The folks at Firesky have been pretty quiet up until now about their upcoming MMORPG Stargate Worlds. At Comic Con San Diego though, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to try the combat system out for himself and he files this report.

At this year's Comic Con San Diego, no MMORPG had more exposure to the convention center-filling crowd than the upcoming MMORPG from Firesky, Stargate Worlds.

Whether it was the well-situated and busy booth, the water bottles or the sides of busses, it was difficult to come away from the convention without knowing that the first video game based in the Stargate universe (and an MMO no less) would launch in 2009.

Advertising aside, Firesky still had quite an impact at the show, demoing gameplay for the first time to members of the press in a hotel conference room near the convention center. MMORPG.com was there and along with some great video interviews that you will be able to see here at the site over the next week, we also got some hands-on time with the pre-alpha game to get a feel for the game's combat.

Read the whole thing here.

Sounds a bit like Tabula Rasa with the shield in TR being replaced by focus, cover affects damage and mobs circle you.

The combat is very fun in TR though and most MMOs borrow from each other.

Blatant robbery of Tabula rasa combat

Which is good

I liked TR's combat. The only thing that bothered me about it, is the same thing that bothers me about DDO. I absolutely can't stand switching back and forth between different weapons in the middle of a fight just because some developers thought it would be a good way to add strategy to combat.

It doesn't add strategy, it just adds tedium. DDO is horrible about this. I always hated the fact that you had to switch weapons to fight slimes, then switch weapons to fight rust monsters or whatever they're called. I hate that type of combat. It does nothing but promote inventory clutter and takes up spaces on the hotkey bars.

I hope the next generation of MMOs gets away from having 10-20% of the screen cluttered with hotkey bars and various other clutter.

As far as SGW is concerned I hope that it's not like TR. You can say, "TR's combat is strategic because you can use cover", but cover never seemed to make that much of a difference in that game.

I could be wrong, but I just don't see any MMORPG combat system being as fun and engaging as a strategic FPS with a good cover system, i.e. Gears of War or Rainbow Six Vegas.

Stargate is a popular IP and I would hate to see it flop around like a fish out of water because the developers decided to go with a MMORPG/FPS hybrid combat system. It hasn't worked for any other MMORPGs.

To the previous poster, read what your sig says. My note on the matter is. With shared xp in an area whats going to keep leechers from just following you around stealing xp while you do the work?

This video explains a little better of the combat system and the UI, hope this helps.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/39080

TR is weak in comparison based on this description.  TR's combat and cover system was mediocre at best, hopefully SGW takes the combat from TR and makes it fantastic.  Considering this was pre-alpha he was playing, I still have my hopes up for SGW.

Originally posted by Thasri

This video explains a little better of the combat system and the UI, hope this helps.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/39080

 

That video not only cleared up a few of my concerns with the game, but it actually got me pretty hyped up to play the game.

The mini-games look awesome, the UI is fully customizable. The game looks great.

The only downside to me is that the combat seemed slow, but that was also alpha footage of the tutorial combat. Are there any vids out that showcase melee combat?

If they include a halfway decent way to interact socially in the game I'll be totally sold.

Will there be player housing, cities, or anything like that?

Originally posted by Xandramas

To the previous poster, read what your sig says. My note on the matter is. With shared xp in an area whats going to keep leechers from just following you around stealing xp while you do the work?

"I think playing video games is work. Some one might steal from me... I'm going home".

This game looks pretty interesting. When I heard about StarGate being made as MMO about 1 year ago or something my expectations were very low tbh.

Originally posted by Kryogenic

Originally posted by Thasri

This video explains a little better of the combat system and the UI, hope this helps.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/39080

 

 

That video not only cleared up a few of my concerns with the game, but it actually got me pretty hyped up to play the game.

The mini-games look awesome, the UI is fully customizable. The game looks great.

The only downside to me is that the combat seemed slow, but that was also alpha footage of the tutorial combat. Are there any vids out that showcase melee combat?

If they include a halfway decent way to interact socially in the game I'll be totally sold.

Will there be player housing, cities, or anything like that?

