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General: The MMOFPS Can Rival the MMORPG
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
In this week's Devil's Advocate, Drew Wood takes a look at the MMOFPS and the stigma surrounding this relatively new breed of MMOs. Can the MMOFPS rival the MMORPG in terms of size, scope, and depth? The Devil's Advocate thinks it's possible.
The MMOFPS genre is continuing to grow every day. While ambition seems to be higher than output on some days, many forthcoming games have the ability to rival the same sort of massive-elements that many MMORPGs use to great effect. But let's start with the shooter as a genre. We all know the big boys of the genre, at least if you pay attention to the video game world outside of the MMO industry. Call of Duty has blown up in the last few years, when 4 dropped and Modern Warfare was born. The game garnered nothing short of a hardcore following, so badly so that I can't pop into Black Ops multiplayer without consistently getting my ass handed to me by these players who play for 8 or 9 hours a day and don't venture to other games. That's hardcore MMO player territory.
Read more of Drew Wood's The MMOFPS Can Rival the MMORPG.
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Comments
There are a number of really good MMOFPS. Some of them even have politics, which is the most awesome thing in an MMO. Face of Mankind for example. However, I left it because of the community, which can be awesome but sucked at that point. Another one is Neocron, which, ten years all is in many respects years ahead of any other other MMO. It has some perofmance issues and the geaphics are not the best (howewver there are enhancements provided by the community!) and best of all: It's free to play. Then there are two others. Planetside, which is for people who love action and Fallen Earth. I don't know about Huxley.
I think there aren't any other real MMOFPSs. The rest is just instance and small scale stuff. This isn't bad, but to me MMO means that there can be lots of players on a single spot and there is a certain amount of persistence.
I would have rather seen an increase in MMOFPS games than these MOBA's.. Maybe one of these FPS games should throw a big streamed tournament online so it will get these aspiring professional gamers would take notice ,jump right in and get other companies to notice..
My vote goes to Team Fortress 2.. We need more "class" based team combat.. There is also a game on steam called Monday Night Combat which is ripe for competition..
Planetside was probably the best attempt at an open persistant FPS. The problem was Sony never supported the game or continued development. They had a great basis and just got lazy.
Adding more tools, more customization and more content would have made that game the standard. Hopefully they build that out for PS2.
I have no doubt that a developer will find the key ingredients to making a mmofps with the success factor of WoW. There is a huge market of FPS players just waiting to be lured into an addictive hampster wheel style game. First one to balance the mechanics of an FPS with the time consumption of an MMO wins and probably wins big.
After my dissapointment with the current state of PvP in the vast mojority of MMO games, I welcome the trend towards the MMOFPS, particularly against the 'themepark' style games.
MMOFPS may not measure up in terms of persistence, playstyle or variety against a 'sandbox', but I think it can compete or even better the current crop of themeparks. Hell, it's just a themepark but with working PvP!
MMOFPS is certainly a valid playtype. The problem that I see is that many recent games have tried to merge the two.. providing "twitch" skills in a traditional MMORPG... and for me personally it has pretty much been failure after failure.
So I hope that the MMOFPS genre grows on it's own... and PS2 is a success and spawns other true MMOFPS games... and allows MMORPGs to go back towhat they do best.
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I don´t think there is much rivalry between MMORPG and MMOFPS. I agree with Slapshot: if it requires some good MMOFPS to make good MMORPGs, then it might be a win-win.
The better topic in my opinion would be: Can MMOFPS rival FPS?
Planetside was P2P, while most FPS Players only knew B2P or even cracked games.
One can hope Activision/EA will milk the playerbase with mappacks, weapons etc when they release Battlefield 3/Modern Warfare 3. So that many FPS-players get sick of the milking and think about trying a subscription-based shooter. Add to this some smart marketing by SOE, sort of "What? Your Shooter only can 32vs32? How about 100 vs 100 vs 100?" and Planetside 2 might succeed.
Uh, what? Sony supported the game just fine. There were many patches and additions to the game in the years I played. But after a few years, the game began to run out of steam/BFRs killed it/whatever, and naturally their development cash went in to other projects.
But please don't say Sony never supported Planetside. That's just blatantly untrue. BFR's? (love 'em or hate 'em) Couple of expansions?
And PS is still the best PvP experience I have ever had in online gaming. Although World of Tanks is pretty good too.
Until the MMOFPS genre is capable of providing fluid combat, e.g., Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty, it will never rival basic MMOs.
Every MMOFPS I've played so far has been extremely clunky. Not fun at all. Either the technology just isn't there or the devs are just not as experienced.
I dont see how its any different than third person mmos. You can even zoom out to third person. The real difference is twitch vs macros. And obviously there are a number of decent twitch based mmos out there, darkfall, fallen earth, apb. No they arent AAA, but thats because they are different and most people dont like to change.
