Planetside 2

[Lantyssa]

Planetside is also hideously overpriced for what you get.  $5 a month is pushing it.  $15 is insane.

[bhodi]

WoW succeeds because you can train on your own, socialize on your own, and learn on your own and succeed. Planetside can tea h you the wrong lessons when you're on your own and doesn't have the environment to train and encourage new recruits. It is literally a "die enough times and you'll figure it out because hey you can't die anyway." Like giving a new 18-year-old recruit a gun and telling him to go fight.

War isn't fair. *Good games are.* Planetside and games like it aren't destined to last.

There are artificial barriers and aids you can put in place that mitigate some of it. You can put in aids to 'herd the cats', like planetside attempted to do with it's command channel, and natural selection did with assigning groups and waypoints. You can also put in artificial walls that protect new people, like WoW does.

Really, the difference between organized squads/clans/whatever and random people is just that - organization. In general, it doesn't matter how good you are if you're significantly outnumbered, it's simply a logistical problem to solve in the game's development. There's plenty of room to create systems that channel the 'pickup' crowd.

And, as for the "unfair/unbalanced games aren't meant to last"? I think all the call of duty games have about 10 million reasons why that statement is wrong.

[Ratama]

10 million reasons why that statement is wrong.

This.

'Unfair' PvP games still do fine as long as they're fun; where MMO devs fuck up is removing the fun to try to make them more fair.  Then the Fail/Quits/Firings happen.  I can't remember if it was a sub or preorder of PS that I cancelled, but myself and three friends did just that when they nerfed Magmowing.

[LK]

10 million reasons why that statement is wrong.

This.

'Unfair' PvP games still do fine as long as they're fun; where MMO devs fuck up is removing the fun to try to make them more fair.  Then the Fail/Quits/Firings happen.  I can't remember if it was a sub or preorder of PS that I cancelled, but myself and three friends did just that when they nerfed Magmowing.

You're taking a statement I made about a specific genre of game (persistant open-world war games) and applying it to instanced, loosely balanced, fast and fun non-persistent online multiplayer.

Call of Duty is a horrific example to show as a counter to my statement. Call of Duty, ideally, starts with the same number of people on each side in a neutral balance of power and wraps up the sessions in a period < 10 minutes per match. If things get "unfair" (one side dominates), you won't be in that situation for long, or can go find another lobby. The game tries to match you against similarly skilled people. There is an element of randomness that no good matchmaking system will ever be able to account for, especially in a team-based game, but CoD does its damnedest. It makes more of an attempt at fairness than Planetside ever could. When I say good games are fair, I'm not just talking about balance of the mechanics.

I would ask what your definition of "fine" is.

Also: if only one side is having fun because they are winning, is that the fault of the losers for not being better, or the developers for not giving the losers a heads-up / entertaining experience as well? (Team Fortress 2 huge example, CoD Kill Cams as well) PvP games where only the winners have a good time because they are winning (maybe because they're beating the shit out of the losers instead of facing actual, real competition?) are also eventually going to bleed players until only the most skilled are left unless they do something else to counteract the bleed or give the losers something for their trouble.

Losers are paying customers too. It's in a developer's best interest to help them because there'll be far more of them than winners.

[Ratama]

Maybe I shouldn't have quoted what I did; I agree that the popularity of certain unbalanced games/maps/levels/etc does indicate that 'fairness' isn't the end-all/be-all of PvP games, regardless of genre, but mainly I was trying to say that persistant team-based MMOs like Planetside *can* be sustainable, even if unfair.

Planetside didn't fail because of uneven teams; Planetside failed, at least for myself and my friends/family that tried it, because it played like watered-down shit, and was steadily being worsened while I played (which I think was the end of beta... been a while).   I think most people, if they had to choose, would pick fun over fairness, even if it meant losing more than winning.

Good example; I actually had a lot of fun, even while losing, in Warhammer BGs... until Tor Anroc, even while winning.

Fuck Tor Anroc.

