The main problem with "massive" scale combat, be it FPS or MMO, is that each person becomes less and less important and has less impact.

It can become a real numbers game. 20 highly skilled players against 50 average players will still lose. I'd like large scale battles, but where you get to fight in mini-battles and make a difference - not feel like you've been outnumbered (or outnumber your enemy) in every fight.

I played the original planetside and enjoyed it. I did get bored of it quite quickly because all of the places to go were exactly the same 3 things over and over. There were some great moments of 60-70 of my side against 60-70 of another, then the third faction turned up to flank everyone. Great fun!

My favourite game of all time is UT. I loved the fast action and the varied use of weaponry - some prediction, some hitscan and some combination effects.

However, since CS did so well and the likes of CoD have become a mainstream money making machine, ALL FPS seem to be "realistic" weapons, with random accuracy, recoil, etc. ALL OF THEM!!

I'm amazed that nobody has stepped into the gap which filled the lives of Quake and UT fans of fantasy FPS, with shots going where you shoot, no recoil and creative weaponry (and dodging!)

I briefly saw a Planetside video and I was hugely disappointed to see that it looks like Planetside has gone "Commercial". Yet another FPS with the same weapons, random shots and recoil. Is this definitely going to be the case?

I think its about time someone made a character server and allow them (technically) to seamlessly move between servers. This will be how they are doing the W v W v W fights.

Possibly also a hacking threat!

I hope this is correct. It would be good to constantly be shifting between weapons depending upon the situation - a bit like you would in quake, etc.

Alternatively, if it doesn't work out like that. It could just be 1111211123111111 which would get boring very quickly!

How about this animation.

Realistically, I don't think the SWTOR animations are great and there are a lot of pauses. But it certainly feels better when playing it rather than watching videos of the animation.

Does anyone know if the last build was in debug mode? There should be a lot of efficiency improvements as soon as all that debug information has been removed.

I think restricting colours to this is a good idea as then eventually, the colours will reflect the personalities of the players. However, having the best items being all light or all dark would force players into the problem the OP mentions.

One thing I noticed is that if you're in a guild, they will pick a server for you. I would expect that this means that they will be able to balance the servers in player numbers.

My experience is that the "evil" side are usually better at PvP... which is why i choose the good side. I like a good challenge!

Originally posted by Dyner

 

@NinjaGaz

PVP:

You do know it's human nature to stack the odds in your favor. Even in WoW's Arena System the healers get alpha-ed (aka 2v1,3v1,5v1) because anyone smart enough to pvp knows that if the healer goes down you've almost certainly won.

To date I have only been in 7 true 1v1 pvp fights. I count true 1v1 fights as the opponent was out looking for a fight and not "oh you're low on health; lemme help you with that!". However, I have been in countless fights of 1v2+ (Gank Squads). In fact, there is no game (MMO, RTS, or FPS) that I've played where the other side didn't gang up on one player.

Questing:

What would be a genuinely entertaining system? You have your choice of "Defend This", "Escort That", "Collect/Gather This", and "Kill Those".

You're right that its human nature to try to alter the battles in your favour, through ganging up or perhaps uneven levels/gear. The dream, for me, is that one day someone can help to remove this imbalance through the game (Restricting the imbalance). I find that PvP (or in general, competitive gaming vs other players) is most rewarding when fights are balanced and you come out on top. Even just to lose, to have fought well is still a rewarding feeling.

In reality, I mainly got this from playing games such as Unreal Tournament, where you had many 1v1s, 2v1s, 1v2s with pretty much equal footings (armour/weapon dependent) but then also the factor of the teamplay. To win (or compete well) in your individual battles is rewarding and to do some great teamplay is even more rewarding!

A lot of PvP games have started to focus on these Epic battles, but inevitably it ends up being zerg vs zerg and there's no skill there either. Open world is always open to ganking, etc. Perhaps they need to look at changing the way kills work, e.g. rewarding XP for the amount of health taken off an opponent before they die (so ganking someone at 20% is of little benefit, so is 5 people attacking someone at 100% health) and having it being more encouraging to attack someone of a higher level and very discouraging to attack someone of a lower level.

Who knows, but trying something different and getting the rewarding feeling for a kill would be the way to make a truely great PvP game.

This game is for the True Hardcore MMO Gamer and they will pride themselves on that! They are no carebears, they are the best of the best!

Actually, to normal folk,  the True Hardcore MMO Gamer is one of those people that will happily grind all day that a non-gamer would Literally not last one minute doing. They'll grind for that 0.1% improvement and all that wood and gold. Then lose it all after being ganked by 6 other people.

