What's the next step for multiplayer FPS?

Games
1

Multiplayer FPS has been a very popular genre with a lot of gameplay innovations in the last few years. However in the last year or so I think the basic BF 1942 type gameplay has become fairly standard.

I am curious as to what people think the future of multiplayer FPS is? Will things stagnate with ever-more-refined variations on BF 1942? Will the genre tend towards Planetside style persistent world stuff, towards more team based stuff, towards more simple deathmatching, or all of the above?

I have a couple of thoughts:

We’re likely to see games that have ever-more complex missions, like the “siege” missions in Jedi Academy. These can be great fun but they can also be confusing as hell and they confer a HUGE advantage on the team that knows the map. I think a lot of people like the more complex missions, but then again, sometimes players just won’t to hop online and blow shit up. So I’m not sure if this will be a dominant trend.

Have they gone as far as they can with FPS classes and teamwork? Would “complimentary” classes (like say mortar/spotter) be a fun addition to the genre or would that take online FPS in the direction of MMORPGs (in a bad way I mean)? I can envision some cool stuff like a stealth class that infiltrates an enemy bases to plant a homing device and then a bombardment class that can level the whole base (once the device is armed) with a cruise missile or somesuch. Is this too complicated or is this is a interesting possibility?

Is the BF 1942 model the sweet spot for multiplayer FPS or are we going to see continuing innovation in the genre? If so, what kind?

Discuss :)

Dan

2

I think/hope co-op play may be coming into fashion. Sven Co-op gets picked as the first non-Valve mod to be supported by Steam, and I’ve been surprised to recently learn how much co-op Raven Shield still goes on.

Complex maps and team roles are great fun if you have a reliable group of players. Getting that group together is a bit of a problem, so there may be social limits on these types of games.

3

Definitely coop. I’m surprised that PC devs have avoided it for so long, considering it’s been a console staple since day 1.

4

Co-op really does seem to be taking off.

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5

Hyper-realism. Per-pixel precision, damage in specific areas of the body, effects from that, etc. People love realism.

I’m eagerly awaiting a company to ship a headset with their game too.

6

I was discussing this with doug a while back. For god’s sake, when is someone ever going to fucking release a FPS with modifiable terrain? Set off a nuke - the buildings are still standing?

Ugh.

7

I’m with Jason on this. Havoc physics and rag dolls are a step in the right direction, but the sort of damage you could wreak in X-Com is what I’d like to see. Walls knocked over, fires started, persistent smoke, etc. Supposedly buildings in Soldner are constructed from lego-style modules and can be destroyed. Trees are also destroyable.

In answer to Dan’s question, I think a lot of developers are still scrambling to catch up with BF1942 because its success blindsided the industry. Based on the games I’ve been seeing in development, that and Counterstrike are still very much the models for multiplayer support.

I’d love to see Unreal’s style of bots become a standard feature, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s probably too much work with not enough of a return in terms of how powerful a selling point it is. Same with co-op, BTW. I know a lot of you want to see more co-op, but you’re a relatively small and quiet group. :) Monolith’s attempts to do something different (co-op in NOLF 2 and disc battles in Tron) were probably considered failed experiments considering how quickly traditional deathmatch support was patched in.

As for co-dependant roles like spotter/mortar stuff, I don’t think building those sort of relationships into gameplay is really viable for the way folks play FPSs these days. I wonder if one of the reason Planetside isn’t doing so well – other than its obvious fumble with the pricing model – is because it demands players put themselves into specialized roles?

 -Tom
8

At the risk of sounding like a heritic, I’d like to point out something:

What’s co-op? You and some team-mates jointly try to fulfill some specific objective. What happens in, say, BF 1942, or another team-vs-team objective-based game? The same as co-op, except that you’re battling a semicoherent team of human opponents. The fundamental difference between them is that you are playing the game with humans instead of AIs. So what need is not fulfilled here that would be fulfilled by co-op?

I’m aware of one obvious and immediate answer - that in co-op you’re likely to get more intelligent teamwork than with the newbie/griefer/smacktard-flooded land of Internet gaming. But if you’re playing with random strangers, how is that true? If you’re NOT playing with random strangers, what prevents you from all joining the same MP server at the same time and just cooperating among yourselves?

Co-op kind of gets a free pass in the traditionally face-to-face console gaming. Nobody’s going to be an asshole to their own friends. Meanwhile, the PC, whose idea of co-op consists of multiplayer team FPSes, broken RTS alliances, and teamplay in MMORPGs, is going to look bad because the player pool is partially made up of random kids who think it’s funny to be an asshole to random strangers. Well, that’s what happens when your whole player base is (1) anonymous and (2) made up of random strangers.

