No it's not about graphics. Ask yourself this: If you'd make a game, why the hell would you send graphics data between server and client!?
Graphics are handled by the client - your computer. The problem is the information that the server has to handle from every client. It is impossible to handle hundreds of players on one server. Or rather the lag would make the game unplayable.
Even the slightest hitch in the server performance is felt on the client side. FPS games are very allergic to lag. Much more so than a game of Eve. Not to mention the flow of information could be greater than in a simple game like Eve.
Eve is simple just for this reason: So it can handle all the clients. If it were more complex or more twitchy, it couldn't handle the same number of players in same area.
True, but the internet is actually getting better so games like this will probably appear soon.
That is half of the thing, the other half is because only small indie companies have tried the idea so far. If someone like Valve made a MMOFPS it would probably be better and sell a lot more.
I think that a big con to MMOFPS is the fact that MMO games and FPS games have diffrent principles in them.
MMOs are about progress, loot, comitment and sotial aspect.
RPGs are about loot and progress.
FPSs are about fair, skill based PvP, with no need for commitment.
So basicly the MMO aspects of an FPSMMO make the game unatractible to FPS players, but greatly appeal to RPG playes. Hence, MMORPG is much more popular demand then MMOFPS.
These threads would be a lot more meaningful if players would play Planetside first before posting. So many of these "reasons" MMOFPSes "can't work" were solved (or didn't exist in the first place) in Planetside 7 years ago.
Graphics? Not a significant factor. Obviously graphics are more constrained when you have to worry about 600 players in the same location vs. 24, but that didn't stop Planetside from having 50+ types of character models (when you consider all the vehicles, power armor, and empire-specific stuff.)
MMOs are about progression? Uh, no that's the "RPG" part of MMORPG. MMOs are about massive players. Probably 50-60% of my time in Planetside was in 200v200 (or larger) battles, which makes it far and away more massive than any MMORPG I've played (maybe EVE has larger battles, but personally I never saw any large-scale battles there and I doubt they're as frequent even for the players actively pursuing that sort of gameplay.)
That didn't stop Planetside from having a fantastic lateral progression system, of course. 10 minutes after creating a new character you can take down max-level characters -- those characters are more flexible, but not outright more powerful. So maybe they'll respawn and loadout with the counter to your current loadout, but by then you'll be long gone (or simply rely on teammates to offset that loadout vulnerability.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If Planetside was so great why did it not become a runaway success ? So it's 7 years old WoW is 6 + so age is not the issue. It never found a large enough market and that is why other developers are not jumping to make more of that type of games. Although I must admit it does sound good.
If Planetside was so great why did it not become a runaway success ? So it's 7 years old WoW is 6 + so age is not the issue. It never found a large enough market and that is why other developers are not jumping to make more of that type of games. Although I must admit it does sound good.
It could have.. i mean it had the numbers.. the thing about planetside is that SOE didnt do anything with it... i mean they abandoned it for years with nothing. Then when they wanted to raise the sub price they added something... SOE is the reason Planetside is what it is today.
A dying dried out hack filled husk of what it was and could have been with the proper attention.
How do you keep people subbed ? Typically shooters are a few hours then it ends but people do not play the same shooter over and over for long. They change them .That is why people buy so many shooters so how do you keep your subscribers ?
That's no more true than saying the exact same thing about MMOs. MMO'ers play for a few levels, but then something else comes out and they jump.
I'm still playing Team Fortress 2. People are still playing Counter Strike. Hell, people are still playing Fortress Forever and Team Fortress Classic. When the Halo 2 servers went down, a lot of people were pissed.
People do not play the same throwaway shooters for hours, and more than people play throwaway MMOs for years. But look at the total time played for some older games, and you'll be surprised.
Halo, CS and TF2 are really the poster children for long lived shooters - those games have support, whether in the form of interesting leaderboards, or advancement, or content updates, or whatever. And people keep playing them.
