MMOGs Shift Gears, Online Crime Up

Next Generation has a pair of articles about the Massive scene today. One is an interview with NCSoft's Ryan Seabury about the company's shift away from the fantasy genre, and the other a short piece stating that in-game crime is on the rise in Japan as the popularity of MMOs continues to rise. From the NCSoft article: "There's a distinct lack of an online home for the wider action gaming crowd in the MMOG arena today. Although we've seen a general trend towards more action and more mainstream gaming in MMOs, still nothing is in the same league as your typical team based FPS style gameplay. We want to provide that home to the masses of action gamers out there, looking for over-the-top action. Our core gameplay mechanic and pace attracts the action gamer, but we subversively immerse them deeper into the world as they play, via the fiction, the item hunting, the crafting, the vehicle customization, the arenas, and so on."

Comments

MMOFPS

[Asgard]

If you are looking for a MMOFPS, try out Planetside. There is also another one called Huxley supposedly coming out late next year.

Re:MMOFPS

[Ceirren]

Wait, Planetside...Didn't that game, you know,

Suck?

Re:MMOFPS

[mrgreen4242]

Nope, it was actually really fun. Just priced poorly. They wanted to charge the 'regular' $13/month for a game that was worth, maybe $8. I played for about 1.5 months in the beta, and then for a almost 6 months after launch. I had to leave because I didn't feel I was getting a good value for my money.

Re:MMOFPS

[Asgard]

It was pretty good, but the content additions turned out to be less then exciting, so the drive to fight over the same bases in the same places on the same terrain evaporated. At a lower price it'd be worth it, but as a full price-per-month MMO one feels the need to play it all the time, and it doesn't grow enough to keep one's interest.

Re:MMOFPS

[fistfullast33l]

Planetside is a game that is very team-based. If you're involved in a good Outfit that likes to play in an organized style, and their style is fun, then you're probably going to enjoy yourself.

If you just run around in a tank and blow stuff up without a care in the world, the game is definitely going to get boring after a while.

Fortunately, the game has enough of a dedicated following to sustain it for the time being. An obvious indication of this is the in-game advertising. SOE obviously has enough of an audience to entice advertisers and also has enough faith in the game's fan base to spend the money and effort to do so. Hopefully the added revenue will lengthen the life of the game long enough to hold me over till the next great MMOFPS comes along.

Re:MMOFPS

[MBraynard]

It also got boring and had some broken game mechanics where you gained more by cooperating with the enemy to make big battles rather than by taking territory from them.

Re:MMOFPS

[Enti]

It really did. I joined up with the beta expecting the sort of thing that Halo originally promised. It was a certain amount of fun, but the game lacked depth. Unfortunately, this was the least of their problems. By the time it hit retail, it was still beyond bug-ridden, and the character/vehicle control was wretched. About a half year ago, I noticed that Sony was offering a free week/month/whatever of play, so I hopped back on the bandwagon, expecting a somewhat more polished game. Instead, I was met with the same rigid control, and a disturbing amount of bugs (just getting the installed program to run was a labour of love). While it could have been good - even great, instead it ended up just being another mediocre MMO that I lost interest in before actually buying.

Article? More like an advertisement.

[ShadowMarth]

Yeah, half the story was just an add for NC...

Re:Article? More like an advertisement.

[DingerX]

Well, for a produt that has been delayed, (and "praised" for delays...), they've got the unenviable position of having started the marketing machine. They've now got to sustain a buzz until the spring.

"Autoduel"-style games are great, and much needed, but the particular implementation will have to be seen.
MMP FPSs have been around for some time, contrary to popular belief. Heck, even that train-wreck of a release World War Two Online is still around with a devoted following (disclosure: I am not a follower, let alone a devoted one) after 4 years of being a MMORPG/FPS -- they're even getting ready for another release (or maybe they've released it already). What's missing is a wildly successful MMORPG/FPS.

Then again, Auto Assault is supposed to be third-person from behind the cars, so it's not an FPS either.