[LK]

There are many, many, many reasons Planetside failed, all interconnected, all reinforcing each other. That's the best way I can deal with a statement like "This is why X did this." without turning it into a "No, MY reason for X is the real reason!"

Then again I think fail might be too strong a word. It's still running. So it's "fine" if you ask me. But it's never going to outgrow its current trappings. A sequel without clear, fundamental changes would be financial suicide. I don't think Sony has it in them to revolutionize on that level.

People would choose fun over fairness. For added drama and entertainment, they would also choose their fun to come at the expense of others in a consequence-free environment. "If you're not having a good time, you should get better at the game!" Not a really healthy environment, that. But a game designer should always choose fairness in a competitive environment if they want their game to succeed. That is, if two players of equal skill were to fight, the game should make it an even contest, not skew in favor of one player because of some selection they made that's different from the other player, where fun was a primary factor of it instead of fairness.

Single player games? Fuck fairness. Fun all the way. Also, what most people seem to enjoy.

[Malakili]

People would choose fun over fairness. For added drama and entertainment, they would also choose their fun to come at the expense of others in a consequence-free environment. "If you're not having a good time, you should get better at the game!" Not a really healthy environment, that. But a game designer should always choose fairness in a competitive environment if they want their game to succeed.

Well, PvP is always going to have losers, thats the nature of it.  If people can't handle losing well, they shouldn't play a PvP game. 
I don't see why the developers need to go out of their way to making losing easier on the losing side.  At the end of the day, you know you are going to lose sometimes in PvP.  No matter how "fair" the game is, one side loses, possibly more than one side if there are more than 2 factions.   It seems to me that at the end of the day this comes down to "how do you make losing not be really sucky?"  The answer is that if you are a competitive person losing sucks - even if the devs give you a lollypop after the battle. 

As for fairness, I totally agree that fairness is good and necessary.   But what is an example of a mechanic that makes it fun for people who just plain aren't good at it?  I know you used the "get better" thing to be snarky, but at some level...really you need to get better if you want to enjoy any competition, video game, MMO, pick up basketball at the local Y, whatever.

[01101010]

Well, PvP is always going to have losers, thats the nature of it.  If people can't handle losing well, they shouldn't play a PvP game. 
I don't see why the developers need to go out of their way to making losing easier on the losing side.  At the end of the day, you know you are going to lose sometimes in PvP.  No matter how "fair" the game is, one side loses, possibly more than one side if there are more than 2 factions.   It seems to me that at the end of the day this comes down to "how do you make losing not be really sucky?"  The answer is that if you are a competitive person losing sucks - even if the devs give you a lollypop after the battle. 

As for fairness, I totally agree that fairness is good and necessary.   But what is an example of a mechanic that makes it fun for people who just plain aren't good at it?  I know you used the "get better" thing to be snarky, but at some level...really you need to get better if you want to enjoy any competition, video game, MMO, pick up basketball at the local Y, whatever.

Great points. I think some game devs try to implement the "pat on the back nice try, EVERYONE WINS A TROPHY" bullshit that kid's sports do these days. PS is not a great example because if you lost a base/foothold on a continent, you were forced to go back and organize. If you didn't want to, well for were fucked. No "you did your best Travis, here's an achievement for being you" shit.

I sucked a PS for the first few weeks. Some of that had to do with the controls and some had to do with the lay of the land and using it to my advantage. Until I started getting a feel for it, I did support shit, laid mine fields, set up the fuck-you turrets, repaired shit, etc. Not once did I feel those contributions were worthless so there was incentive in doing other things than pew-pewing. Hell, AMS driving was one of the most thrilling things I ever did and continued to do even after I got a taste of being successful in combat.

If I have learned anything from these boards, its that there is not overarching video game that appeals to everyone. PS:Next (or2, or whatever the hell they call it) will be a niche game, and once game devs realize this and shoot for that mark instead of the convulsing blob of masses that WoW has dined on, they'll do much better. Sure you need a good number of subs and something worth subbing to in order to keep your game going, but I think too many times people see WoW's insane numbers and believe they can reach into the bucket and pull more than they really are able.