 

I agree, this game does look promising.  The one thing I didn't like about the combat was that it still seems to use the older MMO style of combat...instead of say the AoC type of combat where you have more control over the combat itself, its still like Lineage, WoW and such.  I'd like to see a combat system that doesn't have to be full FPS if they don't want it to be (and I can see why they wouldn't want it to be) but they can have a locking system like on some games, where your gun will lock on the closest mob in your site but you have the control to just fire or to take better aim and say take a head shot or leg shot.  I know they don't want to make it full FPS because with online FPS games the good players level while the bad ones don't, its to twitch for an MMO.  My way would level the field a bit, making the combat easier for people who haven't played or are bad at FPS games but at the same time would give the FPS person the chanse to do the head shot or what not.  Also this way every team would have someone who was good at FPS while having people who were good at other thing.

I'm not sure if I explained my combat idea well enough, it sounded good in my head.  I see the combat being more like the games Rogue Trooper or Second Sight (if anyone played these).  I'm still looking forward to the game and hope it lives up to everything Stargate.

There is very little melee combat at all..it is mostly one big firefight. (Thou there are lots of little mini-games for various classes)

There will be no player cities or houses , specially at the beginning....watch the TV show to understand why.

About all i can say at this time.

You can always download the official comic con vids here:

http://torrents.sgwirc.com:8000/

Some of them are really good, got me pretty hyped ;)

They've said in a few interviews that there won’t be player housing but you will have a bank like storage mechanic. As for as the combat they said that they where using traditional MMO mechanics but utilizing cover as an active environment aspect of the combat. There is a lot of the game that is not finished and needing to be tweaked so I'm sure the pace will pick up on combat some time in the future of course that is merely speculative at best at these time, only beta testers know and the dev's.

Bah, just watched the video on Ten Ton Hammer and that made clear to me, that SGW will be the next MMO that fails to deliver. Well, if they are lucky enough it fails only for me and most of the players that play MMOs since Ultima Online day one. If the rest buys it, they might not get bankrupt.

Why do i think so? Cause i havnt seen a single thing in that presentation that shows a big scale, a motivation, or anything that i wanna achieve/do/or fight for. I want to colonize a planet with my gilde and ... insert a myriad of playerinteractions Ultima Online already had that makes MMOs worthwhile playing... SGW will be just another overinstanced grindingmachine with minigames...wohooo.

By the way the same mistake AoC just did. Its nothing in the game the players can do or live for. And for the casual "I wanna advance in lvl and get more purple gear" guys there are already enough games like WOW or LotR out there. Well, as i already said, there might be enough of those to make the devs and publisher a living and with the big liscense maybe even some good money...but for me it doenst sound like a really promising MMO to be honest. More like another one for the Gallery of bad Gamedesign, side by side with City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, Vanguard.. you name it.

Originally posted by Stevesan

Bah, just watched the video on Ten Ton Hammer and that made clear to me, that SGW will be the next MMO that fails to deliver. Well, if they are lucky enough it fails only for me and most of the players that play MMOs since Ultima Online day one. If the rest buys it, they might not get bankrupt.

 

Why do i think so? Cause i havnt seen a single thing in that presentation that shows a big scale, a motivation, or anything that i wanna achieve/do/or fight for. I want to colonize a planet with my gilde and ... insert a myriad of playerinteractions Ultima Online already had that makes MMOs worthwhile playing... SGW will be just another overinstanced grindingmachine with minigames...wohooo.

By the way the same mistake AoC just did. Its nothing in the game the players can do or live for. And for the casual "I wanna advance in lvl and get more purple gear" guys there are already enough games like WOW or LotR out there. Well, as i already said, there might be enough of those to make the devs and publisher a living and with the big liscense maybe even some good money...but for me it doenst sound like a really promising MMO to be honest. More like another one for the Gallery of bad Gamedesign, side by side with City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, Vanguard.. you name it.

Sounds more like mmorpgs are not for you anymore.  Maybe you should return to UO.  Oh, that's right, compared to the list of mmos in your post, it sucks now.  You will never get that "first mmo" feeling again.  Maybe you should remember that this is pre-alpha, doesn't have any "real" testers in it yet, and wait another 8+ months when it is in pre-release to offer your doom prophecy.

Frickin game nay-sayers....

