Subversion, an argument for MMO

It's all in your head

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Subversion should be MMO?

Yes
7
16%
no
36
84%
 
Total votes: 43
Jordy...
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Postby Jordy... » Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:54 pm

I guess you're arguments are strong, and it will be no doubt hard, or maybe even impossible, so I rest my case, but I do feel dissappointed right now because I expect them to make a mediocre game, with no real touches that are refreshing, but who knows, what it'll turn out to be.

Anyway, goodluck IV!!
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Postby TimTim » Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:13 pm

Never going to happen. There are what only three programmers working on subversion at IV?

It takes a lot more people to code an MMO which doesn't suck, then you need a team of guys available 24x7 to run the infrastructure to support this MMO then you need people to do in-game support etc and that is a very basic view of what goes on in the background of any MMO.

This doesn't even consider the upfront and on-going costs of getting a server farm in place to support an MMO.
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Postby Jordy... » Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:59 pm

Well.. in times of crisis fusions take place :). What's wrong for IV to co-op with some other inspiring development teams.
Currently there is a group of students and teachers that are trying to make the MMO-game called Emergent wich I think both development teams would benefit greatly if they would work together, also how did CCP do it? they weren't big, or NASA also making an mmo, ofcourse they got money but it's nothing like a fancy MMO or anyhting, what about all the free to play MMO's? I think you all greatly exaggerate how hard this is, ofcourse I don't know the littlest of it, but don't see it's impossible please!
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Postby Greeba » Mon Feb 22, 2010 10:51 pm

I think you should go make an MMO. Get started right away. Take your time. Come back when it's finished.
"Timmy... fetch me my tools..."
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Postby martin » Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:05 am

Jordy, an MMO is really hard to make. Everyone and their brother these days seems to think that any idea can be made better by the good old "I have a good game idea, let's make it MMO and it'll be ten times better" logic, clue: that's not true.

Also:

wikipedia wrote:CCP was founded in June 1997 for the purpose of making MMORPGs. In order to finance the initial development of Eve Online; CCP developed and published a board game in Iceland called Hættuspil ("Danger Game"). In April 2000 the company, with Sigurdur Arnljotsson as CEO, raised $2.6 million, through a closed offering organized by Kaupthing Bank, from private investors in Iceland, including the Icelandic telephone company Siminn. Approximately half of the initial 21 staff were drawn from the Icelandic dot-com company OZ Interactive, the makers of OZ Virtual.


So, as someone said, MMOs need lots of up front cash to develop.
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Postby Miral » Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:37 pm

An MMO, definitely not. Not a chance. Not only would it have a poor chance of working as a game, it'd be unlikely to last very long (MMOs have massive setup and maintenance costs).

Co-op multiplayer, on the other hand, I can see that potentially working out. Versus/deathmatch... maybe, but doubtful.

I'm in it for the single player, though. I've never been much of a fan of multiplayer games, and it's been ages since IV's last single player game...

I'm sorta expecting that if anything, they'll come at it from the Darwinia angle -- polish up and release a single-player-only game first, and once that's done add multiplayer to it later, if it will fit in with the gameplay design.
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Postby Clive At Five » Wed Feb 24, 2010 8:59 pm

I could foresee these types of multiplayer modes:

Assault: Guards v Agents. More first (third?)-person-shooter-y, two teams fight it out, guards try to protect the bank vault / server room / CEO from the agents... pretty self-explanatory.
Control: computer generates a city, and selects a few target buildings with vaults to breach, w/e. Two or more teams fight over who can claim those points. Time limit, or play up to X points. More single-player-y with third-person-shooter elements.
Capture the Servers: computer generates a city, hides a few servers for each team in select buildings. Servers must be protected from capture. Again, a fusion of single-player & third-person-shooter elements.

Note that MMO is not among this list ;)

-Clive
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elexis
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Postby elexis » Wed Feb 24, 2010 9:53 pm

For a multiplayer experience i was thinking maybe one player/the AI could design a custom built fortress and one or more teams/players could simultaneously try to break in and get to various or even th same targets. No-one is working together and you win if you complete the objective first or you hold them off.
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Postby Clive At Five » Mon Mar 01, 2010 11:50 pm

I think there's a very limited potential to the "design a fortress" idea. Call me a pessimist, but the failures in my experiences with player-created levels is that players have the insatiable appetite to stump one another and, therefore, will inevitably over-design a contrived, single-solution fortresses. From one of Chris's first posts about security systems, it was clear how open of a game he intended it to be, for example, covering a sensor with a wad of gum. The beauty of stealth is that it has no other rule than to remain undetected. Having not designed the game themselves, I fear many aspiring fortress-builders will simply concoct some sort of enigma, wrapped in a sphinx, buried under a rune. While it's satisfying for the 0.01% of people who can solve it, not only is it frustrating for the remaining 99.99%, but it's completely out-of-context with the rest of the game.

Procedurally generated fortresses on the other hand may hold some potential but, like the procedurally generated LANs in Uplink, will likely become predictable and unchallenging in a short amount of time.