[Ratama]

I think some game devs try to implement the "pat on the back nice try, EVERYONE WINS A TROPHY" bullshit that kid's sports do these days.

Actually, I don't think devs do enough of that.

Shadowbane, for example; sure, the main culprits of SB's demise were shadowbane.exe and server-side lag, but on the War server, immediately after launch, Purity Council wiped out the Jade Empire and a few smaller states... and those people just quit when they lost (for the most part).  Winners won too little, and losers lost WAAYYY too much.  Even without the technical issues, the punitive design of their PvP would have prevented SB from becoming a truly big hit.

Even WoW is guilty; I really don't see the point of awarding losing sides in BGs less honor.  My progress is held hostage by mouthbreathers that want to /dance naked at the GY?

PvP MMOs should reward individuals for *participating*, not winning.  "Winning" and "Losing" should only be on the macro level (Guilds losing funds/Cities being lost, etc).

[Typhon]

[snip]Even WoW is guilty; I really don't see the point of awarding losing sides in BGs less honor.  My progress is held hostage by mouthbreathers that want to /dance naked at the GY?[/snip]

That's not the only way in which WoW is guilty - in GC's latest post on the next patch the topic of the high-end PvP gear comes up again (summary): it's too easy to get, only the really skilled players and teams should be getting the good stuff.

So WoW's PvP design is to reward the more skilled players with better equipment.  It would make more sense to me if the more skilled players were given access to convenience and bling items.  Only giving the most skilled players access to the items with the best stats seems counter-productive if you are hoping that more folks will participate in PvP.

It's like they simply do not grasp how having a larger population of subscribers enjoy PvP is a more cost-effective way of keeping subs than just having folks who enjoy frequent content releases - content being significantly more expensive to produce.  Yes, you do want to reward the better/best players with stuff, no you do not want that stuff to give the better players a bigger advantage.

Edit: fixed grammar (hopefully) and and tried to have sentences actually mean something

[Malakili]

PvP MMOs should reward individuals for *participating*, not winning.

Winning should be the reward.

Edit: And your reward for losing is that you have an experience you can learn from and improve upon next time.

[LK]

If I had to say what I would add as a minimum feature to help a loser get better in a PvP, competitive multiplayer setting, as a developer, it would be playbacks, and to the level that Theater in Halo was implemented or replays in StarCraft II are enjoyed.

I'm not looking for "atta boy, have a trophy", but I am looking to be able to objectively look at my past performance and study it to improve. THAT'S how you can reward someone with inferior skill: be giving them more of an ability to study and improve. Also, having record of glorious losses (HOW THE FUCK DID I DIE JUST NOW? OH MY GOD THAT'S HILARIOUS!) would increase visibility on the game when people share it.

Planetside... Planetside I can't think of ways to resolve the basic issues with it. There's just too much wrong with the formula, as fun as it could be under very specific circumstances. In fact I'm willing to believe the people that support it most have a rather disillusioned view of the experience, with all the high points remembered and all the sucky ones rationalized or deemphasized. They see POTENTIAL and not the realities of the formula. It's far easier to tackle stuff like WoW or other "PvP" (a.k.a. multiplayer) games. WoW has issues, ya. But ultimately Battlegrounds aren't serious competition. They're more like Battlefield games than Call of Duty (Arena would be CoD).

PvP MMOs should reward individuals for *participating*, not winning.  "Winning" and "Losing" should only be on the macro level (Guilds losing funds/Cities being lost, etc).

I think the issue is far more complicated and interconnected than can be summed up in a statement like that. There's a lot more going on than just that one statement. Arguably, rewarding a player for just participating means they don't necessarily have to support their team or the war effort and are just dead weight or even detrimental to the team as they help the enemy by participating their way. Then, if the enemy keeps winning because they are actually playing the game the way it was meant to be played, they take more control, morale is lost, people's entertainment prospects are reduced in a poor system such as Planetside and WoW Battlegrounds...

