I like the Venn Diagram.

I also like that people are discussing the multiple histories idea, even though its pretty bogus. Just interesting to try and wrap your head around the idea. Way Walker has a good point in suggesting that what is impossibly inconsistent for the the online game is the reality of our physical world...

And on the subject of client trust we have to look at the great demand for heavy clients. On many threads here and elsewhere people shoot down otherwise good ideas with the reasoning that the idea (like the MMOFPSRPG) would place too much trust in the client, making cheating way too easy. While this is quite true with current clients, there must be a way to improve this. I can think of two solutions, the combination of which is most probably the solution:

1) apply modern cryptography to the client. Obsfucated code, encrypted networking, encrypted memory and binaries, etc. Now this would use LOTS of client and server CPU power, causing all sorts of negative speed and cost effects.

2) implement a communal trust system to deter cheating (think digg.com + anticheat). An insightful proposition for such a system was written by the creator of Saurbraten, Wouter van Oortmerssen. Here is the link: http://strlen.com/rants/trusted_communities.html

Other ideas?

Ps, that was me b4 I registered above lol

reasons why it's not realized yet (though planetside is fairly badass)

-latency issues
really hard to maintain a fair and consistent (complying with the basic laws of motion and causality) universe when latency down to the tenth of a second makes a big difference as it does -not- in mmorpgs.
-cheating
any game involving reflexes and coordination and skill like that can easily be cheated at. how hard is it to make a bot that kills players with perfect accuracy and dodges with perfect dexterity. look at WoW. most of you don't know this but there is a multimillion dollar business involved in finding exploits in WoW and gold-selling is a billion dollar market. if a truly successful mmofpsrpg came about, that same incentive to cheat would arise and we'd have perfect killers/survivors rising to the top.

as for concepts and design and balance.. that's all trivial and i think it could easily be figured out if these two issues were overcome.

the solution to these issues is simple too: all you need to do is completely replace the current fiberoptic infrastructure of the planet and upgrade the technology level of internet connections by twenty years. oh that and improve the means by which software distringuishes between a bot and a human by about an order of magnitude on the AI scale. you know.. nothing less trivial than a machine capable of reliably administering a turing test.

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Original post by sharpnova the solution to these issues is simple too: all you need to do is completely replace the current fiberoptic infrastructure of the planet and upgrade the technology level of internet connections by twenty years. oh that and improve the means by which software distringuishes between a bot and a human by about an order of magnitude on the AI scale. you know.. nothing less trivial than a machine capable of reliably administering a turing test.

i am designer look 4 programmer to do this no i cant pay lol but u will get share of salse when it's sells also i dont have webpage yet but u join my team we will have it set up soon my friend did some awesome drawings for art i will put those up soon too ok ps no flames

Quote:

Original post by sharpnova the solution to these issues is simple too: all you need to do is completely replace the current fiberoptic infrastructure of the planet and upgrade the technology level of internet connections by twenty years. oh that and improve the means by which software distringuishes between a bot and a human by about an order of magnitude on the AI scale. you know.. nothing less trivial than a machine capable of reliably administering a turing test.

Don't forget also some breakthrough in physics alos, because even if information goes at the speed of light with no routers to slow it down, Australia will always have a ping of at least 130 ms from US because of the speed of light.

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Original post by makeshiftwings Quote: Original post by sharpnova the solution to these issues is simple too: all you need to do is completely replace the current fiberoptic infrastructure of the planet and upgrade the technology level of internet connections by twenty years. oh that and improve the means by which software distringuishes between a bot and a human by about an order of magnitude on the AI scale. you know.. nothing less trivial than a machine capable of reliably administering a turing test. i am designer look 4 programmer to do this no i cant pay lol but u will get share of salse when it's sells also i dont have webpage yet but u join my team we will have it set up soon my friend did some awesome drawings for art i will put those up soon too ok ps no flames

sounds like the chance of a lifetime. do you guys have vent? is MC on farm status yet?

Yvanhoe, while yes if we sent the information around the earths circumference, the lowest pings would be ~134ms, you don't take into account the possibility of drilling through the earths core to run fiberoptics. That would reduce the tranist time by a factor of pi/2 yielding pings as low as 85ms! I can live with that!

Or maybe, instead, you use satellite connections, and even out EVERYBODY to a 100ms ping, more or less, give or take 25ms.

Better yet, we place the servers in the earths core, so everyone has a to-server ping of ~43ms.

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Original post by navaburo Better yet, we place the servers in the earths core, so everyone has a to-server ping of ~43ms.

that server would need some state of the art cooling i think,

but isn't this getting a bit off topic ?

anyway to the poster way above named "Ripple in Reality"

Halo2 is not an mmo in any way, shape or form. its a simple multiplayer shooter.
(The number of players in a single instance of the game world is way too low for the game to be considered an mmo).

Planetside is one of the few games that can remotly fit into the mmofps category
it also has some rpg elements (or more precicely , it has some character advancement in the form of experience points and promotions/upgrades),
others include World War II Online and possibly Neocron2.

WW2 Online is more of a war simulator than an action game though and Neocron is marketed as an rpg (combat is similar to your average fps though).

thus the only games that could be considered MMOFPSRPGS are Planetside and Neocron, Planetside leans more to the action side while Neocron2 is a bit more on the rpg side.

Neocron2 is officially crappy though, it got a stunningly high 2.4 (out of 10) rating in PC Zone UK

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<snip> I wish I could find something redeeming to say, some reason to recommend giving Neocron 2 a try. Unfortunately, I can only sit here and resent the fact it exists. This is because there's a staggeringly good William Gibson-esque, Deus Ex-ish cyberpunk MMOG waiting to happen and while Neocron continues to pollute the genre with its presence, it's unlikely to encourage anyone else to want to give the setting a try. <snip>

Full review: Here