Also, it's not as though there's a binary choice to be made - you can be both an MMO player and an FPS player. I've had a lot of nights where I play TF2 for an hour or two, then hop over to whatever MMO I'm playing and spend a couple hours there. And recently, I'll play Halo: Reach for a couple hours, finish the challenges, etc, then once my friends go to bed I'll do an hour or two of quests somewhere....
Also, the comment above about open world shooters and snipers is dead on. Within an hour of start, Goonsquad, or a similar group, would have 50 snipers camped at the entrance to the main city, killing every single person continuously. Sniper rifles break open world PVP,really.
Who am I? @Lorechaser on CoH Badjuju, Splinterhoof, Plainsrunner on WoW (Moonrunner) Shyy'rissk on SWG (Flurry) ClockworkSoldier, HE Pierce, Letnev on Planetside Gyshe, Crucible, Terrakal on DDO And many more.
Those games you mentioned have no subs. That is why people play them . I have stayed subbed to MMO for years. So have many of my friends. Let me see how many play TF when you have to pay , a sub changes everything.
No it's not about graphics. Ask yourself this: If you'd make a game, why the hell would you send graphics data between server and client!?
Graphics are handled by the client - your computer. The problem is the information that the server has to handle from every client. It is impossible to handle hundreds of players on one server. Or rather the lag would make the game unplayable.
Even the slightest hitch in the server performance is felt on the client side. FPS games are very allergic to lag. Much more so than a game of Eve. Not to mention the flow of information could be greater than in a simple game like Eve.
Eve is simple just for this reason: So it can handle all the clients. If it were more complex or more twitchy, it couldn't handle the same number of players in same area.
True, but the internet is actually getting better so games like this will probably appear soon.
That is half of the thing, the other half is because only small indie companies have tried the idea so far. If someone like Valve made a MMOFPS it would probably be better and sell a lot more.
Isn't there supposed to be a "new" Internet coming in 2014 (2015?) that is massively more powerful and capable than this one, or was it just some guy's fantasy I heard on Coast to Coast AM?
I think most people believe that FPS type stuff is done best on a FPS game, I have read hundreds of comments that state this, and that if they want this type of play they load up their FPS game that they are currently playing...
Then the MMORPG gives them their other fix.
People seem to think that a MMORPG with this style is a poor mans FPS, and is not on par with a AAA FPS, and then the MMO part is not on par with a AAA MMORPG, so you in essence usually get a substandard product that does not stand out or give the person the fix they need for either type of game.
Considering most FPS games are repeatable scenarios, it is hard to imagine them in a persistent world without some heavy handed interference from the developers...
...this would lead to more of a 3D chatroom game lobby effect than an actual MMO. Picture your favorite FPS where you are sitting in a chatroom waiting for your game to launch - instead - you could walk around that room, a building, a base, a city, etc... while waiting for your game to launch.
Yes, it sounds a lot like WoW's Heroics/Raids/Arena/Battlegrounds. Which is funny, considering the rumors that were going around last year, this year, etc - where it sounded like Blizzard's next game was going to be a MMOFPS along these lines. Actually, the rumors sounded a Hell of a lot like APB...lol.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
If Planetside was so great why did it not become a runaway success ? So it's 7 years old WoW is 6 + so age is not the issue. It never found a large enough market and that is why other developers are not jumping to make more of that type of games. Although I must admit it does sound good.
It could have.. i mean it had the numbers.. the thing about planetside is that SOE didnt do anything with it... i mean they abandoned it for years with nothing. Then when they wanted to raise the sub price they added something... SOE is the reason Planetside is what it is today.
A dying dried out hack filled husk of what it was and could have been with the proper attention.