"Sounds more like mmorpgs are not for you anymore."

Yes, all those THEMEPARK MMORPGs that are out there and that are incoming are not for me, that is absolutely correct. But that doesnt count for me and MMORPGs in general. I am just so damn tired of the same handfull of features that are in those games nowadays. If u just use your imagination a bit, there could be so many nice things to be tried in an mmo that the list quickly can grow endless.

All that is done at the moment is to milk licenses. But none of the games that have been released really drove the genre forward. And sorry to throw in Ultima Online again; Compare the featurelist of what u can do in UO and what u can do in any game that came afterwards (exclude AC, Neocron and EVE maybe from that list, and some lowbudget projects), than you must see that all of them were a big step backwards. I am just asking for a step forward, nothing more nothing less. And this process of milking the same concept over and over again will go on  till even the most stupid financial guy found out that its now time to try something new. So you may call me impatient but not  a nay-sayer.

Well we will discuss SGW a few months after launch anyways. I will even press my thumbs for the game, but i doubt that it will be a step forward...

i'm not seeing anything new here.  but then again i'm not into sci-fi mmos, so wouldn't matter anyway.

Originally posted by Stevesan

"Sounds more like mmorpgs are not for you anymore."

Yes, all those THEMEPARK MMORPGs that are out there and that are incoming are not for me, that is absolutely correct. But that doesnt count for me and MMORPGs in general. I am just so damn tired of the same handfull of features that are in those games nowadays. If u just use your imagination a bit, there could be so many nice things to be tried in an mmo that the list quickly can grow endless.

All that is done at the moment is to milk licenses. But none of the games that have been released really drove the genre forward. And sorry to throw in Ultima Online again; Compare the featurelist of what u can do in UO and what u can do in any game that came afterwards (exclude AC, Neocron and EVE maybe from that list, and some lowbudget projects), than you must see that all of them were a big step backwards. I am just asking for a step forward, nothing more nothing less. And this process of milking the same concept over and over again will go on  till even the most stupid financial guy found out that its now time to try something new. So you may call me impatient but not  a nay-sayer.

Well we will discuss SGW a few months after launch anyways. I will even press my thumbs for the game, but i doubt that it will be a step forward...

I've been reading comments like this - the whole "nothing new! same old same old! when will we get (insert laundry list of dream features)" - rant, since literally the dawn of MMOs back in the Meridian 59 era.

Yes, for some people, nothing short of a Star Trek holodeck or the Matrix (not the game, but the actual Matrix) will satisfy them.  Until they can literally remove themselves from their actual life and lead a fully realized virtual one, they will say "not enough"

Still others seem to really just not like the genre.  Whats "new" in FPS games or fighting games or strategy games?  A genre is a genre.  What COULD be "new" really?  Criticism is easy, but I never see anyone articulate what their grand vision of "new" would be in a way that is remotely realistic in terms of implementation.  Yes, human level intelligence on NPCs and completely dynamic living worlds would be nice, but its 2008, not 2080.

The other thing is, what some people mean by "new" is most likely just a totally different genre.  Countless times when I have pushed people to articulate WHAT they want to see, they essentially end up describing an RTS, or an FPS, or what have you, but with some level of persistance.  Thing is, the persistance isnt really adding value to those genres and there are already FINE examples of online multi-player flavors of FPS and RTS that one can play.

I actually work for a developer (not of MMOs, but the comparison applies).  This may be a news flash, but we're not idiots.  We can dream up the same deep future sci-fi scenarios as anyone.  The catch is, we have to actually IMPLEMENT it.  What the web community fails to realize is that 98% of the world population can dream things up.  I know many think thats a skill and makes you a "designer", but it isnt and it doesnt.

You need to "dream up" something that has SOME chance of realistic implementation and then can be backed by a viable business plan.  So yeah, dream away, but reality is reality and to post the same type of comments EVERY release is really the equivalent of yelling "WHY DONT WE HAVE HOVERCRAFTS THAT RUN ON VACUUM ENERGY!!!" on car forums every time a new model is announced.

  Combat exactly like TR.....yah that's a recipe for longevity .  What I see in that vid is utter boredom.  The most exciting part was when the guy decided to run away, that tells you alot.