Winning should be the reward.

Edit: And your reward for losing is that you have an experience you can learn from and improve upon next time.

That's a competitive mindset.

I'm not saying change a competitive game to accommodate casuals, but you're going to have way less customers because casuals who aren't serious about the competition and aren't willing to put in the effort and focus make up a far larger percentage of the games industry market. How do I know? WoW's success.

Hell, what sucks is you can't even make a game that segregates the casuals from the experts because the experts will abuse that by going to where the casuals are and beating up on them for fun and practice. WoW comes pretty close to accommodating the four major styles of gamers, including competitive, which is I think one of the major reasons Battlegrounds / Arenas were added in the first place. It added a niche that was previously unsupported by Vanilla WoW.

[Malakili]

I guess I look at it this way:  I think the persistence in an MMOFPS should refer far more to the game world than to the player.  I frankly don't care if an FPS has a single experience point to gain.  What I "gain" is a town or base or power station (or whatever) for my faction.    If you don't want to look at it from a competitive perspective, then the reward for losing is having played a fun game fighting over some objetives for a while. 

  I don't care if I ever unlock a damned thing or if everything is just available from the beginning - the game needs to be fun to play.   I think Tribes is a good place to look.  Tons of options for your character, and you never have to unlock a thing, you just pick your stuff and go.  Take Tribes 2 - as fucking is - and place it into a huge seamless world where there are 100 bases and 1000s of little stations/sensor towers all over to fight over, and I'd pay 15 bucks a month no sweat.

[LK]

I don't care if I ever unlock a damned thing or if everything is just available from the beginning - the game needs to be fun to play.   I think Tribes is a good place to look.  Tons of options for your character, and you never have to unlock a thing, you just pick your stuff and go.  Take Tribes 2 - as fucking is - and place it into a huge seamless world where there are 100 bases and 1000s of little stations/sensor towers all over to fight over, and I'd pay 15 bucks a month no sweat.

OK. They made a game just for you. It tanks, is a financial disappintment, goes on life support with minimal patching and updates, no expansions, and is questionable whether it makes any money at all, just like Planetside. Explorers are bored, socializers have no place, and Achievers see no point in playing as everything is superficial and meaningless. You might even lose the competitive folks when they see there is nothing worth winning or the game is unfair to the point that they can't get those wins because of the basic fairness issue of a persistant war landscape. The only people you have to play with are people exactly like you: hardcore gamers who enjoy a good rules system and like to challenge themselves. You might get some people that are good at the game and enjoy beating up on the newbs. Either way, the game dwindles to a small, select few, as marketing data and the success of other games has proven that there are a lot fewer of you out there than you seem to personally believe is out there to support a game.

Different people have different reasons for gaming. Accommodating more than one and giving different types of players reason to play will lead to success. See: Minecraft. Don't See: Dwarf Fortress.  I'm not saying fuck with a formula like adding Social support for Call of Duty (which is what I think they want to add with their sub fees -- a Battle.net for CoD). But CoD catered to explorers (Single Player), achievers (HELLA GOOD leveling system and challenges), and competitive folks in a style that all three could appreciate and excel at.

My simple question as a place to start: why would people care about some game world's empire, their goals and philosophies, or their power levels as an empire when they purchase a game? Didn't they buy the game for their enjoyment, not for the glory of the Vaanu? Didn't they buy it to shoot the electrical gun and drive the tanks instead of getting seriously involved in a conflict that isn't there's to begin with?

[Malakili]

My simple question as a place to start: why would people care about some game world's empire, their goals and philosophies, or their power levels as an empire when they purchase a game? Didn't they buy the game for their enjoyment, not for the glory of the Vaanu? Didn't they buy it to shoot the electrical gun and drive the tanks instead of getting seriously involved in a conflict that isn't there's to begin with?

