MMOFPS Games The Next Big Thing?

GameOgre writes "Despite a few lackluster attempts at a major MMOFPS like PlanetSide and now (in some ways) Star Wars Galaxies, could the MMOFPS genre one day rival MMORPGs in popularity and become the next big thing in MMO gaming?" From the article: "Imagine the possibilities of the MMOFPS genre for a second. Instead of going through the tired old tread mill of generic missions and level grinding, blast through a combination of other players and intelligent bots on a massive scale. There would be no rooms or lobbies that you have to scan through to find a vacancy, but one persistent world. The game would be as simple as an FPS but would have enough depth to keep you coming back. You would also not be able to camp a certain monster for treasure, because their would be no monster or treasure." The big issue I see here is pricing. The monthly fee for Planetside is just too high for what they offer.

Comments

Essentials

[Idealius]

Being someone who has played plenty of FPS's and MMO's here are the essentials to a great MMOFPS:

1. No Guns! (or the option to play without vs those who choose the same option)
- guns mean aimbots, you need some swordplay like the Jedi Knight series, Rune, etc. to prevent cheating.
- gameplay > all. sometimes complicating a game by allowing you to have super leet grenades only makes it less fun. Think of a chessboard double it's regular size with twice as many pieces. Anyone can aim a gun, it's not fun anymore and it's not competitive unless you decide to stick to one gun game for the next two years to avoid having to relearn aim in other games -- an absolute nightmare if you own multiple gun games.

2. Clans!
- FPS's main method of keeping a steady population years after their release is by allowing anyone to make a clan, screw MMO's and their factions, I want to choose from factions real people create.

3. Make organized clan matches result in territory wars a la risk, but make them scheduled like real FPS clans schedule matches.
- That means whenever they want as long as all parties agree, but no set period where they must protect their territory because even though all those stories about some kindergartner being god at Quake sound appealing, most of the really good FPS'ers are young adults with lives, too. The clan matches should revolve around my clan's schedule, not the game's schedule. You can make the control a clan has over a certain area gradually disappear with time so clans can't sit forever on a piece of land and refuse to fight for it.

4. Balancing an MMO's duels between different classes is easy. A FPS is much harder, in fact I would say nearly impossible unless they're restricted to the same weapons vs each other in a symmetrical world or something ridiculous @_@. Either, spend a lot of time ensuring this is balanced, or force players to use the same weapons vs each other to make it fun -- or even make the stats/experience system allow for a higher gain if duplicate weapons are used.

5. Fair fights are fun because the other person can't claim a handicap if you win!

6. Tie "virtual material possessions" to the land a clan fights other ACTUAL PEOPLE to retain. Basically, make it more like life.

Some other ideas:

-Use the Instancing model to support low ping duels.
-Crafting has a place in a FPSMMO, think about clothing, it shouldn't hook into your gear, though, because that just leads to unfair fights which, as said, I believe to be the cornerstone of a FPS.
-So what's there to do? Kill people to earn stats, higher stats go to new areas opening up and allowing you certain privileges in your clan such as the ability to arrange a clan match, or the ability to induct a new member.

To be honest, I would be satisified with current FPS's having some kind of "teleport to another server" portal, but if you're going to go all the way please do it right.

It's called battlefield 2

[InsideTheAsylum]

If you've played that game, you'd know that it almost fits into the MMOFPS genre with being able to play on a single map with 64 people. I wouldn't want to play a massive MMOFPS with 2-4000 people though some reasons:

* Latency: Your average FPS game server will kick anyone over 200-300 ms ping because they either have some sort of a script or an active admin. An MMOFPS will be there to make money and I hardly doubt that they will be kicking paying customers off.

* Scope: The problem with MMOs is that events are always taking place wherever you are not. You're gonna need to travel an assload of distance to get wherever the current battles are taking place. What if you die? Where will you spawn? That's a major PITA. Even if they implement "spawn anywhere your team is," it's still rather annoying to find out where you can frag the most which is the beauty of simple server hopping in FPS games.

* Teamwork: Unless you have a dedicated clan, which most people won't have, you will simply be playing with a bunch of idiots who do everything to further their own gaming experience without any regard for the people on their team. An example of this in BF2 when nobody will ever stop to give you a ride, look at your landmines covering the road (and then punish your TK when they ignore the glaring red skulls), and then shoot you when you spawn and run halfway to grabbing the vehicle. Imagine that, but on a massive, thousand player scale. Fun, huh?

So, for my quick fix of shooters, I'll stick to smaller (in comparrison) games and have my fun there :P.