Realistic-styled War MMOs? That would be neat.

[Coldkilla]

For the mature gamer, I think a modern realistic war-sim MMO would be a nice change of pace. A game much like Operation Flashpoint, only you start out as a Private and work your way through the ranks with a continuously changing environment. You can have your non-violent MMO players in towns and villages, and your military MMO fans in another. Hiring military protection against guerrilla insurgents and other armies. There would be Airports, civilian pilots, governors, a president, 2-3 factions each with their own army's and governments. An airforce that protects the skys overhead. A military would go on patrols, provide supplys to towns, villages, city's. Each Military would have its own command hierarchy and structure. The technology is there, much like OFPs expansive 200,000 sq. kilometer islands, or Armed Assaults 400,000 sq. kilometer islands, all of which are in very good detail.. (ArmA was the biggest anti-climax IMO)

I would find great interest in this... But I guess the trend nowadays is sci-fi, ww2 mmos. So what do you guys think? Too far fetched to ask for a more realistic/mature mmo gaming experience?

 

[spunkz]

i think it would be awesome with planned battles, like Lineage, except where the game is fun and doesn't require thirty-thousand hours of grindfest. say you have two factions (any time setting would work, maybe revolutionary war instead of modern?) with a huge battle planned for saturday night and a new battlefield created for each week. you have the different classes, like you said, with the hardcore players out farming and leveling up throughout the week, as well as random PvP skirmishing/patrols, with rewards in rank and/or weaponry for the final battle. maybe if you've ranked up you can move up to cavalry or spy or something. plus you have commanders to build up bases and decide on general tactics for the battle over the course of the week. finally you have the mainstream players(free account?) who can log in only for the battle each week and play just a regular soldier but in an epic battle with thousands of players.

i think it would make a great game, as long as there was some way to give people freedom to do what they want while maintaining a system of command, thus keeping some order and realism on the battlefield. this could be a mix of rank earned throughout the week and a reputation system where a bad captain can be voted down and replaced by his unit or a guy just screwing around can be demoted and labeled a traitor, able to be killed by either faction.

 

[OhSnap688]

Someone get on this! Gogo

 

[pontifex]

military might work but i think a mmo where you're mercenaries might work better.

 

[Genx87]

World War II online kind of does what you are asking. I know, it is WWII. But it is a MMO that plays across North Western Europe and they have ranks and production ect ect.

I often thought a good MMO would be a sandbox of a few hundred square miles. Each square mile represented a number of resource points. Each square mile has an objective. The problem with WWII is the battle moves very quickly because the points are so spread out.

Then behind the combat system you had an economic system where people can build stuff, collect resources ect ect.

 

[duragezic]

Yeah, something like this would be awesome if done well.

Just think how I felt reading previews for WW2 Online back in 2000 or so. I was thinking how perfect this game was gonna be as I liked shooters and thought the hugeness offered by an MMO would be amazing. So I preorder the damn thing, and convinced a friend to do the same, and we get it and well it was less than stellar. It was actually cool that because it was so flawed, they didn't charge the monthly fee until quite a long time after release.

There was still a number of fun times with it. Mostly when the server was populated enough to where there was a big battle going on in a town. Otherwise, you were stuck with finding a tank to travel a long distance, or worse have to walk, then get killed out of nowhere and be so far away again.

Joint Operations is kind of cool. Although it is not a MMO, it has a 150 player limit. No ranks or unlocks (cmon, this was 2004), but large maps, boats, aircraft, and vehicles (that aren't overpowered actually, *cough* BF2), as well as customizable classes.

 

[chizow]

Yep WW2 Online came to mind immediately but as others mentioned it was plagued with problems and never really caught on. Plus it was based on WW2 so I think the idea was to constantly "reset" the timeline/progression every so often.

PlanetSide also took a shot at a persistent/perpetual MMO world. It had factions, ranks, and some unlockable abilities but didn't really have any centralized theme or objective to tie it all together.

MPBT 3025 was probably the closest to getting it done, but never came out of Beta and wasn't really an FPS (although 4v4 Javelin drops were pretty darn close to FPS action!) more of a sim. But it had a perpetual planetary assault engine with planned events/objectives for the future. Built-in rank system and limited stat tracking and rank + money earned in combat gave you access to bigger mechs and purchase more mechs to add to your stable.

COD4/BF2/2142 integrate a lot of these elements but they're not persistent and not MMO. A limitation of FPS games has always been max server size and continuity between servers.

Personally I think a futuristic setting would be needed so that a storyline/campaign wouldn't be limited by historic/current events. I know a lot of people (myself included) prefer "realistic" FPS based on modern weapons, I just don't think it would work well in a contemporary climate.

In any case, I think first and foremost the gameplay and engine need to be good/fun. If the game falls short in that area, being persistent or MMO won't be enough to keep people's interests.

 

[badnewcastle]

This would be cool.

 

[coloumb]

Ah..so BF2 in an MMO environment? Yeah..that'd be nice..

 

[BladeVenom]

If you disappointed with Arma (Armed Assault) I don't know what to tell you. The company Bohemia Interactive also makes Virtual Battle Space VBS which is used by the US Marines and other countries for military training.

If you want a realistic MMOG then it would be boring most of the time. In real wars big battles can be weeks or months apart.