More or less for the same reason that when I'm playing TF2 I suddenly care a whole lot about the RED team or BLU team arbitrarily, because its MY team.  As for the last part - yes, I would buy it specfically to get involved in a virtual conflict/war (thats why I have an active subscription to world war 2 online!).  That is, in fact, the ENTIRE appeal of an MMOFPS for me.  Otherwise, I will just stick to normal FPS games (which I also play).

[LK]

OK. I have no problem with your personal preference. I feel it is one that should be supported in a good competitive game along with other factors. The key thing is that you don't place importance on the other factors. That's OK.

[Malakili]

OK. I have no problem with your personal preference. I feel it is one that should be supported in a good competitive game along with other factors. The key thing is that you don't place importance on the other factors. That's OK.

I think the thing I worry about is basically Global Agenda.  That is a game that tries to please everyone.  I decided to check out the demo.  The shooter mechanics felt really solid, and it had a lot of potential.  I could even deal with instanced AvA combat with the hex map the way they have it set up.  HOWEVER, I quickly realized that they wouldn't even let me PvP until I got to level 5 or 10 or something.  And I saw /general chat mucked up with loads of "Looking for crafting material X"  and all I could think of was how fun the game had the potential to be and how unwilling I was to even get to that part because of all the extra crap they stuck in.

Thats sort of the "bad" direction I'm comparing my "Tribes 2 but bigger" idea to.  For reference.

[LK]

The disconnect I'm having is that my viewpoint is of understanding the realities of selective focus vs. all-inclusive design and the effects of a persistent world in a competitive, war-type  environment, while your viewpoint, from my perspective, is "this is how I like my games, other people should like this, and game developers should make a game for me above all other priorities."

The first part of my perspective, absolutely no problem with. Parts two and three are problematic. Global Agenda, I haven't studied, but just because someone knows what they should do doesn't mean they will succeed in its implementation. Game development is *hard and complicated.*

[Malakili]

The disconnect I'm having is that my viewpoint is of understanding the realities of selective focus vs. all-inclusive design and the effects of a persistent world in a competitive, war-type  environment, while your viewpoint, from my perspective, is "this is how I like my games, other people should like this, and game developers should make a game for me above all other priorities."

The first part of my perspective, absolutely no problem with. Parts two and three are problematic. Global Agenda, I haven't studied, but just because someone knows what they should do doesn't mean they will succeed in its implementation. Game development is *hard and complicated.*

Who ever said other people should like this?  I'm obviously arguing for my own preference.  Yes, I want a game developer to make a game like this, for me and the other population that would play it.    Yes, I'm not like most gamers, yes, I think most gamers have made MY enjoyment of games worse because I think they've gotten more casual over the years.  Is this selfish? Probably, but its fucking entertainment, we aren't trying to find a way to feed people while I make the argument that everyone needs to like my favorite food or starve.

[LK]

Winning should be the reward.

Edit: And your reward for losing is that you have an experience you can learn from and improve upon next time.

You're making a case here for how other people should think rather than respecting how they want to play. Winning is the reward for you -- not necessarily for other game players.

If you isolate your statement to other competitive people, that makes sense. But I am speaking of *all gamer types*.

[Mrbloodworth]

The moment you make a MMO shooter about the player, that's the moment it dies. Just to add to my crazy card.

Plantside showing your kills and K/d Was the beginning of the end. Nothing else mattered a majority of the culture after years of neglect made this true. If more such stats were presented at the empire level, it would have been different. The other major issue is in a lot of games, winning = Loot, this was a bad precedence to set, more so for MMOFPS. Its an expanding issue that just gets worse.

At the beginning, Factional pride was king, until people realized it was meaningless (Anyone remember when you could only make one empire toon? Of course not.). Then it just became about kills and less about "the war". I'm with Malakili  in a lot of what he is saying, however take that with a grain of salt as both of us are heavily invested in that level. I really don't care about how many kills you have, stop showing it to me, did you take the base? No, you are worthless. Thanks for that. Im not sure how many of you played in year 4 or 5 but that's just what it devolved to, endless tower camps and farming kills. And that has everything to do with the larger world game being neglected and well as an erosion of team based requirement.

