Would you play a game like this? (Warning: Long-Post)

Would you be interested in a comic book MMO where you started at the game's max level? Where ordinary MMO logic was turned on it's head? Read more to find out!

The game's philosophy would basically this:

You are a hero or villain. You are STRONG. You can fight off armies of lesser adversaries at will. How you got there is up to you, and you could "re-live" getting there through a system similiar to Flashback in this game if you want to "find-out.

Imagine that all the sets are designed to basically be equal in "amazingness" at 50. This means that designing sets around a leveling curve is less important, but the end-game powerset effectiveness is #1. Ideally, this would allow for game-breakers (Granite, PSW, and friends in this game) to be balanced with more consistent sets, like Axe or War Mace in this game.

The heroic side of the game would be based on random missions rather than contacts. Basically, events that are appening would show up on as a blip on a mini-map, with more urgent events showing up as different colored blips. For an example, a kitten in a tree would show up as a green blip, but a giant robot destroying the city would be a purple blip. That's not saying there wouldn't be contacts, but they would take a lesser role. The idea is that the player decides what they want to do, not the contact.

On the villain side however, the game is about being proactive. Building a doomsday device is all in a days work, and playermade villains would be responable for a large number of the hero side random missions. If a villain sets a fire, you can bet the heroes will know there's a burning building. Is it a trap!? If you want it to be, it is!

Baddies would be big. Whether that means giant robot, or an army complete with tanks and aircraft, you can expect fighting things that respect you. And if they don't, they will. Enemy groups that you have beaten badly before will not attempt to tackle you again with the same amount of force. However, occasionally baddies will come up that just completely defy even the ordinary giant robot. Perhaps it is a planet eating monster from outer space, or a sea leviathan. These would be what we ordinarily call "raids". The rewards would vary, but one big reward is the stopping of complete destruction of the world/world/superbase/COOKIES. And though that type of threat is not likely once upon a month, and it will have plenty of warning, it could happen.

Powersets in this game would be based around making someone feel awesome. Because you start as a "Justice Leaguer" equivalent, you have the power. If this means throwing cars, you throw cars. If this means the ability to summon giant red balls from the sky, then you summon giant red balls from the sky. Knockback would be of the "through buildings" sort, and would cause extra damage on collision. That won't be a worry for melee classes, because just about everyone is designed to BE a tank-mage. You can be more tank, or more mage, but all characters will have the ability to have ranged attacks.

Each character would be given a choice of a themed powersets (if you have fire, you use fire up close, from range, as a heat shield, etc.). However, you could also take a different route and choose between 4 or 5 different powersets, with travel powers being basically inherent powers that don't cost any slots. Because of the tank-mage design being intentional, the developers wouldn't care if you could blast and melee in Fire, Ice, Force, and Pink. It's just still just a type of blast. Even if it's pink.

The following section has been dismissed by the author as stupid. Ignore or read at your own condemnation! (I didn't really want to edit it out, but basically, it's obviously a bad idea. I accept that, and want the rest of the "game" to be talked about)
-The game could be played as a traditional MMO or using a point and click system. The tradiational MMO way would basically involve clicking a target, and clicking your powers to defeat them. The point and click way would involve a FPS like system where you point a cursor with the mouse and fire a power with the left mouse button. To make it less stressful, right-clicking locks the cursor on the target, and scrolling up and down would select powers. This would allow you to basically play the game with the mouse, if you felt like it (pointing and clicking without a power selected would move you).-

The game would invite you to fly around shooting fire at 90 mph. This would not only make it hard to hit you, it would make it hard to for ordinary mobs to target you. Speed = awesomeness, and as such combat versions of travel powers would still aim to be very fast. To go even faster would be allowed, but it would be harder for you to target and hit other enemies if you are traveling 200 mph.

In the game, player knowledge would basically determine the Supermans and the "mere" average JL player. Complex play mechanics would invite players to learn about the powers, and though just using "Punch Hard" and "Punch REALLY Hard" will be completely feasible, learning the ins and outs of the game would be a advantage. While this could easily just make min-maxers change the order of the powers, a more comprehensive system would be highly perferable.

