Vindictus

[Vagrant0]

Has there ever been an FPS MMO?

 

Planetside is considered to be the only real MMOFPS ever created to actually "make" it. They're the only real type of MMO I'm interested in now as they actually required a modicum of player skill to be good at; rather than the ability to waste countless hours grinding and learning the fastest way to get your 5 best spells off that essentially involves pressing five hotkeys and then waiting for 30 seconds while your actions unfold in-front of you, devoid of any real skill.

For realtime mmo, you are really kinda limited since most mmo software can't keep up with the connection demands of several hundred users relaying complex information to eachother about what actions they're doing. This is essentially the same reason why many early MMOs weren't even hotkey based, but required toggling combat mode and had a mostly turn-based fighting system. Under such a system, the server didn't have to relay anything more complicated than the results of an action. A more complex system which takes into account the timing of individuals and where/how exactly they are attacking requires much more information to be transferred, which if why these sorts of games still maintain some sort of targeting system (active or passive) to give a higher priority towards information related to that target or a targeted area. Hotkeys and cooldowns exist not only to make sure that there is no buildup of actions to be processed, but to imply some sort of restriction on exactly how many actions can be pending at any time. While realtime combat can be more interesting, it also becomes much more prone to both serverside and clientside delays, making things usually less about skill, and more about connection speed.

 

Anything realtime, like fps deathmatches, is still out of reach for anything of more than 100 players at this time simply because servers can't keep up with all the data. Even when these games don't have anything complicated, like dealing with internal player statistics or special modifiers to damage, they are still hindered by connection to and from the server and the types of information processed. This is why, although connections and processors have progressed greatly since the days of classic doom, the servers for fps games tend to be fairly small, between 16 and 64 players. Granted, if the doom engine were modifed to work on newer networks, you might be able to get a nice 200+ person deathmatch going, but at that point you'd be hard pressed to find 200+ people who could live with the graphics and simplistic movement/aiming components of the game. But, it still wouldn't be a MMO.

 

 

If it wasn't for the cell-shaded style, I might be tempted to suggest Vindictus' parent game, Mabinogi as a reasonable MMO with real-time elements. The combat system, while still 3rd person and hotkeyed, depends quite heavily on personal skill to do anything. Its also fairly open ended progression, so there is no "ultimate skill which you spend 6 months grinding levels for and use exclusively from then on". There are still advanced skills which require a fair amount of effort to get, but these advanced skills usually have various limitations and costs which make them impractical to use as a sole means of attack (and are usually fatal to the user if not supported by other skills). It is also largely class-less, so everyone can learn and use the same skills/actions... However those who specialize in a certain group of skills is usually better at those skills since the skills are raised and gain benefits from associated stats. Meaning that while you may favor melee combat, there is nothing keeping you from switching to a primarily magic based role beyond your own willingness to spend the effort raising those skills. Being a Korean MMO, it's still grind heavy in some spots, but rather than be about levels, it's about meeting certain criteria related to raising desired skills or farming items for tradeskills or to assist in combat. But, although your current level may mean next to nothing, how high skills are raised means much about overall character power, and even if you time all your attacks skillfully, you can often be limited in just how effective you are. It's a mostly realtime combat system in that if you aren't positioning yourself in combat, planning your next action, or running around trying not to be killed, you're already dead. The easiest way to explain combat is like playing a game of high-stakes rock-paper-scissors, often against multiple opponents at the same time. Although somewhat skill and stat based, there is none of that "stand around for 30 minutes mashing the same 5 buttons and hacking away at someone's ankles" WoW type nonsense.

Edited November 19, 2010 by Vagrant0

[LoloPinky]

I downloaded Vindictus just yesterday, but couldn't log in as there was maintenance, so hopefully I get to try it out tonight.

[Deleted472477User]

I tried it for about a half an hour. I couldn't get past the cutesy anime/jrpg NPC interaction screens. I'm not a fan of anime in any form: games, game mods, etc. I ended up going back to WoW. It might or might not be the best MMO out there, but I enjoy it the most.