Sadly true, SOE messed up again, they introduced the cavern combat, and BFR's, it really did ruin the game, after that it was all downhill, up to that point though, it was probably the best MMOFPS in existence, the Outfits (clans) were also one of the reasons for playing, forming up at the air vehicle bay, waiting for the galaxies to land so we could all get on board, then off to hot drop some barnies, who were probably doing the same thing to us... seige/counter seige, air superiority, artillery support, and squad based tactical combat... mine fields, bombers, and .. bouncing across the wilderness in a marauder (3 man jeep) being pursued by a bunch of mozzy pilots... really dont understand why they introduced BFR's.... but yes.. the cap i think for numbers was about 4 or 500 per island. thing is... if SOE could manage a game like planetside, yay many years ago.. that had those kinds of numbers.. why don't we see that kind of thing more often? technologically we've moved on quite a bit i should think. and while numbers of 1k or more are probably unreasonable, i think any game that cannot handle 300 active players in a single area, is probably a waste of time. If Planetside 2 does ever get off the ground though, i really hope that they learn mistakes of the past.. .. and don't have giant robots.. those things are only really cool.. if your 8 years old...
These threads would be a lot more meaningful if players would play Planetside first before posting. So many of these "reasons" MMOFPSes "can't work" were solved (or didn't exist in the first place) in Planetside 7 years ago.
Graphics? Not a significant factor. Obviously graphics are more constrained when you have to worry about 600 players in the same location vs. 24, but that didn't stop Planetside from having 50+ types of character models (when you consider all the vehicles, power armor, and empire-specific stuff.)
MMOs are about progression? Uh, no that's the "RPG" part of MMORPG. MMOs are about massive players. Probably 50-60% of my time in Planetside was in 200v200 (or larger) battles, which makes it far and away more massive than any MMORPG I've played (maybe EVE has larger battles, but personally I never saw any large-scale battles there and I doubt they're as frequent even for the players actively pursuing that sort of gameplay.)
That didn't stop Planetside from having a fantastic lateral progression system, of course. 10 minutes after creating a new character you can take down max-level characters -- those characters are more flexible, but not outright more powerful. So maybe they'll respawn and loadout with the counter to your current loadout, but by then you'll be long gone (or simply rely on teammates to offset that loadout vulnerability.)
This. It's too bad Planetside is past its prime, but if people had played it they would understand that a lot of their complaints about MMOFPs have answers. The huge battles, the level playing field, etc.
The problems with Planetside's success didn't have anything to do with any inherent problems in the genre. It had to do with SoE's lack of support, advertising, and adding in unbalanced expansion content in order to get people to pay more money to access it.
Top MMOs: Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, EVE Online, Planetside Played: Pretty much everything at one point or another
Because in general mmo gamers care more about gear scores and what kind of colour pants their elf is wearing then actually aiming in a game. I think it's more down to the playerbase not wanting them so much as opposed to technological limitations.
Still there are a few things up and coming with Planetside NEXT and Tribes Universe in the pipeline.
Actually, you're right, MMO's are about increasing your character's power by working on various activites, be it leveling, improving gear to gain advantages over your opponents.
Twitch based combat is the province of the FPS genre, and it not something most MMORPG players want.
Being able to aim in a game does not make one a superior pvper, just means they have better hand eye coordination.
Edited to avoid being drawn into this old chestnut again.
You can have progression in a game with fps aiming.
Why don't they want aiming? That it is more traditionally found in another format is not a real argument against it tbh.
I never said it did originally, but having fps aiming as opposed to autolock does take more skill, ergo an mmorpg with fps twitch aiming does indeed require you to be a superior pvper to succeed.
Well RPG people don't like aiming for example cause RPGs are about what your character can or cannot do, not you persoanally as a player. If my character has high dexterity (and a bit lucky maybe) he hits, if he has low dexterity (and a bit unlucky maybe) he misses. Check how D&D works if you don't know, which is the base of the RPG genre.
MMOFPSes are a whole different story.
Other reasons people don't like twitch based combat, in general, is that
a) It's very latency dependant. RPGs with either the traditional turnbased combat, or the global cooldowns that we see in current MMOs overcome this.
b) It's much more hackable with the use of aimbots, speedhacking and everything which is bad if you wanna have any sort of PvP combat in your game. On turn-based or global-cooldown based combat there isn't too much to hack in the first place, cause you can only send that much of abilities per second to the server, and the game doesn't require you to do something like aiming, which like you said requires some extra skill.
