The Rumored Cancelled Project Revealed:

[GFreeman]

It would have been bad.

 

[SouLeSS]

WoW does not have deep combat, unless you just really love recreational math. It's "click the mouse and hit 1-9 as fast as you can" from lvl1 all the way to lvl90.

70, actually, and what MMO doesn't have it? The only game that I can think of that had a more indepth combat system was DAoC, and that was cause of the linking moves.

 

[GFreeman]

Saying "all MMO's have ****ty combat" doesn't change the fact that they have ****ty combat, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

 

[Zenien]

Dude you have to use strategy in WoW or you die.

Is Zenien pretending she would have loved the Marvel MMO? I can't tell.

I would have loved a good Marvel MMO.

 

[GL1]

The problem with making combat deep (well wow actually does have some pretty deep combat to moderate to higher levels) is that lag will often cripple that sort of thing.

The game could have been awesome though, if they made small server sizes and then had detailed game plots. Like how cool would it be if everyone went through a variation story event, and than had to choose between registering or not with the SHRA. A lot of it could be instanced, not quite PSO style but not quite a full blown "everyone else is everywhere" MMO.

I think the best way to do it relatively speaking, would be to start out by designating what type of hero your character is, street level Moderate power house. From there which type of character you chose would effect what types of powers you could have and what your various stat caps would be initially. You could also choose than what type of powers your character has, so you could be Super Human Magic user Mutant.
THere are a lot of problems to consider with that system right off the bat but it's not a bad idea. Instanced super villain situations would be a great idea as well. Imagine Being a tech Hero working for shield and having Ms Marvel tell you that Armada is attacking whatever shield base, and you could go there and fight said Super Villain by yourself or get a team up which would scale the difficulty.

Ugh, so disappointing.

All well and good. Sounds a lot like CoH actually, though more instancing certain takes a load off of the Game Designer's shoulders... and while deep action-packed combat was technically impossible two years ago, I'm not even half convinced it will be impossible two years from now.

I think the biggest challenge is crafting a universe that allows thousands of people to feel truly special, unique, challneged and/or accomplished. That's where the beef with MMO stories comes from, it's crafted for too many variables... honing down the story and filtering it through some sort of mission/NPC/storyarc randomizer could give each player a unique perspective on the overall story as well as make each player singular in more ways than they're used to.

Of course, that would require programming, essentially, a function that creates stories when given certain inputs (player type/power/priorities, for instance)... and that is a lot harder, and thus less likely, than creating one big cookie cutter story that everyone can blandly follow regardless of what/who/why their individual character is.

But, perhaps I am wrong, and the technology to impliment high-quality (as in, as good as your fave single player games) MMOs simply doesn't exist.

 

[GFreeman]

Dude you have to use strategy in WoW or you die.



I would have loved a good Marvel MMO.

Not really. It's all the same formula. Buff, then repeat an attack/heal pattern until foe is vanquished. I had a warlock on WoW when a friend let me use their trial, and it was no different than the combat in Star Wars Galaxies or Lord of the Rings Online. It's a genre hallmark I guess. A slightly less complex Virtua Fighter style system like the one the article talked about would have been a massive success I think. Looking at WoW, I can only imagine how successful an MMO could be once you introduced fun gameplay to the concept.

 

[GFreeman]

Dude you have to use strategy in WoW or you die.



I would have loved a good Marvel MMO.

Not really. It's all the same formula. Buff, then repeat an attack/heal pattern until foe is vanquished. I had a warlock on WoW when a friend let me use their trial, and it was no different than the combat in Star Wars Galaxies or Lord of the Rings Online. It's a genre hallmark I guess. A slightly less complex Virtua Fighter style system like the one the article talked about would have been a massive success I think. Looking at WoW, I can only imagine how successful an MMO could be once you introduced fun gameplay to the concept.

 

[Zenien]

Fair enough.

Great now you have me being all nostalgic about Star Wars Galaxies (before it sucked).

 

[GFreeman]

They need to just do the whole game over. A Star Wars MMO should be practically impossible to screw up.

 

[Zenien]

Especially if you're Bioware.

Allegedly they (SOE) sunk more money into SWG than any other project in the history of their company, it still boggles my mind how they made it suck. I mean maybe the first step was including 50 billion stackable classes, but that didn't mean scrapping the class stacking system entirely and shoe horning in an lame FPS mechanic was the answer. Equally embarassing is that game could haev easilly be what World of Warcraft is today, but SOE sucks.

 

[WhatsHisFace]

I would have loved a good Marvel MMO.

t: t: t:

I am never wrong!

 

[Jerry!]

There was a time when Star Wars Galaxies didn't suck?

 

[XtromaniaK]

PlanetSide was actually a decent MMO. Mainly because it played like an online FPS, but meh.

 

[GFreeman]

There was a time when Star Wars Galaxies didn't suck?

Pre-"combat upgrade" and "new game enhancements", yeah, it wasn't bad.

 

[Jerry!]

Huh. Well....good for Star Wars.

 

[WhatsHisFace]

No official announcement yet. And no Xbox Exec left. Shane = guitar. Although I won't be surprised when/if the Marvel MMO dies off.

Should be re-done into a 4-player co-op title in a large, open city like Crackdown.