f13.net

I know some of you like Eve but I lasted all of 45 minutes before I said to hell with it. SWG, we all know how that turned out in the end. AO is kind of fun but seems to be missing a certain...something. The Matrix, no good.

I'd love a sci-fi MMO that successfully mixed space action with a fun ground game of some kind. Does anyone know of anything on the horizon? Or something out now?

Also...cyberpunk. I'd love a good cyberpunk MMO. The closest I ever got to the feel was either AO or Neocron (which sucked).

Is Tabula Rasa still Sci-FI?  Or did that become something else entirely in the rework?

My impression is it has become some sort of Sci-fi/Fantasy all-in-one kind of game though I may be wrong. I just found myself browsing the Neocron 2.1 website out of total desperation.

http://ng.neocron.com/index.php?id=1

Well, there's SG-1. And Star Trek Online. And that new NCSOft project by some ex-SWG guys that's kind of rumored to be Wing Commander Online-esque.

So, in answer to your question, NO.

A wing commander like universe could be good or it could be earth and beyond and I will cry in my rootbeer again.

kaid

Firefly online please.

Neither of which I have much faith in. STO could be interesting if they can incorporate some kind of space battles in it but I doubt it. You'll be Red Shirt #7 on the USS Generic. SG-1...nah.


Wing Commander Online-esque could rock. However, being done by Ex-SWG means they have a lot to prove before I give them a chance.

...

One can dream, can't they?

THAT is a game I would LOVE to see.

Sorry for the bizarre quote of my own post. I'm not even sure how it happened.

Yea, Firefly online would work.

....


Wait, no it wouldn't, at all.

Yes, if there would be a way to get all Whedon fans into one spot, then I could avoid that spot.  Please make this game!  

I haven't given up on Star Trek online yet.  It could very well be crap like everyone likes to predict, but who knows.  It's still at least a year away, isn't it?

Hey, how is Neocron? I had read some stuff about it years ago, before it was released.

Someone should do a sort of min-review on it. Is it crap, or Planetside with a radioactive aftertaste?

Inquiring minds demand to know!

Neocron has a grind before you can actually aim your gun, even though it is fps.  I never got past the disgust of realizing that.  Oh and back at launch the ui+community+in-game help made for an even more painfull experience then figuring out how to play Face of Mankind.

I had always planned to do a brief write-up of the failed innovation attempt semi-indy MMO's but GunzOnline was so good I stopped switching from game to game and then I took a break and now EvE owns my soul so that idea is shelved for good.

I really need to find you a Josh doll.

What, so I can pull a string on his back and he can tell me that it "wasn't a complete world, that there'd be no interesting classes, and that no one should make this into a game."? There's only about 500 other licenses that would make for a more cohesive and complete world. Firefly might make a decent SP game, but it'd be about as bad as Cowboy Bebop would be for an MMOG. Of course, it helps that Firefly is simply a poor man's Cowboy Bebop.

Ha.   :-D

Actually, I just have a hard time looking at a larger SCI-FI universe in a MMOG sense.  Battletech would probably be the best universe; or maybe Dune might be interesting, but Star Trek just leaves a big ?  Firefly had a condensed universe and was at the point in time where not much had been pushed forward on the technical side.  I liked the political sphere of the recent domance of the Alliance and the fact that the outer rim basically was the slum of the inner core.  I just don't have a good alternative.  I have not played EVE, but I liked Privateer over Wing Commander.  The only hold up I really have with EVE is I don't want a ship as an avatar.

Since when does sci-fi have to have anything to do with Space? Or do you want a space MMOG and you're just using Sci-Fi as a setting?

Naw, does not have to do with space, but in general the genre does end up there.  Cyberpunk is classified as Sci-Fi in my mind.  What do you want to see?

Firefly would be better than, say, BSG - which I've also heard pitched as an MMG. Firefly has the virtures of multiple worlds, interesting culture, and multiple, interesting enemies. Reavers, Alliance, mafia... There's worlds of difference between Adlai Niska, Badger, and Patience. Plus there could be some interesting play with the concept of "find a ship, find a crew, keep flying." Move up from an indie operator hiring on for contracts (LFG) to owning your own ship, getting a bigger ship, eventually running your own crime syndicate / merc outfit / shipping company / what have you.

I'd hit it. Hell, if the BioAustin office decided to pick that up, I might even another shot at working on an MMG (the last two left me feeling a tad bit negative).

Shit, I get called idealistic?

