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Dev Discusses Upcoming Spy-MMO, The Agency
Kheldon writes "The MMO Gamer recently sat down with Lorien Gremore, lead producer on SOE's upcoming spy-shooter MMO, The Agency. They discussed various aspects of its development, such as the 'stickiness' of session-based games, striking a balance between FPS and MMO players, and whether or not The Agency even falls under the definition of a traditional MMO at all. 'You might be in Prague, and experiencing play with a lot of different other players; you might have come in at your field office and gone out into the city, encountering many other players doing missions that you are also doing,' Gremore said. She added that the game's areas are large enough to have 'lots of different people in them, collecting intel, engaging in public combat, all of those types of things. These areas are big enough that there’s shops, there’s secret spaces, photos to be taken of suspicious objects, things like that. They’re all out there in the world. We’re really trying to create a balance, where you’re encountering a lot of social situations, chances to get into groups with other people, just by merit of the fact that you guys are doing the same sorts of things in the same sorts of places.'"
I remember seeing a trailer for this a couple of years ago. I assumed it had already come out without any hype around it. I guess like most games, they've released a trailer way too early. I think it hurts sales doing this too. Build up hype, people get excited assuming it's coming out soon, then something else comes out in the mean time and then you're over the hype. Seems to doubly apply to MMO's. At least to me anyway. Was super pumped for Jumpgate, now I'm not sure if I'll get it or not.
For your next mission, I want you to collect 12 pictures of supermarkets, 14 mysterious hats and a lost 'spys briefcase'..
Intel gathering MMO? Really?
We've got this idea for a game see, and it's about spies, but rather than come up with any truly compelling gameplay we're just going have a really big world and put it online.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"John Ubuli, Fictiana's prime minister, was assassinated tonight. Apparently 12502 assassins entered the embassy simultaneously screaming 'LEEEEROY JEEenkins!'"
I'm not gonna knock the game yet... it has an interesting twist to the normal beat-em-up mmo's so will wait and see how they implement it. As it's an mmo, you will always have the grind factor etc so will just have to weigh up the good points.Some ideas that come to mind are:
(*) it would be cool to be travelling the world disguised as normal npc so other players may not be able to tell you're a player unless they have higher skill and so you never know how many people may be after the same target.
(*) You could be in rival spy-assassin companies and build company/player reputation.
(*) Being able to use sniper weapons, cameras etc like an FPS
(*) Ability for espionage, infiltrating rival companies or sabotaging their objective etc
MMOs, historically, haven't really been able to do anything about the problem that, in game, everyone wants to be the protagonist; but every protagonist needs extras.
Something involving spies seems much more problematic than usual in that regard. Meet another PC? Oh, now what are the odds that he is a spy, no matter how clever his cover?
So basically it's like meeting an American in Europe?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hey, we aren't all spies. A few of us actually do work for the state department, for real.
You thought grinding xp by combat was bad, wait until you see stealth grinding.
Follow 20 different sewer rats for 1min each without being seen.
Why should we care about being a spy in a game where everyone is a spy? Part of the fun in the idea of being a spy is that you do neat stuff while masquerading as a normal person... among normal people. If everyone's a spy, it's kind of boring, sort of like playing a Hitman game where everyone is the Hitman...
http://www.tenjou.net/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/Spy_vs_spy.gif
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Indeed, and a few "Civil Servants" are actually employed by offices other than GCHQ! It's a good cover, though... A little too good...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The "Sober American" is just a myth--much like the Loch Ness monster, the modest Frenchman, and the employed Briton.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Or people who RTFA.
Bark less. Wag more.
Which isn't a coincidence. It also makes me want this game.
i like the "you are what you wear" classlessness. It's one of my favorite features of PlanetSide(PS). i despise classes in other MxxGs.
Normally i'd say the 4 player teams is lame, but in this case it fits with the setting. It does erode their claim that it is a massive. Only the public spaces are massive. Sounds a bit like Global Agenda (which i didn't care for after being in the beta).
Switching to third person is clever, as long as there is no auto aim BS. The over the should shit is fine for an MRPG, but not for something calling itself a shooter.
Missions SHOULD be PvP, one agency defends, the other attacks.
The lack of persistence is disappointing. What my team does in Prague has no effect on what your team does in Prague. It's counter strike with a loose plot tied on to it. PS has one and only one instance and everything is persistent and interconnected. My team capturing Hossin gives your team on Ishundar a benefit. Hossin stays captured until someone takes it back. In tA, the map resets.
PvP appears to be tacked on like it is in much of GA, WoW and other massives, rather than a part of the whole game.
i hope they find a way to make console and pc players integrate. Without auto aim the PC players will wipe the console players with little effort. Or maybe... consoles should *GASP* allow keyboard and mouse as input!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
They need to make a spy MMO that leeches on some other mmo. Entire servers populated with normal people living out their lives (playing the standard game) with a spy game orchestrated on top of it with only a small number of players participating. The normal players have some idea that there are spys around--there may be occasional spies working for their guild as well as bad spies who they can tell are trying to spy on their guild--but they are not involved in any of the actual spy games (e.g. they can't just go get a "spy quest" just like you can't just go and become a foreign agent for the CIA).
WoW is a bad example for this game but it is the one that I am most familiar with...(EVE already has espionage going on but the player base is all too involved for it to work...you need a lot of "dumb" players who amount to live bots for the spies while they go about their usual raiding). There is no real Horde/Alliance adversity to play off but imagine there was more than just some inconsequential world pvp (there is also no real animosity between guilds as its all instanced and nothing is permanent). The spy game could provide people the ability to go under cover on the opposite side or infiltrate guilds...maybe it could be offered as a sort of diabloesqe Hardcore mode for experienced players; when you blow your cover (maybe have an "incognito" XP bar that can go up fast and down slowly) that character's espionage career is essentially over. Still playable as a normal person (if anyone trusts you) but deactivated from the spy game. There could be all sorts of things a spy might do in a game with more meaningful player conflict. Even in WoW there are sabotage opportunities in battlegrounds or ninja looting from other guilds/factions (maybe allow spy missions that give you one trade to a prearranged character for BoP items) that might require you going in deep enough to earn enough trust/DKP to get a specified item for the granter of the spy mission.
Could be fun...
Bottles.