The MMOFPS could be our next great obsession

Um... didn't Sony release Planetside as a MMOFPS? I thought the idea of MMOFPs has been around

My friend talks about Planet Side all the time, isn't that a MMOFPS?

Yeah, PlanetSide is a MMOFPS... it has its moments but overall it's too flawed to play.

Yes, but its not as popular as others could be.
MMOFPS could be the next great thing. REAL Clan warfare instead of just regular clan warfare. Your clan could have its own city and its own economy.

Wow. Yeah, I'd LOVE an MMOFPS game!

Screw economy and crap, how about a massive war, like a real war game with people on both sides that go into real battles and when you die you don't just come back but either go back to the "main map" or wait till the battle is over. Most people prob. would disagree with that, but people tend to be a little less careless with their "lives" when they have to sit out when the die.

I've always wanted to fight a more realistic war (without actually joining the army) and this would be awesome, you could join special teams to attack bases in real time, ohh the possibilities. This is the kind of stuff next gen games should be made to do.

Own city, hell, that would kick so much ass. I'd definately play, unless the game sucks when it releases.

But then there's the problem of an elite few starting an elite group and owning everything... but that would lead to clan alliances...

kick ass

Damnit! That's my idea!

Screw the whole sitting out idea, altough it does make people less careless. There should be some sort of penalty for getting killed though, not just respawn in 10 seconds.

I was able to take part in the beta test of a MMOFPS game called Endless Ages a few years ago. That was ridiculously fucking addictive.

Finally, I've been wanting something like this ever since i played the Planetside beta like 3-4 years ago. I loved that game, but couldnt justify the monthly fee (I was younger then). Planetside just didnt get enough love. Anyway, I'll be the first in line if another good one comes out.

what about console MMOFPS games? im thinking Revoluton...

one word : griefers

It's harder than it looks, mostly because part of what makes MMORPGs work is the social glue, which there usually isn't room for in an FPS.

It's doable, but I'm not sure if it'll be as successful.

Planetside is such a horrible MMOFPS, it's too laggy and you'll get killed so freakin often it's just ridiculous. Not to mention the ridiculous control scheme which makes it nearly damn impossible to kill a damned thing.

Planetside is a terrible game, period.

Lansing says: "Screw economy and crap, how about a massive war, like a real war game with people on both sides that go into real battles and when you die you don't just come back but either go back to the "main map" or wait till the battle is over. Most people prob. would disagree with that, but people tend to be a little less careless with their "lives" when they have to sit out when the die.

I've always wanted to fight a more realistic war (without actually joining the army) and this would be awesome, you could join special teams to attack bases in real time, ohh the possibilities. This is the kind of stuff next gen games should be made to do."

dude, i've thought of this EXACT same thing. i've even thought that when you die maybe that character never comes back to life. like maybe you have 10 minutes or something to come loot your old body witha fresh new character, but the character that died is really just gone.

and maybe instead of levelling up, your rank increases. there could even be more than 2 sides... think 3 or 4, all in one war against eachother. the story line could contain temporary alliances, etc.

only i'd want it to be in 3rd person, not first. i'm glad to see i'm not the only one who's thought of this.. maybe our wish will come true and it will happen :-D.

mmm want to join in a realistic war... wasn't that the aim of World War 2 online... and why no one really liked it? (among other reasons)

MMOFPS? Like... Battlefield 2? :)

There is a game in the progress of being made called 1944 D-Day (http://www.1944online.com/) which is attempting to be a complete recreation of the invasion of Normandy over a 160km x 160km area. The developer is focusing on developing an amazingly massive AI system, but at this time the engine supports up to 512 people in one net server. They will have vehicles (tanks, airplanes, etc...) and a realistic command system.

The really neat thing is that to promote their commercial game they are developing a HL2, BF2 and possibly a UT mod on a smaller scale.

"like a real war game with people on both sides that go into real battles and when you die you don't just come back but either go back to the "main map" or wait till the battle is over."

"dude, i've thought of this EXACT same thing. i've even thought that when you die maybe that character never comes back to life. like maybe you have 10 minutes or something to come loot your old body witha fresh new character, but the character that died is really just gone."


As noble as these ideas may seem, they simply aren't a fun model to play within, World of Warcraft is a testament to this fact.

I too have thought of something very similar but it came to me after the release of battle field 2. I found myself thinking, what if this was an MMO? What if you could go off of the edges of the current map to different battle fields, where it was one massive line of battle accross a massive virtual world, where the line is pushed back and forth constantly. Where an over veiw of the battle is always veiwable and it becomes also the biggest stratergy game ever, with even planned battles. If it hung on to the stratergy offered by Battle Field 2 currently it would truly be a great game.