Just compare the ammount of hacking and the ammount of possible different hacks between Darkfall and WoW's PvP for example. It's not just the "budget", the bigger company, the more years that the game is running, there is this core design difference that makes Darkfall a hackfest and WoW's PvP a fair game. And that's why i personally consider WoW's PvP superior, even though it requires less skill than Darkfall's.
Because in general mmo gamers care more about gear scores and what kind of colour pants their elf is wearing then actually aiming in a game. I think it's more down to the playerbase not wanting them so much as opposed to technological limitations.
Still there are a few things up and coming with Planetside NEXT and Tribes Universe in the pipeline.
Actually, you're right, MMO's are about increasing your character's power by working on various activites, be it leveling, improving gear to gain advantages over your opponents.
Twitch based combat is the province of the FPS genre, and it not something most MMORPG players want.
Being able to aim in a game does not make one a superior pvper, just means they have better hand eye coordination.
Edited to avoid being drawn into this old chestnut again.
You can have progression in a game with fps aiming.
Why don't they want aiming? That it is more traditionally found in another format is not a real argument against it tbh.
I never said it did originally, but having fps aiming as opposed to autolock does take more skill, ergo an mmorpg with fps twitch aiming does indeed require you to be a superior pvper to succeed.
It takes a different kind of skill, and let's face it, neither skill set is earth shattering.
That is limited though.. they limit the amount of people on one server. I am talking about mmo's with massive amount of players such as EVE conflicts.
Given the major issues that CCP has with massive scale EVE fleet battles(even with bleeding edge hardware and software), I doubt we are going to see epic ground combat on that scale any time soon. I suspect EVE's shardless system is pushing the limits of what is possible at this tech level. Perhaps in another 5 to 10 years that may change.
The problems with Planetside's success didn't have anything to do with any inherent problems in the genre. It had to do with SoE's lack of support, advertising, and adding in unbalanced expansion content in order to get people to pay more money to access it.
Personally I felt the problem was base design's stagnation. Their refusal to change the default base layouts (which even in beta I criticized as feeling too similar to one another) caused the game to gradually decline in fun factor over the years (especially as the faults to each base became apparent.)
I sort of disagree about "unbalanced expansions", at least if you're referring to BFRs. As slow and costly as they were, my typical aircav/infantry role was considerably more effective. Yet players made a huge fuss about this lackluster playstyle. I never could understand it; I think maybe I was too busy taking them out solo (or sometimes in swarms of air vehicles, and sometimes in packs of magriders.)
As for the earlier poster's "why isn't Planetside doing well?" I think the other guy who responded nailed the real reason. The game simply wasn't supported properly. It got some reasonably good content additions for sure, but some of the core issues (default base layouts being bland: both in art and gameplay) went unaddressed throughout the life of the product.
There's that, and there's the fact that fewer players want a PVP game than a PVE game. And fewer players want a game where skill matters (FPS) than one where time investment wins them fights (RPG). The design is inherently less popular than an RPG, and yet it's an amazing genre that I'd return to in a heartbeat (and every time I mention it in games or forums it seems like virtually everyone who played it agrees with me.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It is interesting seeing all this talk about Planetside. I never had any idea there was so much depth to what people liked and disliked about the game.
I remember when it was announced, when it came out, etc... the folks I gamed with saw no reason to pay a sub for a FPS game when there were plenty of FPS games to play already.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
A simple question with a simple question right? Well probably not because I am sure a lot of you will not agree with me but I will tell you anyways. The reason is straight forward, the internet. Plain and simple there is too much lag and graphic lag for a twitched based shooter to work on a large scale. Now there are some mmo shooters out there that are twitched based but the servers put a cap on the number of people or are lobby based.
