Do MMOFPS really work? - Page 2

kubacheski · 2011-08-26, 08:49 PM

I keep having a thought that there's a percarious balance that must be achieved with a fully PVP world. I mean there is nothing that is controlled by anything other than people. Imagine how difficult it is to keep everything level/balanced and still have enough variety of content to keep people interested. When things cap in an MMORPG, you increase the levels and put more dragons and zombie kings in to kill. It's an easy progression when people start getting bored. You bleed their subscription money until they're about to leave, then slap on an expansion to keep that sub going. That concept is a lot different in a fully PVP game. Instead of people leaving cause they've got nothing else to kill, they leave cause they start getting a seriously negative kill ratio and simply get tired of being fragged more than they're fragging others.

PERSONAL NOTE: I never cared to monitor my kill ratio, I simply was satisfied that when I shot and killed someone in PS that there was another human being on the other side that probably was hacked off that he just got wacked. Especially from an infil with a loud chainknife when he was zoomed in with his sniper rifle. Man, I loved watching snipers jump up and run around shooting like crazy when they couldn't get out of zoom fast enough. good times. anyway.....

PS tried inserting new content with BFR's and it completely unbalanced the game. Between that and the confusing caves, people said this sux and spent their money elsewhere. The ideas from sony we keep hearing about that are in the development roadmap are things like space travel and sandbox building possibilities. both of which most likely will be built on the resources that are able to be collected at launch. It sounds like they've got some long term content that will be built upon the initial launch foundation.

I've got a lot more hope for the profitability of PS2 after 3 years than PS1 as it seems that sony has learned from their mistakes. That foresight along with the 8 years of balancing a fully PVP FPS for 8 years makes me feel that they may have the right formula for something truly revolutionary. I fully expect to see some PS2 clones showing up after release.

Although it could be that PS2 is simply a testbed for the new engine and they'll get people to pay to test it for it's real purpose - EQNext. Hrmmm......I may be drunk, but I might be on something there. Kinda like how Mythos was developed to test the netcode for Hellgate:London. Then Flagship studios all went to hell when Hellgate:London flopped at launch and the had to sell off Mythos.

Graywolves · 2011-08-26, 09:09 PM

No one else has made an MMOFPS because they're dumb sheep and only copy leading titles. If they bring it up they're like "durr idk sounds risky."

Honestly if you advertise it right you'll be awesome. And it's alot of work. SOE has experience with it so they know what's up, but I'm still fearful they'll try to put in too many mainstream concepts in an attempt to draw in more players, which I feel is like some kind of a mad scientist's experiment where you put alot of things together that just don't belong.

Senyu · 2011-08-26, 09:26 PM

Sad people these days are so focused on the money making.

What happened to providing a service simply to do so and to make a living off it? Instead trying to squeeze every penny from everything good or bad.

If you make a good game, and focused on that instead of your quarterly statement, people will play it. Sad finances, stocks, and more are so powerful they dictate so much.

With that I can understand this is SOE's sink or swim to get big with their games. With PS2 and EQ coming, if they pull it off and make a amazing game that lots of people enjoy playing they will be pretty good off. Lets do our part with PS2 and help polish it to the potential it can go. BRING ON THE BETA!!!

P.S. to above poster, i loved hellgate london. Such a cool idea. Diablo in first person. And had a nice feel to it. Really does need to come back

kubacheski · 2011-08-27, 02:01 AM

Senyu, my comment wasn't to bash the game or anything. I never played, but reviews of the actual gameplay seemed very good. Their problems appeared to come in with an overhyped launch that didn't go anywhere near as planned with server outages, bugs, and other issues. It put a bad light on the game as a whole when it was mostly infrastructure and technology issues, not gameplay. Somewhat akin to PS1 with a weak marketing strategy for a relatively new subscription business model, not to mention EVE and SWG being released in a close timeframe, and then WOW being available when BFR's and core combat expansion came out. Kindof bad timing for its initial release and then the expansion in PS1's case and a little too early in Hellgate's.

It's just interesting that the game engine is being used in PS2 prior to EQNext's release. SOE seems to have the opportunity to test it with the revamp of PS (a game that generated relatively little money and persistent population compared to MMORPG's of the same era) before using it on the next iteration of one of their flagship (and high revenue) game series.

exLupo · 2011-08-27, 03:43 AM

It's really not surprising that nobody has touched a persistent MMOFPS since PlanetSide burned the market. Investors can either back known money makers or risk their shirts on gambles. Unfortunately, PS left a black mark of "MMOFPS = Financial ruin" so it isn't even a gamble. You get some larger field battles in BF, Frontlines, MAG (not a bad game, I don't get the hate) and others but nothing touching PS's launch at with 1,000 fighters per side on a lock and a never-ending struggle.