Multiple worlds are a LONG fucking way off from being a non-suck reality unless we're talking Blizzard levels of funding and competence (perhaps even extra competence) + a level of vision and commitment we've never really seen.

Lets apply the KISS rule and think of some settings that dont require you to have a viable ground game + a viable space-sim + a huge amount of real estate, gameplay freedom and environmental variety.

Battletech:
Could work, in the vein of Planetside, but when do you set it?  During the established timeline and let players re-write history?  Surely not in the bastardized bullshit Mechs with buzzsaws Wizkids timeline where all FTL communication has been severed.  As much as I want it I dont think this is an ideal MMO setting.  Your going to have a host of npc faction population imbalances (how many people will be playing House Marik compared to House Davion I mean really), it could be done but it really wouldn't even remotely resemble anything we call a MMO today.

ShadowRun:
This is an established IP I'd champion, and I hate this whole established IP trend a great deal.  The setting is familiar and nowhere near as grandiose as some of the ideas being tossed around.  But we've got several big steps away from the vanilla fantasy we're used to while still making elf boobies available to the legions of MMO gamers whose first lover within the medium was World of Warcraft.  I will be surprised if this license isn't used or at least attempted to be used in the next 5 years.

I'm looking forward to when more obscure novels are drawn for settings of games.  Or shit, here's a thought invent your own world you fuckers.  Instead of compromising elements of an existing world, not to mention taking on all its baggage while you try to shoehorn it into a game.

Dude. All I was doing was comparing it as a concept to BSG, where all you'd ever see is the monotonous insides of ships. Unless you set it on Caprica. Which is kind of like setting an LOTR game in the Easterling lands.

Being able to show some diversity of environment keeps the player interested. I get real tired of seeing cityscapes in CoX.

I'd be elated with one good MMO.  Setting would matter little.

Amen. I cringe when I think about it though, since it would never come close to the awesome game I can see in my mind's eye.

Car Wars could be considered Sci-Fi in the post apocalyptic Fallout sense. Still really like to see that done right. Something like the BF1942/2 sort of combat mechanics, where you can enter and exit vehicles, fire weapons as a pedestrian, etc.

"I am the Nightrider. I'm a fuel injected suicide machine. I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!"

"It was like slow motion. He leaves his seat and goes through the windshield, headfirst straight into the tree, right? And then bounces back through the windshield. And by the time we got to him, he was just sitting there, trying to scream with his face ripped off."


Come on it would be perfect to have a Mad Max MMO. If done right of course.

Except that the entire game would be populated with giant muscle dudes in hockey masks, with a smattering of feral children here and there.

But you have a good and evil side for PvP, crafters can try to find/repair stuff. Explorers can try to find petrol supplys. Modify cars and trucks into killing machines. And there were more than just "giant muscle dudes" for characters. Fun times if I do say so. 

What we're waiting for is the Starcraft MMO.  Imagine: Terran and Protoss as playable races and potentially as cooperative and/or competing sides.  The Zerg will be the common enemy to both.  The dynamics could be interesting.

What you're waiting for is a Starcraft MMOG. I don't want WoW in Space. I want Starcraft 2.

Shadowrun and BattleTach would both be cool. I would probably pick Shadowrun though. BattleTech is pretty damn big, and the burden of mutiple planets/environments would be hard I bet. They could probably make a MechWarrior MMO though. There has been a couple single player games already. You basically just live in your mech... think EVE on the ground. But Shadowrun would be interesting. You got those who want to be Deckers, then Merc's, or Suits... cybernetics... Sorta like Matric Online meets GTA meets COH?

Fucking yes.  This is the MMO my brother and I have been pining for, the concept that got some spontaneous  "Hell yeah!" from UO guildies when I brought it up in Ventrilo during a conversation about what games we'd like to see.

I'd like a space MMO, not some other cyberpunk excuse for Massive Incorporated. I want space. Spaceships, space stations, asteroids, aliens, wierd politics and religious beliefs clashing with commerce and freelancers, all that thing. The ground would be something to visit occasionally, and optionally. I want to be born in space, and be able to walk around my ship.

SWG JTL meets Eve, with some story and purpose not entirely managed by the whim of other players.

