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Just imagine if they implemented something like that in a game. Like that KD thing you guys are always yammering about.

My physics teacher or something showed us a video of that last summer or something. It's cool. But I don't see how that'd make a cool feature in a game...

There are so many ways.

A massively multiplayer, multi-faceted war game. Okay so you have your infantry, which is just a well-refined first person shooter. As your character increases in rank, you get to command other SOBs as you take and hold planets throughout the Galaxy. You are supported by your artillery, your star fleets and what not...

So you could also be a hotshot fighter pilot and fly around and blow shit up in a well crafted flight simulator. Perhaps your aircraft is also capable of operating in space so you are now a starfighter jock too. You kick ass.

But then you have to consider these massive fleet movements. You can't possibly take over the galaxy just using conventional ground forces and a few starfighters. So you control these massive star fleets in a real time strategy style of play. All the while fighting for glory and honor.

There could be mechs too. That would kick ass.

chriscaffee wrote:There are so many ways.

A massively multiplayer, multi-faceted war game. Okay so you have your infantry, which is just a well-refined first person shooter. As your character increases in rank, you get to command other SOBs as you take and hold planets throughout the Galaxy. You are supported by your artillery, your star fleets and what not...

So you could also be a hotshot fighter pilot and fly around and blow shit up in a well crafted flight simulator. Perhaps your aircraft is also capable of operating in space so you are now a starfighter jock too. You kick ass.

But then you have to consider these massive fleet movements. You can't possibly take over the galaxy just using conventional ground forces and a few starfighters. So you control these massive star fleets in a real time strategy style of play. All the while fighting for glory and honor.

There could be mechs too. That would kick ass.

And then Peter Molyneux would be in charge of the project, and you'd end up with a 3D version of Breakout instead.

Please don't destroy my dream.

Seriously, a massively multiplayer action game with that kind of scale? People would need bandwidth the size of cable companies. But yes, that would be kick ass.

I also always thought a "simple" massively multiplayer war game would be great. Where you're in a battlefield with a couple hundred players on each side. Trenches, vehicles, all that. Battlefield tactics might actually be needed, because you couldn't run around like Rambo without being ripped to pieces.

They kind of tried it with Star Wars Battlefront except you could only have a max of 12 people per team and 8 bots per team. 20 on 20 is hardly a couple hundred against each other. Also the bots were so dumb that you could run around like Rambo.

If you could have a few hundred it would be a bitch to organize them. It is already a bitch to organize 8 on 8's on Xbox Live.

I dunno, you go in fire teams, or whatever.

If such a game were to be made, then I would imagine that you would have some party system like Halo 2 where you would match up around four guys (a fire team) and then join in the middle of the battle, just like you would for a custom game. If you wanted to join as a pair, you could be a recon unit (sniper and spotter) or if you joined as a single guy you could be an advanced look out or something.

See you could do so much more in an FPS if the battlefield was just plain bigger. A modern M16A2 can throw a bullet across Blood Gulch. So aside from hardware limitations, there is no excuse for the way FPSs are designed. Almost every battle is a melee situation. I know in this whole counterterrorist war we are in now, a lot of the battles are very close in, but FPSs have been around much longer then the war on terror, so the trench wars and expansive battlefields could be brought back.

The maps in current FPS feel too constrained and just rely on who grabs the weapons. If you had utterly massive fields of play you could have tons of guys running around and you could do all sorts of cool shit like spy on enemy movements, give coordinates for artillery strikes, set up makeshift camps in trenches or whatever. Halo/2 partially goes in that direction with vehicles and stationary guns but the maps are still ultimately a bunch of Rambos running around and gunning each other in a bloody close range brawl.

Yeah, that's how I've felt about most FPSs. Maps are almost always too small, but if they're big, there's not enough people to fill it and usually you end up walking around with nothing to do.

Sniping never really feels like sniping, because usually it was a shot you could make with any other gun that had a scope, and you have perfectly perfect aim even while standing.

Flanking is near impossible, because A) there are so few people that confrontations usually last around 30 seconds, or B) you couldn't break enough people off the main engagement for a decent flank without the other team noticing the decrease in fire.

Suppressing fire does not exist at all. Partly due to inhuman accuracy some people have, and partly due to the fact that there usually aren't enough people, and they don't get enough ammo, to lay down that volume.

But the main thing that a game like this could mostly eliminate would be one man armies. Although one problem I can see arising would be snipers. Lots and lots and lots of lamer faggots abusing sniper rifles, if there wasn't a max quota.

Well that wouldn't be a problem if they make you pick different types of guys, like demolitions, or sniper, or rambo etc.

Personally I like the Halo style of FPS, its games like Rainbow Six 3 that piss me off. I guess it's just a matter of opinion.

There's nothing wrong with Halo, but I would also like to see something like this. The thing about a sniper is that they wouldn't be that over powered.

Let's say that your arena is a square mile. Let's say for the sake of argument that a headshot is instant death and it takes two shots anywhere else to kill someone. Well say they have class three armor so they can take one shot from a .30 caliber rifle. The only way a sniper is going to hit someone one kilometer out is if they have perfect leading. By the time the bullet gets to the target, they have a little more then a second to move. If they change their velocity in either direction or magnitude then that perfect leading is shot to hell.

Let's say that you are a sniper and you give away your position after single-handidly defeating an entire fireteam. All someone does is call on the radio the rough coordinate of where the sniper is and a barrage of mortars or shells or any other long range artillery blast the sniper to hell.

Snipers in Halo have a max range of around 250m. (Never mind that in real life these are actually anti-material rifles capable of punching through an inch or so of solid steel about 1800m away). Shots at 250m are well within the range of modern assault rifles or machine guns. Hell, most SMGs are rated at less distance.

The game doesn't have to be a war sim, but if the maps were spaced out a bit with different terrain and an emphasis on team play: not in grabbing the right weapons and holding the strong spots in the beginning, but in communciating where the enemy is and in what way to take them out, then I think a pretty awesome game could be made. If it was just four or five fireteams (16-20 on 16-20) in a map of about a square mile up to four or five (so tanks can literally be engaging each other at reasonable distances), I think an awesome game could be had.

Uh, only 40 people in a square mile map? I think that'd equate to a lot of nothing moments. I mean, Counter-Strike can have 32 on its relatively tiny maps.

I've played a couple different FPSs that had really big maps, but with only 16 players on each team. Basically everybody congregated in this one town in the middle and, for all intents and purposes, that was the entire map. And the game ended up like any other FPS in that setting. Except for when you died and respawned at the edges and had to walk for 5 minutes just to get back to the action.

Which is why I want HUNDREDS OF PLAYERS!!!!

The next step online shooters need to take is in the MMO direction. However, that kind of bandwidth is a few years away.

Well when you throw in tanks, choppers, and fighting vehicles, that square mile could get pretty small pretty quick. Maybe 50 on 50 would be good, but if you had hundreds of people it would amount to nothing more then a melee. Space is time and time gives you the oppurtunity to strategize and get your gear together. Objective game types could also help to focus the battle to certain locations so people aren't just wandering all over the place. That isn't even bad IMO. My fondest memories from Halo are 2 on 2 system link in Blood Gulch, Boarding Action and Sidewinder.