What do you guys think?
It's hard to explain, but it's just about server processing capability and the fact that you need to check every bullet coordinates on the game with every player coordinates in the game for every time unit on the server, that makes an insane amount of data processing, and thats why fps games are limited to low numbers usually. For example the 32 players in a fps game shoot 1 bullet 1 time that makes 32 bullets, checking 32 bullet against 32 players makes 1024 hit posibilities, this is made fast. But say you have a massive server, 5000 players shooting 1 bullet at same time agaist 5000 players on server that makes 25 million posible hits of bullets against players, I may be wrong, but that makes a lot of data procesing. Thats why mmorpg's combat is usually based on "you select your target and you attack your target" mechanic, becouse when you select it you limit the data processing to just your target.
You guys should check out AARMAII for some nice large scale warfare action. Best combat simulator on the planet in my opinion. You have to have a beefy rig to push framerate though the graphics are ultrarealistic.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized" "The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
They tried the fpsmmo thing with the NGE in SWG years ago, and we all know how well that worked out. But even today, most mmos have major trouble with lag when you get 100 people or so in a given area. I think we are still a few years away technologically.
The problems with Planetside's success didn't have anything to do with any inherent problems in the genre. It had to do with SoE's lack of support, advertising, and adding in unbalanced expansion content in order to get people to pay more money to access it.
Personally I felt the problem was base design's stagnation. Their refusal to change the default base layouts (which even in beta I criticized as feeling too similar to one another) caused the game to gradually decline in fun factor over the years (especially as the faults to each base became apparent.)
I sort of disagree about "unbalanced expansions", at least if you're referring to BFRs. As slow and costly as they were, my typical aircav/infantry role was considerably more effective. Yet players made a huge fuss about this lackluster playstyle. I never could understand it; I think maybe I was too busy taking them out solo (or sometimes in swarms of air vehicles, and sometimes in packs of magriders.)
As for the earlier poster's "why isn't Planetside doing well?" I think the other guy who responded nailed the real reason. The game simply wasn't supported properly. It got some reasonably good content additions for sure, but some of the core issues (default base layouts being bland: both in art and gameplay) went unaddressed throughout the life of the product.
There's that, and there's the fact that fewer players want a PVP game than a PVE game. And fewer players want a game where skill matters (FPS) than one where time investment wins them fights (RPG). The design is inherently less popular than an RPG, and yet it's an amazing genre that I'd return to in a heartbeat (and every time I mention it in games or forums it seems like virtually everyone who played it agrees with me.)
My brief experience with Planetside was less than appealing. Horrific even. People circling each other in a declining circle until the other guy froze due to lag giving the other guy chance to shoot him in the back of his head with a shotgun. And that happened more than once, I tell you. The problem wasn't just on my end since I did the same thing to other players. The lag made the game unplayable. (Servers might have been all too far away.)
The mechs firing from outside the draw distance straight to the spawning point didn't help the experience either. Artillery is fine, but beyond draw distance? -Hell no! There was just no way I'd try it past the first day. My first experience was so horrible and I couldn't see them "fixing" the mechs or the lag overnight. Also, I have pretty much zero tolerance for spawncamping which was all too frequent.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
It is interesting seeing all this talk about Planetside. I never had any idea there was so much depth to what people liked and disliked about the game.
I remember when it was announced, when it came out, etc... the folks I gamed with saw no reason to pay a sub for a FPS game when there were plenty of FPS games to play already.
And that is the answer to the question in the original post. There is no "large MMO Twitch Based Shooter" because it doesn't make sense to develop one from a business point of view.
Planetside and APB are hardly good examples for a successful business model.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Comments
True, but the internet is actually getting better so games like this will probably appear soon.
That is half of the thing, the other half is because only small indie companies have tried the idea so far. If someone like Valve made a MMOFPS it would probably be better and sell a lot more.
I think that a big con to MMOFPS is the fact that MMO games and FPS games have diffrent principles in them.
