The Proposals For Unigine's Linux Game Competition

[elanthis]

@elanthis,

Meaning no disrespect, but you sir are an idiot.

Meaning no disrespect, but just because you like MMOs doesn't mean they aren't for gullible dipshits with no lives. They are literally designed the same way casino games are designed, for the same kinds of people (that is, stupid people). I know this because I literally just had the same conversation with actual MMO developers, just recently in fact. They aren't made to be fun because fun does not equate to recurring subscription fees. Addictive gets people to keep playing. Enjoyable content gets people to pay for one or maybe even two months before they've seen everything and quit to go play something else. This is why (despite 7 years and several expansions that could've changed this) the newbie quests in WoW are still just wasted unmemorable hours of "go kill 10 boars; now go kill 15 boars" that some junior designer slapped together in the quest editor with a dialog box while all the expansions focus almost solely on expanding the insanely time-consuming and ridiculously repetitive raiding aspect. And the expansions aren't even about the actual content, they're just about raising the bar so anyone who actually maxed out before has a reason to keep paying to try to max out again. MMOs aren't designed to appeal to people who want to explore interesting content, because it's literally impossible to make a profit off those kinds of people in the MMO model. You need to keep people playing for months and months on end, and even if you had user-submittable content the players who play for fun and exploration will get bored very quickly after exploring their 20th cave or what-have-you. The only people who stick around and keep paying are the people who don't give a shit about content because they just want to click the monsters repeatedly until they can be the first in their guild to get the Uber Gloves of Lubed Handjobs that the Goblin Queen of Drag drops with a 0.0001% droprate.

On the business side, getting into MMOs right now is stupid. The market is over-saturated, nobody has come close to dislodging WoW, and even the second-place MMOs are barely staying afloat.

[elanthis]

Sigh. Me responding with further insults is not helping anything, and being acidic just leads to people ignoring real points and getting upset over the insults.

I apologize for being rude. It was immature of me. Sorry.

[kayosiii]

There are already oodles of FPSes and MMOs on Linux, and many of them ar open source.
What I would personally hope for is either an RPG like Daggerfall/Morrowind (loosely based on the d20 system, in an immersive realm), updated to the best of today's graphics and user interface standards.
Failing that, a AAA FPS which actually differentiates itself somehow (perhaps with an actually realistic colour palette, realistic limb damage, non-regenerating health, etc) would be very sweet.

what we absolutely do not need is another grinder mmo or browngreybrown "realistic" fps.

Actually something along the lines of Morrowind would probably be a good fit for Unigine. I feel it's strength will be in doing large detailed outdoor environments. Things will largely be determined by the manpower available to the winning team.

[kayosiii]

What I would most like to see is some sort of highly detailed fantasy or science fiction world being created. Not so sure about genre or type of game play something with a detailed ecosystem would be cool (I am thinking of Monster Hunter).

[nite]

So how about a PvP-based MMO? You need no grind, you advance through PvP and have fun cooperating with a group of people. Warhammer Online was pretty good at that, I loved the PvP there. But it had other issues... If done right, it would be incredible though.

[yotambien]

They are literally designed the same way casino games are designed, for the same kinds of people. I know this because I literally just had the same conversation with actual MMO developers, just recently in fact. They aren't made to be fun because fun does not equate to recurring subscription fees. Addictive gets people to keep playing.

But how do you make it addictive? This is, how do you make people care about improving some absurd game statistics? I don't get it. Are you sure there's nothing you could identify with "skill" in the way these games have to be played? I honestly have no idea about MMOs, but maybe there's some planning and even some (primitive) social interaction between players to organise themselves before and while playing? Something that they find rewarding and provide for a cool time?

The way you depicted it, it sounds like only an army of sad people without a life play these things. While the sarcastic in me would agree, I know some not-so-lifeless guys who play WoW...: )

[rogerdv]

There's an open project for this already, called PARPG (Post Apocalyptic RPG). Check it out. http://blog.parpg.net/

Unigine is looking for a 2010 commercial quality game, not a knock-off of a 90's style RPG.

I dont see why a modern isometric RPG game cant be a commercial success. with the power of Unigine you can make a good looking game, with lots of fancy effects, fluid and natural animations, a rich world... the possibilities are endless.

[Setlec]

MMOs are something that i like, please don't think that i'm one of those fantasy bullshit games (like WOW, Everquest and a-like). My very first MMO was anarchy online kinda cyberpunk then i've started to play Neocron Which i stopped playing last years (first real cyberpunk MMO FPS pvp oriented which it makes even better game than the current games like fallen Earth or global agenda I've played beta on both games...)

[xpander]

So how about a PvP-based MMO? You need no grind, you advance through PvP and have fun cooperating with a group of people. Warhammer Online was pretty good at that, I loved the PvP there. But it had other issues... If done right, it would be incredible though.

I actually suggested Warhammer devs to change their engine to unigine.
Since the Gamebryo they use is really bad imo.
But it will cause too much work for such a small team to switch the engine
WAR is still fun, it got alot updates and stuff meanwhile... sadly it runs really bad under wine.

[jonwil]

What I would like to see is an RPG similar to Oblivion but set in a sci-fi setting. So instead of swords and axes and plate armor you have laser guns and body armor and forcefields. Instead of horses and carts you have spaceships.

There is an old DOS title called Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic that is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about only done in a much more modern 3D environment.