Expanded scope of FPS

[Akkori]

I would love to see a new game combining the board game Risk and a FPS like 2142. I play 2142, so I will use it as the base, and modify it a bit. This just came to me this morning, and I wanted to get it down somewhere so I didn't forget. Does this exist already in some form? It's not a complete concept, just a general idea.

A very large Map, at least 10x the size of normal 2142 maps, but the map is split into zones the size of current maps. Zone size is flexible. (CoD maps are too small in general)
The larger the map and the greater number of zones equals the higher ranked map.
The map is loaded onto a server, and will run until the map is conquered.
There are 2 teams, with flexible membership, that operate just like 2142 games do currently (EU and PAC).
Winning a zone (like winning a current round in 2142) will give the team control of the zone. Winner picks the next zone to attack.
The map is conquered when one of the teams rules every zone on the map. Server will then reset, with a new map or the same map.

Awards depending on a series of criteria above and beyond the normal unlock and award system in place.
The server will track every player by their game ID until the map is completed, (can log in as any soldier on a single game cd) as well as their performance.
In particular, purposely changing sides should be tracked (defections) in order to reduce their rewards if it happens more than a couple minutes into the game.
A players actions, including their game stats like accuracy, k/d ratio, defections, etc... will add to or subtract from their award.
Awards would be mostly cosmetic and exist in the players profile, badges, rank, and the like.
There should be a few special tangible awards, particularly a new skin for an existing weapon, uniform skin's, etc...
New abilities or effects should be sparingly added, and be very difficult to achieve no matter how long a player is logged in. Based on performance, not time based.

Commander should lose Sattrack ability. No more blind manual tagging from the command screen!
UAV should be a remote vehicle the commander can control, allowing him a personal view of the battlefield. The UAV can be set into Optical Mode for normal viewing, Thermal Mode allowing it to track humans, or Magnetic to track concentrations of metal. Commander can choose radius of effect by varying altitude. Larger radius= high altitude and less effective (people under certain kinds of cover are missed), and countermeasures (like stealth suits - thermal, camo cover - optical, drones - mag & thermal, etc...) will be more effective.
New small and slow Drones available to Commander. They must be programmed before being released, are one-shot, and their travel path must be set in advance (waypoints). These disrupt the UAV from other commander. Aerial Drone can be used to mimic hot spots (using lasers to heat the ground to mimic the movement of a human) to fool thermal imaging, dropping EMP canisters in a small radius, spreading metallic chaf in the air disrupting optical viewing, etc. These can be shot down! They have short life-span.
Ground drone can eject a cloud of metallic particles of a certain size to mimic the presence of a vehicle. Identify, track, and disrupt the optical or thermal performance of enemy UAV (if in range) through small lasers (must be stationary). Act as a mobile beacon for only Squad Leaders. Always acts as a mobile Supply Crate.

The goal here is to add more strategic planning to the game, make the Commander a more valuable member of the team, and expand the scope of the game into a series of related battles for control of the Map.

[Trippy]

PlanetSide works somewhat like this though each "zone" is much much larger than your typical FPS map.

[Sky]

Problem with online FPS is that it turns out very few people like to defend. It's a constant circular game of attack the enemy where they aren't.

I've played PS games where we swoop through and gain all this ground, I hang back and repair/deploy for defense and next thing I know our entire army is gone and the continent is being taken over by the enemy. Within a span of twenty minutes, sometimes. Some blame can be laid at the game's feet, but it's mostly human nature. See the 1943 thread for Prospero's comment. Some folks kinda limit the shooter genre by always wanting to shoot, which takes out a lot of the strategic layer, since a lot of good strategy involves not shooting.

Hell, in both PS and 1942, much of the time it was better to lie low and NOT shoot, so you could carry on your objective safely.

[AcidCat]

Problem with online FPS is that it turns out very few people like to defend. It's a constant circular game of attack the enemy where they aren't.

Yeah I did experience this in PlanetSide - but there were also plenty of times when people would defend - and let's face it those were the big battles that were what made the game fun. I think enough people realized that the shooting was more fun than playing Real Estate Wars against no opposition.

[Yegolev]

Will this have Bullet Time?

[fnddf2]

Planetside also did not have much abilities for the leadership to control action on the field.  I think it had to do a lot with the fact that it was an MMO, and squads were basically treated like MMO pickup groups, which does not happened in disciplined armies (at least, not intentionally).

I would love to see a game like what you are describing.  You would have to have some way to enforce discipline though, so that orders are actually carried out from top to down.  The game mechanics would have to punish armies that are disorganized so that the commander's orders are taken seriously.

[Strazos]

So what happens when you get asshat commanders?

[Yoru]

So what happens when you get asshat commanders?

That's when you get penis monsters drawn on your mini-map with the commander crayons.