MMOs are about progress, loot, comitment and sotial aspect.
RPGs are about loot and progress.
FPSs are about fair, skill based PvP, with no need for commitment.
So basicly the MMO aspects of an FPSMMO make the game unatractible to FPS players, but greatly appeal to RPG playes. Hence, MMORPG is much more popular demand then MMOFPS.
These threads would be a lot more meaningful if players would play Planetside first before posting. So many of these "reasons" MMOFPSes "can't work" were solved (or didn't exist in the first place) in Planetside 7 years ago.
Graphics? Not a significant factor. Obviously graphics are more constrained when you have to worry about 600 players in the same location vs. 24, but that didn't stop Planetside from having 50+ types of character models (when you consider all the vehicles, power armor, and empire-specific stuff.)
MMOs are about progression? Uh, no that's the "RPG" part of MMORPG. MMOs are about massive players. Probably 50-60% of my time in Planetside was in 200v200 (or larger) battles, which makes it far and away more massive than any MMORPG I've played (maybe EVE has larger battles, but personally I never saw any large-scale battles there and I doubt they're as frequent even for the players actively pursuing that sort of gameplay.)
That didn't stop Planetside from having a fantastic lateral progression system, of course. 10 minutes after creating a new character you can take down max-level characters -- those characters are more flexible, but not outright more powerful. So maybe they'll respawn and loadout with the counter to your current loadout, but by then you'll be long gone (or simply rely on teammates to offset that loadout vulnerability.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If Planetside was so great why did it not become a runaway success ? So it's 7 years old WoW is 6 + so age is not the issue. It never found a large enough market and that is why other developers are not jumping to make more of that type of games. Although I must admit it does sound good.
It could have.. i mean it had the numbers.. the thing about planetside is that SOE didnt do anything with it... i mean they abandoned it for years with nothing. Then when they wanted to raise the sub price they added something... SOE is the reason Planetside is what it is today.
A dying dried out hack filled husk of what it was and could have been with the proper attention.
FoE Fist of the Empire
That's no more true than saying the exact same thing about MMOs. MMO'ers play for a few levels, but then something else comes out and they jump.
I'm still playing Team Fortress 2. People are still playing Counter Strike. Hell, people are still playing Fortress Forever and Team Fortress Classic. When the Halo 2 servers went down, a lot of people were pissed.
People do not play the same throwaway shooters for hours, and more than people play throwaway MMOs for years. But look at the total time played for some older games, and you'll be surprised.
Halo, CS and TF2 are really the poster children for long lived shooters - those games have support, whether in the form of interesting leaderboards, or advancement, or content updates, or whatever. And people keep playing them.
Also, it's not as though there's a binary choice to be made - you can be both an MMO player and an FPS player. I've had a lot of nights where I play TF2 for an hour or two, then hop over to whatever MMO I'm playing and spend a couple hours there. And recently, I'll play Halo: Reach for a couple hours, finish the challenges, etc, then once my friends go to bed I'll do an hour or two of quests somewhere....
Also, the comment above about open world shooters and snipers is dead on. Within an hour of start, Goonsquad, or a similar group, would have 50 snipers camped at the entrance to the main city, killing every single person continuously. Sniper rifles break open world PVP,really.
Who am I?
@Lorechaser on CoH
Badjuju, Splinterhoof, Plainsrunner on WoW (Moonrunner)
Shyy'rissk on SWG (Flurry)
ClockworkSoldier, HE Pierce, Letnev on Planetside
Gyshe, Crucible, Terrakal on DDO
And many more.
Those games you mentioned have no subs. That is why people play them . I have stayed subbed to MMO for years. So have many of my friends. Let me see how many play TF when you have to pay , a sub changes everything.
Isn't there supposed to be a "new" Internet coming in 2014 (2015?) that is massively more powerful and capable than this one, or was it just some guy's fantasy I heard on Coast to Coast AM?
