I had a lot of high hopes over the past few years for the MMOFPS genre.
Planetside had some good concepts in their game, and during the beta, I really loved it,
but over time they patched their game into oblivion and gave it a leveling curve that too
strongly benefits people who have been playing that game since day one, hurting it's long
term potential for a revitalized community.
It seems like now, slapping the MMOFPS tag onto a game, or closely relating a game's
system to MMOFPS (such as CrimeCraft's PWNS) is all the hotness. With Huxley,
CrimeCraft, The Agency, Global Agenda, APB, and all of these games coming out,
it seemed like the genre was booming... but the sad fact of the matter is, it's all a huge joke,
a shady lie, and miserable shortcutting of the promises.
Fact is, these games, through all of their differences such as being FPS, TPS, and various
small flavor differences, follow a model that is even close to Planetside or the traditional
MMO format, in all reality, it's really just a fancy version of Korean Shooter Clone games
that you'll find on popular second rate gaming sites such as ijji, softnyx, or nexxon. Closer
to the model of briefly fun yet forgettable games like Gunz, War Rock, Wolf Team, and any
number of the Korean attempts to create a Counter-Strike clone with micro transaction pay
models for upgraded weapons.
These games are trying to get away with calling themselves an MMO because of a
graphical lobby system, uninspired gameplay that could be mistaken as PVE by the
uneducated, and character progression through gear and abilities, which are game
crippling gimmicks that do more to trap the player than they do to enhance the gameplay
or add anything fresh or creative to the genre as a whole.
While each of these games have varying promises and numbers for the actual level of
'MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER' involved in their games (with APB currently holding the highest
promise with 100 users in a persistent PVP server -- and when we say server we mean a
server in the sense of TF2 or Counter-Strike, not WoW or Warhammer), the fact of the matter
is, none of these games have yet to step up and offer a true MMO-Shooter experience as
each of them so arrogantly set out to do when each of them began buzzing themselves to
the gaming community.
The fact is, these games have all taken a short-cut around the tough challenges that lay
within the MMO Shooter gameplay model, rather than solving those challenges, and actually
contributing something more than a forgettable clone with no long term growth potential or
staying power. It's an Eastern model struggling to reinvent itself and succeed in a Western
community, will any real media outlets actually bring these facts to light?
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Should look at MAG then, I think that will work.
MAG looks great and has potential but that is still not much different than the NovaLogic FPS games that have had 100+ players on a single server concurrently.
Though by DEFINITION (Not by genre), MAG is about as close to Massive-Multiplayer-Online as possible.
APB doesn't seem like an FPS at all to me. MMO sure, but not an FPS.
@Zippy
MAG is an action game, not an MMO.
He's referring to Huxley and such where you can quest.
@Mag
Whatever, I think it's a mix of both.
In fact I just googled it and I trust Wiki personally, so there you go, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Action_Game
*Cough*
"MMO shooter" & Genre(s) MMOFPS"
@TECHNOPHILE
APB is supposed to emulate a Grand Theft Auto gameplay environment in a Massive Multiplayer Online setting.
@Zippy
Wikipedia, wtf! MMOs are part of a perpetual world. MAG is going to be based around a perk system, with separate games that have a beginning and and end, just like the COD series/Killzone 2. Are those MMOs?
We haven't heard about the "ongoing campaigns" much: I hope they haven't scrapped them. But yea, that would be MMO-ish.
@weenus
so...GTA is an FPS? I thought it was a third person action game?
Well it definitely has FPS elements in it, but I guess it's my fault for generalizing MMOFPS/MMO-Shooters. In effect, MMO-Shooters is really my target in this post.
but I appreciate your vapid attempt at sarcasm!
MMOFPS, PWNS, APB, FPS, TPS, MMO, PVE, PVP, TF2, WoW, MAG, COD, GTA and finally MMOFPS/MMO. That a lot of abbreviations.
Thanks for the tally.
I agree with you on this.
I had very high hopes for MAG, the upcoming PS3 MMO/shooter game. It has 256 players on the same server (quite a feat for a console game!), but the more I find out about the game, the more it seems that it will follow the standard shooter formula found in games like Killzone, Socom, etc. The only "persistence" to the game is the standing of the 3 factions in the overall world (which gives a "defend" advantage to the winning faction) - the actual games will vary in length from 20 minutes to 2+ hours. The "levelling" system might be interesting, but we'll have to see how much of an advantage it gives to those 24/7 players and if it manages to shut out the more casual players. Apparently XP buys perks, but most of the perks are apparently of benefit to the squad/team rather than individual perks, but I'm a bit skeptical as to how this will actually work.
It "could" turn out to be an MMOFPS... but until the beta comes out I guess it's wait and see! (and I'm trying not to get my hopes up... but am still keeping my fingers crossed that this might be a break through game for this genre).