And, like most hype articles, the claim here is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Those big-ass games that people play, have something called "leveling" that stands in for talent and narrative -- spend enough time, you go up a level, get new abilities, and new access to narrative content. So: leveling = new narrative + new abilities. Take away either one of these things, and people complain. Narrative is one of your biggest costs in these MMP games -- come up with ridiculous stories and maintain interest over time. Making people do repetitive tasks is a way to stretch the narrative out.

The claim of making leveling "fun", as well as everything else, suggests 100% narrative. The subtext suggests 100% automotive fights. Now, these are going to be simple enough that your average moron can pull them off -- otherwise, some people won't level, and you'll lose your sub base (a la WW2OL). So how's it gonna work?

Re:Article? More like an advertisement.

[Anonymous Coward]

HALF the article? the entire thing was just an Auto Assault ad.

and a poorly written one, at that.

Online crime?

[pudding7]

I don't get it.

Re:Online crime?

[coolestdickofall]

It does kinda seem like something the game administrators should have some control over, doesn't it?

Re:Online crime?

[Nasarius]

Read the smeggin' article.

He said he'd illegally accessed a game (unnamed) using the password of a female user. He transferred goods from her account to his own on 11 occasions adding items to his character at the expense of hers.

Unlike the recent article about someone PKing with a bot, this is obviously a crime.

Re:Online crime?

[superpulpsicle]

In other news online crime rate in Japan has increased 10 fold in one year. Offline crime rate remains the lowest in the world.

Re:Online crime?

[Enti]

Yeah, I couldn't help but laugh at that article. Maybe it could have been considered griefing (and obviously cheating), but it's not as if the game creators have no hand in a player's ability to steal items - given in games like Lineage/Lineage II, it's a definite aspect of gameplay, and karma based in Lineage II. Can't remember the article entirely, but it left me with the feeling that the writer didn't know this, and assumed features needed to be coded out instead of being coded in (having to write code to prevent people from climbing trees in game - bad example, but it gets the point across). Either way, I got a chuckle out of it

Re:Online crime?

[omnispace]

I assume they are referring to hacking to steal game accounts, not necessarily stealing in-game items (besides, some games allow you to play a thief/bandit).

XBoX Live?

[Shadow Wrought]

Isn't the intended audience for an MMOFPS already feeding the monkey on their backs with stuff like XBoX Live and Halo2? I could be wrong but I'd think you'd have to offer something truly amazing to lure people over from their LAN and Halo parties.

But, then again, IANAM(arketing)D(roid).

Re:XBoX Live?

[Anonymous Coward]

What Halo2 can't do is the element that turns an FPS from running around and shooting at things into a war: Larger objectives. The maps are always the same, the two teams are trying to do similiar things, or one team is always trying to do something and the other is always trying to stop them.

With an (Ideal) MMOFPS you might have a single unified map tens or even hundreds of miles across, with some sort of 'teleporter' system that can move you close to your team's front lines in a few moments. From there, you can use all the now-standard tools (up through possibly even paratrooper-dropping) to gain a new objective. Furthermore, the objective may not always be obvious. If lines of support and supply are implemented, you might try to cut these off to adversely affect respawning. You might try pinning down players with critical equipment from the opposing side to make their assault collapse. Or maybe you just grab a gun and shoot at anything and everything that moves, hey, that's fun too.

The point is, a well-done MMOFPS can bring a degree of depth that CTF and Deathmatch games can't match.

as the home of the "have it your way" showed...

[KillShill]

the only way to win is not to play.

seriously, that's one of the big reasons i stopped playing online games. the rampant cheating and cracking. not to mention all the rude foul-mouthed teenagers, "team-killers", people whose only reason to play was to screw others, etc etc.

and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. even in pay for play MOGs, there's a ton of cheating and the above going on.

it isn't worth the aggrivation. if you can find a group of players... well that's good for you. i was never able to find people to play with at the times i wanted. this is the single biggest challenge for the online game industry and it's the one most swept under the carpet / covered up.

single player is far more satisfying, if for no other reason (there are) than just to be in control and not to have to put up with other peoples' shit.

the so called online crime will be skyrocketing more and more as newcomers fill up the virtual worlds.