And finally the game would basically be a sand-box game. If you're idea of fun is picking fights with giants robots, than you can do that all day. If you prefer to flashback and find out just how your hero/villain got to where they are now, you can do that. If you want achievements and collectables, there would be those. If you like a little bit of PvP (whether of the doomsday device sort or the usual bashing in heads sort), you can do that. You can build your own base, you can travel around the world, you can start your own missions, you can end them, and you can do it with very little of the usual policing and dictating.



Is this game coming soon to a market near you? Is a DC Universe online, or champions, or GR, or an unannounced game that is being secretly worked out in a military base?

NO!

This game is just a concept of a concept of a game that Combat, the forum-user that no-body knows, thought up. Basically, it is a comic book game that completely defies ordinary MMO logic, such as: No tank-mages, Contacts and quest-givers should be the majority of the content, you should have to work hard to get a character to a high level, and etc.

The question is, would you be intrigued by such a game, or by any of the features of the game? If so, or if not, please reply.

I am not like most of the people here, I think.
After testing several up and coming MMOs.

I am afraid, for me atleast, the only Super Hero MMO that I like is this one.

I tried DCUO recently, didn't like it.
I tried CO recently, didn't like it.
I played Prototype, didn't get into it.
I played InFamous, didn't like it.
I tried Marvel Ultimate Alliance, didn't like it.

But I am sure there are other people who would love a game like that.

Don't get the idea that I don't like CoH or anything. I would consider it without a doubt one of the most enjoyable games I have ever played, and I play as much as I can.

This is just an idea, not a "I wish CoH had all these things and it sucks because it doesn't it sucks x(" thread. These are not things I would want for CoH. These are just ideas for a different style of MMO.

Maybe I've been reading too much JB though.

Hmm. I'm afraid I wouldn't like such a game, for a number of reasons, including:

- I wouldn't be attached to a character who starts out at the top. There would be no sense of accomplishment in developing the character over time.

- Steep learning curve. The advantage to starting at low level is that you learn how each of the powers work over time. You build up gradually. Guild Wars once had a kind of open beta opportunity to jump straight to 20 in a brand new class, with most of the skills available. I spent a long time trying to figure out which skills might be useful for me, and couldn't come up with an effective combination. Later I started a new character from the beginning, and had much more fun.

- Point and click targeting? My reflexes aren't that good, and common MMO lag can kill you easily with a system like that.

i guess your concept is kind of cool but it's vague enough to reveal nothing about whether it could actually work or not

Probably the stupidest part of the whole long post is the point and click targeting. Mainly, that was my thought processing going:

Make a concept of a super game!

You start strong!

You get stronger by learning, not grinding!

Stronger means skill!

In order to gain skill you need-

What?

What?

Faster clicking?

Bigger clicking?

Think FPS, think FPS, think FPS, you need skill in those right?

Skill = Reflexes!

Right?"


And then not going back and editing it out with a better solution.

If you're talking about an mmo, then click-based anything is a lose/lose situation for anyone with a slightly slower connection. That alone would put me at a disadvantage with my current mouse (which is way less responsive than my old broken gaming mouse), and anyone who has a laggy connection is just boned.

Part of the idea behind mmo's is that you DO those things to become powerful, not start out that way. Yes, yes, turn it on its ear... but the thing is: this concept already works.

What I see as a target audience for this kind of game, should it become actual, are a load of horrifyingly munchkin gotta-have-it-now powergamers who would become quite bored with it - just like those kids who are AE babies, many of whom simply don't bother to learn the rest of the game's mechanics, and become bored, and leave because their attention spans are just not quite long enough.

So no. I woulndn't play it.

History teaches that if you target your game at a niche audience that you will usually fail when your audience fails to grow beyond its niche. Eve Online is the one glaring exception, though it's more a case of proving over time that the niche was bigger than anybody realized.

In this case, the niche appears to be people who value story over achievement.

I think that game would probably fail in the long term, unless it had a constant steady stream of new and compelling story content such that the other types of players would eventually see how happy the story-types were and decide they wanted a piece of that action.

The reason that so many games have a "leveling" concept is that it's an easily understood metric for measuring advancement. It makes comparing e-peens easier (I mean that nicer than it sounds) and it gives the achievers a feeling that they are achieving something tangible.