I wouldn't want BSG though. Not yet. The new IP has not yet been nearly fleshed out enough. Any attempt to make a licensed BSG MMOG would be restricted to two seasons of limited tools: refugees in a few dozen space ships only once taking the fight to the enemy (twice if you consider the trap) and a few castaways waiting to be picked up on Caprica. 12 hours of patrols with 12 hours sleeping is not fun. When the series has a few years, maybe a movie, and a dozen or so paperbacks to flesh out backstory, multiple worlds, maybe a few other ragtag fugitive fleets on a lonely quest the Galactica doesn't know about, then maybe.

And no to Starcraft MMO. It couldn't be in space because the RTS wasn't. And unless I missed something from the summer I gave a shit, Starcraft was little more than a creatively remixed Warcraft II.

I believe Front Mission Online is coming to the States soonish.

Wha, wha, whaaaaaa?!


Also, re Stormwaltz:

Evrything you have mentioned is already featured in EVE, with the exception being that you can not have multiple people crewing one ship. Other than that, they have a pretty darn broad set of gameplay posibilities.



* Edit:

Mind you, i would kill for a Cyberpunk 2020 game world. Of course, i see it as more of a Nevewinter Nights-esque multi module system, with groups linking up for the completion of various objectives, rather than the traditional "grind grind grind little piggy" crap. And also, there WAS a good BattleTech mmo that EA had in brief beta before they characteristically killed it. And yes, Marik was outnumbered 043968309863-79872-972960orjgq85jyw9 to 1.

There actually was a BattleTech game being made, although EA shut it down during beta.  It was fun, not awesome but fun, and more true to the table-top game than the Microsoft adaptions.

It's like, there is an echo in here  :-D

Shadowrun.....  yes there is an echo   :heart:

I don't know why, because even with neo-elves and magic that game is still very compelling for me.  If anyone could get anywhere's close to that, I'm sure I'd preorder.

I want to be corrected. Starcraft to me was a nice add beyond Warcraft II by featuring Heros after a fashion. Otherwise it was just a fun remix of the same stuff.

And the thing about Eve is that the core mechanic isn't for everyone. It's got a lot of really cool elements, but nowhere near the low barrier of entry new MMOGs need to capture gamers.

Mind you, I played MPBT3050 and I was in House Marik, I'm well aware, I wonder how Beastyman and all them are doing these days...

I think a MechWarrior game would really be the bee's knees if they'd incorporate some Eve-like elements into it.  Since the game is interstellar by nature what's to prevent trade routes, asteroid mining, piracy, etc?  Hell, the actual mechs are only one part of that universe.  Player corps would be a distinct possibility, and all those little tanks, turrets, jets, and truck convoys supporting worldside operations could just be the visible NPC byproducts of player-run planetary exploitation that those player owned corps would have to pay for.

In that way you could have multiple areas for conflict from the merely market oriented, space oriented, and the nitty gritty on the ground stuff.  Just the idea of such a thing makes me orgasmic.

ETA:  This would also open up the in-game economy quite a bit.  Rather than just metals/ice like in Eve, planets would be different and provide different stuff.  Food, water, fossil fuels, population centers that specialize in consumer goods (and player corps that trade in those goods would be advised to keep their NPC civilian populations from being vaporized by giant robots), etc.

Also ETA:  Since I'm coming up with pipe dreams, this would also lend itself to more organic forms of alliance.  Say your corporation is running a primarily electronics/weapons manufacture concern.  In order to feed your workers and run that machinery you need to purchase food and fossil fuels produced by another corporation.  Suppose that corporation is then attacked by a third party.  In order to insure your own food supply (and perhaps get a reduced price in the future) would it then be in your interest to defend the company that provides you with a food supply to run your own corp?  Inter-dependencies would be fucking awesome.

Marik and Laio seemed to hold their own in MPBT3050, despite their smaller numbers.

Starcraft MMO hybrid FPS/RTS, please.

I can't wait to see Blizzard finally decide to develop the Starcraft IP again. 

Riggs can I join your mailing list?  How hard have I tried to make myself re-insert into AO for example, but to no avail.  And recall I was one of the folks that actually cared that Auto Assault might not suck.  Well, I can always hope can't I?


Just to add to the completely fantastical list:

Dune Universe -  LisanalGaib says, "Gimme ur spice bitch or u get the pranabindu lolz"

ShadowRun - uhh duh?

Neuromancer Universe

Fall Out Online - has a nice ring to it dunn't?

BattleTech Universe

And I'd get on the Mad Max Online train too.  Instead of gold we could use "dogfood" as unit of currency.  Or oil, your choice.