I know there are lots of people who like to play alone, go Rambo, and have high stats. Plantside was not for you. It never should have been for you, and you are the reason it fell down (Among others out of the player control). There are about a billion better games for the soloist, A MMOFPS should not be yet another. I'm sorry. Explorers, socializers  and Achievers need not apply.


As for Wow PvP comparisons, Its laughable. Not a dam thing should be taken from WoW's PvG (Player VS gear) Time = better BS (Yes I am ignoring player skill to make a point) I hope, that Plantside 2 will be the team based game Plantside one started out to be. I won't hold my breadth though. Not in this day and age of everyone is special. Yes, I'm being draconian, yes I'm ignoring all the arguments in the world, No its not how I truly feel and i realize there are some nuances I'm stomping on. But some of this conversation is just retarded.  You want a MMOFPS that everyone can play, everyone gets a pat on the back, every one is told they are special. Fuck that.

/rant

Plantside 2 needs to be the same rule sets, new environments, a better world game, more solid feel (and that means netcode) and a more expandable engine. Everything else, why mess with it? The original game had tons for people to do and was extremely flexible with many many facets of play.

[Mrbloodworth]

Just to be clear, my post was not intended to be rational. Lorekeep has very valid points.

[LK]

So you want the same thing as before, except maybe less cheaters and better handling. Despite the fact Planetside is what it is because of what it is, and all the failures and niche-thinking that underlines its design.

I mean, you repeated, near verbatim, what I said about how a competition with no end, fairness not guaranteed, and meaningless victories will deter the competitive crowd. Of course focus would shift to personal accomplishment: that's what matters MORE to people.

Guys I think yours is a valid viewpoint but there is a "I am pro I want to have my power in game shown by curbstomping newbs" prejudice that this game allowed you to have and might have influenced your opinion on how good this game really is. Mr. B, I know for a fact that's why you threw out such praise for APB. Yeah, it's a lot of fun getting organized, working together, and beating up randoms and raping and pillaging for personal / team glory. That happens way more than serious competition. Why would a conquered / competitive type waste time on a challenge when there's perfectly good newbs to slaughter and is way more fun?  That doesn't make it a good game... that just means it's a personal empowerment simulator with real PCs instead of NPCs to beat up on.

The audience for the game you want doesn't exist. The amount of money to develop vs. expected return is bad business. If someone makes it without taking into account the realities of the design and the audience, then it is out of passion for the game rather than smart business. You can't expect a company to initiate development that will likely cost them money instead of making it.

[Mrbloodworth]

Ill be the first to tell you I'm not that good, I played a mix of support and support fire. So, that's not where I am coming from.

So you want the same thing as before, except maybe less cheaters and better handling. Despite the fact Planetside is what it is because of what it is, and all the failures and niche-thinking that underlines its design.

Negative! Look at the stuff I listed after the my little rant. For me to agree that the core design was a problem, I would have to acknowledge that the core design was flawed. It wasn't, not in the areas you speak of. The failings came AFTER launch, and were just compounded by the constant erosion of the team focus.

To this day I still believe Planetside had more avenues of play, for more skill levels, or time commitments than any other game. That's about the only part they expanded on with great affect (like the hacking stuff, the gunships, the engineer stuff). You could be as mediocre as me and still contribute, until they started removing the team aspect! In fact you could have ZERO shooting skills and be competitive or at least, pivotal to the world goal.

No longer.

[LK]

Persistent world + online PvP war = flawed at its core.

They are not popular with all gamer types. It's a solid concept... in a niche and when not measured up against other game designs. Like the world's best female poker player who only barely breaks the Top 100 when put against all available types of competition.