When you start at the top, you have to come up with some other kind of metric that gives the achievers something to work towards or you'll never pull them into the fold and your game will die from lack of players.

Horizons and Shadowbane are proof of the folly of targeting your game tightly at a single niche in the belief that everyone who likes that niche will sign up just because of your tight focus.

I wouldn't like to play a game based on twitch reactions.

I've edited the orignal post in order to kick the twitch-reflex thing out.

So now all it's just a game the splits away from ordinary MMO thinking in levelling, the power and speed of the player, sand-box style play, and non-contact based content.

I wouldn't mind a supers MMO built around something similar to Guild War's idea of skills.

I think the "trouble-spots!" would be a good way to go.

Easy missions, a couple of clicks, rescue the cat, done. Larger problems, or significant issues, lead to bigger confrontations and a bit of ferretting out clues, talking to contacts or busting heads.

We have a bit of this with zone events and giant monster announcements, but

In terms of "skill" collateral damage could be the determining factor. Those who do a lot of damage to the environment with missed shots and area effects, and overly powerful punches (which bust windows blocks away) or are considered to have used excessive force. Not sure what the penalties are, because sure as shooting, someone is going to try to bust up the whole place.

Would you like to live in a country where children are given fighter jets to get around in?

I think it would be good if it were looked at in a different way. As an MMO directly, it's intriguing yet problematic for a few key reasons. However, it would be good as a FPS or general action game that incorporates MMO elements. A couple of these exist in a lesser form (as far as MMO-ness) and would actually be the audience/niche you'd want to target.

As far as achievement is concerned, the measurement should be done in a title system based upon which of the instanced missions you have completed. While "bigger" missions would be worth more overall, specialized missions should be available for people who the "lesser" tasks. Sure NPCs will be happy that you saved the city from Godzilla but they'll have a deeper respect if you take the time out of your world saving schedule to rescue that kitty, too. Also, if enough heroes ignore lesser issues like street level criminals, it'll lead to it's own zone event and will cause NPC morale to lower.

Collateral damage should be handled differently for heroes and villains. Villains who create heavy collateral damage will be more actively chased by NPC police and heroes. Oddly, the mechanic would probably be most comparable the one in GTA IV where police chase you after certain crimes. Would tweaking so that it be a valid threat without being overpowering. Heroes would have the NPC reaction of them change negatively and affect their title (thus a direct detriment to your achievements) until enough non-destructive goodwill actions are done. Both should have a monetary fine since some players may ignore or even enjoy the "consequences" (say...they find the police chase thrilling).

As far as powers are concerned, it's fine to "start strong" if handled right. However, there should still be ways to improve and enhance your powers as a longtime protector/destroyer of the city as opposed to a beginner. Also, there should some sort of teamup mechanic outside of just "lft" that makes you more powerful as a unit in a "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" fashion. Some attacks are more powerful/lower cost or are team exclusive like Wolverine + Colossus's infamous Cannonbal Special or a "castling" situation where you and a partner are fighting 2 vs 2 and switching targets temporarily gives your team a stat advantage.

Something to keep in mind with a reflexes based game is that while speed and reflexes DO mean a lot, there's still plenty of room for strategy if the combat is designed properly.

I'd try it.

That'd be novel, having a whole game to play at max level.

Y'know, my first thought is that if we all started at 50, we'd be in the same position as AE babies- we'd have all kinds of powers, abilities and attributes that we don't have any idea how to use, and we'd have to learn by advice, trial and error how to make an optimal build.

Player effectiveness would not be measured by level or time sunk into the game, but by skill, straegy, and the ability to learn.

Boy, oh boy. Let's get started...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Combat Would you be interested in a comic book MMO where you started at the game's max level?

No. A big part of this game is the same reason I like Dragonball Z - taking a character who starts out strong but not very, and watching that character mature and get stronger. Facing an enemy who can wipe the floor with you and represents a hard boss fight, only to come back ten levels later and instead face 10 of that enemy and wipe the floor with them is COOL. Starting at level 50 is just ego stroking without the substance. Starting at level one and THEN getting to level 50 is ego stroking, but with the substance of having SEEN what these enemies can do.