Jesus Christ, sometimes I wish I had the patience to go through the Grind again - for Neocron's sake.

I played Neocron in beta.  It was really fucking fun, once you levelled to a point where you had parity with those around you.

Given that I was playing in Beta, that meant about four or five bleary-eyed nights of killing the rat spawn (yes, literally killing a rat spawn, in a sewer.  But with a gun - yay sci fi!) over and over.

I invested disproportionately in sniper rifles and jumping ability (i think that was it?), and went into Pepper Park, the Red Light District where police patrols are scarce and people are running around buying illegal weapons and whatnot.  What I love about cyberpunk is the potential for Z-axis movement in big cities; I was well above the floor of pepper park, having used the world geometry to eventually work myself up into the rafters/girders above the main avenue.  It was a sniper's holiday, with people being unable to figure out where the bullets were all coming from.  Eventually, some other guy also worked himself up into the rafters, and we had the equivalent of a sniper duel.  I had formed a loose alliance with one of the two player-run rampaging mobs that owned Pepper Park at this time; over the chat channel, I called in a friend with heavy weapons skills.  From down below, he was able to launch some AoE that set my opponent's position on fire, forcing him out of his cover and into my crosshairs.  I also liked to play assassin from time to time, hiding under stairs, up in a nook, or using other world geometry until someone would wander into a back alley, and then sneaking up on them from behind.


I have no idea if moments like that still exist in today's Neocron; but man, at the time I felt like the combined twenty hours I spent grinding were worth it.

Fallout and Neuromancer I'd go for. But Neuromancer would be a lot of work for a developer. You'd need some pretty hardcore worldbuilding to create and populate a fun, challenging and deep cyberspace in addition to a fun, challenging and deep real world. Fallout you could do with just a continent of a few zones.

How is this experience that different from, say, BF2 or the equivalent FPS death match game play?

It occurred in a persistent world, one large enough that nobody has 'routes' and every nook/cranny memorized.

There have been some FPS experiences that are similar.  For instance, some Counterstrike servers running the Warcraft 3 mod save stats and XP and levels and chars on a persistent server, allowing a community to develop.  But when the maps are known quantities (and not really that big), it's hard to get the same feeling.

NeoCron was cool in part because it was the size of a city, and people were going around in it doing city-like things; I had fun in pepper park sniping and stalking because not everyone was there for that; some were there to socialize or trade or what have you.  A PvP game's no fun if it's all wolves, no sheep.

I played EVE for a year. I like and respect it, but it's not remotely what I was describing. A Firefly game would have to be very character-oriented, because the series is. It would be a game with human avatars interacting with PVE content, with handwaved travel time between firefights in cyberpunk bars, dusty mining towns, and mafia space stations.

Before Serenity, the closest Firefly came to space combat was running from that corrupt cop's interceptor in "The Message." Unless you count the Dortmunder scuttling the Reaver-struck freighter in "Bushwhacked."

I'd like to see something that covered the post-apocalyptic Mad Max/Car Wars/Fallout bases, and I'd also like to see a 40k online, where the players are primarily something like Rogue Traders, Eldar Pirates, Ork Warbands or something. Not Ultramarines online. Stuff like Marines should be background and the Inquisition could easily be a source of missions for Imperial players. It'll never happen of course, but maybe something more modest, like a form of Necromunda online could work...

Heh, you are awfully naive for someone actually in the industry.

I really think FallOut or Mad Max make the best potential MMO candidates thusfar. They aren't all that different from a fantasy RPG in terms of mechanics, which seems to be the main ingredient for a succesful MMO. Quests, crafting, various toys, pure social arenas and lots of possibilities for 'lost lore arenas' ala Kunark and Velious. I suspect that SOE could simply take the Planetside engines, rework the artwork from the ground up, incorporate meaningful story arcs for the PVE aspect and then simply let the players fight each other in endless faction wars. Basically, AO done without the insane learning curve and rubberband physics.

I'll chime in with my usual...

Dune Online please.


And I have to agree with Televangelist that Neocron was a fun ride during beta and even a bit after release. The grind wasn't abhorrent, but the aiming ability being reliant on grinding always annoyed me.

The Battletech universe's space element is deliberately sparse - If I recall correctly, the biggest Clan starfleet was only comprised of 20 or so ships of the line. Jump drives are hideously expensive and arcane as well, and in the 3050 timeframe nobody but the Clans and (I think) Comstar is able to even build them. I think the ground element would in itself be enough to keep me entertained, but the space part really isn't there except as perhaps a shipboard environment.