However, the total mismanagement of the project and its resulting backlash poisoned the pool. Global Agenda sorta but only in the same meta-map sense that MAG uses.

It's easy to see why there hasn't been another attempt since PS and I'm glad that SOE is brave enough to revisit the IP. If it's a success, expect more genre clones in the years to come.

CutterJohn · 2011-08-27, 04:42 AM

Originally Posted by Peacemaker

Very interesting thought honestly. I mean, when you REALLY think about it no one has ever done anything CLOSE to the scale. Battlefield series hosted up to 64 players at a time. That's been the largest number for FPSs since BF1942.

Why does everyone always forget the other mmofps? The first mmofps, ww2ol. Even Higles ignores it in his interviews when he bigs up PS1 by saying its the only mmofps ever.

Oh, and btw, it had probably 100x the land area of PS1. Its map was a 1/4 scale rendering of europe. And far more units and weapons. Actual flight physics. A realistic damage model with vehicle softkills, ricochets. Actual foliage and forests. And lots of continued development(though its release was pretty atrocious).

As for why its never done..

-There are a plethora of multiplayer FPS options out there, with no sub cost. Thats stiff competition.

-Its hard to add carrots that keep people paying without pissing everyone off.

-Its much more difficult to program.

-Its operating costs are higher. More servers, more powerful servers, more bandwidth.

-It absolutely relies on a high population to be successful. Low populations make the game not fun, reinforcing a negative feedback loop as more people leave.

I think SOE can make PS2 a great mmofps. I am less inclined to believe they can make a successful one that will last more than a year or two before its glory fades again.

Crator · 2011-08-27, 10:27 AM

The devs have stated several times that PS1 and PS2 are games they want to play and the driving factor into why they are doing it. SOE is about innovation and PlanetSide is just that, innovative.

DviddLeff · 2011-08-27, 11:58 AM

My thoughts on this are posted on my upgrade project site here.

But the overall failure (compared to say EVE which released the same year) of PS boils down to:

Lack of potential player base FPS
Monthly fee for an FPS game
Under par game mechanics
Poor post release development
Poor graphics

Baneblade · 2011-08-27, 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by Crator

The devs have stated several times that PS1 and PS2 are games they want to play and the driving factor into why they are doing it. SOE is about innovation and PlanetSide is just that, innovative.

SOE doesn't have a spotless track record of innovation

Crator · 2011-08-27, 06:11 PM

What do spots have to do with innovation? I never said anything about spots.

Senyu · 2011-08-28, 03:28 AM

Originally Posted by kubacheski

Senyu, my comment wasn't to bash the game or anything. I never played, but reviews of the actual gameplay seemed very good. Their problems appeared to come in with an overhyped launch that didn't go anywhere near as planned with server outages, bugs, and other issues. It put a bad light on the game as a whole when it was mostly infrastructure and technology issues, not gameplay.

I know, i just saw someone saying how they liked hellgate and i wanted to say it to. Loved how it was randomly generated zones and loot like diablo but in first person with a nice feel to it with the technology and magic it had. The game was unique and its a shame it hasnt been expanded or continued. Gameplay-wise, it was very fun. And I hope it or other games like it come out

Graywolves · 2011-08-28, 05:58 PM

Planetside's graphics are definatley not poor...especially for its time.

Making an MMOFPS is risky, you either get the players or you don't. And even if you do get the players you need to retain them. It's a major investment that requires alot of advertisement. Planetside was really successful briefly and I only happened across it by chance, never heard of it outside the community.

GTGD · 2011-09-03, 04:35 PM

Biggest problems that Planetside had to deal with at its launch, besides lack of advertising:

5) The learning curve was incredibly steep. Not only did you need to learn how your character handled and who was on your team. Each weapon was so unique in Planetside, with their own ammo and handling. Inventory management. Driving and gunning different vehicles. The BASE LAYOUTS, holy shit. What about squads, different certifications?

And to top it all off, it was difficult from players to go from team deathmatch and CTF to a completely objective-based game. Add in the fact that instead of worrying about possibly 15 other people, you had to worry about 300 other people that were all ready to swoop in and plaster you.

4) Speed of the game. You needed to wait 15 minutes for the HART to take you near a battle, if you didn't want to end up somewhere random with Instant Action (for the few who even knew about that feature). Ok, now you're there. What now? You just got killed because you HARTed right into the middle of hotspots and got killed by a reaver. Woah, now you have a respawn screen. Where to spawn? The closest base, that sounds good. Then the person ran about 3 minutes towards the enemy base just to get killed again almost instantly. A few of those deaths with a 30 second respawn timer will frustrate people, especially when they are so far from the battle.

