SOE's Next MMOG (for the PS3, oh noes): The Agency

[Margalis]

"What you wear" was in Tribes long before PS.

[Stephen Zepp]

"What you wear" was in Tribes long before PS.

Amen brothah!

/duck

[Margalis]

No need to duck.

Also FFXI has the job system, which is pretty close to "what you wear" although in FFXI you have to level each job separately and it isn't clear if that will be the case here.

I've always liked games that let you switch classes back and forth based on your current whim without having to roll a new dude.

[Mrbloodworth]

"What you wear" was in Tribes long before PS.

Considering PS was an extension of Tribes...cool.Im just hoping it is more like PS's system, and not, well, full "Suits", more pick stuff you can use.  Point being, it seems they have applied some of PS to this new game, I’m hopping the best parts.

[Hoax]

PS was an extension of Tribes?

You mean in the sense that it took the coolest part (y-axis movement for all) and removed it?  Oh and made everyone move at the speed of heavy armor?  Please dont insult the fucking brilliance that was Tribes1 by associating it with Planetside. 

[Stephen Zepp]

PS was an extension of Tribes?

You mean in the sense that it took the coolest part (y-axis movement for all) and removed it?  Oh and made everyone move at the speed of heavy armor?  Please dont insult the fucking brilliance that was Tribes1 by associating it with Planetside. 

There's a lot of hidden "history" here that isn't talked about much...but it's a platitude around the office to not talk too much about Planetside if Jeff Tunnell is in the room ;) (Jeff Tunnell was founder of Dynamix, the core company that made Tribes for those that may not know).

[HaemishM]

Sierra closing Dynamix was indeed one of gaming history's worst fucking tragedies ever.

[Stephen Zepp]

Sierra closing Dynamix was indeed one of gaming history's worst fucking tragedies ever.

That too, but if you look at the Lead Designer (I think it was, I don't even know the specifics myself) for PS, and then look at the employee list for Dynamix/Sierra before it was shut down, you better break out the tinfoil hat :)

[Mrbloodworth]

Sierra closing Dynamix was indeed one of gaming history's worst fucking tragedies ever.

That too, but if you look at the Lead Designer (I think it was, I don't even know the specifics myself) for PS, and then look at the employee list for Dynamix/Sierra before it was shut down, you better break out the tinfoil hat :)

Just saying :mrgreen: (yeah, lead designer), even the engine has surprising similarities way it handles objects, Terrain, Dynamic objects, ETC...... and faults (alpha sorting anyone?), i am surprised more people don't know this. Look at some of the "ability's" of tribes, and see the parts in various equip etc in Planetside.


Not to derail the thread....

[Hoax]

Tribes1 was a fluke a fucking brilliant one but a complete fluke.

The thing that made it so incredible was the "bug/feature" that allowed people to ski.  Without ski'ing it was just an upgraded version of Microsoft's Outwars title with OMG vehicles (the most overrated fps feature ever imo).  With skiing it is still the absolute best CTF ever.  Hands down. No competition and I dont think there is a major ctf I haven't played except Q4 because really after 1 and 2 things could only go downhill and by that time DM held very little interest.

[Stephen Zepp]

Tribes1 was a fluke a fucking brilliant one but a complete fluke.

The thing that made it so incredible was the "bug/feature" that allowed people to ski.  Without ski'ing it was just an upgraded version of Microsoft's Outwars title with OMG vehicles (the most overrated fps feature ever imo).  With skiing it is still the absolute best CTF ever.  Hands down. No competition and I dont think there is a major ctf I haven't played except Q4 because really after 1 and 2 things could only go downhill and by that time DM held very little interest.

Funny story--skiiing really was a bug--and one that was damned hard to reproduce. Tribes 2 had quite the difficulty getting the "bug" back in to the play.

[Hoax]

Yeah they never got it working quite right, which is why I didn't last long playing T2.  That and the default maps were awful, they were totally on the OMG TANKZ AND PLANES kick, which resulted in choppy bits of action and way too much downtime.

[Margalis]

I only played Tribes 2, never Tribes 1, and I could never ski. I kept reading descriptions of how to do it, but I just could not do it myself. Very frustrating. Maybe I'm just dumb.

[Trippy]

Skiing sucked. When Heavies would flag run because of that the game stopped being fun for me.

[Kail]

I only played Tribes 2, never Tribes 1, and I could never ski. I kept reading descriptions of how to do it, but I just could not do it myself. Very frustrating. Maybe I'm just dumb.

I dunno, I thought I could do it, but it wasn't this mind blowing revolutionary mechanic that Hoax is describing, so I might not have gotten it.  I thought it was just a way for runners to get some additional speed when heading downhill.  The diversity of the gameplay and complexity of the mechanics were what I liked, I thought skiing was just another movement trick, like strafe jumping in Quake.

[Sky]

Meh. I thought skiing was fun, but I didn't care for it as a full-on game mechanic.

Vehicles the most over-rated addition to fps? Heh. That's a good one.

choppy bits of action and way too much downtime.