So no-one misses Mimesis Online then?

Shadowrun won't happen. AFAIK, Microsoft owns the license for having bought out FASA and there isn't as much of a computer game history/following for SR as for Battletech.

Battletech would be easy to do with instancing. Shit, you could even have the Mechwarrior RPG style ground game if you wanted it. Not that anyone will do it correctly. Anything to do with giant robots will be faggy Korean anime shit full of rang rang, grinding and farming til your ass bleeds.

EDIT: Firefly would, IMO, work better as an MMOG than say BSG. But really, anything licensed is only going to work well as a game, especially an MMO, if they set the game OUTSIDE and SEPERATE from the events of the book/movie. No Darth Vader in a funhouse. No helping Malcom fight the Alliance, no taking part in Steiner's big battles. Either let the player make his own unique story in the universe, or don't fucking bother.

"Either let the player make his own unique story in the universe, or don't fucking bother."


That is what they did in SWG...............

Quote the entire thing next time.  There's an important tidbit that you're ignoring.

No, they didn't. Because you had Darth Vader, and your choice of profession was limited by the timeline of having few Jedis, and there was all that useless GCW shit that you couldn't change, and that whole "it's been two years of Galactic Civil War and nothing has changed but the publish number" shit.

Darth Vader handed our 4 missions in the Imperial theme park, that was the extent he was in the game (until the live events team started using him long after the game was launched). I agree that there should not have been the Jedi in the game based on the timeline they selected, but before the holo's were given out and it was confirmed that to open the slot was just grinding professions the game was played...differently.

People were guessing that you needed to do certain quests (like the hero of tatooine), be a high ranking officer, have a house in game, treat players and Npc's with respect (for lightside), explore everywhere. The speculation alone was fun to think about.

And yes the GCW never had any real meaning, the only time they even did anything was allowing control of planets if you outpointed the other faction. It was mostly bragging rights since you had to kill the other factions bases to earn points, but what is PvP anyway but bragging rights ingame and on the forums.

If you couldn't kill Darth Vader and change the nature of the GCW, or you couldn't join him as a Sith and kill the Emperor together with him, you couldn't effect the GCW and thus couldn't affect his place in the game.

As I reflect on it, I still think the best bet would be a Mechwarrior game, cloned on EvE Online where you *are* your Mech, and after its in and working, opening up a ground-based game with avatars and such.

I spent my whole commute home thinking about a MW online game, when I got home there was an email from the House Marik mailing list in my never-used hotmail account's junk folder.  It was a call to arms, I have to register for the new forum and have my credentials from MPBT3050 checked so I can gain access (they take this type of shit very seriously) before I can figure out what is going on but I'm guessing that there must be a new game in the works.  There was a mention of a beta to participate in and the mailing list has been quite for who knows how many months prior to this so once I know wtf is going on I'll let you all know.

Like many I would be happiest with a Starflight MMO type game.  Space battles, ship building and customization, AND exploration of planets including landing on them and battling stuff, discovering ancient ruins, pre-cursor tech etct etc. 

Either that or you could take the Heechee universe concept of hand waving the space flight and no battles in space, and just make a very explorer and puzzle oriented type game. Can you imagine a MMO game with almost no combat and heavy exploration and puzzling?  While I can, there's about a snowball's chance in hell of seeing such b/c repeable basic combat content is easier and cheaper to make.  At this point I'd settle for a huge single player game like that.

If there's one element of space based sci-fi games that is generally missing its the exploration of the unknown (and potentially unknowable). Be it unknown artifacts, planets, systems, aliens with true outlandish characteristic and behaviors, space exploration ought to be interesting.  If all of the interesting bits of a space game are known entities, the space setting loses a lot of appeal for me.

Xilren

I'd go for Dune

I wouldn't. One of the things that made dune so good was the everchanging landscape and how all of the different character's plans were either adapted to or planned around such contingencies. It was subtle. MORPGS are not. I'm pretty sure I would cry to see the dune universe not only hit with the bland paintbrush of lowest-common-denominator diku-mudism but suspended in aspic as well. No thanks. As much as I'd like to summon a sandworm in a 3d enviornment or play EVE-esque political games as a minor house, somehow I know that I'd just end up doing "collect 15 krysknives" quests.

I think its a LOT harder to get a good sci-fi MMO simply because you are limited in the variety of effects that even futuristic "science" could reasonably produce.