I think most people believe that FPS type stuff is done best on a FPS game, I have read hundreds of comments that state this, and that if they want this type of play they load up their FPS game that they are currently playing...
Then the MMORPG gives them their other fix.
People seem to think that a MMORPG with this style is a poor mans FPS, and is not on par with a AAA FPS, and then the MMO part is not on par with a AAA MMORPG, so you in essence usually get a substandard product that does not stand out or give the person the fix they need for either type of game.
Considering most FPS games are repeatable scenarios, it is hard to imagine them in a persistent world without some heavy handed interference from the developers...
...this would lead to more of a 3D chatroom game lobby effect than an actual MMO. Picture your favorite FPS where you are sitting in a chatroom waiting for your game to launch - instead - you could walk around that room, a building, a base, a city, etc... while waiting for your game to launch.
Yes, it sounds a lot like WoW's Heroics/Raids/Arena/Battlegrounds. Which is funny, considering the rumors that were going around last year, this year, etc - where it sounded like Blizzard's next game was going to be a MMOFPS along these lines. Actually, the rumors sounded a Hell of a lot like APB...lol.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Sadly true, SOE messed up again, they introduced the cavern combat, and BFR's, it really did ruin the game, after that it was all downhill, up to that point though, it was probably the best MMOFPS in existence, the Outfits (clans) were also one of the reasons for playing, forming up at the air vehicle bay, waiting for the galaxies to land so we could all get on board, then off to hot drop some barnies, who were probably doing the same thing to us... seige/counter seige, air superiority, artillery support, and squad based tactical combat... mine fields, bombers, and .. bouncing across the wilderness in a marauder (3 man jeep) being pursued by a bunch of mozzy pilots... really dont understand why they introduced BFR's.... but yes.. the cap i think for numbers was about 4 or 500 per island. thing is... if SOE could manage a game like planetside, yay many years ago.. that had those kinds of numbers.. why don't we see that kind of thing more often? technologically we've moved on quite a bit i should think. and while numbers of 1k or more are probably unreasonable, i think any game that cannot handle 300 active players in a single area, is probably a waste of time. If Planetside 2 does ever get off the ground though, i really hope that they learn mistakes of the past.. .. and don't have giant robots.. those things are only really cool.. if your 8 years old...
I'm 40 and I think giant robots are awesome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhOvbfyyJw
This. It's too bad Planetside is past its prime, but if people had played it they would understand that a lot of their complaints about MMOFPs have answers. The huge battles, the level playing field, etc.
The problems with Planetside's success didn't have anything to do with any inherent problems in the genre. It had to do with SoE's lack of support, advertising, and adding in unbalanced expansion content in order to get people to pay more money to access it.
Top MMOs: Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, EVE Online, Planetside
Played: Pretty much everything at one point or another
Well RPG people don't like aiming for example cause RPGs are about what your character can or cannot do, not you persoanally as a player. If my character has high dexterity (and a bit lucky maybe) he hits, if he has low dexterity (and a bit unlucky maybe) he misses. Check how D&D works if you don't know, which is the base of the RPG genre.
MMOFPSes are a whole different story.
Other reasons people don't like twitch based combat, in general, is that
a) It's very latency dependant. RPGs with either the traditional turnbased combat, or the global cooldowns that we see in current MMOs overcome this.
b) It's much more hackable with the use of aimbots, speedhacking and everything which is bad if you wanna have any sort of PvP combat in your game. On turn-based or global-cooldown based combat there isn't too much to hack in the first place, cause you can only send that much of abilities per second to the server, and the game doesn't require you to do something like aiming, which like you said requires some extra skill.
Just compare the ammount of hacking and the ammount of possible different hacks between Darkfall and WoW's PvP for example. It's not just the "budget", the bigger company, the more years that the game is running, there is this core design difference that makes Darkfall a hackfest and WoW's PvP a fair game. And that's why i personally consider WoW's PvP superior, even though it requires less skill than Darkfall's.
