Why no MMO?

[Ducimus]

And how is that different in an MMO?

Because MMO's tend to be groupcentric. Grouping, unfortunatly is one of the best "tools" of social engineering to encourage players to interact. The whole thing about Massive Mulitplayer Online is player interaction. Everything you do, your whole reason for being, is ultimatly about player interaction.

The problem comes that, with that interaction often comes a social obligation. LFG? Nobody wants you around if your just going to be in for 15 minute and bail. Theres sort of an unwritten rule to stick it out for some undertmined lenght of time - otherwise you wont get invited again. Particuarlly in any sort of large or *cough* "epic" encounter. Then, heavan forbid if your of a class or skill subset crucial to the groups survival. And if the group is working something, you can't just go AFK in the middle of the fight - or rather you shouldn't. In group centric games, people who go afk alot, leave early, and are otherwise not focused, do not get invited back very often, and participating in said groups, is crucial to your own advancement. Kind of a bummer huh?

[XanderF]

Originally Posted by MikeJW

No, because not every series is as sucessful as WoW. Frankly I see an MMO sub sim with subscription starting of with a small base that barely covers the servers and only gets smaller. An MMO would limit the modders too. No, I know its hard for MMO fanatics to believe but MMOs are not the end-all-be-all of games.

FWIW, for perspective, I don't currently subscribe to ANY MMO. I played 'Planetside' (MMOFPS) for about a year a while back, and beta'd 'Guild Wars' and 'Lord of the Rings Online', but even that is a generous term (I got into the beta, tried a day or two, decided it wasn't what I wanted and dropped them). Hardly a 'fanatic'.

That said, I really think SubSims COULD benefit from this arrangement.

As to "the servers" - honestly, that's more optimistic than I would put it. 'Planetside' is a pretty good example of a 'failed' MMO - 3 servers, current max simultaneous population is about 6,000 - 9,000 on each on a good night.

Personally, I think *one* (or two, for our European friends) servers with HALF those numbers each would be the perfect target for an MMO-SubSim.

Your comment about mods is, unfortunately, the only real caveat I see with this. Obviously, no mods would be possible. On the one hand, that CAN be a major killer. On the other, the very format of MMO means that the developers themselves are adding content on nearly a monthly basis.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Because MMO's tend to be groupcentric. Grouping, unfortunatly is one of the best "tools" of social engineering to encourage players to interact. The whole thing about Massive Mulitplayer Online is player interaction. Everything you do, your whole reason for being, is ultimatly about player interaction.

Agreed - the basic reason for the game's being WOULD be interaction. This "Silent Hunter: Wolf Packs" idea (for lack of a better title) would very much have that as the focus.

That said, that's not the ONLY thing there is. Even in the most group-centric MMO (and there are definitely some that are more of this than others), there is single-player content.

Originally Posted by Ducimus

The problem comes that, with that interaction often comes a social obligation. LFG? Nobody wants you around if your just going to be in for 15 minute and bail. Theres sort of an unwritten rule to stick it out for some undertmined lenght of time - otherwise you wont get invited again. Particuarlly in any sort of large or *cough* "epic" encounter. Then, heavan forbid if your of a class or skill subset crucial to the groups survival. And if the group is working something, you can't just go AFK in the middle of the fight - or rather you shouldn't. In group centric games, people who go afk alot, leave early, and are otherwise not focused, do not get invited back very often, and participating in said groups, is crucial to your own advancement. Kind of a bummer huh?

While GENERALLY true - again, this is different between games. I'll go back to 'Planetside', as that's the only MMO-like game I have any real amount of experience in. In that game, yes, you could belong to an "outfit" (but you didn't have to), and most combat you fought in was with your outfit. However, even with a hundred people in it, they weren't all always on. And I found pretty regularly that you could squad up with others for a continent cap or two with "no obligations" - just fight as best as you can while you are on - and drop out half an hour or so later. You probably wouldn't see those people again, just due to the size of the community, but if you did run into them, they would usually be perfectly willing to invite you to an 'ad-hoc' squad, or to fill out an otherwise outfit-only squad - as long as you fought well last time.

For something like 'WoW' - which relies heavily on grinding, camping MOBs, queueing up for unique item drops, etc - yeah, I can see the "casual gamer" not being very welcome.

I can't fathom why SH:WP would be ANYTHING like that, though. There are no unique items, you aren't levelling. Worst thing that would happen if someone dropped out of your wolfpack halfway through a patrol would be...you are down 1 sub. That's it. Not exactly the end of the world.

[MikeJW]

Then you have to ask yourself what what would an MMO Sh4 bring to the table? Nothing I can see. Do you think theres enough people who want to be individual crewmen on a sub? Great, I'm a helmsman for 2 hours. Doesnt sound like fun. Or wolf packs you say? How big? What would an MMO add to current wolf packs? Since theres no real character improvement and no questing for the Uber Sword of Noob Pwning wheres the incentive to pay out $x amount a month.

[Ducimus]

When i played PS, pre bogus expansion, I was blessed with being in an outfit that happened to be online when i got home form work. So i only ran with the outfit on teamspeak. Point being, if someone was a noob, retard, or otherwise a dumbass, everyone knew it and everyone just shined him on. If your not a focused player, people will remember.