I haven’t played multiplayer FPSes in a while, though, so maybe my reasoning is off. (Seeing as this thread’s already been hijacked, anybody got any good ideas on getting back in? :) )

9

BF1942 was a windfall for the inclusion of vehicles (in on-foot shooters), popularizing them to the point where including them is “expected” instead of “risky”.

I wonder when the simulation crowd will try to get back into the scene. Then again, the focus is still on entertainment, not realism. Still, I’d prefer that plane/helo. controls were a bit less arcade-y.

Class-based gameplay seems to have caught on, but in most cases it’s relatively easy to switch between classes. In some cases, it can even be done on the battlefield by picking up the appropriate gear.

I’m excited that co-op may be coming back. I hope this includes co-op through a storyline.

I expect we’ll see more scaling up in shooters, in terms of number of players, and in terms of number of bots.

Speaking of bots, AI will get better as people start warming up to middleware – right now devs are still rolling their own AIs from scratch, which is just a waste of resources.

I think we’ll see more exploration into hybrid FPS/RTS games, ala Natural Selection or Savage. These are essentially an exploration into more effective command/control structures for team-based games.

Voice comms will probably become more prevalent as well, being more feasible due to increasing bandwidth and the like.

With increasing number of players, I’d like to see better smacktard/damage control tools. Punkbuster seems to help a bit, but there are still a LOT of griefers. I guess it’s partially a side-effect of anonymity/lack-of-accountability.

I’d like to see lengthy level transitions become a thing of the past.

What’s the next big step? Hard to say; none of the things I’ve mentioned here are new, they’re just refinements and combinations of previously existing concepts. Still, every little bit helps.

  • Alan
10

I agree, it would be cool to assess the enemies health level by the blood stains or armor damage.

11

Uh, playing through the single player game with a friend? I don’t like multiplayer as a general rule, the only MP games I’ve ever enjoyed to any extent were Diablo 1, Tribes, and BF1942. In all other cases I much prefer single player. But that doesn’t mean I prefer playing alone; I just prefer playing single player as opposed to just random killing and respawning.

The fundamental difference isn’t playing against humans vs playing against AI. The difference is playing multiplayer vs playing single player with multiple people.

Edit: And since it is singleplayer, not multiplayer, that sells games, it makes sense. Multiplayer is always a nice bonus, and it can boost sales or cause them to be somewhat extended, but as a general case, it’s the singleplayer that makes up the bulk of the sales. So it makes sense to extend that with multiplayer, instead of taking on a multiplayer that doesn’t particularly appeal to 90% of the gaming audience.

12

I’m going with Jakub, but for slightly different reasons. People want realistic hit detection with locational damage not because they want realism per se, but because they want to actually fucking hit what they’re aiming at. Most games up to this point have used this hitbox crap, and it’s completely worthless.

Deformable landscapes would be nice, but we’d need people who actually knew what to do with it. Otherwise we get Red Faction 3. Then there’s that whole deal with visibility and framerates. Maybe with voxels or something. Havoc-style physics mean jack squat, as far as i’m concerned though. From what i’ve seen, it looks like a total waste of time to have in a game.

At the risk of sounding like a heritic, I’d like to point out something:

What’s co-op? You and some team-mates jointly try to fulfill some specific objective. What happens in, say, BF 1942, or another team-vs-team objective-based game? The same as co-op, except that you’re battling a semicoherent team of human opponents. The fundamental difference between them is that you are playing the game with humans instead of AIs. So what need is not fulfilled here that would be fulfilled by co-op?

I’m aware of one obvious and immediate answer - that in co-op you’re likely to get more intelligent teamwork than with the newbie/griefer/smacktard-flooded land of Internet gaming. But if you’re playing with random strangers, how is that true? If you’re NOT playing with random strangers, what prevents you from all joining the same MP server at the same time and just cooperating among yourselves?[/quote]

Primarily, the thing with co-op is being able to share the singleplayer or story portion of a game with a friend. Grabing a buddy and diving into the hopefully rich and story-focused environment that the developers have made is quite different than going through comparitively “dead” environments where the focus is on everyone playing on the server.

Co-op kind of gets a free pass in the traditionally face-to-face console gaming. Nobody’s going to be an asshole to their own friends.

Wrong. So totally wrong.

Meanwhile, the PC, whose idea of co-op consists of multiplayer team FPSes, broken RTS alliances, and teamplay in MMORPGs, is going to look bad because the player pool is partially made up of random kids who think it’s funny to be an asshole to random strangers. Well, that’s what happens when your whole player base is (1) anonymous and (2) made up of random strangers.