 

[Coldkilla]

..........I'm disappointed by Bohemia's intended use in misleading the loyal fan's of OFP over to a unfinished, unpolished, nonvista supporting, non DX10 card supporting, non 4+GB supporting systems, just to cash in on the fan's loyalty... I'm disappointed in Bohemia because they released their game in Alpha, see here before it was even beta, and made you pay the full 50 dollars for it. Then they start working on another engine before they finish their current one, costing well over $500,000 to develop, meanwhile not giving public patches out in nearly 6-7 months. Vista is not supported, if you have a DX10 card, the cards and drivers do not support it, if you have over 4GB of RAM, you physically have to take a stick out for the game to even work. But in order for the game to work, you have to try numerous backdoors and workarounds to get it to - I spent 11 hours over the course of 6 days to try and get it to work.. Bohemia has never addressed these issues, and don't forget the mention of hackers. 80% of unlocked servers are infested with hackers that literally cause host servers to lockup and shutdown. Since there were no official word on this, the community tried to handle it themselves, however unable to get a secure passworded server, I decided to quit the game and wait for Operation Flashpoint 2 which is NOT being developed by Bohemia, rather Codemaster's largest team ever assembled (120+ people) using a modified engine from the game "DiRT", but they just keep releasing kickass render pictures and video, no actual gameplay.

But anyways, back to topic: My good friend Matt is in college now for Video Games and sees a much more specific/realistic MMO that seems quite interesting, 400 pages of interesting, except he hasn't been in the business yet and it would be perhaps too soon to start working on his dream project with his current team. I just hope that the realistic genre comes back.. I've grown tired of this fantasy/sci-fi stuff. I actually have to go outside these days and do real life things!! Nooooo!

 

[BladeVenom]

You want a bit more realism and maturity; Have you tried IL-2: 1946, Silent Hunter 4, and Dangerous Waters?

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
If you disappointed with Arma (Armed Assault) I don't know what to tell you. The company Bohemia Interactive also makes Virtual Battle Space VBS which is used by the US Marines and other countries for military training.

If you want a realistic MMOG then it would be boring most of the time. In real wars big battles can be weeks or months apart.

i think they mean realistic movements and actions (no bunny hopping, stuff like that) and realistic weapons modeling and effects.

in a game you can make it so there are constantly battles to fight in or something to do.

 

[DSF]

One major problem I see is that realistic war simulations would involve a lot of people dying. Of course, if the game ended when you died, it wouldn't be a whole lot of fun. You'd either have to respawn or assume a new identity, and making a new character every time would get tiresome. Fantasy and sci-fi settings have solutions to this in a couple ways. First, there's the sense that your character isn't an average joe. It isn't everyone who's respawning, just these adventuring heroes. Second, in such settings there are usually magical and/or advanced scientific explanations for respawns.

How do you manage this in a realistic, modern-day or WWII sim? How do games like WW2 Online handle it?

 

[Inspector Jihad]

battles have to be large and organized...how can you get hundreds of people to fight in a battle?

i am interested in a MMOFPS. Huxley looks interesting but I dont think there is enough info on it yet.

 

[Coldkilla]

For the people who argue that it would suck to die: Your right. Today, most are used to the infinite respawns and falling over dead in 20 seconds. However, in a game thats realistic, you value your life more and would live for a very long time before you died. There could be NPC AI under your control that you could use to do some of the dirty work.. Battles could easily be set to a specific number of respawns, depending on the army's status. You could respawn just outside of the battle and it would be finished when your respawns are up. Now for those who don't like this, then go play CoD or something where you can have your 70x deaths and 30 second lives. The battles could be fought in large: When you start the game you pick one of the three factions, then decide weather you want to be military or civilian. If military, you get display updates on your hud, telling you if a battle has started over a particular portion of land and if your company has been called in to help. If you had the rank, you could order your AI's ranking officer to command the battle if you don't feel like fighting. Your company does not have to constantly battle, they could be assigned to civilian protection and other things, fighting off a few guerrilla fighters here and there attacking convoys and the like.

I think its completely feasible to come up with a formula that works.

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: DSF
One major problem I see is that realistic war simulations would involve a lot of people dying. Of course, if the game ended when you died, it wouldn't be a whole lot of fun. You'd either have to respawn or assume a new identity, and making a new character every time would get tiresome. Fantasy and sci-fi settings have solutions to this in a couple ways. First, there's the sense that your character isn't an average joe. It isn't everyone who's respawning, just these adventuring heroes. Second, in such settings there are usually magical and/or advanced scientific explanations for respawns.

How do you manage this in a realistic, modern-day or WWII sim? How do games like WW2 Online handle it?

Instead of dying, you get injured and end up in a hospital.

 

[videogames101]

Sounds like BF2C just with mmo UI backing it....

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: coloumb
Ah..so BF2 in an MMO environment? Yeah..that'd be nice..

refer to above post

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: videogames101
Sounds like http://bf2combat.net/index.php">BF2C</a> just with mmo UI backing it....

Your link is a little bit messed up. http://bf2combat.net/index.php

 

[Drift3r]

While not realistic I think some sort of cyberpunk or western meets fantasy MMO would be kind of cool.

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
battles have to be large and organized...how can you get hundreds of people to fight in a battle?

i am interested in a MMOFPS. Huxley looks interesting but I dont think there is enough info on it yet.

PlanetSide was good for it's time in terms of MMOFPS goodness. Now it's pretty dead and dated.

 

[spunkz]

i played 50v50 joint ops on lan and it blew. you spent 5 minutes getting to the front lines just to get sniped. but there was no real sense of purpose, so you felt like you just wasted 5 minutes. i think it would work with only 1 life if at least you knew your death meant something and if you still got to respawn as something interesting, but a non-combatant like a medic. last man standing games are always fun once in awhile.