Huxley beta sign-up has started.

[01101010]

Well anyone who took advantage of the free open play on Aug 11th and 12th should be pretty confident that this game is really a non-issue.

[Sky]

"Achivements", "persistent character development", etc. in games like TF2, and the CoD and BF series actually make it harder for games like Huxley to succeed. Why pay for character persistence when you get get the same thing in free-to-play FPSes? PlanetSide is about the scale, which Huxley doesn't duplicate, and is something some people will pay for since you won't find that in your normal online FPS. The "RPG"-aspects in PlanetSide actually did more harm than good to that game, IMO.

I completely agree with this statement.

The most common gripe about PS was about paying a fee for FPS. Chasing the FPS crowd is difficult, because the vocal hardcore crowd was just playing CS, maybe dipping into BF1942 for vehicles. I could convince NOBODY from my BF1942 clan to even try PS because of the fee, and these are guys who paid for a server and hosting. As Trippy says, with achievements and unlocks in most FPS these days, the "rpg" aspects are a hobble. Full disclosure: I always hated the rpg stuff in PS because people played non-strategically to 'get xp' 

The thing PS is still completely untouched in is massive three-way battles with combined arms. I still believe it's the best application of the mmo idea, but completely mismanaged to the point of almost destroying the genre.

[01101010]

The thing PS is still completely untouched in is massive three-way battles with combined arms. I still believe it's the best application of the mmo idea, but completely mismanaged to the point of almost destroying the genre.

That is about a perfect, succinct conclusion about PS.

[Venkman]

"Achivements", "persistent character development", etc. in games like TF2, and the CoD and BF series actually make it harder for games like Huxley to succeed. Why pay for character persistence when you get get the same thing in free-to-play FPSes?

This. Entirely. It's got to be a good FPS first to draw the attention of the FPS crowd and you need to talk to them with the model they expect.

As to Item Shops, it's nice to get that 5% to pay deep into your system, but you need to have a lot of passersby to make that 5% a big enough group of walking wallets. I can't see a generic sci-fi shooter with side instances GW-style shared social spaces attracting nearly as many people as a co-op game like Borderlands or the FPS coming later this year.

[DLRiley]

I think that mmpFPS actually have to make a good FPS first in order to make any money. There are plenty of FPS's that support themselves via cash shop, warrock, wolfteam, combat arms. a gimmick + low development cost = success. Nothing wrong with guild wars instance if the gameplay is actually good and can hold fps gamers attention.

[Kageru]

From my point of view they simply can't. Unless they're going to allow third parties to host servers, which opens up a lot of potential exploits in maintaining and updating world state, they simply can't make a game as responsive as the TF2 server hosted by my ISP. Free, high quality and low latency TF2 versus paid for, less balanced (the no-life's need more advantages?) and high latency? Good luck with that.

[Hindenburg]

From my point of view they simply can't. Unless they're going to allow third parties to host servers,

Skirmishes are hosted by the players.

[Kageru]

Didn't Diablo 1 try that and end up with significant issues of people running hacks against their locally hosted sessions? That was part of the reason D2 was hosted on the central servers. Same with TF2 and all the "achievement unlock" servers I saw around.

In a game where there is supposed to be significant investment in the character, and gameplay is supposed to "earn" rewards for achievements, I'd think you'd have to trust the security of the environment where the game is being run.