[Malakili]

Guys I think yours is a valid viewpoint but there is a "I am pro I want to have my power in game shown by curbstomping newbs" prejudice that this game allowed you to have and might have influenced your opinion on how good this game really is.

Thing is, I'm far from pro in WW2O, and I love the hell out of it.  I love playing infantry and assaulting an objective, looking up and seeing a dogfight.  I love the feeling of an airstrike coming in at just the right moment to save my ass from a tank line.  I love the feeling of seeing an armor column rolling out flanked by trucks to bring in infantry and mobile spawn points.  I love the feeling capping an objective with a really long capture time while under the pressure of having the enemy baring down on you and just trying to hold out another minute.  I love that there can be a long day long back and forth over a single town and even though I'm not online all the time being able to watch the progression on the campaign map on the website.

Yes, I'm in an good squad, but we accept pretty much anyone who is a reasonable person and willing to learn.  We are organized, but frankly the mechanics of the game and the way its shaken out now mean that we aren't TONS more organized than anyone else.  Curbstomping newbs means nothing because you have to take objecitves to actually do anything.  No one really cares about personal stats. there is the occasional post someone makes about a really nice sortie, but for every one of those there are 10 on our forums about how great a job the allies did in the fight over town X too nights ago and that we should be proud we contributed to that.  Thats what I mean when I say the reward is winning.  It isn't necessarily about the same kind of competition as say, competitive TF2 where the winning reward is a bit different (there are leagues and such).

My first 2 weeks of WW2O, and I swear this is no exaggeration, I can count the number of kills I had TOTAL on one hand.  I LOVED EVERY FUCKING MINUTE OF IT.  While I haven't kept my sub up every month since then, I do keep going back to it when I have the time and the feeling I get playing it is unlike anything else on the market right now.  Its that feeling I wanted replicated in PS2 or Tribes Universe, maybe with some faster paced combat as a sweetener.

[LK]

You've had very positive personal experience with the game. That's not a problem. There's room for that in every game, good and bad. I can see how you'd want the environment that allows the possibility for you have such experiences.

The issues I'm looking at are macro and non-niche. I'd love to see a good shooter as much as the next guy. But there are so many more factors that must be considered besides anecdotal, biased evidence for a game like that to be successful. By successful I mean growing in popularity, profitable, and encouraging further development. Anyone that gets let go because a game didn't make enough money to support all the employees means it wasn't successful enough.

Given human nature, it may be impossible to achieve a successful MMO FPS! Niches will pop up, but nothing on the scale of WoW.

[Mrbloodworth]

I Do know from what position you are speaking. I just had to get that (Rant) off my chest :)

It was very sad to sit there and watch over 5 years the developers neglect and remove the team requirement.

[Malakili]

I can see how you'd want the environment that allows the possibility for you have such experiences.

I think this is actually really important.  When I look back at my best times in gaming, they are all relatively trivial things from a mechanical standpoint, but they came about because the games allowed for them to happen.  These are experiences (just using recent examples) in things like Darkfall Online travelling across the game world on my first day to a clan city, truly awe inspiring and heart pounding...and barely anything of note happened, because the game allowed for the experience to happen.  EVE Online and being involved in a large scale industrial corporation and dealing with some war decs by mercenaries bought by a rival industrial corp, I managed to avoid conflict totally in the instance I'm thinking of an it was still 2 of the most intense weeks of gaming I've played...because the game allowed it to happen.

Along with that is the game allowing bad things to happen.  Getting ganked on day 2 in Darkfall by a couple travelling high level players, lost some gear.  Learned a lesson about paying attention to my surroundings though.   In EVE my corp had a bunch of POSs set up for capital ship production and a few of them got knocked down due to some poor decisions we made, lost a non trivial amount of ISK worth of stuff.   We recovered and rebuilt (which was a rewarding process on its own I might add, despite our losses!)

The scale itself, the part of being something bigger than yourself either a bigger group of other players, a bigger system, a bigger world, is what these games have.  It isn't just the "positive" experiences that make that scale visible, the negative ones do to, but as long as its that scale and that bigger than yourself context that is the attraction itself, setbacks aren't going to cause you to quit the game.

