Hands-On: The Agency

[Nimbus]

Unless I see a persistent, online, (mostly) non-instanced world, I'm not interested. Near as I can tell, the shooter part looks good. Unless the MMO part ties it all together, I just don't think it will work.

Every MMO is "mostly" non-instanced. The reason instancing crops up is because there are far too many people to pile them all into one area at times.

What I meant was, something like WoW as opposed to something like Everquest.

 

[Tourette]

I vowed never to play another MMO that was run by SOE and I don't see this one making me change my mind.

 

[DoctorDisaster]

I want this game to work, on many fronts. Thematically, I'll root for anything that breaks free of the scifi/fantast/WWII rut. Mechanically, real innovation in MMO combat has been overdue for something like a decade. I've pinned some hope on this game as a consequence, but the combat in that trailer is worryingly generic. If the devs are really taking cues from TF2, I hope they are paying special attention in the obvious place: the spy class. A game chockablock with gadget-rich, health-poor combatants who rely on evasion, surprise, and wickedly cool situational powers would evoke their theme perfectly. Make it look like yet another assault rifle pissing contest, and it won't stand out enough to be noticed.

And now, to rise to some bait...

Those who find RPG combat boring, are usually people who can't get their heads around it. The thing is that a player who isn't bright enough to be able to manage stats, gear, talents, etc... and wants immediate gratification from shooting people (and stuff) twitch style exclusively, wants what is fundementally a simple game of non-stop instant gratification. That kind of instant gratification is not served by a persistant world where there are variables well outside of the player's control, or where they might have to wander around and travel to find where something is going on.

As adorable as this is, you should really work on your reasoning (and your spelling) before dismissing shooter fans as too stoopid to appreciate the lofty nuances of action bar management. If you do something silly like ask people what they don't like about MMO combat, you'll find that the two big complaints are: (1) There's an actual equation to determine who wins, reducing most 'strategy' to looking up numbers and solving math problems, and (2) it's slow -- you make all the important decisions before the fight with no time constraints, so quick thinking is needed rarely, if ever.

In other words, both combat systems require brain power to excel. Good shooter players have to make good decisions with incredible speed, which MMOs neither demand nor reward. The TF2 spy I brought up earlier is a great example: twitch skill will get you nowhere with him, but all the brainpower in the world won't help, either, if you can't make good decisions quickly and under pressure. To be fair, good MMO players have to balance a vast number of statistics and boosts, which most shooters don't present you with. The two genres work out different parts of your brain, and which kind of exercise you prefer is a matter of taste, not intellect.

In the end though (for those that read this far) I think the biggest problem is that someone who can't have fun with existing MMORPG games, is going to find that the very nature of a persistant world is going to annoy them. It's not so much a matter of simply reconciling the "twitch" aspects, but also player reward, and the desire for immediate gratification against long term play. With no meaningful stats involved rewards that are anything but purely cosmetic are going to be impossible, people who aren't patient enough to slowly build up in an RPG are also going to be bored when dealing with a huge world and long periods of nothing happening for all intents and purposes.

I quote this because I think this is a really accurate picture of the problem you were bluntly prodding at with the "dumb twitch gamers lol" comment earlier. Current MMORPGs and shooters have very, very different reward schedules, and no one has successfully adapted the shooter schedule to a persistent environment. If you offer a shooter whose rewards are at MMO pacing, you're going to bore the pants off shooter fans. If you offer a standard MMO with the shooter schedule, you're going to run through your content too quickly and be unable to retain your audience.

However, I think there's a simple solution you haven't considered. In a game like Mass Effect 2, for example, you've got tons of quick-scheduled rewards as you blast your way through missions ("I pulled that guy out over a chasm, and Miranda bodyslammed his ass down into the abyss!"). You also have quest rewards, which are a schedule common to shooters and MMOs (the explosion at the end of a TF2 payload map and the loot at the end of an MMO quest are comparable in timeline). And you have long-term strategic goals to consider, like recruitment, loyalty, and ship upgrades.

A game like the Agency could (and should!) couple short-term gratification in combat with overarching strategic advancement in the MMO mold. Not just territory control, but territory deformation -- 'destabilizing' an enemy region to remove certain perks for the faction in control seems like a worthy goal for a spy agency, for example.