Quote:

You are a hero or villain. You are STRONG. You can fight off armies of lesser adversaries at will. How you got there is up to you, and you could "re-live" getting there through a system similiar to Flashback in this game if you want to "find-out.

Flashback in this game sucks. I can play a low-level hero just fine when I'm still progressing to the levels, but going BACK in the levels and LOSING powers I'm used to is the single-most annoying thing in the entire game. If I start at the end of the game, what point is there to go back and relive it? Roleplaying? Weak. Sense of progress? Not really, not when I can hit the "I win!" button and shoot all the way back to 50. Limitations are part of what makes the game fun. Removing the limitations and claiming "Well, you can just limit yourself anyway!" doesn't work. It's fake. More fake than a game actually is.

Quote:

Imagine that all the sets are designed to basically be equal in "amazingness" at 50. This means that designing sets around a leveling curve is less important, but the end-game powerset effectiveness is #1. Ideally, this would allow for game-breakers (Granite, PSW, and friends in this game) to be balanced with more consistent sets, like Axe or War Mace in this game.

This is already true in this game. Not all sets are equally strong while levelling up, but most sets are balanced between each other in the end. And the reason Psychic Shockwave is an outlier is, in fact, in regard to final end-game performance. It's also a case of one power overshadowing an entire set, which is IN-SET balance which doesn't need to take other sets into account. Starting in the end game wouldn't change this.

Quote:

The heroic side of the game would be based on random missions rather than contacts. Basically, events that are appening would show up on as a blip on a mini-map, with more urgent events showing up as different colored blips. For an example, a kitten in a tree would show up as a green blip, but a giant robot destroying the city would be a purple blip. That's not saying there wouldn't be contacts, but they would take a lesser role. The idea is that the player decides what they want to do, not the contact.

You can't describe missions as randomly appearing and then claim people can choose what they want to do. That's not how random works. You can just as much hope a contact randomly offers you the mission you want as you can hope that the game randomly spawns the mission you want. Personally, I prefer contacts to a very large extent. I don't see why heroes HAVE to be reactive and only ever respond to emergencies, when they can instead work with contacts and get to the root of what's causing these emergencies. If I had a choice, I'd rather the more involved investigations were the primary goal of heroes. While I wouldn't be opposed to random emergencies popping up, I like to think that my hero has bigger goals than spending his life putting out the fires that Dr. Makes Fires keeps starting and never anything more. Being a super hero shouldn't be a beat job, it should be... Well, about adventure and mystery.

Besides, I'm sick and tired of everyone depicting heroes as these layabouts who sit on their hands all the time except when disaster strikes. The heroes I design are constantly working to take the fight to the villains.

Quote:

On the villain side however, the game is about being proactive. Building a doomsday device is all in a days work, and playermade villains would be responable for a large number of the hero side random missions. If a villain sets a fire, you can bet the heroes will know there's a burning building. Is it a trap!? If you want it to be, it is!

As long as you're not advocating fighting other PLAYERS, then I don't have a problem with that. However, I just don't agree that, on the flip side, villains HAVE to be proactive. Sure, for some villains that's key - big plans, lots of schemes, destroy all humans, etc. That's definitely an integral part of any game that has you playing the villain. But just as much, responding to events as they occur, seizing opportunities, taking advantage of unexpected situations or just selling your services are just as integral to the broader spectrum of being a villain. Some villains are born leaders, some villains are born followers, and some villains are born apathetic and looking for something to do.

A lot of CoV is built with mercenaries and followers in mind, that has to be said. There isn't much room for leaders, which is sad. But just by the same token, a few characters I made just fit the "follower" role PERFECTLY. Either they are followers of their masters (my other villains) and working for their true masters by proxy of Arachnos, or they're just biding their time and looking for venues to use their powers. A system that only catered to scheming, cackling villains would remove this vital part of the game.

Quote:

Baddies would be big. Whether that means giant robot, or an army complete with tanks and aircraft, you can expect fighting things that respect you. And if they don't, they will. Enemy groups that you have beaten badly before will not attempt to tackle you again with the same amount of force.