Think about WoW, EQ, or any MMO like that.  Think of the staggering array of spell effects.  There is not a suspension of disbelief problem with magic, because we believe that "magic" in the fictional setting can produce any damn effect that it wants.

Sure, we could take every sort of spell/ability in WoW and paste in "Nanobot Warstomp" or some shit.  But the connection isn't as intuitive (especially given that we think of "technology" as not being castable or requiring direct contact with another person).  I believe that MMO devs thus self-consciously limit the "Magic" end of their games, which reduces tactical options and fun.

HA. Given the silly/stupid/obscene success of WoW can anyone realistically deny that Starcraft Online (aka WoW in space) is not in the works?

No Brainer.

I see your point but I would counter with why can't someone just make something other then vanilla Tolkien orcs and elves fantasy?  I mean I would eat up something that resembled steampunk, or deadlands (they have magic right?) or shit anything that doesn't have orcs and elves.  Even FFXI wussed out when it came to including technology in the game, I mean rangers had guns (and they were wtfpwnage mobiles w/ them but it also was catass only due to the cost of ammo) but other then that it was just the same old fantasy shit, sure they put in airships and that was cool but I was sorely disappointed with the lack of nifty equipment that we haven't already seen in every other EQ clone.3

RIFTS.  Maybe not the system, but something of that flavor would have a bit of something for everyone.  Of course it would be so diverse that it would probably fail before it got started.

I see what you mean but there is lot of lore to use. I only read the first 3 books so I really don't know how everything ended... I would just love to be in that setting.

Considering what you are saying it sure would turn out crap as Dune universe might be hard for kids to swallow and I don't want a simplyfied game (I'm thinking how SWG turned out and that universe isn't close in depth imo). As a niche game for the Dune "geeks" it might be good and I can't imagine having to much trouble enjoying it.

Having a large amount of lore is not really a benefit.  Yes it gives the developers a starting point and is an initial draw for players, however problems quickly arise if the team is unable to strongly incorperate that lore and that is not an easy task.  They also have to fact check everything because if they contradict even miniscule events the fanbois will be screaming for blood.

If the devs get too focused on getting the lore correct, they may lose sight of making good gameplay, which is hard enough to do as is.  The lore may also prevent fun ideas from being implemented because it cannot happen in that setting.

It is far easier to come up with something original or to use something with enough backstory to make a cool setting but without enough to hinder making the game.

No amount of lore makes an MMORPG good. I'm sorry, lore doesn't replace good gameplay. And since we haven't gotten to good gameplay yet, this thread can be answered in 3 words.

"Maybe, probably not."

You are right, it cannot.  It is likely going to get in the way of making that gameplay, too.

(There, I can be succinct.  Sometimes.  Really.)

Best way would be to have one recognized lore expert review everything, so everyone doesn't have to become an expert. Turbine has Chris Pierson as lore expert for MEO:LotRO:SoA:WTF. He's always been a hardcore devotee; he has his name in the extended edition credits for all three films.

I don't know about that.  We already have games that use wierd crap like gravity guns and orbital strikes.  We have games where people are healed by walking over first aid kits.  The "staggering array of spell effects" in WoW becomes amazingly less so when you realize how many of them are just the same four effects (damage, root, DOT, heal) with different numbers; mostly I suspect that the reason games like WoW and EQ have sixty squillion special moves is because they need to give the player more carrots to string them along for a longer period of time than Quake does, not because the Devs are subconsciously afraid of sci-fi or whatever.

And even if that were true, there's no rule that sci-fi can't have magic.  Shadowrun has been mentioned a number of times in this thread, for example.  As have a lot of sci-fi settings with quasi-magical effects, like Dune.


Seconded.  The only way I can see any setting leading to a particularly high quality game is if that setting either has rules implicit to it that would make it entertaining or if it were somehow capable of attracting enough money that the devs could crank out something really spectacular.  And, after seeing Star Wars Galaxies and Matrix Online, I'm not so sure about that second one anymore.

From a practical standpoint this is probably true.  (I imagine having someone that knowledgable whose only job is to fact check is very valuable.)  Although the rest of the team, especially those focusing on content, need to be well versed enough to make us believe we are in that setting.  Unfortunately conveying that feeling can be difficult even if someone knows the lore intimately.  Which leads us back to implementation.  Lore will not save poor implementation because most players will be too annoyed and frustrated to catch the nuances.

