #1, back when i played jumpgate, the vast majority of insanly skilled players would rather be a pirate or just a punk kid who wants to shoot down defenseless ships and non-pvpers. when was hunting down that punk when I ran into him and decided to fight him one on one. needless to say, I lost to him badly because my reflexability was not as good as that punk kid. he was down like at 80% shields and he was like "roflmao I pwned a noob in a fighter!!".
reason #2, in jumpgate again, I was in a middle of pvp using my so called rare artifact engines on my bomber to try to rack up kills when encountering another player fleet from another faction called "octavians", I was being shot at, I targeted the person who was shooting me and needless to say he was killing me at 25k away facing a different direction and our fleet was winning the battle as well. I flashed fired to get out in space and ended up with a lag kill. and now I beta tested vendetta and noticed the same thing, I kept shooting that bot for a few minutes and finally when the server updated, my ship exploded.
and that was where I drew the last straw. after encountering those types of programs with so called twitch based combat system, back to point and click controls for me.
you know? now that you mention it, that genius of David Braben (creator of Elite... Frontier... and... Rollercoasters and... erm... "A Dog's life"
) is said ti be working on Elite 4.
Details are scarce on their page at www.frontier.co.uk but we can always hope.
As for a MMO with twitch skill, there was one... well kinda of. it wasn't Massive. name was Allegiance, anybody remembers it? microsoft twitch game of space combat in which players could assume different roles like Fighter pilot, fleet commander, economy director and so on... Never got any success but the ideas were quite good and would shine in a MMorpg
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
I think Microsoft actually released the Allegiance Source Code too... suprised not many project spawned from it...
I can say that for me personally I hate twitch games. I don't have very good reflexes, I don't overclock my computer (a common practice for online FPS's). I love space, I wish I could be in space... But I also like character development, in EVE online you can scape together all your cash and buy a ship and have it blown up in 5 seconds.
That would be the equivalent of losing all your armor in a traditional mmorpg setting every time you die.
I loved to play starwars: tie fighter, I STILL think about that game, I miss it. But I also cheated a lot:)
If they ever remade that game you'd never see me here.
The problem is space based games don't translate well into mmorpgs, in that you are not a person but a ship a ship that can be destroyed. I wish I had the answer, but I do know that I am against all twitch based games. Maybe in they implemented a disable feature and you had to give over a percentage of your ships worth to the pirate?
Homeworld is a fine example of how space based combat should be, you control the formation the ship type and the agressiveness and let them go at in a beautiful dogfights. In a perfect would twitch for everything would be the most realistic but I'm not paying a monthly fee for realism, or for a game that punishes me for not having a godly computer and internet connection.