[apocrypha]

There was a very small element of this in BattleZone, except it was essentially an RTS combined with a tank-driving game. I thought it was awesome and if someone tried to re-develop it with todays technology (particularly netcode... multiplayer was pretty much impossible back then) it could be even more awesome.

Other than that then the concept your describing is basically a very large game of zone control, which exists in many forms, eg. Warhawk. To make it work more like your idea would require two main changes I think: much larger maps, as you say, but secondly the zones would have to take a long time to recapture after initially being taken. If this was coupled with fast travel to a zone under threat to enable defence then it might work. If the zones had strong automated defences activated after zone capture it would slow the pace of recapture enough to allow/encourage defence.

[Sky]

The game mechanics would have to punish armies that are disorganized so that the commander's orders are taken seriously.

[Slayerik]

Planetside also did not have much abilities for the leadership to control action on the field.  I think it had to do a lot with the fact that it was an MMO, and squads were basically treated like MMO pickup groups, which does not happened in disciplined armies (at least, not intentionally).

I would love to see a game like what you are describing.  You would have to have some way to enforce discipline though, so that orders are actually carried out from top to down.  The game mechanics would have to punish armies that are disorganized so that the commander's orders are taken seriously.

We had 50+ man raids in PS with different armor, air, covert ops, and infantry TS channels. Our commanders would all communicate through command channel, was pretty awesome when you led a raid...I was a part of the armor division and actually saw the air support and galaxy drops happen that I called in. Closest I'll ever get to being a General, and an absolute blast to be a part of. We would also do fun stuff like sunday fun raid, would do all MAX (heavy armor, and we were Vanu so we could jump walls with the jet packs on them...MAX RUSH!!!!)....or a 30 man Lightning raid (small, fast tanks). Bummer was, most people sucked at driving Lightnings (cept me of course : )

Fuck they need a new PS like game.

[Sky]

And thanks to Slay for properly illustrating the fact that there's an inherent punishment in disorganized armies. I swear I never realized how commonplace masochism is until I started playing mmos.

[Mrbloodworth]

Planetside also did not have much abilities for the leadership to control action on the field.  I think it had to do a lot with the fact that it was an MMO, and squads were basically treated like MMO pickup groups, which does not happened in disciplined armies (at least, not intentionally).

I would love to see a game like what you are describing.  You would have to have some way to enforce discipline though, so that orders are actually carried out from top to down.  The game mechanics would have to punish armies that are disorganized so that the commander's orders are taken seriously.

We had 50+ man raids in PS with different armor, air, covert ops, and infantry TS channels. Our commanders would all communicate through command channel, was pretty awesome when you led a raid...I was a part of the armor division and actually saw the air support and galaxy drops happen that I called in. Closest I'll ever get to being a General, and an absolute blast to be a part of. We would also do fun stuff like sunday fun raid, would do all MAX (heavy armor, and we were Vanu so we could jump walls with the jet packs on them...MAX RUSH!!!!)....or a 30 man Lightning raid (small, fast tanks). Bummer was, most people sucked at driving Lightnings (cept me of course : )

Real role playing.

Planetside also did not have much abilities for the leadership to control action on the field.  I think it had to do a lot with the fact that it was an MMO, and squads were basically treated like MMO pickup groups, which does not happened in disciplined armies (at least, not intentionally).

The outfits that were the tightest, and had their own command structure, were the best. It was possibly some of the most fun to be had in any game, and only the freedom, and community made it possible. They needed no rules, or abilities.

[fnddf2]

Hm, I guess it was just me then.  I never really felt that I knew what the commanding officers were trying to do.

Perhaps I was trying to express that it didn't seem to matter whether or not I knew what my commanding officer's orders were or not.  I would imagine that in a real army, I would have been disciplined somehow for running around at random.

[Ozzu]

MPBT 3025 was somewhat like this. At least it was towards the end. I miss that game. 

[Stephen Zepp]

Planetside also did not have much abilities for the leadership to control action on the field.  I think it had to do a lot with the fact that it was an MMO, and squads were basically treated like MMO pickup groups, which does not happened in disciplined armies (at least, not intentionally).

I would love to see a game like what you are describing.  You would have to have some way to enforce discipline though, so that orders are actually carried out from top to down.  The game mechanics would have to punish armies that are disorganized so that the commander's orders are taken seriously.

We had 50+ man raids in PS with different armor, air, covert ops, and infantry TS channels. Our commanders would all communicate through command channel, was pretty awesome when you led a raid...I was a part of the armor division and actually saw the air support and galaxy drops happen that I called in. Closest I'll ever get to being a General, and an absolute blast to be a part of. We would also do fun stuff like sunday fun raid, would do all MAX (heavy armor, and we were Vanu so we could jump walls with the jet packs on them...MAX RUSH!!!!)....or a 30 man Lightning raid (small, fast tanks). Bummer was, most people sucked at driving Lightnings (cept me of course : )

Fuck they need a new PS like game.