[LK]

It was very sad to sit there and watch over 5 years the developers neglect and remove the team requirement.

I would suggest an alternate perspective: that over five years, they wised up to what a majority of players wanted and changed the game as best as they could in order to keep the service running. They saw the future, and the flaws, but only after the ship ha been launched. The customer / gamer landscape has changed significantly as more people of all technical and skills levels have their barriers to getting the product removed. Planetside was a game of its time catering to an exclusive niche audience, but one that, in its initial design, was much narrower than it is today.

What they did sounds like a response to the player base, not necessarily something they desire. Catering to the majority instead of the minority (of which, I believe, you count yourself apart.)

[Typhon]

I used to want the DAOC-style realm warfare that Malakili is describing.  Now what I want is to have absolute control over how much time I actually spend in the game.  I also don't want to be significantly penalized if I can't spend more than an hour a day in the game.  I want to get in and play, and I want to have very little downtime.  My days of putting up with 30 minutes of getting to/finding the conflict and a minute of fighting are over (DAOC).

The only game system I can think of that might accommodate both types of players would involve having "loyalists" and "mercs".  Mercs are players like me - get me to the combat right now, I don't care about what I'm fighting for, I'm rewarded for completing objectives, and win or lose, I'm off to the next battle within 10 minutes (procedurally generate an arena if there aren't player-controlled forces engaged in battle). 

Loyalists are invested in whatever faction they are fighting for, they are rewarded for how well their faction is doing... or not.

[Speedy Cerviche]

When someone logs into the game, it's for them and their buds and nobody else. There is no recruitment and socialization aspect in game. An outfit leader would need to make an effort to train new recruits, but most would rather poach the players that are good and have proven themselves by actually succeeding at what they are doing.

My opinion of most Outfits / Guilds is that they aren't organizations like the military that takes anyone and trains them up, but sports teams that recruits and invests in top talent. You still need to design the game that people at all skill levels can participate... but those at a higher level need to face similar opposition.

PS needs to reward outfits better. Outfits should get rewards/points for participation, and could use those rewards for stuff like control over bases which give them unique weapons/vehicles (not overpowered, but different) and other cool things.

In games with far more consequential PvP (EvE, Darkfall), there are plenty of well run large clans that take in newbies, there's also elite small clans. If the game rewards players for organizing, they will, and that includes mass recruiting into their structures.

Planetside basically had no rewards for outfit, and player impact on the gameworld was minimal. If the game was just a bigass public FPS capture the flag map in function, why expect players to act any better than they do on ANY random FPS public server? No proper incentives from the devs to play the game in a manner other than running around pew pewing, and since the game itself was an inferior FPS mechanics wise, little reason for people to stick around (especially being charged a subscription).

[Mrbloodworth]

^^^^ 

[Malakili]

I used to want the DAOC-style realm warfare that Malakili is describing.  Now what I want is to have absolute control over how much time I actually spend in the game.  I also don't want to be significantly penalized if I can't spend more than an hour a day in the game.  I want to get in and play, and I want to have very little downtime.  My days of putting up with 30 minutes of getting to/finding the conflict and a minute of fighting are over (DAOC).

The only game system I can think of that might accommodate both types of players would involve having "loyalists" and "mercs".  Mercs are players like me - get me to the combat right now, I don't care about what I'm fighting for, I'm rewarded for completing objectives, and win or lose, I'm off to the next battle within 10 minutes (procedurally generate an arena if there aren't player-controlled forces engaged in battle). 

Loyalists are invested in whatever faction they are fighting for, they are rewarded for how well their faction is doing... or not.

They have games for that style, they are called every non-MMO FPS ever made. 

[Typhon]

They have games for that style, they are called every non-MMO FPS ever made. 

No, not what I'm talking about.  Given your response, seems like you aren't interested in what I'm talking about, so I'll save myself the effort.