i have yet to find a single vendor even remotely crack down on cheating. but please don't mention blizzard... for every one cheater/cracker they catch and ban, 1000 new ones show up to take their place. in fact, their policies are very lax and only slightly have come up now that people pay monthly for one of their games (WoW). they want those cheaters/crackers paying monthly to play but they forget that the honest players far outnumber the a**holes. they are mixing up their priorities.

hell even sony set up a virtual game trading bazaar in order to get a piece of the criminal commerce. 99% of all items for sale online have been gotten through the use of bots (farming), cracking other peoples accounts and stealing their items or just plain scamming them from innocent people.

i stopped playing. that's my cure. and judging by the awareness of people of the addictive and click-festical nature of MOGs, not to mention the treadmill syndrome, more and more people are coming to the same conclusion.

Re:as the home of the "have it your way" showed...

[ikkonoishi]

I think that many MMORPGs could make themselves more fun just by installing a one-on-one mentoring system. Basically instead of having guild halls where you can change classes you have to find someone to apprentice you. You could have some rare items that GIVE a class title, but they would be difficult to get, and would mostly be sougth by the devoted solo hunters, and the vain.

Both the apprentice, and the higher level teacher gain bonus exp when they are online in the same map at the same time. Limit this to maybe one or two apprentices at a time, and people will form small groups that will be able to manage themselves for the most part.

Make the apprenticeship trees visible, and you won't even need to allow guilds to form since they will form just due to who is training whom. This would allow people to easilly keep track of item farmers, and botters since for the most part only other item farmers or botters would sponsor them. People who cheat reflect badly on their sponsors and apprentices, while people who win acclaim add to the reputations of those around them.

Am I reinventing the wheel here?

Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[Moraelin]

Well, honestly, try Planetside for the perfect counter-example to that.

E.g., in Planetside, there is no money, hence no farming or stealing or whatever. (You're a soldier, you get your equipment for free from your base. But because you're a soldier, you can only get equipment you're certified for. Your "assets" are your certifications, which noone can steal from you, farm, or sell on ebay.)

Now I'm not saying it's necessarily your genre or that you should join PS. I'm just saying that it's an example that not all games have to be clones of the exact same loot-farming model. Yes, _most_ MMOs are essentially very unoriginal, and repeat the exact same mistakes and problems, I won't disaggree with you there. But just saying that it's possible to come up with something different, and at least one game did just that.

As for WoW... methinks you're massively exaggerating about cheating or cracking. I don't think there's been one single cheat so far that allowed one to edit, dupe or whatever items. (Yes, one fake duping cheat with blatantly photoshopped "screenshots" is being waved around, except it's just that: a photoshopped fake that never worked.) Scamming or stealing also just don't work in any form or shape in WoW, and there is no bloody way to be TK-ed either. You'd have to explicitly accept a duel to get attacked by someone on the same side.

Now Diablo, that had a ton of cheats, which I think is what gave you those ideas about Blizzard. But WoW is a very different beast.

Of course, it's still a click-fest treadmill, fair enough. But that's about it. That's the only thing that matches from your rant about it.

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW did have its bugs and duping.

You're just poorly informed, and it wasn't widely publicized for obvious reasons.

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[KillShill]

so there isn't rampant botting and farming?

it's interesting that botters and farmers have access to lots of cd keys...

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[Moraelin]

Well, ok, I'll give WoW that. It does have farming, though you probably realize that you don't really have to compete with that. The only way you'd end up in direct competition with those is if you too planned to sell gold on eBay, but I'm thinking you didn't.

What you accused it of, however is rampant cheating, cracking, and scamming. I can tell you firsthand that it's not the case.

The quip about having access to lots of CD keys, I'm not even sure what to make of it. They have access to the keys they bought, and that's that. Even if you told someone your CD key (but not many people are stupid enough to do that), once you've already used it to open an account, it's not usable again. So it would be of exactly zero use to anyone.

Look, I'm not saying you should play WoW or whatever. If it's not your favourite genre, fair enough, you're better off playing something else.

Noone's forcing you to play it, so you don't have to invent completely bogus problems to talk your way out. Just don't play it if you don't want to, and that's that.

Or to put it otherwise, no offense, but please stick to stuff you've actually played and problems you've actually experienced when you want to complain about something. You're so far off the mark, that it's like reading someone complaining about sniper-camping in Leisuresuit Larry, or about the selection of racing cars in Quake 3.

