GameZig

Jordan Weisman, the founder of FASA Corporation and creator of the MechWarrior franchise has reacquired the license for MechWarrior back from Microsoft along with a few other properties previously in the FASA catalog.  He has taken his newly reacquired franchises back and launched a new game company to boot, Smith and Tinker.  While he hasn’t made official any news as for what he’s planning to do with MechWarrior and any of the other franchises, his new company is geared toward developing internet based games tied to offline products.  Does that mean an MMO?  Who knows, but it’s fun to imagine what it would be like.

Obviously a MechWarrior based MMO would be ultra cool but what would it really be like?  I guess the first question would be what would the combat be like?  Most traditional MMO’s are skill based games like World of Warcraft or Age of Conan, but there are good examples of games that are twitch based which have worked well like World War II Online or Planetside.  After playing the MechWarrior single player FPS style games I can’t imagine it being anything other than twitch combat.  But does that mean no skills to level?

Not necessarily.  There are always room to give players that oh so familiar feel of other MMOG’s.  The Mech’s you pilot for example, it’s possible to unlock other classes of Mech as you advance, being a good example of putting skills into the game.  Or perhaps abilities or addons like jumpjets or more advanced components. 

That could definitely lead to potential problems with higher level characters out classing lower level character just based on equipment, but in a twitch based system the lower level guys still have a chance to win in a fight, especially if several team up to take down a more advanced player.  In a system like a FPS - how long you’ve been playing or how high your level is has no impact on whether or not a newbie can land a hit on a high level target.  It would just effect what that newbie is hitting with - and you can bet even the lower level weapons will hurt.

But you can’t just have nothing but massive scale combat in an MMO, there has to be more.  Otherwise there is no point in making it an MMO is there?  Then it’s just another FPS.  If you include non-combat roles it adds even further to the skill based system that so many fans of MMO’s are used to.  You could have merchants or traders, scavengers or salvagers to go over the wreckage of fallen mechs to see if there is anything of value (like the MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries feature), engineers and mechanics to fix the mechs and other equipment.  Then the crafter roles which will be the ones building replacement mechs and weapons - along with any other items that will be available in the game.

To have a nice flowing economy and to keep things fresh and mix things up in the game - mechs should be permanently destroyable.  Mechs that are damaged bad enough to be inoperable on the battlefield but aren’t permanently destroyed should be able to be salvaged by the victor team or whoever happens along the wreckage.  Players who do nothing but fight in the game and have no means of income would obviously need a way to make money.  There are ways to do that.  If you wanted to do it right, you could institute an actual mercenary system where players could rent out their services for a paycheck.  If you wanted to go the easier route, you could just award a certain amount of money for every enemy the player kills.  Or obviously they could make money running missions (quests). 

What if a player runs out of money and loses their ride?  Well - we could be really mean and make them go learn another trade.  Or we could have a starter mech that is always repairable for them to start over with.  Maybe just a light scout class mech like the Raven or something in that class.  Single small laser and a light chassis - now go run missions!  Heh, there are lots of ways to do it.  But my point of this whole article is that if there ever was a MechWarrior MMO - it should revolve around two key things.  Combat and money.

 Sony Online Entertainment and DC Comics announced today at E3 DC Universe Online.  There really isn’t much available yet as far as game play type information.  The only thing I was able to take away from this is that a) it’s going to be an MMO based on the DC Universe, duh.  b) It’s goine to be developed both for the Playstation and for PC based setups as well.  Playstations logo is even on the trailer.

That isn’t really a first for MMO’s venturing to the console platform.  Age of Conan is planning a future release to the XBOX 360 platform, eventually.  I would imagine they have a lot of bugs to work out before they pull that off.  But there are already some games released to the console market in tandem with the PC market, like Phantasy Star Universe.  It’s really no big surprise to see bigger upcoming titles looking to expand to more markets.

I am not a big console fan but a big MMO may be enough to change my mind.  You have to admit, the idea of grinding for hours while lounging on your sofa with a controller in your hand sounds more comfortable than sitting in that computer chair your in now?

In a recent letter for the game director, Gaute Godager announces what Funcom has been up to behind the scenes working on Age of Conan.  It’s a rather lengthy letter but I’ll some up the key points and what I took out of it.  Before I begin, I should say that the biggest reason I left the game in the first place is that it didn’t run very well on my older system - the stuff I played was fun enough especially the single player content but overall it just felt like I was paying to play in a beta game, it didn’t feel finished.

Gaute mentions that the entire development team is being kept on the AoC live team for the foreseeable future to continue working on adding content and fixing bugs with bug fixes being there primary goal.  He goes on to talk about a slew of content they’ll be adding to include new quests, new areas and a horde of PVP fixes and content patches.  Bugs are bad, but if they aren’t necessarily game breaking for the masses I wouldn’t focus so much on them though, just my 2 cents.

Instead of focusing on the bugs, like putting clothes on some naked NPC or whatever other bugs they have implemented, they should really push hard on getting content into the game that should have already been there.  Stop wasting time with stuff that can wait!  I left partly because of bugs to be sure but higher level players who get up there and start finding less and less things to do are going to be leaving in droves.  Finish the PVP implementation, fix the female avatar damage problems and for goodness sake get the end game player city siege stuff hashed out.  That’s what everyone is really playing for anyway!  Fix the little annoyances later when you have the big problems done.

My point exactly is that he claims they are putting some attention to game performance for players, like myself who have older systems.  Gaute says we should see some fixes for that in the coming weeks and months ahead.  Basically, that translates to guys with older systems don’t bother trying to play for a few months at least, that’s what I read out of that anyway.  This is cutting out a huge potential stream of subscribers and should be fixed long before the little graphic glitches here and there.

I just feel that Funcom is focusing not necessarily on the wrong things to fix, they have that down well enough but they are focusing on to much stuff to fix all at once.  This is the same analogy as trying to push an elephant through a key hole!  Focus your resources on the big stuff first, the things that are breaking the game for the biggest amount of people, then work your way down to the smaller things to polish the game.