Hmm, looks like my old outfit has disowned me since i no longer play. LoL
http://myplanetside.station.sony.com...8339&worldId=3

I was primarly CE, or scout/sniper for awhile. So i didnt get alot of kills. later on i switched to "skill-less assault" for the plasma spamming fun down into towers and spawn areas :P Man i have so many awesome memories of that game. Ever see the movie, "Terran Conquest" (100 MB WMV file), that movie was made in part by my old outfit. (42nd fire ant brigade)

[stinger503]

An MMO would limit the modders too.

I have to disagree with this. If Ubi did it right then you could still update your own submarine skins for example what better advertisement would there be for the Redfin Submarine Mod than to show it off around pearl harbour. You could still update the look of your own sub from the inside to aswell as the HUD. As for enviromental changes maybe you could send them to UBI and be acknowledged in a patch.

As for the problem with people leaving their wolfpacks why not just have two systems. 1 for clans and the other for recreational use. So if you use the recreational one there is no reason to expect you or someone else to stay. (Maybe as an incentive you have to be in base to "save" the game or else you take a hit on renown) and clans (flotillas,wolfpacks) would be more "professonal subsimmers" (which would be cool because you could have a clan specific skin or something for your subs).

[XanderF]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

When i played PS, pre bogus expansion, I was blessed with being in an outfit that happened to be online when i got home form work. So i only ran with the outfit on teamspeak. Point being, if someone was a noob, retard, or otherwise a dumbass, everyone knew it and everyone just shined him on. If your not a focused player, people will remember.
...
I was primarly CE, or scout/sniper for awhile. So i didnt get alot of kills. later on i switched to "skill-less assault" for the plasma spamming fun down into towers and spawn areas :P Man i have so many awesome memories of that game. Ever see the movie, "Terran Conquest" (100 MB WMV file), that movie was made in part by my old outfit. (42nd fire ant brigade)

Same way with my PS outfit, but as I started the game on the east coast, I had joined Konrad (before it was absorbed into Emerald). Although I did create an Emerald account before the merge, so my main one would have the "-K" to indicate I was a pre-merge vet.

Anyway, moved to the West coast, and the hours of play shifted quite a bit. Bummer, too. Always played Terran, though, and - yeah, that game DEFINITELY had some of the best memories of any game I've ever played. We were mostly an AirCav outfit, and we Gal dropped into some INTENSE firefights. My favorite were the gen blowing missions, when several of us would guard the entrance in bolted down MAXes and have medics and repair dudes running around behind us, keeping us patched up while we POURED lead into the doorway.

Good times, man, good times.

EDIT: Huh, still in my outfit. Looks like I outrank you in CR, but you beat me in BR. :-)

http://myplanetside.station.sony.com...037&worldId=15

[Ducimus]

Twice the kills too. Mah e-pein's bigger!
( We had dedicated squad leaders, so command rank for me wasnt a concern, frankly i didnt want it)

[difool2]

Reading the "nay" opinions here does not fill me with confidence WRT future MMO games
(of whatever sorts). I guess we will all be forever in the thrall of the lowest common
denominator, getting the same basic kinds of content over and over just dressed up
in different clothing. Now perhaps because I've never really felt the urge to sign up
for one of these games* I have little to contribute to this idea (or against it), but it
certainly on the surface seems like it would be cool. In practice yeah maybe not so
much, and probably not profitable, but in any event I'd sure like to see a MMO game
come out which just shatters the genre conventions. Would that be a naval/air MMO?
Maybe not but I'd sure like to see some developer try.

I guess the game to look at for any sort of model (obviously) would be Dangerous
Waters. What do they do right which would translate to the WWII environment?
What wouldn't translate? I think the map would have to be much smaller and scaled
down from what we see in SH3/4, with significant enemy traffic about an hour's sail
away or so. But being in an environment where the Japanese are assaulting this
island over here, the Yamato shelling the beaches while the American fleet sneaks
up on them, suddenly unleashing a horde of Dauntlesses, while a few American subs
inch towards the troop transports, that would rock IMHO. But I don't want Battle-
field like arcade gayness, that is for sure, but the public probably would.

*[In the case of MMORPGs, the relative lack of true role-playing lies near the top of
reasons why I never wanted to get involved in those, as does the static unchanging
nature of the world, along with the "everyone is a hero so nobody is" syndrome. I
could go on.]

[Cakewalk]

Anyone heard of Enigma: Rising Tide?

I'm sure most of you have. It was scheduled to become an MMO. Never happened, even though the game enjoyed some commercial success.

It would have been interesting, to say the least, how it would have played out. I could certaintly have found it enjoyable.

But, its not everyone's cup of tea.

[Meco]

Perhaps this thread could be made into some sort of Poll to see how the SH3-4 community at large would vote on such a concept.

[SteamWake]

I dont need a poll.

I can most assuredly tell you that it would be in the neighborhood of 20 to 1 against.

[jesterofsanity]

my 2 cents:

XanderF says repeatedly that subscription plans are a windfall for publishers--this is wholeheartedly not true if you are at all familiar with the upkeep of IT infrastructure. It is expensive, to put it mildly, to maintain a server farm. A niche market, as sub games generally are, with a small number of players, would be nothing more than a horrid money sink. It would float for two, maybe three months before the publisher tanked--and that's assuming everyone who played it LIKED it.

I don't think this one is in the cards soon, unfortunately.