"As noble as these ideas may seem, they simply aren't a fun model to play within, World of Warcraft is a testament to this fact."

exucse me??

a) WoW is NOTHING like what i think either myself or Lansing were invisioning

b) even if it were, what the hell do you mean? WoW is massively popular and considered successful in pretty much every area MMOs are rated by.. so i don't think it's a testament to anything not being a "fun model to play within".

lastly, i think it would be EXTREMELY fun, if executed correctly. i think it's the best game concept i could hope for.

Unfortunately, the idea of the MMOFPS will never work. The main draw of FPS is that everyone is on even ground and skill is the only thing that matters. The main draw of MMORPG is that you can build a character over time who becomes more powerful the more time you spend. The core elements of these two genres do not allow for a good combination.

What you can get is an MMORPG with FPS combat, which is nothing more than a gimmicky method of combat. Basically, lower levels would have pistols while higher levels would have BFG 2000s.

Or, you could try a FPS with a MMO persistent online world, which is basically fluff. So what if your clan has a city? You get to be defender on a CTF game or a DM game, big whoop. When people play FPS, they except the ability to go on for a quick game and then log off; requiring any type of marathon gaming session will turn people off.

i beg to differ, Uy Tran.

in my opinion, the addition of FPS gameplay to an MMO could do nothing but add to the experience. i think on of the major things that's lacking in MMOs (and probably the reason that i have yet to take the plunge into one) is actual action gameplay. that is to say, more of an ability to actually control your character. i don't know about you, but games in which you click an enemy to engage in combat, then sit back and watch as your character fights are extremely boring.

if i'm going to live in a full online world, and participate in a full online society, i'd like to be able to have maximum control over my avater. and clicking around for specific actions just really doesn't do that for me. it's the reason i never got into NWN (yes i know NWN isn't an MMO, but same idea).

i think that Huxley, or other games that follow, will be my gateway into the wonderful world of MMOs.

The problem with merging these two types of games (FPS, MMORPG) is that they are in fact two different types of games. FPSes usually has many short rounds, MMOs have sessions that can last well over 6 hours; FPSes start everyone at the same basic level, MMOs have players at different levels and strengths; FPSes are mostly about skill (dodging and rocket jumping and yes, even spawn camping), MMOs are much more strategy-based (which mob will we pull, who's on healing, who's on manna, you're going to tank, etc).

I played PlanetSide's beta when it was out and initially thought there was a lot of potential, that it was only lacking a significantly large user base (traveling 5 minutes to a contested area only to find that the battle was already over was my biggest peeve). Yes, there was lag, but you always have lag, regardless of the game type. Griefers were only a relatively small part of the overall experience. To be fair, this may have changed recently; I don't know, because I couldn't justify the monthly cost in comparison to the hundreds of free HL, CS and Quake servers out there.

One problem with large-scale FPSes is marshalling troops and communicating strategy. It's hard enough to do so with a well-knit CS team. It's doubly-hard in games like Tribes 2, where you have team members joining and leaving every round. How do you select a leader? How many people is that leader responsible for? How do seperate groups of the same team (squads, platoons) communicate and get issued instructions? What kind of accountability does that squad have if it fails or ignores an assigned task? A real military has these problems solved, but I don't think anyone is going to pay a monthly fee that comes with the potential for a court-martial. Also note that these "leaders" don't have to be subscribed players; they could be in-game NPCs, or game employees directing battles.

It's not so much about respawning after dying on the front line; this is a problem that has already been solved. And I don't see a barrier from the perspective of social interactions: MMOs have guilds that form from people who choose to combat with each other; the military creates bonds between squad members because they're ordered to fight with each other. If grouping was artificially limited to a subset of the population, social bonds would still form.

The biggest problem I see with merging these two game types is the Han Solo effect: everyone wants to be the hero, the guy who pulls off the dramatic, battle-shifting move that changes a defending team into offense. Honestly, who here would volunteer to be cannon fodder? Not many, because it's hard to reward that kind of action. Not everyone can be a general at the same time; someone's got to get up and run and try to take out that pillbox. You see this a lot (ironically) in large multi-guild raids in games like DAoC, in the frontiers, but these generally turn into wars of attrition with no individual contributor recognition (except for the 8 guys who successfully snagged the relic).

