Ultima X: Another one bites the dust...

[Alluvian]

OOOh OOOOH!!!!  Can I play third string QB???  Please???

[Venkman]

The little engine that could seemed like such a neat thing. Too bad they're charging so much for it.

From a player-count point of view, the game has enough players to be enjoyable. However, with only three servers, and even using a liberal 1:5 players-to-account formula, if Planetside has 15k active accounts, I'd be very surprised (Geldon, I'm not sure where your 20k player count is coming from. Did you mean accounts?)

The game is exactly what it's supposed to be, except for the damned fee. It's simply too much to grab the attention of enough players to give Planetside the attention it deserves. I'd keep my account open indefinitely if the fee was $5/mo or so because I love popping for a month every three months.

But asking MMOG players to shell out the same monthly fee that the ultra-meta-games like EQ and SWG collect is stretching things a bit too far. And asking FPS players to shell out a fee for a game they have no problem emulating without said fee is sorta ludicrous. Neither of these is saying anything new. Even those of us in the earliest betas were saying it. Nothing has changed there.

Yea, what your paying for is a dev staff to close bugs and an integrated voice chat. Unfortunately, the dev staff has proven to want to be more responsive than SOE is allowing them to be. Also, everyone uses TeamSpeak or RogerWilco anyway because that's independent of the inevitable client crashes or lag or ultra-long-zone-load times. The fee doesn't actually buy enough players enough features to make it worth it, and is atop whatever clan infrastructure that group is already paying for (URL, server space for forums, TeamSpeak, etc).

It's a risk to change it though. Reducing the revenue stream to hopefully get a few more players probably doesn't make as much sense as continuing to collect it from those who have stayed.

Star Wars Planetside. Everyone here has already written a workable design document for it. Forget Battlefront, make it persistent. And then charge $7.95/mo for it.

As to UXO, ah well. I maintain that EA didn't really believe they'd get the whole team to move in the first place and that if they were serious about maintaining it, they'd have quickly hired to replace everyone. UXO just wasn't top of mind enough to keep going, which is a shame because it could have been good, for a different type of MMOGer.

[HaemishM]

That article was the biggest piece of PR spin I've seen since "Alchemy is working as intended." Ok, maybe not, but holy shit was a whole lot of words used to say "No comment."

Online sports MMOG's like Ultimate Baseball Online could be wildly successful, but they better be at least as playable and fun as last year's biggest franchise game in that sport, or they'll tank. Why pay $15 a month for a game that isn't even as fun as Madden 2003?

[Comstar]

Star Wars Planetside. Everyone here has already written a workable design document for it. Forget Battlefront, make it persistent. And then charge $7.95/mo for it.

I don't think so myself. Some (most?) people want to fly Xwings and Star Destroyers. With Stratagy and tactics and stuff. Not SWG mind you. I want to be able to plan, recon, particapate in and watch the movie afterwards of a Allience Hit and Fade attack on a Imperial Starbase before the SD shows up with a wing of 36 tie fighters shows up.

Star Wars Battlefront the Online MMOG would only work if it's like WW2OL, not Quake, but I guess Jump to LightSpeed will prove that one way or the other. SWG certinaly hasn't proved people want a MMOG Star Wars ground combat RPG.

[Venkman]

SWG certinaly hasn't proved people want a MMOG Star Wars ground combat RPG.

Erm, with over 250k subscribers, I'd say it's proved enough people want it. Maybe not as much as could have been had with a better game (particularly with a better combat mechanic), but certainly enough to say it's nowhere near the failure some continue to asert.

Some (most?) people want to fly Xwings and Star Destroyers

KOTOR proves otherwise.

SW Planetside would just be a larger persistent version of SW Battlefront, and that's being heralded not just here. I'd say Planetside hasn't lived up to it's potential nearly enough. Generic sci-fi FPS games need a hook to compete with the big boys, and being persistent with a monthly fee obviously isn't enough.

[daveNYC]

Some (most?) people want to fly Xwings and Star Destroyers

KOTOR proves otherwise.