Unfortunately, I think that's why the success of this game depends heavily on a mass of well-designed, and increasingly difficult security systems for single player, and a competitive third-person shooter, co-op hybrid in Multiplayer, a la guards versus agents.

-Clive
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Postby The GoldFish » Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:11 pm

Clive At Five wrote:I think there's a very limited potential to the "design a fortress" idea. Call me a pessimist, but the failures in my experiences with player-created levels is that players have the insatiable appetite to stump one another and, therefore, will inevitably over-design a contrived, single-solution fortresses. From one of Chris's first posts about security systems, it was clear how open of a game he intended it to be, for example, covering a sensor with a wad of gum. The beauty of stealth is that it has no other rule than to remain undetected. Having not designed the game themselves, I fear many aspiring fortress-builders will simply concoct some sort of enigma, wrapped in a sphinx, buried under a rune. While it's satisfying for the 0.01% of people who can solve it, not only is it frustrating for the remaining 99.99%, but it's completely out-of-context with the rest of the game.

Procedurally generated fortresses on the other hand may hold some potential but, like the procedurally generated LANs in Uplink, will likely become predictable and unchallenging in a short amount of time.

Unfortunately, I think that's why the success of this game depends heavily on a mass of well-designed, and increasingly difficult security systems for single player, and a competitive third-person shooter, co-op hybrid in Multiplayer, a la guards versus agents.

-Clive

Hello!

I agree with you almost entirely, and have been trying to put most of these points forwards for some time.

I am worried about the multiplayer aspects moreso than single player, since, if a stealth based game is nonrandom/liniearly designed, it can become trivial sometimes to literally run through the level once you learn how everything is put together (eg Hitman perfect score speed run type things). This would kind of ruin the multiplayer on fixed design maps, so there needs to either be a random factor or a player factor or something to make that work. I never played the splinter cell competitive multiplayer, so I'm not exactly sure how they did it for that.

The same applies to single player if there isn't progression and development from level to level - the uplink comparison is a good one; it just becomes trivial and boring. If they're going to make it single player, I think they're going to have to use generated stuff as a base and then author it appropriately, unless they can get the procedural stuff to the point where it can do this reasonably for the number of levels they want the game to have - I don't think that there is a point that the abiltiy of the procedural generation could reach where the game would continue to challenge/interest you with levels forever, and if anything, that might upset the progression curve and hide novelties from you.

I suppose possibly uplink-esque, random missions vs story missions could work quite well - start off with some hand crafted tutorials, and start doing randomly generated content (since it's all still new), then progress on a trail of intrigue or somesuch along several (ideally more than 5) story related missions. Hell, if you as a character can be impartial (ie not directly threatened by the story), you can easily have a multithreaded story, or even several unlinked ones. Hell, make it nonlinear too, everyone always goes nuts for that, right? I mean, I know IV don't seem to like hand crafted maps etc, but I can't imagine there's a better alternative for a single player game, which is the only way I can imagine subversion will definately work at current.
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Postby Jordy... » Wed Mar 03, 2010 11:36 pm

I remember a long time ago chris saying he saw a big space left for the community to make maps and whatever not, he said that was the plan, but as we all know... still no map editor >(.
Anyways, I'm quite sure they'll put a map editor in this game and I guess that's how they'll try to make this game intresting, however what I would like to see more.., no not mmo...,
is a world wherin you fight against an oppressive regime, where the whole gameplay of hacking into buildings etc. is overarched with gameplay of creating a network of resistance and you being police monitored or whatever, so kind of gta free-roll style but then more focused on you, where every action really does have a consequence, and again, I keep being remembered of that game wich name I constantly forget.. but in short he wanted to built a massive world with alot of houses and every person going about his own thing and for you to craft an career in that city manipulating all those individual persons.
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Postby Zakski » Thu Mar 04, 2010 2:57 am

I would rather they built an extremely polished and well thought-out single-player exprience at the expense of multiplayer features, than have it split half and half or as some sort of mmo. After all, evil genius didn't have any mp, but was a vastly entertaining game for me (pulling off the perfect setup of silly traps to take out over confident agents was a awesome sensation).
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Postby Lucky13 » Thu Jun 24, 2010 9:50 am

elexis wrote:
As for the networking side, depending on how the game is designed even the tiniest amount of latency could be an issue. In space sims it is entirely possible that the players can have speed and manouverability that is comparable and even equal to the projectiles being hurled at them. (think Tie Fighter here) If on one screen a player's dread missiles score a direct hit on the enemy and on the other he does a barrel-roll at the last minute, people will be annoyed.

that used to bug the crap out of me in freelancer...

If anything i could see a multiplayer aspect where each RP plays a member of the team. it would limit bandwith issues. and not over complicate the aspect of integration. that coupled with the use of any number of voice chat programs (running separately) i think would make for an enjoyable experience. one person runs distractions. another hacking the safe. someone else watching camera feeds. ect....

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