"Big" baddies are overrated. My most favourite baddies are the small, lone, human-sized enemies who don't look like BASEMENT CAT DESTROYER OF WORLDS. An actual thinking, playful personality is a plus. For me, one of by far the visually coolest bad guys in the game is Requiem, because he's not huge, he's not a horrible monster, he's not feral... He's just a smart guy who happens to hold enormous power in his hands. And after you've wiped the floor with his enormous army, here is this one not-very-tall skinny guy who poses ten times the danger.

Giant armies are cool, I will admit that, but not as the "big bad," but rather as the armies of mooks who guard the big bad, who's actually many times stronger than his entire army just by himself, only he didn't want to or couldn't get his hands dirty.

Personally, I like my baddies small.

Quote:

However, occasionally baddies will come up that just completely defy even the ordinary giant robot. Perhaps it is a planet eating monster from outer space, or a sea leviathan. These would be what we ordinarily call "raids". The rewards would vary, but one big reward is the stopping of complete destruction of the world/world/superbase/COOKIES. And though that type of threat is not likely once upon a month, and it will have plenty of warning, it could happen.

If your question is whether I would play such a game, then the answer is "no." I'm not interested in raids, I'm not interested in chaos, I'm not interested in teamwork, I'm not interested in sharing my imaginary glory. I don't need big cosmic threats that take 20 other people to defeat, because such a dogpile isn't fulfilling. It's dull and unrewarding. And I DEFINITELY don't want the game's biggest rewards to hide behind forced teaming content. EVER! Why do you have to go and undermine your own point, anyway? You start out by trying to make the player feel like a super-super hero from the start of the game, then you throw in an enemy that makes the player feel like the chewing gum stuck to a fat man's shoe. No, thanks. I like my baddies in smaller packages that can be defeated by myself if I try hard enough or think quickly enough. I was never a fan of stories that featured loads and loads of character.

Quote:

Powersets in this game would be based around making someone feel awesome. Because you start as a "Justice Leaguer" equivalent, you have the power. If this means throwing cars, you throw cars. If this means the ability to summon giant red balls from the sky, then you summon giant red balls from the sky. Knockback would be of the "through buildings" sort, and would cause extra damage on collision. That won't be a worry for melee classes, because just about everyone is designed to BE a tank-mage. You can be more tank, or more mage, but all characters will have the ability to have ranged attacks.

That's an interesting prospect, because I've always dreamt of a game where everyone was some brand of tank-mage and didn't have anything positively crippled to make it mandatory to team. And I certainly wouldn't refuse some more attention played to knockback. I've always wished that knockback mitigation didn't mean not being budged at all, but rather meant that you would, say, flip in the air and quickly land back on your feet, as opposed to cartwheeling through the air.

I'm not sure that knocking someone half a mile back is productive, though, as you then have to chase after him and find him, which IS a problem for melee.

Quote:

Because of the tank-mage design being intentional, the developers wouldn't care if you could blast and melee in Fire, Ice, Force, and Pink. It's just still just a type of blast. Even if it's pink.

You can't really ignore game design. I've nothing against giving melee fighters some ranged attacks, ranged fighters some personal protection and so on, and it can be designed such that going for melee and range costs you defence and suchforth, but the truth remains that completely random building hasn't worked yet. The original City of Heroes system allowed something like that, and the result was that some people made incredibly overpowered characters, some made incredibly underpowered ones and there were very few in-between. You start out with the idea that everyone will be super, but propose a system that will allow only some to be super and most to be rather sub. The point of game balance isn't to make everybody WEAK, it's to make everybody EQUAL. You can draw the balance point higher up the power curve, but you can't discard balance out of hand and expect people won't get hurt when they realise they're not quite super.

Quote:

The game could be played as a traditional MMO or using a point and click system. The tradiational MMO way would basically involve clicking a target, and clicking your powers to defeat them. The point and click way would involve a FPS like system where you point a cursor with the mouse and fire a power with the left mouse button. To make it less stressful, right-clicking locks the cursor on the target, and scrolling up and down would select powers. This would allow you to basically play the game with the mouse, if you felt like it (pointing and clicking without a power selected would move you).