It would cater to a partly different audience. I believe that a large part of MMORPG gamers are new to PC games in general and wouldve never played a FPS game for long. From my friends there are several who are not even able to play using w,a,s,d movement. They never strafe and always use the mousebuttons to move forward. Having to aim at mobs is just annoying to them.
On the other hand it could attract players that were not interested in MMORPG's untill now because it lacked twitchbased combat. But the MMOFPS would have to offer more features then just FPS combat to have a huge amount of subs.
Go play PS or WWIIOnline. While WWIIOnline is slower then the games you mention is still provides fluid and dynamic combat. Oh the fun monent I had. Remember my first kill, bombaring a city being a gunner on a ship and killing hell of a lot of enemies while my tank was imobilized in a ditch leading onto a town good times.
PlanetSide is more of a faster paced version of WWIIonline (or WWIIonline a slower pased version of PS). Both are rather tactical fluid shooters, the benifit that WWIIOnline had was the fact that tanks and the likes had different spots you could hit them and disable them. I am happy the PS2 will also feature this.
I do not think that the fast paced combat of COD and such games would work as a MMO. It might work in urban envoirments, but not in open field combat.
Playing a halfassed shooter in an MMO environment is not that fun,
I don't think that the MMOFPS can rival the MMORPG, but that the MMOFPS will rival the MMORPG. The bottom line is that many people are just tired of the same old boring tab targetting system, and a more action-paced style of MMO is destined to attract that entire dissatisfied segment of gamers.
The way I see it, the MMO genre is in the same position that the strategy genre was 15 years ago, or that the single-player RPG genre was a few years ago. We're about to move away from the old "turn based" model and move into the new "Real time" model.
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Many patches and additions? Try 2 expansions in 8 years, Core Combat and Aftershock and if you ever went to the PS forums you would know what the community thought of them.
Players wanted more CQB so they made Core Combat which totally failed because the design sucked. Aftershock, nobody asked for big robots, so not sure where that came from, but what it managed to do was give garbage players an overpowered crutch. That is what killed the game when someone who barely had a 50/50 k/d went 100/1 by using a BFR.
Stop taking things literally and look at the big picture. Relatively speaking SOE failed to support PS, just look at how many content patches/expansions EQ and EQ2 had compared to PS.
If they wanted to keep the FPS market interested that takes alot of work, because after 2 years your eye candy has become an eye sore so your content better be on point.
there is one thing that will stop most mmofps:
helios / artificial aiming, if they dont have a valid protection against it, games most likely will fail. sad but true, that sucker screws the best games :<
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I agree with this. I'm hoping Dust 514 brings the same scale and scope as EVE to the FPS genre. And who can deny that Oblivion style combat in a persistant mmo environment wouldn't be the best thing ever?
I think the MMOFPS is the natural evolution of this genre. Both Online RPGs and FPSs are very popular, and for many of the same reasons. Each has adopted mechanics from the other over the years. I don't think any of the hybrid games that have come out in the past few years have been very good, mostly due to combat mechanics. But I think a really good one is due out shortly and it's gonna rock our socks off.
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I actually think MMORPG's and FPS games are growing towards each other, and soon to meet in the middle.
FPS games are developing into consistent online worlds, deeper lore, more character customization, etc.
MMOs have been growing steadily more solo-friendly and less concerned with roleplay for at least the last decade.
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I agree with other posters sentiments
I feel like MMORPG's and MMOFPS's will merge at some point
lots of people enjoy both role playing / quests as well as reactive fast paced combat.. (death to auto attack / tab targeting ;p)
We already have games that are MMOFPS and MMORPG combined. This isn't a future thing, it's happening now.
Ahh good deal.. whats a couple of the better ones.. I'm just dipping my toes into mmo's atm
nothing too serious right now going on ;p
I'm currently playing Global Agenda because you can lvl to max from nothing but PvP and it's just as fast (if not faster) than questing.
It is very easy to compete with the mmorpg because there has been pretty much complete failure besides WoW.
This is why I laugh at the people who say we are ruining the MMORPG genre with our criticism.
Uhh.. Well then, I think you have found the one single line that, without directly saying so, points out that you are hardly a gamer, that you are first time on the internet, and that you are actually mentally retarded.
Congratulations, I don't think anyone will ever top you on that. You should put it in a signature and troll around other forums some more just to spread your amazing discovery.
Anyway, I think we can use more combat mechanisms found in FPSs in MMORPGs. With the aiming, the first person view and the potential and adrenaline rush of sudden victory or defeat.
Rather than clicking and having your character run to that monster and start swinging at it, then waiting until it is dead, and repeating... You would more so feel yourself running in that forest, hear the monsters, see them and start blasting and hope that it doesnt run you over or your bullets run out before its down.
I also rather games where you click to swing your weapon, or press a button to do it, so you can actually be more part of it as a gamer. I don't care about repetitive strain injury, I grew immunity. Not just watch your character moving and killing on a macro or with just a few clicks. That gets stupidly boring.