If a team does integrate lore to make the setting come alive and have a fun game then kudos to them.  Together these two things can give a powerful experience.  There are a few games like that out there and they deserve their praise.

I am sorry, but i still do not see in any great detail what precisely the difference between your version and EVE is. Perhaps you need to clarify what you mean by "character driven" because i am not sure what this is to mean; at the moment you mention different settings to that of EVE, not much else. Are you implying a less combat-centered game?


re: Darniaq

It would take a very long time to explain in detail what the differences are between Stracraft and War2 (and that's not including the obvious, such as, say, completely differenent gameplay). The short of it is, Star is and has been up to this point in time the best rts ever made. The depth and variety of gameplay options is presents to the player is unrivalled by any rts game made before and after.

To use a loaded example, it's the difference between pre-JTL SWG and EVE. In pre-JTL SWG it was all about the "ground game" where you had an avatar you controlled directly. In EVE your avatar is a just a picture and you can't interact "physically" with anybody in, say, a space station.

Well yes, but in EVE your ship is effectively the avatar. I mean, it's really only a skin-deep difference between having a "person" avatar, and a "ship" avatar. The actual interactions that happen are exactly the same, are they not?

Well sure at the meta level you could say that both games are just "shooters" (just focusing on combat for now) but at the implementation level it's the difference between something like Quake and X-Wing and some people prefer one style over the other.

Actually, I tested it out for a while and then I think they had it for free for a bit so I played it again. I guess they shut it down about a year ago or so, but it was a constant work-in-progress with a lot of work that needed to be done so it was probably a smart move for them. Was an interesting concept and world at least, but just never panned out.

The gameplay would have to focus on your character in a story.  Sure you could say time in WoW, EVE, or where ever is about your story, but there is a degree to it.

If you were to write a book about your EVE character, would it be interesting if you included all the details like mining ore for an hour?  Skilling up while logged out?  Firefly the Game should be something where watching your advetures are interesting for someone not playing because it is all about telling a story.  Basically a utopian ideal, but without that it is not living up to the show and there would not be much point in making the setting.

If you can't see the difference between playing a ship in EVE and where things happen (and what scale they happen at) in Firefly, I'm not sure I can describe it any better. In Firefly, individuals form a ship's crew, and they have adventures together on planets, or face crises that "come to them" aboard their own ship. In EVE, everyone has their own ship, and they can at best fly next to each other.

Yes, you're still joining together to play as a group. The basic function is more or less the same. But Firefly, being focused on people and personalities rather than ships and technology, seems to demand a focus on skilled avatars interacting face to face rather than equipped starships flying next to each other. The latter simply feels inappropriate for the milieu.

I think what Stormwaltz is saying is that it's not even about being on the ship; it's about being on the ship and focused outward (EVE) versus being on the ship and focused inward (Firefly, or how I'd generally imagine a Star Trek MMO).  Where the ship is more of a setting, and sure, you might look out the window once in a while to watch the planets flying by, or briefly man the helm for some evasive maneuvers if you enter an asteroid belt or encounter some hostiles, but that a lot of the time it's the internal setting of your ship that provides the backdroip for gameplay.

Ever seen the Star Trek episode "Data's Day"?  Not saying that a MMO would be made of such things, but it's hard to imagine anything like that coming through EVE.

Oh, and as to this:


Completely different gameplay?  The phrase "completely different" apparently does not mean what you think it means.  That's like saying Starcraft and Warcraft together had completely different gameplay from Command and Conquer.  (They didn't.)

Oh, and "the best RTS ever made?"  I thought that the 'elite' consensus among RTS types (of which I am not one) was that Starcraft was for the plebes, and afficionados of the genre were all about the Total Annihilation?

Total Annihilation was a much better RTS than Starcraft. Unless you are Korean.

kekelalala ^^^

QFT

I deleted a multiple page rant a few days back that basically amounted to that, but with more swearing directed in the general direction of SC and its players.  I like Megrim though so I decided against it.

Exactly.  I like the universe as presented by Whedon.  Roddenberry was brilliant, but everything past the original show was not my cup of tea.  I would vote Kirk over Piccard anyday.

I never liked StarCraft too much, especially the fucking zerg bullshit that went on over Bnet. I'm one of those guys bred on the AoE series, and when I played with friends, I just ended up building and building until I had a max-pop army full upgraded. Attacking 3 minutes into a game just isn't my thing.

Word! The building is as fun as fighting! Try Empires at War, BTW, its actually pretty damn cool.