This is a huge opportunity for an enterprising online developer, and I'm still surprised that no one has taken the task: create a skills-based FPS capabable of supporting hundreds of simultaneous players that has a persistant hirarchiacal chain-of-command that you players can move up in (or not, if they're casual FPS gamers) in a persistant environment that appropriately rewards all actions (pilots that take out the bridge, grunts that hold the line, corporals that take the hill, and generals that win a battle). PlanetSide came close, but the lack of enforced command structure really hurt, IMO.

gilbert:

"This is a huge opportunity for an enterprising online developer, and I'm still surprised that no one has taken the task: create a skills-based FPS capabable of supporting hundreds of simultaneous players that has a persistant hirarchiacal chain-of-command that you players can move up in (or not, if they're casual FPS gamers) in a persistant environment that appropriately rewards all actions (pilots that take out the bridge, grunts that hold the line, corporals that take the hill, and generals that win a battle). PlanetSide came close, but the lack of enforced command structure really hurt, IMO."

yes, but why can't that be done in an MMO setting? then it just take place in a big continuous world rather than in a single game.

all of those elements could work equally well in either setting, and i'd prefer to paly them out in an MMO setting.

one reason being.. after you play CTF on a map a couple dozen times, it gets repetative. if the same scenerios take place in a full world, where those bridges that are taken out stay in pieces (until, perhaps, they are repaired). i think it would create a much more immersive war experience. and that could only be more fun.

Rare Hare said:

"yes, but why can't that be done in an MMO setting? then it just take place in a big continuous world rather than in a single game."

Because it's *not* an MMORPG. It's not even an FPS, really. The article is talking about something else, something new(-ish): an MMOFPS.

Remember that the only thing that makes Everquest and DAoC and WoW MMORPGs is that there are many, many people in them. Failing that fact, they're just RPGs (role-playing games, with stats and races and party members and encounters and dungeon crawls and so on).
Add hundreds of thousands of people and you have a massively-multiplayer RPG. Put it on the Internet and you have a massively-multiplayer *online* RPG. But at it's core, it's an RPG, and these are strategy (and dice-roll) based: where do you stand to maximize your range for the mana bolt? How do your tanks taunt most effectively? What's the drill if a train-pull shows up?

Now, take the FPS: kill or be killed. It's skill- and speed-based; your progression through Half-Life has nothing to do with what armor class you're wearing or what level you are, but how well you can jump over these crates and how fast you react with your crowbar to a headcrab. Throw in a bunch of additional players and you have a deathmatch (or if you're playing, say, Serious Sam, a collaborative story arc). The round is 3 minutes long, and at the end of it, you start over with the same weapons and a level playing field. You don't always have time to line up the perfect mortar round, but when you do it's spectacular.

These are two different types of gameplay. I don't think merging them is going to be easy.

Again with the dead horse (but there aren't any other examples, really), PlanetSide had your basic FPS in an MMO setting, with persistance of objects (bases instead of your bridges, but essentially the same thing): why did it fail? It wasn't for lack of server capacity or open space or too few vehicles or no classes; it had all of those, and then some. PlanetSide (I believe) had in it's beta a very effective way to cut back on team killing (probably the best way I've ever see to date). How could it not capture the FPS market?

I think the answer is that there was too much for the casual FPS player. It's a pain to choose your class and armor type, then to spend your points into upgrades or enhancements and then meet up with your squad and dropship out into the world just for an hour or two a day of senseless mayhem. When I fire up UT2003 I want to get into the mix right away, blow some stuff up, and get out; anything else isn't really worth my time. For me, an FPS is shooting things, not keeping track of my stats and flag caps and comparing it to other people. If I want to worry about the back-end numbers on the game I'm playing, I'll start DAoC again.

Info from Webzen on Huxley states that "...Each character requires good strategies and cooperation to achieve victory." I'm not sure that your average FPS player is going to sit still for this while paying for it (although I'd really, really like to be proven wrong on this; Huxley might be all that and a can of beans). This quote is particularly scary: "As the characters grow, players are able to gain more enhanced, out-of-this-world weapons and new skills that make winning easier..." I interpret this to mean if I'm not willing to grind through the game for 10 hours a day, then when I go into the PvP areas I'm going to get smacked down on my face in no time flat. Why would I pay for that? This sounds more and more like an MMORPG viewed in first-person.

I look forward to Huxley's launch in 2006/Q3, and I sincerly hope that I find it an enjoyable game where I can spend some (or all, if it's really good) of my free time with it. Until then, I'll find a 64-person Tribes 2 server with 63 people on it and dream.

"Because it's *not* an MMORPG. It's not even an FPS, really. The article is talking about something else, something new(-ish): an MMOFPS. "

ummm. ok? the acronym 'MMORPG' never ocne escaped my fingertips. i said 'MMO'. no RPG to be seen anywhere.

either read the comment in full or don't bother replying to it with some answer that goes off on a tangent about a point no one made.

There also endless ages, its an mmofps thats free to play with limitations, but it doesnt have the greatest graphics and is still a bit buggy. Although it was released about a month and a half after planetside, I think it was in beta before planetside.

The only real problem with Planetside was that it was a monthly subscription. Why pay for an FPS when there are 50 other FPS with free internet servers you can play on whenever you like.

Most of the people in Planetside liked the organizing with teamates. Nothing more satisfying in Planetside then dropping three ten men squads onto a base from the air and taking out all the defenders.

I think if any MMOFPS is going to succede it needs to take the Guild Wars format and not cost money to play every month.