 

[wrecker77]

I remember seeing a demo for this and it looked amazing. I really hope we get to see more of this and it does good.

 

[Therumancer]

I want this game to work, on many fronts. Thematically, I'll root for anything that breaks free of the scifi/fantast/WWII rut. Mechanically, real innovation in MMO combat has been overdue for something like a decade. I've pinned some hope on this game as a consequence, but the combat in that trailer is worryingly generic. If the devs are really taking cues from TF2, I hope they are paying special attention in the obvious place: the spy class. A game chockablock with gadget-rich, health-poor combatants who rely on evasion, surprise, and wickedly cool situational powers would evoke their theme perfectly. Make it look like yet another assault rifle pissing contest, and it won't stand out enough to be noticed.

And now, to rise to some bait...

Those who find RPG combat boring, are usually people who can't get their heads around it. The thing is that a player who isn't bright enough to be able to manage stats, gear, talents, etc... and wants immediate gratification from shooting people (and stuff) twitch style exclusively, wants what is fundementally a simple game of non-stop instant gratification. That kind of instant gratification is not served by a persistant world where there are variables well outside of the player's control, or where they might have to wander around and travel to find where something is going on.

As adorable as this is, you should really work on your reasoning (and your spelling) before dismissing shooter fans as too stoopid to appreciate the lofty nuances of action bar management. If you do something silly like ask people what they don't like about MMO combat, you'll find that the two big complaints are: (1) There's an actual equation to determine who wins, reducing most 'strategy' to looking up numbers and solving math problems, and (2) it's slow -- you make all the important decisions before the fight with no time constraints, so quick thinking is needed rarely, if ever.

In other words, both combat systems require brain power to excel. Good shooter players have to make good decisions with incredible speed, which MMOs neither demand nor reward. The TF2 spy I brought up earlier is a great example: twitch skill will get you nowhere with him, but all the brainpower in the world won't help, either, if you can't make good decisions quickly and under pressure. To be fair, good MMO players have to balance a vast number of statistics and boosts, which most shooters don't present you with. The two genres work out different parts of your brain, and which kind of exercise you prefer is a matter of taste, not intellect.

In the end though (for those that read this far) I think the biggest problem is that someone who can't have fun with existing MMORPG games, is going to find that the very nature of a persistant world is going to annoy them. It's not so much a matter of simply reconciling the "twitch" aspects, but also player reward, and the desire for immediate gratification against long term play. With no meaningful stats involved rewards that are anything but purely cosmetic are going to be impossible, people who aren't patient enough to slowly build up in an RPG are also going to be bored when dealing with a huge world and long periods of nothing happening for all intents and purposes.

I quote this because I think this is a really accurate picture of the problem you were bluntly prodding at with the "dumb twitch gamers lol" comment earlier. Current MMORPGs and shooters have very, very different reward schedules, and no one has successfully adapted the shooter schedule to a persistent environment. If you offer a shooter whose rewards are at MMO pacing, you're going to bore the pants off shooter fans. If you offer a standard MMO with the shooter schedule, you're going to run through your content too quickly and be unable to retain your audience.

However, I think there's a simple solution you haven't considered. In a game like Mass Effect 2, for example, you've got tons of quick-scheduled rewards as you blast your way through missions ("I pulled that guy out over a chasm, and Miranda bodyslammed his ass down into the abyss!"). You also have quest rewards, which are a schedule common to shooters and MMOs (the explosion at the end of a TF2 payload map and the loot at the end of an MMO quest are comparable in timeline). And you have long-term strategic goals to consider, like recruitment, loyalty, and ship upgrades.

A game like the Agency could (and should!) couple short-term gratification in combat with overarching strategic advancement in the MMO mold. Not just territory control, but territory deformation -- 'destabilizing' an enemy region to remove certain perks for the faction in control seems like a worthy goal for a spy agency, for example.

Getting past the entire engrish nazi thing (my engrish skills have never been especially good, which is a big part of why I rant on internet forums rather than trying to write professionally), I will say that I am not knocking shooter players for the 'lulz' I'm simply engaging in an honest analysis.

To be blunt, everyone wants to believe that they are smart, and more clever than on average, even people who "admit" to being dumb or slow. In reality the average intelligence level of humanity is pretty low. Things like the shooter genere are designed for mainstream play and to appeal to the masses. A specific shooter player might be "smart" or even very smart, just as there are some truely dumb players of complex RPGs, but that doesn't change the audience they are directed at, and their reason for success.