That's called tactical gameplay. Your spazfest 'oldschool' fps is thatta way --> (insert Hellgate here)

[Driakos]

The ELF gun is your friend for stopping flag runners/skiers.  Heavies too.  People get so pissed!  Nobody took the ELF.  ELF em, if they already have good momentum, you know they'll at least be close to the ground, toggle to grenade launcher/disk, get your flag back.  If you are in better position and ELF them before they get out of your base/flag  area, it was even easier.  Usually they were so bent on getting speed, they didn't defend themselves as well.  There were always people who were just better players (or insanely low pings? LPB's!), but you could really trip most people up with the ELF.

I never really got skiing down in Tribes2 (I drove the tank), but you almost had to learn it to be competitive in original Tribes.

The sound packs for Tribes were a huge chunk of the fun.  "Oh no you did not just shoot that green shit at me!"  Or play the Benny Hill theme when you have most of the other team chasing you :)

[Hoax]

Meh. I thought skiing was fun, but I didn't care for it as a full-on game mechanic.

Vehicles the most over-rated addition to fps? Heh. That's a good one.

choppy bits of action and way too much downtime.

That's called tactical gameplay. Your spazfest 'oldschool' fps is thatta way --> (insert Hellgate here)

God your a fucking tard.

Forcing tactical choices to be made under greater pressure due to the speed of the game being much greater doesn't remove the tactical elements from the game.  In fact it doesn't diminish them at all.

[Megrim]

Ugh, we already had one of these. Let's not do it again.

[caladein]

As much as I agree with Hoax (the vast majority of the time), he's as easy to bait as Slayerik.

If only you could combine the twich-FPS argument with some arcane UO reference... wait... no, that'd be bad.

[Falconeer]

With skiing it is still the absolute best CTF ever.  Hands down. No competition and I dont think there is a major ctf I haven't played except Q4 because really after 1 and 2
things could only go downhill and by that time DM held very little interest.

Always preferred Team Fortress. Love your way of hating everyone who disagree with you, though.

[NiX]

I never really thought of TF as CTF. Half the time I totally forgot about the stupid flag and most people did too. Occasionally someone would go about the whole flag run business and die horribly. But, I guess that's because there was so much more going on that it didn't matter if you were running the flag, you were still having fun.


So, can we setup a TFC night?

[Falconeer]

I never really thought of TF as CTF. Half the time I totally forgot about the stupid flag and most people did too. Occasionally someone would go about the whole flag run business and die horribly. But, I guess that's because there was so much more going on that it didn't matter if you were running the flag, you were still having fun.

That's like the hostages in CounterStrike.
If you just log in in a random server, you can only expect old-school deathmatch with some frustrated guys trying to save the hostages or to plant the bomb yelling at everyone else for "not playing right, go pack to quake you noob!".
If you singup to some no matter how crappy tournament, then it's different.

The point is I really dislike the CTF mechanic. Team Fortress is the only game I enjoyed (a lot) despite the darn flags.

So, can we setup a TFC night?

I'm so in.

EDIT: a nasty typo

[schild]

I promised myself no Team Fortress until the new one comes out. That's how angry I am at the delays.

[Count Nerfedalot]

As much as I agree with Hoax (the vast majority of the time), he's as easy to bait as Slayerik.

If only you could combine the twich-FPS argument with some arcane UO reference... wait... no, that'd be bad.

Bring back precasting twitch, beyotch!

[Velorath]

A lot of details have been coming out about this game lately:

From IGN:

Though there are classes in the game, a player is never limited to one or the other. Instead, you just put on a set of clothing before entering into a mission to determine your class. Most dramatically different is the fact that the game is, as far as we can tell, a first-person shooter (though seemingly much more accessible than something like Planetside), there really isn't a skill bar, and the lowest level players can still kill high level players with a headshot.

Another interesting aspect is the entire game is soloable. You can group up, in fact grouping is encouraged since it yields better rewards, but you're never actually required to meet up with others. Beating a mission by yourself will likely yield a bronze medal, says SOE Seattle, which gives you access to more skills, gadgets, and operatives. In a group, however, you can get silver and gold medals, allowing access to more elite items.

the key to developing your character and getting cool new items is gaining operatives; NPCs who you can order to build you things. Let's say you've unlocked a car-building operative. You can order him or her to start construction on an item, log out of the game, and still have the building process continue while offline. SOE Seattle's idea was to keep friends playing the game on as equal in their progression paths as possible, so if one friend has to duck out for a while they're not left in the dust when they finally return to the game world.

Another big focus is on UI. Since this game is being built for PS3 and PC, the traditional MMO skillbar setup just wouldn't work. You simply can't manage upwards of 100 icons with a controller. Instead the UI is being kept to a minimum, popping up only in contextually relevant situations. If a teammate falls during a mission and your medic-type character runs over, only when next to them will you receive a prompt to hit a button to perform a revive. The same goes for setting off environmental hazards for enemies like breaking apart steam pipes, or downing a glass of gin in the local U.N.I.T.E. headquarters.

