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Attention Developers: There is a market for an internet space game
Rekindle
Member UncommonPosts: 1,206
Are you a AA or AAA developer looking to produce a game with mass appeal? You should take a good hard look at the space setting. I am not saying that you should make "WoW in space" but on a spectrum there is loads of room between what Eve is and what WoW is. And dear god not SWTOR.
Take a good hard look at Eve online and all of the things that are keeping it a niche game. I think you will find that if you can capitalize on the things that CCP refuses to look at year after year you will find yourself a profitable venture.
A game that offers reasonable challenge and content without the constant "risk" of pvp would do well. A game that captures the imagination of space enthusaists without the their absoultely depressing vision of warfare and destruction as a centre theme would do well. That is not to say that these could not be aspects of warfare in a space setting universe.
Space themed games are a woefully under utilized opportunity. I would say that comosologists turned programmers would make the best candidates for the type of game i'm talking about. Someone who can take a look at the marvels of space and turn them into a UO'esque or even EQ 'esque setting would do well.
Just don't ever try to run player elected governments and shun the idea of an organization like Goonswarm being in your game setting at all and you would find yourselves in an advantage.
Comments
i want a space themepark mmorpg
eve takes it too extreme on the other end of the scale....
This type of thinking is exactly what is holding games like Eve back. If you don't have 40 hours a week to devout to an internet spaceship game then you must be one of them mission runners.
It may not be perfect, but its basically what you are asking for.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
DUST514 is filling the gap.
This type of thinking is exactly what is holding games like Eve back. If you don't have 40 hours a week to devout to an internet spaceship game then you must be one of them mission runners.
I am neither, I don't play it, but 450k subs and slowly and steadily rising should not really be considered held back. You don't like EvE I understand that, it's not for you, but EvEs long term success is proven and undeniable and BECAUSE it is how it is.Which gap? Dust is a ground-based console shooter. That's about as far removed from a space MMO as you can get without dragons and elves.
I thought SWTOR had cornered the market on space bar games.
...oh, you mean outer space.
I'd say that EVE has been pretty successful. If all it does is to fill a niche, then it's a pretty big niche that it fills.
But there is a market for good games in any reasonable setting. And there is not that much of a market for bad games in any any setting.
Heres what i think would work
you make a game like elite but a mmo. so not so much like eve in that you actually fly your ship, but still a sandbox.
you include things like joystick and joypad support.
You also have stuff to not scare away pve players. Do this by having different sections of space, so you have like hi-sec space in eve, but you just prevent pvp there full stop rather than rely on npcs to kill agitators. You have your FFA areas of space like eve, call it outlaw space or something for people who dont want to join factions and become freelance / mercanary / pirate. You might even have a mid way area with 3 or 4 warring PVP factions in areas of space for rvr fans (much like jumpgate was going to do) e.g. you seige orbitals and stuff to capture planets, then you can scale up to capture entire solar systems.
Finally take the one thing themeparks can do better than sandboxes - dungeons. But make these freespace 2 style missions but for groups of players, taking out big capital ships etc..
You can also try Star Trek Online.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
" StarFlight "
MAGA
WAY too simplistic and has all the depth of a saucer of water.
That saucers depth all depends on just how tall you are...
I miss earth and Beyond, take that game and some of the sandboxiness of EvE, allow me to get out of the ship and roam around and maybe even do some DUST514esque missions... I would be all OVER that. Give me Planetside but allow me to leave the planet if I choose. Factions, meh, let the players make the factions.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Which gap? Dust is a ground-based console shooter. That's about as far removed from a space MMO as you can get without dragons and elves.
It has better space game than SWTOR though you do have to sub separately.Titan maybe?
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
halo mmo, been known for years
Search "Unknown - 3D space trader" on the iOS app store if you want a game like elite, you will be pleasantly surprised.Well someone should announce it then! lol From what I have read even blizzard employees don't know it's a Halo mmo.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I get what the OP is asking for... and I agree.
It's a shame Jumpgate Evolution floundered, it was looking good at one point.
A more 'arcady' space based game in the spirit of Elite or Freelancer would be great.
i dont own any apple products
with a rvr system. basicly daoc / planetside in space ships. shame it got cancelled
I beleive you all might be waiting for this one.
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=33
I am too. :P
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I too would love a space game that combined real space flight and combat, with planetary economies and exploration.
It needs to have equal parts of space(black), and planets(green). EvE is no fun for me, there are no plants in Eve.
I like trees, animals, a real virtual world to play in.
Frodo heads to the spaceport, gets in a ship, and now it's a space game.
Oh wait, wasn't SWG supposed to be like that?
And, I'd like to play the game almost totally on the ground, or in space. The ground game should be good enough to stand on its own, and so should the space game.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
I agree. Eve's combat is lacking. Too simplified to be able to handle the massive player numbers. Ships use "skills" with an on/off switch and watch the dice rolls. Too old too.
We need a more gamey space MMORPG. A game where we would have direct control of our ships, modules that have instant and one-time effect, hide/cover behind asteroids and wrecks to avoid enemy fire, where you can ram the enemy ship when it is the last thing you can do, explosions that shake and throw around ships nearby... In short: Space combat that plays, looks and feels like combat.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. Personally I've been waiting for a long time for a cyberpunk themed MMO. Matrix online tried but it was really bad (sigh). Imagine an MMO that was set in a Deus Ex: Revolution Japan type thing.
A game where questing feels like Rick Deckard walking through Los Angeles 2029 hunting down replicants in instanced alleways, bars and other bleak settings. This would just be for "world" adventuring of course, with plenty of room for "off world" adventuring to colonies, space factories and other worlds. Give every race in the game their own pvp faction and introduce space pirating/combat/professions with like "mmo" pvp on the world and in arenas and then a chance for eve type space pvp. Eve always felt like half a game to me because I can't get out of my ship and strike up a flirty RP dance with a female character.
Or how about an MMO set in Asimov's Foundation universe? That game pretty much thinks itself up and there is thousands of pages of lore.