Do not fear for the True Hardcore MMO Gamer though, for he has nothing else to do and can start again all over tomorrow. In fact, he and his Hardcore friends will be ganking 6 vs 1 tomorrow to gather a stash of goods!

The 6 vs 1 is irrelevant, of course, because the game involves skill! Skill to destroy your opponents (oh, and stats which you have grinded (and grinded (and grinded)) for!

Enough of that. In the end darkfall was a baaad game. It suits a certain type of gamer, but would be completely unrewarding for anyone that is unable to dedicate a large part of their week to it. Its really just not worth it.

I like the idea of open world PvP, but it inevitably ends up being about uneven numbers and not 1v1. The day someone invents an MMO with a genuinely entertaining questing system and a PvP system that actually encourages skill and teamplay over ganking and stats... and we might just have a WoW beater. Its probably not going to happen (Well... maybe until Blizzard's next game?)

I think that the massive thing that the old MMOs have over the new ones... is simply that they were new to the player. UO was very different to any other game I'd played and it was exciting to play in a world filled with all these players. Every experience was new and exciting.

10 years or so later, and anyone who is old enough to have played UO has done it or seen it before. I don't think you can quite get the same feeling from a dungeon, etc once you've been in 500 other dungeons. Killing 10 bears in 1999 was much more fun than 10 bears in 2009.

That's one of my main gripes with games these days. They all are pretty much the same. Areas like crafting/careers have never been developed well and there is still no game which has amazing PvP. I think following the same formula as every one will bring relative success, but nobody will truely excel until they find something special in their game.

I have 2 points to the OP...

Firstly, its not a great idea to abandon a game before you've even played it. Even to me this game seems like every other MMO ever, but with more story to it. I'm still likely to buy this one anyway to see if a great story can be the missing link. I do play solo a lot and like to raid/PvP in teams, so perhaps a story may make the game great. But my preconceptions may mean nothing by the time that I play it. It might turn out to be so different its amazing, or it could be absolutely awful.

Secondly, this is why games companies shouldn't release info on their games when like 3 years to go. A brief announcement of a game at 1 year to go, then ramping up the marketing when the game is ready to beta test is the best thing. Get people really keen and excited to buy it, then release it. Don't drag it on for 3 years to the point that we know everything about the game anyway and that excitment has long been lost.

I'll be honest, I didn't read all of the posts and ideas thoroughly, but what I did read sums up why I just don't get excited much by MMOs any more :( There are no new ideas! Its just the same thing with a twist every time (Sometimes no twist - Aion! :))

MMOs seem to still be in the industrial age - its all gather and build. Its time to move things on!! Here are some ideas that anyone is welcome to steal! I think they could change the whole trading/economic side so that it is interesting, different and actually useful!

Player Contracts

An economy for all player levels can be built based around contracts. There would be 2 types of contract, Private & Public. Private are the same as public but are offered directly to individuals (usually to give them a better deal) or public contracts are available via a bulletin board, or similar.

The idea is that you would pay people for gathering items for you. You specify price, quantity per contract, number of contracts and time frame, e.g. 5 contracts for 20 wood paid at 1 gold (1 day). Players can view the bulletin, pay a 20% deposit (20s) and accept the contract. They must then gather 20 wood within 1 day or lose their contract & deposit. If you have the 20 wood immediately, you can complete the contract immediately and take your cash.

It would work for all items, so Newbie A, B & C collects for a wood for Intermediate A, who then provides joists for Expert A, who builds Catapults for Warlord A.

It provides guaranteed funds and its different

Auction House change / Shops

How are there not shops?? Seriously! Things should change to similar to estate agents in real life. 

First of all, you have your "rightmove" (auction house), a place where all estate agents (Vendors) sell their items. But the auction house charges 10 or 15% More than you put the product on sale for. However, it lists the agent (Vendor) and their location. So you can view an item, see which town/zone the product is for sale in, travel there and buy it from the shops there at the set price (ie 10-15% less than the AH). This is a key component that encourages people to visit shopping areas. A small fee would apply to list an item on the AH (2.5% or so) - this is to encourage people to visit shops directly rather than have them search on the AH and visit the shop. See below!

There would be an NPC area of shops in towns at all levels. To sell an item, you have to "hire" a shop to sell your item for you. The charge would be 10% on sale. So an AH would be 20-25% cost of what you would sell an item for via free trade.

However, this encourages the 3rd option! Player shops. Players can set their own profit levels to encourage players to buy from them. And so player shops become the best place to buy items.

All this makes things different and starts to make places which are community based. It also creates key real estate!