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[KillShill]

no i've played my share and i got sick of it.

i've seen tons of people complain about it... but they can't do anything about it except stop playing.

no i haven't played WoW but it's an online game, a MOG at that... with thousands of "entrepreneurs" who destroy the ability to play cheat, cracker, and a**hole free. it's a common problem in all online games. it's in quake and fps games, though not in the exact same way.

sure there are people who play and enjoy. that's fine. i'm simply saying i've had enough of the kind abuse people tolerate on a daily basis. the only place where you have that kind of control is offline, aka single player. hell, even a lan party is far better... you could physically deal with troublemakers. there's no recourse online.

and the cd key thing... guess you've never heard of trojans and keyloggers. they steal other people's keys. there's also other ways of obtaining keys, all illegal. and the reason i bring that up is simple. the moment they're banned, they're back online. and to be banned in the first place is a long shot in itself.

i'm glad you enjoy WoW. i'm just going to sit out online gaming... maybe indefintely. the crap to enjoyment ratio is not to my liking. don't take it personally.

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[Moraelin]

Actually, I'm not even playing WoW any more, but I find it surrealistic to basically extrapolate "WoW is a MMO, some other MMOs have been ruined by cheats and hacks, therefore WoW is ruined by cheats and hacks too." It's a textbook fallacy. It's as bogus as saying "Need For Soeed is a computer game, some computer games are FPS, therefore NFS is a FPS."

The thing about keyloggers again, you're extrapolating things you know from other games (e.g., FPS games where that CD key is your only identification) to something where that doesn't even work at all. It doesn't matter if you get my WoW key by trojans, keyloggers or I gave it to you, you just can't start another account with that key. Ever. Period.

As I've said, please complain about things you've actually experienced. This talking out the rear end based on assumptions and blanket extrapolations is getting tiresome.

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[KillShill]

i didn't say WoW was as bad as others but to make it appear as if it doesn't have it's share of problems like the aforementioned is plain incorrect. i've heard and read complaints from players. there are degrees. online games have jerks and cheaters on them, MMOGs even more so, then WoW will have its share of problems too. what's fallacious about that? i didn't mention to what degree but that wasn't central to my point.

but please don't get rude just because i spoke ill of a game you like.

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[Moraelin]

It's not whether I like it or not (as I've said, I don't even play it any more), and it's not like it doesn't have its own real problems (yes, it has its own, completely different, problems.)

But you're making some specific claims as if they were hard facts, on issues you're simply not informed enough to talk about. They're just stuff you assume, imagine or extrapolate from completely unrelated games and genres. (E.g., that since stealing CD keys works in Counter-Strike, it surely must work in WoW too. When it clearly doesn't.)

If you know some _real_ problems, please do post them, because it might help someone decide if they want to try the game or not. I actually like reading about the negative parts of a game too, because there are already thousands of review sites giving me the rose-tinted-glasses version.

But the scoop is that I'd like to hear the _real_ issues, from someone who's actually played the game. Purely imaginary issues are just noise drowning any useful signal. I don't care if it's pro- or anti- that game. It's just noise and no signal as long as you haven't even seen the game you're talking about. That's all.

Re:Actually, Planetside has none of those problems

[MrCopilot]

it's like reading someone complaining about sniper-camping in Leisuresuit Larry, or about the selection of racing cars in Quake 3.

Those cars did suck man.

Blah blah MMOG crime blah

[Red Flayer]

FTA: "Theft of online 'virtual' goods is on the rise in Japan, as the popularity of MMOGs increases."

Then the article goes on to describe a single incident as anecdotal evidence of this trend. Poor reporting, headline and teaser have nothing to do with article.

That said, the instance cited involves one player using another player's password. How did he get it?

If she gave him the password, then it does not excuse his behavior, but she messed up.

If he cracked her password, then that's a different story.

But really, online goods, if they have real-world value, need to be protected. Secure passwords, etc. Do you let your kids leave their YuGiOh cards unattended at the mall?

The answer, to me, is to not let your kids play games that you can't trust to protect your property.