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

[Megrim]

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

[Soln]

Shadowrun.....  yes there is an echo   

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.

[Venkman]

Wha, wha, whaaaaaa?!

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.

[Hoax]

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.

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...

[Big Gulp]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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...

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

[Rhonstet]

Starcraft MMO hybrid FPS/RTS, please.

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

[Flood]

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.

[Telemediocrity]

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.

[Tale]

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.

[Engels]

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.

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

[Telemediocrity]

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.

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.

[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.

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."

[Azazel]

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...

[Murgos]

A Firefly game would have to be very character-oriented, because the series is.

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

[Engels]

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.

[Soukyan]

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.

[Chenghiz]

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.

[Wasted]

So no-one misses Mimesis Online then?

[HaemishM]

ShadowRun

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.

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.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

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


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

[Rasix]

"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.

[HaemishM]

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


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

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.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

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.

[HaemishM]

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).

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.

[Akkori]

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.

[Hoax]

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.

[Xilren's Twin]

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

[VickeVire]

Dune Universe

I'd go for Dune

[bhodi]

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.

[Triforcer]

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.

[Daeven]

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

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.

[Hoax]

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.

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

[Lantyssa]

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.

[VickeVire]

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 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.