Really, those people don’t make up more than a fraction of the player pool unless the game has really gone to shit. The problem with team games on pub servers ends up being a lack of overall coordination. Contrary to what some makers of ultra-mega-realism-teamwork-be-a-cog-in-the-machine games/mods think, it’s not all that feasible to toss a bunch of strangers into a server and have them sort out a pecking order and gameplan every single game.

13

Anyone who wants coop in order to play with random internetards is a moron. Coop is so that you can share a gaming experience with people you know.

14

Primarily, the thing with co-op is being able to share the singleplayer or story portion of a game with a friend.

Charles, Jon R., thanks for pointing this out. I’ve never managed to participate in seriously successful co-op gaming, though an aborted NWN campaign came fairly close before the DM imploded from workload.

15

I’m waiting to see what Soldner- Secret Wars does with this. Craters, damage to buildings and trees, don’t know what effect it will have on processors though.

16

UBISoft did. They had/have a headset & game combo package for Rainbow Six 3 available on the XBox.

17

"I’d like to see lengthy level transitions become a thing of the past. "

This is something I still wonder why we have to deal with in this day and age on the PC. I guess devs just don’t even think of going beyond the standard level based system.

I’m so tired of staring at those loading level bars in games.

18

[quote=“Warlord_of_Mars”]

UBISoft did. They had/have a headset & game combo package for Rainbow Six 3 available on the XBox.[/quote]

What do you need a headset for with a Xbox game? If your online you got one with the Live kit already.

19

Actually, what I’d like to see and be interested in playing is something that will probably need more power and a lot of work in the future to make come true. And that is a kind of melding between single player and multiplayer modes into one. Something like you are playing single-player, but the environments you are playing through change based on the ongoing internet multiplayer game. You’re just plugged into the 'net, but not actually playing the multiplayer, but kind of downloading the conditions off the server.

For example, people fight for territory or capture flags and on that level, whomever the territory that day that you play determines who are your enemies and who are your allies, or what types of hazards you’ll run into. That doesn’t seem so hard to do, change the level layout and enemy design somewhat to suit who ever is it that day, if there were factions or something. Lots of work, but I’m a gamer, not a designer, I like to dream and the best designers make dreams seem easy. Then you could join the online multiplayer scenarios yourself if you wanted to and determine other people’s singleplayer experiences.

Or something like maybe the battlefield you have to run through to get somewhere and hazards are determined by the online multiplayer game going on both sides, though you only have the single-player amount of interaction with this battle, which is somehow different.

It would probably be really hard, 'cause you need to load AI bots or something to take up the slack when no one is playing and decisions of servers and how many singleplayer or multiplayer people you let in to each scenario would be hard.

Or you know, you could combine Diablo with an FPS. Sick people out on missions to get tons and tons of loot to sell, and then whatever money they get from you buying weapons from them in the single-player world, they use to further their area-hacking and get even stronger and richer, but there’s no other way to get money than to sell them to single-player people and compete with prices with other multiplayer. So the one player mode is an FPS and the multiplayer mode is like a Diablo type of dungeon hacky thing.

Or maybe something as simple as you choosing a character, then getting machines generated from to help out the ongoing, perpetual war in the multiplayer game. The missions are scripted, but what missions you are given to help your side, with your character is determined by what kind of events are going on in the war. Harder difficulty levels help your side more.

Not knowing much of multiplayer FPS, I imagine some of this has already been done on some levels. But it would actually get me playing them if it were concentrated on to a much greater degree.

I know there was some game that tried to make you an FPS grunt based on the conditions set by an overarching strategy general, but I heard it didn’t work well, and it really isn’t quite the same thing.

Probably not the next big thing, but something I’d really like to see come around sooner or later.

-Kitsune

20

I dunno, there seem to be plenty of non-“Battlefieldish” FPS’s on the horizon, and I don’t feel like they’ve lost their relevance. Until a BF1942 clone gets the tight-knit shooter feel of games like CoD, Vietcong, the R6 series or even CS, those respective franchises are safe.

That said, Battlefield is just about perfect. What advancements would I’d like to see to the “Battlefield” genre?

Interplanetary/space combat. I know this is beyond current tech, but how sweet would it be to hop in a starfighter, leave orbit, board your enemy’s carrier/starbase, get out on foot to SET HIM UP THE BOMB and dogfight your way back home, all with that Battlefield sensibility. Pretty goddamned sweet if you’re asking me, and I didn’t even mention the GIANT ROBOTS.

I’m calling you out, PC Gaming Industry. Make it so!