Racing - Motor City Online flopped.

Space/Air dogfight - Plausible, I suppose. What would be persistant though?

FPS - Same as above.

Sports - Takes way too much coordination. No one wants to play a linebacker, everyone wants to be the quarterback or receiver. A big fantasy league is possible, but you can find some free webbrowser game for that.

RTS - A huge map with 100 - 500 players per map? What happens when you log out? You can't win a game of that size in one sitting and any AI is going to play like ass and get you killed. He who sleeps less wins.

Action/Adventure - Really what's the difference? Levels and attributes replaced by rarer items?

Pokemon - Definitely the best.

GTA MMO - Just an MMORPG in an urban environment.

As for your genres:
Gothic: What's the difference between gothic and fantasy but a darker environment?
SCI-FI: EVE Online, Anarchy Online
Horror: The hell would you do? Run away from monsters persistantly?
Wild West: Being made.
Mythological: Difference between fantasy is...?
Prehistoric: This one could be fun.
Cyberpunk: Neocron.
Steampunk: An MMO in the Thief universe? That would be pretty cool.

I agree a creature fighting game with a MMO style would be sweet... But you gonna have to make something that breaks out from the idea of Pokemon or Monster Rancher its gonna have to be something unique beside being MMO... I say get some designers on it though cuz I would sure like to play that... Also avoid the childish sence of pokemon... Maybe when I got my MMO engine done Ill see if I can put my own twist on this... But I got a game already set up for the first use of that engine so... it probly be 5 years...

Read the genre part after I posted that last one... I have a sequal to the game im working on now planned... And it would probly fall into the "Prehistoric" genre but it wont be like dinosaurs but yet the creatures you were fighting in the one rpg you will actually be one of those creatures...

Quote:Original post by GroZZleR
Space/Air dogfight - Plausible, I suppose. What would be persistant though?

EVE-Online. Everyone shares the same universe - no sharding or anything, and the playerbase is constantly breaking records for the most amount of people online at once.

Quote:Original post by GroZZleR
Racing - Motor City Online flopped.

Good point. Most racing games today allow you to play online and maintain network leaderboards (especially sweet on Xbox Live); a predominantly-online, persistent world doesn't add much to the formula except subscription fees. it might work on Xbox Live, since annual access is a flat fee for all games.

Quote:Sports - Takes way too much coordination. No one wants to play a linebacker, everyone wants to be the quarterback or receiver. A big fantasy league is possible, but you can find some free webbrowser game for that.

Ultimate Baseball Online

I think the idea has potential; it just has to be intelligently pursued. Some games (basketball, hockey - except for goalie) lend themselves better than others (football, soccer, tennis) because everyone plays, but then you have the problem of what to do with substitutes (who wants to pay to play benchwarmer?) and how to handle things like injury and spectatorship. Then again, you start out most MMORPGs as a fairly insignificant character...

Quote:Space/Air dogfight - Plausible, I suppose. What would be persistant though?

FPS - Same as above.

RTS - A huge map with 100 - 500 players per map? What happens when you log out? You can't win a game of that size in one sitting and any AI is going to play like ass and get you killed. He who sleeps less wins.

I reordered these elements because the logical thing to do, at least initially, is to layer an MMORPG on top of an MMOFPS and MMOFlightSim. There will always be a greater need for (and higher supply of) pilots, grunts and footsoldiers than of RTSes, especially if the story gives a plausible reason for making advancement challenging. Let me flesh it out with an example.

The MMOFPS is designed as a promotion-based tactical squad shooter, where you start out under the command of another player (who may be a bot, but we never reveal this to the players if we can help it). Depending on your record, you get increasingly delegated command responsibilities and then take control of your own 4-person fireteam. Then you command a couple of fireteams. Then a whole company. Now, if you want, you can enter "officer training" and switch to the RTS or just continue racking up godlike stats as a shooter and tactical leader. Actual characters may be disposable, which breaks the "persistence" rule of MMOs, but who really cares?

The MMOFlightSim is designed as an advancement and promotions-based aerial war simulator. After obtaining your wings, you're sent out first on recon missions, then on escort and protect missions - or, if there's a sudden need for pilots, you're sent right into the thick of things to die for your country. [smile] Eventually you rack up enough kills and hours to get put in command of a squadron of fighters, after which the next step is "officer training" - or choosing to remain a flyboy, married to the sky.

The MMORTS is a wargame, where each player starts out in officer training. You don't have to go through either the FPS or Flight Sim or any other modules added on to get into officer training; it's simply a "recruitment" or "stat advance" method to open players of those games to another view on the game they've been playing all along.

During officer training a branch of service is selected and the successful graduate (training is basically a How To Play sequence, so everyone graduates successfully after a short while) is then assigned to an assistant command position with some company. By having a chain of command in place and including a promotion system on which other, higher-ranking players get to vote, you not only have military challenge by social networking and so forth. Certain parts of the promotions process should probably be automated (such as recommending a soldier for promotion based on performance) so as to limit the amount of tampering possible, but in such a way as to cooperate with players (such as requiring a set number of human players to support a promotion recommendation for it to come before a panel for review).

The supply chain or Military-Industrial Complex is part abstracted such that soldiers are never required to mine for resources (unless the game is set on an alien planet or something and that's part of the fundamental premise). Instead, depending on economic factors, unit performance and the overall dictums of the Department of Defense/War Office due to the perceived requirements of the war, resources are allocated and reallocated by strategic players at different levels - giving tactical/action players further down additional incentive to be productive.

I'm sure you can flesh this design out a whole lot better than I can.

Quote:Pokemon - Definitely the best.

Actually, on this I disagree. Pokémon is just like racing in this regard: the ability to play competitively online and maintain a rankings leaderboard seems to be all that's necessary. I can't quite wrap my head around what would persist in this game - unless you're talking about basing the MMO on the cartoons/films/novelizations (I assume there are novelizations, given the franchising wonder Pokémon is).

Finally, I think genre is completely orthogonal to the structural requirements of an MMO. Take the military MMO RTS/FPS/Flight Sim hybrid I described above: it could be set in the Wild West (with no Flight Sim component, but a much expanded infantry as well as the considerations of the emerging railroad system), either of the World Wars, a sci-fi future on a distant planet involving "strange, unfamiliar races," an alternate steampunk reality, a fantasy realm...

While my network programming skills are extemely primitive, I think the limiting factor in MMO game design is dealing with lag. Since you've got to verify everything with zillions of players on your big server, the game can't really rely on instantaneous response and update times for all players in the game world. This rules out any game that relies on twitch reflexes, so all action games are out.

So this leaves game designs where either lag doesn't matter so much, or a simple A.I. layer can deal with lag issues. RPGs are well suited to this, as they don't need to have to deal with commands as soon as they are issued, and can have low level scripting A.I. to deal with lag issues. However I think RTS games could work as well, as long as they weren't too twitch-happy. Anything with a turn based system (even if the turns have a very short time limit) would also work.

And I also agree that the Pokemon francise is screaming out to be made MMO. While I don't play MMO games (due to a crappy internet connect, lack of time, lack of interest, and a general disregard to play games where I have to deal with the unwashed masses of socially beligerent adolescent gamers out there), if there was a MMO Pokemon game with updated A.I and strategy (something like the T.V. show, where the moves can be used creatively with the environment, and the pokemon have individual personalities which depend on the care of the trainer and influence their fighting style), then I would be extremely tempted to join up.