I just want to reinforce what Slayer mentions--if/when you got into a tight outfit, and even better an alliance of tight outfits, the game experience and meta-game experience went through the roof. I was in the military for 13 years, and I swear I've seen Planetside Operations go off better than real world ops when the PS outfits had, and used, a strong, dedicated command chain.

Best freaking game experience I've ever had was leading a flight of 5 galaxies under direct control of an organized command. It was literally mind blowing what could be done with 3-5 well trained outfits each doing what they were supposed to, when they were told to ;)

[Engels]

I second that. I was part of a unit run by a couple of guys who had been in the military and they were freakin experts at getting us to do what they wanted by clear rules, clear orders and engendering the sense of adventure. Other commanders failed at this, simply because getting 10+ people on the internets to do something in concert is like herding cats.

And tactically, it was night and day. A base take over that would ordinarily take anywhere from 1-3 hours could be done inside of 20 minutes if you had even so much as just 2 full galaxies with people in it with a leader, focus and, well, an attention span.

[Akkori]

Does Planetside allow you to aim? I never much cared for MMO combat with it's click-the-enemy-press-attack-button system. Being able to headshot someone, or drop prone if you are surprised and empty the clip into their crotch while they shoot over your head is awesome. Any FPS I get involved with will have to have free-form shooting. I know there are a lot of EA-haters out there, but 2142 fit's really well on me. CoD was pretty good too, but I didn't like the tiny maps (easily memorized, mucho spawn-camping) and lack of any armor or aircraft. I did like their game type variety.

To be honest, I think that if they were to implement a "world zone map" in the current 2142 game, and load up existing maps in it, it would be great fun. Taking a single zone would require the same actions as they currently do, but after the map is done, you load into the next zone, which the winning commander has chosen.
All of the current maps have a pretty decent amount of developed but out-of-zone terrain. I can't imagine it would be *that* hard to expand a current map 2 or 3 times and use it as a couple separate zones.

I play a fair amount on a TacticalGamer server, and they require squad membership and following squad leader and commander orders. You get booted from the server if you go more than 90 seconds not in a squad. Only TG members can lock squads. The game is a lot more fun this way. In reality, nearly two thirds of the players actually do follow commander orders. And you do get point bonuses when you get kills while following orders.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yes, Planetside is a FPS.

One of the best ever created IMHO.

God dam it i need a PS2, And once again, 2142 took a lot from Planetside, they just didn't get it right.

[Sky]

Yeah, a new planetside is a niche being squandered by SOE, though I'm not sure of the direction the live team has been heading.

If they ever do make a new one, Slay is the first person I'm getting hold of. The only way to play these military games is with a good unit.

[Engels]

Its about as 'niche' as WoW & CoD. If a company pulled Planetside v2.0 with the positive components of Planetside, CoD & the magic je-ne-sais-quoi of WoW (don't ask me, I don't get it either), the game would be a roaring success.

[tazelbain]

It would need an easy mode so dexless shrubs like me can do stuff.  You aren't going to be massive if 95% market doesn't have the twitch skills and ping to play.

[Engels]

utter nonsense. I'm about as untwitch as they come, and I had a great time in both Planetside and I still play CoD4. I'm utterly useless if I compare my epeen to the twitch-leet out there, but I'm having a blast.

The key is having a skill tree system that rewards enough of the time to cater to those of us who get 3 kills for every 20 deaths, yet doesn't initiate a widening abilities gap between the l33t who have progressed from grunt to Admiral of teh wtf army in a week. Planetside did this seamlessly by simply giving access to all items right out of the gate while allowing the 'advanced' player to wield more stuff simultaneously. For example, a grunt could drive a trike OR a tank OR a plane, but the supah leet level 6 could keep all 3 certifications. On the battlefield, the advantages were the same, it simply provided for more flexibility for the advanced player.

[Akkori]

I have long believed that a company making a game combining combat like 2142 and Eve Online, world size of Dark & Light or Eve Online, crafting (screw you you combatards!!) like SWG or ATitD, and a decent Guild setup would rule the world.

[tazelbain]

>3 kills for every 20 deaths
And I was an order of magnitude worse in PS, it sucked balls being perpetual cannon fodder.

[Engels]

well, alright then.

I think there may be a justifiable cut-off point where a game developer just has to say that if you can't get an even marginally acceptable kill/death ratio, then perhaps the game ain't for you. A MMO can't be all things to all people, but calling it niche is like saying that TeamFortress 2 is 'niche' just cuz you aren't much good at it. It just ain't so.