Between X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Rogue Squadron, X vs. Tie, Alliance, the Starfighter games, and anything else that I'm forgetting; it just proves that Star Wars can sell anything except for Christmas specials.

[Sky]

Planetside proves people want it! :) Replace Reapers with Xwings. Terran Republic becomes the Empire. SOE would be silly not to consider using the Planetside combat design for a deeper MMO experience. Best of both worlds.

If SWG had that combat model...well, let's just say that's my idea of a combat revamp. PvP would be fun in and of itself, not so much who has the better stack of defensive bonuses.

But SWG is way too invested in it's current engine and advancement/skill system to ever do such a thing. That's why I've left it in the dust, but I'm still dropping into Planetside for a little fragging.

[Alluvian]

Here is what I don't get about the whole thing.  I have repeatedly seen people say the following in practically the same breath:

People want to play jedi when they play a starwars game.
Battlefront is what people want!!!!

The first is just patently illogical as there have been more star wars games where you don't play a jedi than there have been star wars games where you do (well, maybe not anymore with all the new movie license games).

You can't put jedi in a battlefront type game for sure unless it is some kind of silly temporary power up.  Actually now that I think about it, you could.  There could be one jedi/sith per team.  You lose it when you die... not sure how to define who gets it at that point.  You don't want it to be the leader in points, that would cause a rich get richer syndrome... maybe an item that respawns randomly in the world and the first to it becomes the next jedi.  That could actually be pretty cool having one sort of avatar like power per side.  Add in a delay before the jedi making item respawns and you have a big incentive for the other side to hunt down and kill your jedi.  So they have one and you don't.

Same thing could apply to a larger scale game.  Just make more jedi per side.

In the end it would not have any more depth than planetside though.  And for that reason would have to charge less than $15 a month.

[Venkman]

Actually, Sky mentioned the other angle so many have wished SWG would have taken. PS combat in SWG. I ask again as I have at every interation of WT.o:

Why wouldn't that work? Because the stats junkies wouldn't like it? So? I would love to hear from both PvE farmers (hides, rare loot, etc) and PvP players who would rather just sit back and watch their statistics do the work. PS is such a scalable combat engine it's not funny. The Cone-of-Fire system can easily have it's formulae adjusted for the stats of the equipment craftable in SWG, as can the absorption factors of the various armors.

I would love to know how many stats-junkies would quit in the face of a combat system that is fun for the fucking sake of being fun.

I'm waiting for JTL. I will bet the money I have on Bloodfin and Eclipse that not a single player quits the game because they don't like the twitch combat in the space engine. Some forum rats will of course complain that their catassery isn't netting enough reward for time in, but they are statistically irrelevant. When JTL takes off like gangbusters, I hope to hell SOE considers a true vamp of the ground combat game.

Like, to something that is fun in a way that isn't already fun in 25 fucking other MMORPGs and for the same set of game jumpers.

You can't put jedi in a battlefront type game for sure unless it is some kind of silly temporary power up.

I agree. The emphasis on same-number-of-people vs same-number-of-people is what has screwed this time and again. If one side had one player Jedi and the other side had 10 FPS BHs, it would feel right. But would it be fun? I doubt it. I doubt it so much because so often the opportunity has presented itself but been ignored or changed. Players want themselves to matter and there's no better way to diminish a player's enjoyment than to say their moment-to-moment decision making is irrelevant.

[Sky]

You can't put jedi in a battlefront type game for sure unless it is some kind of silly temporary power up.

Why not? Jedi don't have to be overpowered, any more than wizards in EQ are. Sure, in a lot of situations they'd wtfpwn, but it can be coded so that they also have weaknesses like interrupts or mana, whereas a Stormtrooper gets armor and tons of ammo.

Is it pure canon? Who gives a crap, it'd be a fun game. THAT'S THE POINT IMO. It'd be kinda like a MMO Jedi Knight. Some people got good with sabers, some used guns, some used force powers.

And in a combined arms style like Planetside, while you're thinking you're all that with your force lightning, an xwing swoops in behind you and lays in a plasma bomb.