Don't get me started on newbies joining a random outfit and god forbid their squad leaders ask them to wait to plan a raid.

3) The fact that the game was a PC exclusive really hurt the potential sales. This was a time where everyone and their mom owned a PS2, and a smaller nich who loved FPS like Halo owned Xbox. Nintendo fans were fine with their Gamecube. Some people owned the GBA too. But PC gamers? It was a dark time for them. Just the notion of installing a game was rough, as you had to put in serial codes and install them to your hard drive. Keep in mind there was no Steam as Half-Life 2 didn't even come out yet.

What was everyone else doing in this time? Counter-Strike was still extremely popular, and that is where most of the PC gamers were at.

2) The PC requirements were outrageously high. If you were a PC gamer, it was still difficult to run this game. I had a bit of an older, hand me down desktop. I upgraded the graphics card and RAM (not knowing the game was heavily CPU reliant) and it didn't make a huge different. In the pop locked battles, I got a whopping 15fps. It basically made the game unplayable as I watched a slideshow unfold as enemies charged through the doors and slaughtered everything in sight, including me. The fact is, you needed to invest quite a few hundred, if not over $1000 to make this game playable on the higher settings. For those who played with subpar rigs, it put them at a disadvantage. Many of the "elite" PS players at the beginning simply had amazing computers that allowed them to react faster and more smoothly to threats. It alienated a lot of PC gamers who would play Counter-Strike on their crappy old PCs fine, but be at a disadvantage on PS.

1) Nobody wanted to pay a subscription, especially at $13 a month, to play an online game. The only people who payed an online sub before that played Everquest, or were on Xbox Live (first console online infrastructure). Quake, Counter-Strike, and countless other games were free to play minus the cost of the game. People didn't understand that the games were constantly updated (though funny enough, they had a point lol). And $50 for a game plus $13 a month meant that they were paying almost $200 for the first year of the game. They could buy 4 brand new games for that much, or they could play Planetside at 15fps. What is the obvious choice? Subs really limited PS from day 1, and although I know they were necessary because of the scale of this game, it was a huge problem. Especially talking to people who played for the first time with free trials or during the reserves program when borrowing another account.

Lartnev · 2011-09-11, 07:52 AM

I think it's harsh to call PlanetSide a failure given that it is still going today even if it didn't live the dream. Plenty of MMO games have been and gone in its lifetime.

Why make any game an MMO in the first place? Well the two things I can think of are size (lots of people playing together) and persistence (what you achieved yesterday is still there today).

The unlock systems of FPS games such as Battlefield 2 have covered some of what you would expect from persistence. However another aspect is if a guild in an MMORPG takes down King Imabadman in a MMORPG you can't take that away, its their accolade for the lifetime of the game. If you take a base in PlanetSide there's every chance that tomorrow it might be in somebody else's hands.

EVE Online suffers a similar problem: When you gain sovereignty you have to be able to secure it so that it'll still be there tomorrow, otherwise why bother taking it? At least if an alliance takes a system they can actually take credit for it as opposed to an outfit just happening to be in a base at the time of a hack.

Therefore it's important that an MMOFPS gives credit publicly and records achievements made by both individual players and to groups of players. It could be something as simple as bases taken by outfit x today, player y hacking the base's console last, or even squad z filled 3 NTUs this morning. It's just statistics but at least a player can point to yesterday's play session and say "I achieved that" even if the battlefield has shifted back today.

When you think of thousands of players playing together at a time it sounds brilliant but the trick is reinforcing that during the game. How do you know there's 300 players assaulting your base when you're inside defending a corridor and only see one or two squads attacking? How do you know that your fellow outfits have achieved gains on the other side of continent and that the enemy are pushing on another? Somehow an MMOFPS has to make the player feel part of something much bigger than 16 v 16. Perhaps that's through better reporting of progress or by making it easy to co-ordinate a 20 tank assault with combined air and infantry support. More recent MMORPGs have adopted open party systems and invasions to make players get more involved on a larger scale.

Another size differentiator is the size of the maps. In a standard map teams have standard starting points and have a small area to fight in. In an MMOFPS you can allow attacks from different angles and fighting in between. I think this is why bridge battles in PlanetSide are so fondly remembered. The choke point allowed large numbers to build up, they were outside so all players can see the scope of the battle, and they happened almost by accident between the bases which added to the variety.

So in short yes, I think you can make an MMOFPS work.

Tigersmith · 2011-09-12, 09:48 AM

Lets not bring up MAG in a MMOFPS discussion its not even close. Yes you did have 256 players on 1 map. But you only saw 15-20 people in your section of the map at any one time. Believe me you never felt like you were in a massive battle. EVER.

Mag is awful. I have it for ps3 and I will never play it again.