For example, I have a horrible sense of rythm. Having to play Guitar Hero would be masochism. But that doesn't make it niche.

[Trippy]

>3 kills for every 20 deaths
And I was an order of magnitude worse in PS, it sucked balls being perpetual cannon fodder.

There were/are plenty of ways to contribute in PS without needing to kill opposing players. A large chuck of the experience I earned when I was playing was from driving an ANT around refueling bases. You could also be an "engineer" or "medic" or Galaxy/Lodestar pilot or AMS driver and so on. I actually spent most of my time in various support roles when I played. My original computer was too slow so base firefights were slideslows and I couldn't hit anything, and my computer after that had issues with the mouse that I could never resolve.

[Engels]

Hah hah, yep, that was me, Mr. ANT driver. Galaxy drivers required the patience of your average gradeschool bus driver, so that wasn't for me. Hollering at your squad to get on the danged bus, then having some random squaddy lost out in the middle of nowhere asking for a ride, then getting hit by a buncha mosquitoes was beyond my capacity for punishment. I always admired the stolid drivers who did that for the squad time and time again.

[tazelbain]

well, alright then.

I think there may be a justifiable cut-off point where a game developer just has to say that if you can't get an even marginally acceptable kill/death ratio, then perhaps the game ain't for you. A MMO can't be all things to all people, but calling it niche is like saying that TeamFortress 2 is 'niche' just cuz you aren't much good at it. It just ain't so.

For example, I have a horrible sense of rythm. Having to play Guitar Hero would be masochism. But that doesn't make it niche.

TF2 would be niche as hell if they changed 15 bucks a month.  MMOs are a service.  Why would any start a service and deliberately slash your market?  Which why you can't make a 1 to 1 comparisons to MMOs.  Single player games are fire and forget.

I did the PS support thing and it was fun for a couple hours.  But it was limited, not something most people would sub for.  Expanded to all aspects of the game, it could work.  How you would do it.

Anyway my basic idea would have easy-mode weapons and vehicles that don't have quite the same stats and the criticals that the hard weapons do. Narrow the gap between the dex monkeys and scrubs and leave it up players to decide which one they are.



 

[Mrbloodworth]

well, alright then.

I think there may be a justifiable cut-off point where a game developer just has to say that if you can't get an even marginally acceptable kill/death ratio, then perhaps the game ain't for you. A MMO can't be all things to all people, but calling it niche is like saying that TeamFortress 2 is 'niche' just cuz you aren't much good at it. It just ain't so.

For example, I have a horrible sense of rythm. Having to play Guitar Hero would be masochism. But that doesn't make it niche.

TF2 would be niche as hell if they changed 15 bucks a month.  MMOs are a service.  Why would any start a service and deliberately slash your market?  Which why you can't make a 1 to 1 comparisons to MMOs.  Single player games are fire and forget.

I did the PS support thing and it was fun for a couple hours.  But it was limited, not something most people would sub for.  Expanded to all aspects of the game, it could work.  How you would do it.

Anyway my basic idea would have easy-mode weapons and vehicles that don't have quite the same stats and the criticals that the hard weapons do. Narrow the gap between the dex monkeys and scrubs and leave it up players to decide which one they are.



 

Planetside already had this right, no need to change the formula. Just cert Uni-max yah nub!

[Sky]

Yah, hate to say it, but lern2play. Pick up a thumper or an AE max loadout, or drive a tank. Or do your support role in a tight outfit rather than PUG or solo. When I'm in practice I'm decent at fps, but I often find it boring just being the shooty guy. I like the more diverse roles something like PS offers. Fuck, if you can't find the malicious glee in being a good Combat Engineer, the game isn't for you.

A long stealth fight between two CEs over a lone tower is one of the most fun times I had outside the massive battles.

[AcidCat]

No game is all things to all people and expecting it to be just because it's Massive is ridiculous. Obviously there is a huge market for FPS games and if you have the right game, they'll pay their monthly fees too. Planetside was almost that game ... I don't know exactly why it wasn't bigger, for me it was the perfect game.

[Merusk]

Wild swings in side imalance and the always-disheartening "oh, hell, time to take over all the islands again/ lose all islands now" that comes from the game's basic design.

[Mrbloodworth]

Wild swings in side imalance and the always-disheartening "oh, hell, time to take over all the islands again/ lose all islands now" that comes from the game's basic design.

Basically, the "grand" game becomes repetitive. The meta game however, more dynamic than any MMORPG ever.

[tazelbain]

No game is all things to all people and expecting it to be just because it's Massive is ridiculous. Obviously there is a huge market for FPS games and if you have the right game, they'll pay their monthly fees too. Planetside was almost that game ... I don't know exactly why it wasn't bigger, for me it was the perfect game.

Let's not allow reality to get in the way of obviousness.

MBW: more dynamic than EvE?