It takes a different kind of skill, and let's face it, neither skill set is earth shattering.
Given the major issues that CCP has with massive scale EVE fleet battles(even with bleeding edge hardware and software), I doubt we are going to see epic ground combat on that scale any time soon. I suspect EVE's shardless system is pushing the limits of what is possible at this tech level. Perhaps in another 5 to 10 years that may change.
Personally I felt the problem was base design's stagnation. Their refusal to change the default base layouts (which even in beta I criticized as feeling too similar to one another) caused the game to gradually decline in fun factor over the years (especially as the faults to each base became apparent.)
I sort of disagree about "unbalanced expansions", at least if you're referring to BFRs. As slow and costly as they were, my typical aircav/infantry role was considerably more effective. Yet players made a huge fuss about this lackluster playstyle. I never could understand it; I think maybe I was too busy taking them out solo (or sometimes in swarms of air vehicles, and sometimes in packs of magriders.)
As for the earlier poster's "why isn't Planetside doing well?" I think the other guy who responded nailed the real reason. The game simply wasn't supported properly. It got some reasonably good content additions for sure, but some of the core issues (default base layouts being bland: both in art and gameplay) went unaddressed throughout the life of the product.
There's that, and there's the fact that fewer players want a PVP game than a PVE game. And fewer players want a game where skill matters (FPS) than one where time investment wins them fights (RPG). The design is inherently less popular than an RPG, and yet it's an amazing genre that I'd return to in a heartbeat (and every time I mention it in games or forums it seems like virtually everyone who played it agrees with me.)
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I just don't have the reflexs to be at the top of those kind of games.
More often then not I'm barred from a lot of neat things, because I just can't keep up. So, they're just not interesting to me.
It is interesting seeing all this talk about Planetside. I never had any idea there was so much depth to what people liked and disliked about the game.
I remember when it was announced, when it came out, etc... the folks I gamed with saw no reason to pay a sub for a FPS game when there were plenty of FPS games to play already.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
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It's hard to explain, but it's just about server processing capability and the fact that you need to check every bullet coordinates on the game with every player coordinates in the game for every time unit on the server, that makes an insane amount of data processing, and thats why fps games are limited to low numbers usually. For example the 32 players in a fps game shoot 1 bullet 1 time that makes 32 bullets, checking 32 bullet against 32 players makes 1024 hit posibilities, this is made fast. But say you have a massive server, 5000 players shooting 1 bullet at same time agaist 5000 players on server that makes 25 million posible hits of bullets against players, I may be wrong, but that makes a lot of data procesing. Thats why mmorpg's combat is usually based on "you select your target and you attack your target" mechanic, becouse when you select it you limit the data processing to just your target.
You guys should check out AARMAII for some nice large scale warfare action. Best combat simulator on the planet in my opinion. You have to have a beefy rig to push framerate though the graphics are ultrarealistic.
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They tried the fpsmmo thing with the NGE in SWG years ago, and we all know how well that worked out. But even today, most mmos have major trouble with lag when you get 100 people or so in a given area. I think we are still a few years away technologically.
Darkfall
My brief experience with Planetside was less than appealing. Horrific even. People circling each other in a declining circle until the other guy froze due to lag giving the other guy chance to shoot him in the back of his head with a shotgun. And that happened more than once, I tell you. The problem wasn't just on my end since I did the same thing to other players. The lag made the game unplayable. (Servers might have been all too far away.)
The mechs firing from outside the draw distance straight to the spawning point didn't help the experience either. Artillery is fine, but beyond draw distance? -Hell no! There was just no way I'd try it past the first day. My first experience was so horrible and I couldn't see them "fixing" the mechs or the lag overnight. Also, I have pretty much zero tolerance for spawncamping which was all too frequent.
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And that is the answer to the question in the original post. There is no "large MMO Twitch Based Shooter" because it doesn't make sense to develop one from a business point of view.
Planetside and APB are hardly good examples for a successful business model.
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