Shares / Shops

Shops can be bought in shares (Both in player towns and NPC towns - NPC towns would be taxed). So you could invest 10G to buy a 100G shop and you would own 10% of the shop (and get 10% of the profits). If a 100G shop could contain 4 vendors (each having a specific category role (e.g light armour only) and holding 50 items), you could buy control of a vendor by owning 25% of the shares. You can then change his/her category and the fee that you would charge for that vendor. So 3 vendors might charge 6%, whilst yours charges 7%.

Vendors have categories so that people learn that, for example, to get armour for a good price I should go to Zone A and buy from NinjaGaz's Armoury. Suddenly, crafters and shop owners become famous.

Share value would depend on how much profit the shop was making per "tick". Hour/2 hours/day/whatever works best.

So you could buy a newbie area share, earn your income and then wait for your share to rise (whils lots of players are around), before buying shares at a medium area.

You would then earn an income there.

Shares would be limited (by competition laws :p) and realistically, the shares would be more like 10G for 1% share.

Again, this would be different and would provide an income for people who don't like to grind just to join raids, etc. It would also offer the opportunity to build up their own shopping areas.

-----

I was going to write some more but this would get too long. I think NPCs can be used to prevent having the markets flooded with items, but I've written enough.

Honestly, my dream for a next MMO is someone who does something different. Someone who changes the formula so that I'm not just grinding to level, to raid/pvp. or crafting and losing money the entire way just to make a bit of money at end game. We really need new ideas and the economy is an area which has not been exploited in the slightest. 

I think people who enjoy the crafting/economic side of the game would love to have their shops become famous and be "the place" to go. Having shares, player towns with shops, etc make it all more interesting and offer many more community options.

Unfortunately... people are trying to get the basics sorted first and leaving the stuff that can really make a game fun until last (if they ever get done!).

I just read that this is due for release in 2013... Seriously... whats the point in releasing info now? I think its bad enough when games try to get you hooked 6 months before release, but 2013??

Wake me up in 3 years time.

Strange article as you don't actually explain what this program is. Google it is, but there should have been something here about it!

I think the game will have a decent story. Dragon Age got me hooked, but their other games didn't.

My main concern is that the gameplay itself looks like any other MMO. A lot have people who are into MMOs have already played 3 years+ of the same old thing. For me, every MMO that comes out just appears to be the same thing... nothing new or exciting ever comes out... and for every game that plays the same as the last, my excitement dies even more. The rush for release is always a killer too as it takes soooo long to build content for an MMO that companies inevitably release as soon as a game is playable instead of waiting until its refined. 3 months of pure refinement is worth many more months worth of $$$ from players.

MMOs aren't dead, but for me personally - they are on their last legs.

Why would you change a model which is supposedly bringing in £130m per month?

You'd have to be crazy to do that!

I thought this game was pretty good fun. Some nice teamwork was involved, etc.

However, I found the waiting around became the worst bit in the game. Waiting for 15mins in AvA only to attack an empty base or playing a match for 5mins and waiting another 10 min before the next one came along.

The other big problem was that the European servers emptied after a release set everyone to default to US servers. Queuing on an EU server meant waiting for 30mins+ whilst going on the US one got you in within a few minutes. So nobody ever went EU, which meant playing at 150+ ping... which really spoils the point of a FPS.

I consider gankers to be mostly losers.

Challenge is the most important thing in being competitive. For a normal person, its no fun to kill everyone with 1 hit. There's no skill in it and a normal person shouldn't gain anything from it after the first 5-10 minutes. The people who do... are those that don't understand challenge & if you don't understand challenge then they will most likely suck at everything - because its challenging yourself which makes you better. Since they suck at everything, they become a loser.

So anyone that goes around ganking newbies or waiting until someone is on 10% health before starting their attack are just losers. They take pride in winning when they have over-whelming odds and often have a million excuses when they lose.

The main other type of person (also a loser) are the ones that do it to grief - that is to upset another person for the purpose of their own enjoyment. These people are losers because this sort of person has no friends in real life.

The only "decent" gankers are the ones that do it for the challenge - the ones that wait for you to be at or near full health and attack you 1v1. These do it to win, enjoy the fight and prove themselves. People will still hate these guys, but they will respect them.

I would like to like this game, but... as many others who have played MMOs for a few years... it really does look like the same old thing :(

A story could drag me in. I thought Dragon Age was great, whilst I could barely get into Mass Effect (view bob didn't help!).

But I wonder when someone will actually do something different. I just think that after you've played a few games for 3-6 months each... which follow the same kind of formula then every new one just seems to get more and more boring.

I expect I'll buy this one, but don't expect to last longer than a month.

MMOs need a big shake-up. I think part of the problem is that it takes soooo long just to get the basics there... and then companies think that their game is worthy of a release. Something new please!