Simply put, the entire idea of an RPG is an intellectual exercise, with the numbers and stats affecting the outcome of actions rather than your personal reflexs as a player. It's all about tweaking numbers and variables. You have to be a certain kind of person to enjoy this kind of thing. The guy whom you mention finds RPGs boring because everything is resolved by numbers and math as opposed to direct action, pretty much makes the point for me.

With shooters, deep thought doesn't really enter into the equasion, all that matters really is reaction time and hand eye coordination. Speed of thought is all part of the entire "twitch" thing that you keep hearing about. Anyone with brain wave activity can play a shooter, but it requires a lot more thought to play a serious RPG, control those variables, and then watch the results of our actions with any direct control over the outcome.

Patience is also a factor as well, another common complaint about RPGS is that they take a long time to "get good". Shooters don't generally involve much in the way of character development unless they are one of the hybrids that people are increasingly trying to create. You don't slowly take your time to build up from a wimpy peasant, into a borderline super hero (or whatever), it takes a certain kind of person to take pleasure in that kind of growth. Your typical shooter fan wants to jump right in for immediate gratification, they want to be handed their chainsaw gun and powered armor right from the beginning and leap right in to pwning dozens of aliens single handedly... as opposed to say starting out as a farmer on a remote colony who can't even fight aliens and instead winds up using a sharpened hoe to scrabble for resources with other pathetic human survivors, and then slowly works his way to dominating that enviroment, getting off planet, finding his first handgun, and then someday hundreds of hours later finally gets a suit of powered armor and a chainsaw gun which lets him handle a couple of aliens... as part of a slow crawl to the point where he eventually becomes good enough at it to save the galaxy.... Your typical shooter guy is going to go "wait! I want to shoot aliens and blow stuff up like I'm the manifestation of death, not start out humble with a hoe and build up to that point?"... and that combined with the general lack of abillity to derive enjoyment from the stats makes my point.

See, I am not really picking on shooter players despite how it might sound. I'm just being honest about the differance between dedicated shooter and RPG players (despite their being some overlap). My judgements are based on a lot of the complaints that shooter players make about RPGs which you yourself mention. Granted a shooter player doesn't use the same words I do, but it does basically come down to a matter of intellect. A dedicated shooter player who does not do RPGs, and treats them with scorn, ultimatly winds up complaining about the intellectual aspects.

I'm not baiting anyone, if the issue is going to be addressed it needs to be looked at honestly. The point ultimatly being that in the end RPGs can persist because of the stats and numbers (one piece of gear being much better than another for example, giving a motivation of finding the better gear so you can build more favorable numbers), where the shooter guys generally don't like those kinds of aspects of gaming, and anything you could add into a game that will allow persistance is going to go against the grain of what attracts these guys to the games they play... namely simplicity, fast play, and instant gratification.

The problem with your ideas about what could be added to a game world of this sort is that they are impractical. If you allow factions to make those kinds of permanant changes it means your going to find people gravitating to servers where the faction they want to play has control. Not to mention the fact that worlds that morph that radically are going to discourage a lot of new players who are going to want to come into the game with a fresh slate and have a chance of affecting things from the get go. The idea of permanant changes being inflicted is an old one, but in the end online games did away with the idea because it's just not practical for long term play. In most MMOs winning something simply means the victorious faction gets a benefit for a few hours/days until things are again contested.

What's more I'll also be kind of honest in saying that excepting certain "clans" that get together to play games regularly, your typical shooter player doesn't seem to fond of objectives, the same can also be said of PVP in RPGs as well. They pretty much want to kill people, and be on the leaderboard for "most nubs pwned" or whatever. You hear about this constantly on these forums, the people who enjoy playing for objectives and such being something of a minority, and always annoyed by the inevitable people they run into who just want to sit back with a sniper rifle, or rocket launcher, or whatever and see how many kills they can farm rather than trying to seriously capture the flag or whatever. The more complicated the objectives get, the less general interest there seems to be from the rank and file player base in trying to complete them.

Your persistant MMO shooter is ultimatly going to involve the vast majority of the player base simply wanting to shoot other people in the head above and beyond anything else.