To further streamline skill selection and activation, they're broken up into passive and active skills, both of which you'll have to determine before heading into a mission. This prevents a player from having to somehow cycle between tens of skills, instead just concentrating on a handful. Of these active skills, SOE Seattle said we can expect something like a brief burst of quick-firing, doing increased damage in a conical range in front of your character. Aside from skills, classes are differentiated by how many weapon and gadget slots they have available, with the more combat focused able to equip more armaments before a sortie and others having more room for strange gizmos (which apparently might even include exploding kittens).

During the demo we were given, a character was wandering around a U.N.I.T.E. headquarters and suddenly stopped at a wall mounted monitor to play a game of Q-Bert. Yes, that Q-Bert. They said that mini-games like this would need to be played in order to access hidden messages, so you couldn't get that secret communiqué to get that quest until you beat Q-Bert's third level. Other examples were given concerning poker games, where you had to lose one million dollars in order to attract the attention of a quest-giver playing at the same table.

Then there's the PvP side of things, which takes place in areas separated from the game's main locales. In it you enter into capture-the-flag and team deathmatch type of modes against the opposing factions to reap rewards, and SOE Seattle is being careful to properly balance what can be won and used in PvP versus that in PvE. Also a possibility and joint missions where you and an enemy squad are trying to defeat the same set of NPC foes, though no real details about how this would work were available.

The mission we saw involved players meeting up near a U.N.I.T.E. safe house (which was hidden behind a flower shop front) and finding a gentlemen on the street to follow into an underground complex swarming with enemies. In order to tail him properly, you have to manage a green dot hovering above his head that turns red after he spots you or suspects you're being followed. Once underground, there were a few firefights within corridors, but things opened up in a courtyard area. Apparently the baddies were trying to destroy a structure by blasting out all its underground support beams. To beat the mission the team had to prevent bomb-carrying enemies from successfully planting and detonating their payloads on columns scattered throughout the area.

During the firefight the game looked remarkably slicks, with fluid animations for all the enemies and exaggerated but fitting death physics. At it's conclusion an Agency Moment popped up, which is basically a ring of light that when stepped into lets you perform a special action. In this case it detonated a series of crates that led to a truck trying to escape.

Gametrailers also a three part series of videos showing a walkthrough of the game (parts 1, 2, and 3).

[KallDrexx]

Wow that was pretty impressive.  I'm definitely going to keep this on my radar.

[Sky]

Hey, thanks for the fucking bronze medal, asswipes. Bu-bye. 

[damijin]

Sierra closing Dynamix was indeed one of gaming history's worst fucking tragedies ever.

That too, but if you look at the Lead Designer (I think it was, I don't even know the specifics myself) for PS, and then look at the employee list for Dynamix/Sierra before it was shut down, you better break out the tinfoil hat :)

I was in relatively early Planetside beta, and the way I had always heard it was that Planetside was originally going to be a bit more like EQ with guns (i.e. it would have money, and npcs, etc), but setbacks or lack of planning stalled the project significantly (mind you SOE was developing SWG simultaneously, so their resources were mostly going that way), and it resulted with a shakeup that involved Dave 'Smokejumper' Georgeson coming on as the producer for the title, as well as other people who's names I haven't bothered to remember.

I don't think Dave was involved with T1 at all, but he was involved with T2 if I'm not mistaken -- which may be why Planetside seems quite a bit like T2 without skiing and slowed down. Things get a little murkier for me after that connection. All I remember is that Dave had a strong desire to apply story to the game, and I think it was him who came up with most of that "Humans go through a wormhole and get dropped on an alien planet and then start to fight" stuff. It was not a terribly compelling back story.

It was kind of interesting to be a spectator -- only a few months before the game asked for beta testers the entire Planetside page had gone silent. No dev updates. They even took the community forums down. I thought for sure the project was dead, but SoE managed to put it out, and it wasn't too bad of a game.

Sure as hell wasn't Tribes 1 though :P

[tazelbain]

Full re-classing and re-skilling between missions sounds awesome.

[SnakeCharmer]

That looks like a blast.

Color me interested.

[Hoax]

Hey, thanks for the fucking bronze medal, asswipes. Bu-bye. 

I'm going to really miss Sky, afterall its just so damn wrong that people are rewarded for working together in online games...

If I really need to flush out this point to explain how people stick w/ MMO's for the community bonds they form in-game & those bonds are less likely to develop if everyone is xXxLoneWolfSniperxXx6667 solo'ing to victory.  You can respond with blahblahblah WoW, at which point I'll remember your the guy who thinks Tribes was better off thanks to more vehicles...   

Go
Play
<insert Single Player genre here>

jesus.

[Venkman]

Hey, thanks for the fucking bronze medal, asswipes. Bu-bye. 

I missed something.

[SnakeCharmer]

I was thinking the same thing, but I wasn't going to say anything.

[Rasix]

Beating a mission by yourself will likely yield a bronze medal, says SOE Seattle, which gives you access to more skills, gadgets, and operatives. In a group, however, you can get silver and gold medals, allowing access to more elite items.