Empires at War suffers the same poor building processes as Battle for Middle Earth and Z. I do not want to be told where I can build. I do not want to be told what I can build on spots. And I especially, ESPECIALLY, do not want to have to take an extra step just to get my already built units on the board. Oh, and limiting the number of people you can have that drastically is missing the fucking point of a war in space. Yea, great, I've reached my cap of seven. I ONLY BROUGHT 45 STORMTROOPERS, ONE AT-ST, AND MARA JADE. WATCH OUT GUYZ, I'M HEADING STRAIGHT FOR YOU.

Yea...pretty damn cool. /natch.

On that note, there will never be a good sci-fi MMOG in a sandbox. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=6346.msg170474#msg170474)

Well, yeah, it does have some limits, but in all I think its a step in the right direction. I like that you have free reign to build what you want, where to station them, and who to take to the fight. The static, pre-determined building locations... yeah, kinda bites and I am not sure why they did it. World size could have been bigger too I think. But having 2 battlefields to conquer is pretty cool (space and land). Maybe the next version will be more free-form.

If Microsoft took over FASA, maybe they will throw a bundle at BattleTech or Shadowrun. Their games aren't as bad as some others out there.

Hell, Battle Realms was better then Starcraft if you ask me.  Being able to set other people's rice fields on fire was the shit.

Will there ever be a good, fun Sci-FI MMO?

God I hope so! But I'm not getting my hopes up...maybe we'll see one come 2010.

I vote for Dune, SWG II, Anarchy Online II, and Ghost in the Shell.

The quickest route to a good, fun, Sci-Fi MMO at present?

Get someone to reskin Puzzle Pirates so it's Star Trek themed.  Compared to the "wait and hope" strategy, with a couple talented artists it'd be quite feasible.

Battle for Middle Earth II fixes most of those problems but still suffers from the fact that it's an RTS.  My problem with RTS's is that they become tediously dull against the AI within a couple of scenarios and that they are generally so offense orientated that there is almost no tactical element at all against people.  Sure there is some strategy in the build queues, and lately a little more with resource points in some games, but it's all very straight forward.  I took years off of RTS's and just tried a couple recently and there has been, if possible, even less innovation than in MMOG land.

edit: The spell checker things genreally is a word...

Tangent:

90% of everything beyond the original series wasn't even Roddenberry, so I don't blame the man.  Soon as he died the franchise decided that hope and inspiration was 'lame' and tried to be edgier.   History Channel was running a show called, "How William Shatner Changed thw World," that really emphasized this, to me.   (It was supposedly about all these inventions and what-not that were inspired by fans of all the ST series, but it focused more on the history of ST than anything else.)

The trouble with sci-fi, in my mind, is that there really isn't much mass-marketable sci-fi out there that is actually sci-fi. Most are either horror (be afraid of new/unknown), drama with shiny backgrounds (people and their issues) or fantasy reskinned.

Fantasy is also a bit more approachable, because a lot of it is recognizable. Dragons and Orcs are unknowns, but kings, knights, magicians are all from history/lore we read. How much sci-fi is featured in kids and teens education?

Sci-fi is harder because there's less bounds than fantasy in my opinion. If there was fantasy without kings, knights and magicians, where nothing was recognizable, I imagine that would be the same issue. Basically, fantasy is rooted in some reality whereas sci-fi often is not. And when it is, it's to use technology as a gimmick to show how "advanced" a society is, yet which are still having the same problems.

Good sci-fi itself is hard to achieve and bad sci-fi has not been popular enough.

As to Eve vs, say, AO or Neocron, I think people need to play a character they can relate to. It's hard to relate to a ship. It's easier to relate to bipedal lifeforms. Not sure pulling an Auto Assault on Eve (adding characters) would do it though.

To sail even further downt the tangent:  Saw this show as well, it was different to say the least.  The 'edgier' parts crept in slowly durring TNG, which is why it's ratings stayed higher longer.  The others... not so much.

I can't really see an argument differing from these points.  My problem with most ST settings is at some point everything is answered by the equivalent of gods.  Whether the Q, or whoever, it always comes down to something that is a god, or becomes a god, or whatever.

How do you have good sci-fi MMOGs when the same ultimate references and achievements come down to the same shit we experiences in Forgotten Realms in the late 70's/early 80's?  I enjoy exploration and conquering -- I believe most people become bored if that's automatically equated to a Monty Haul setting.