Ironically, that's one of the sections I like in principle. The only way to make an MMO truly interesting in terms of combat is to shift the importance from build, numbers and RNG calculations and into... Well, player skill in real time. The only way to do that is to have positioning and aim matter. Tying powers to button combinations like, say, Street Fighter or MegaMan, is another good way, but that's hard to do in third-person 3D.

This comes with problems, though, and they are the most boring problems of them all - network speed capacity. A good action game really isn't playable with more than 60-70ms of ping. I play City of Heroes with 250-300ms of ping on a GOOD day. Such an action game is cool for offline play, or play over either LAN or at least through local Internet servers. But I live in Eastern Europe and connect to servers in the US. There's no way I won't have a lot of ping.

Quote:

The game would invite you to fly around shooting fire at 90 mph. This would not only make it hard to hit you, it would make it hard to for ordinary mobs to target you. Speed = awesomeness, and as such combat versions of travel powers would still aim to be very fast. To go even faster would be allowed, but it would be harder for you to target and hit other enemies if you are traveling 200 mph.

That's a pipe dream, I'll tell you right now. Even ignoring issues of geometry load and server capacity, you CANNOT travel at 200 mph and expect to have any sort of control over where you're going. Ever driven a car at 200 mph? Your reaction time simply isn't good enough to do much more than drive in a straight line and try to keep on the road. And while it's true that heroes might have better reaction times than us mere mortals, you have to remember that YOU are in control, and it's YOUR reaction time that matters. IP is around 2 miles long. At 200 mph, that's 36 seconds end-to-end. That means building and intersections are going to be shooting past you in milliseconds. Let's be generous and call an average street 50 feet wide. At that speed, an intersection will pass by you in 0.16875. That's ~169 milliseconds. Not only is that half as long as my ping time, but you are NEVER going to have the reaction time needed to actually make that turn, and make it precisely.

Heck, Super Speed right now is around 80 mph, and even that's too fast for most people to be able to manoeuvre over anything but straight open roads. I've seen people try to use Super Speed indoors, and the people who don't constantly run into walls move in fits and starts as they stop to face the right direction. Exaggerated speed is cool, but because we, the players, are all human, we can't go TOO fast.

Quote:

In the game, player knowledge would basically determine the Supermans and the "mere" average JL player. Complex play mechanics would invite players to learn about the powers, and though just using "Punch Hard" and "Punch REALLY Hard" will be completely feasible, learning the ins and outs of the game would be a advantage. While this could easily just make min-maxers change the order of the powers, a more comprehensive system would be highly perferable.

That's an interesting concept. I've never been very good at twitch reflex games, but once upon a time I was very good at UT2004 because I learned all the tricks and kinks of all the weapons and vehicles and was able to consistently beat players who were otherwise much superior to me, but using poor tactics. However, I have serious doubts that this can be possible in a game that still depends on builds and to-hit checks. About the only way to make that happen is to introduce these "complex play mechanics," and I'm not convinced this is a good thing. Why? Because "complex" very often turns into "boring" and then into "annoying" when you have to do it more than a few times.

Example: Playing a Mastermind can be a very complex experience with the right binds. You can control each henchman individually, control placement, behaviour and so on. It can be very productive, but it's SO DAMN FIDDLY! The result? Even the most active Masterminds eventually fall into a simpler, easier approach that, while it isn't QUITE as productive, is at least sustainable. The ideal game of skill shouldn't be built on complex game mechanics. Quite on the contrary, it should be built on SIMPLE game mechanics that simply require knowledge and situational awareness. "Easy to play, difficult to master," as it were.

Quote:

And finally the game would basically be a sand-box game.

That's as much as I'm going to quote from this paragraph. No, thank you. I am not interested in sandbox games. At all. I like making my own fun in controlled games from time to time, but I DESPISE a game that essentially hands you the keys to the world and tells you "Go make your own fun. I'm going out to have a drink." I like a discrete, finite world with pre-determined things to do, with storylines to follow and missions to take part in. And on the flip side, I don't like a world where most of the activities don't actually have a point.

Quote:

The question is, would you be intrigued by such a game, or by any of the features of the game? If so, or if not, please reply.

Some of the ideas are interesting, but you're ignoring some very basic game design principles which I suspect may cause more problems than the novelty of ignoring them will bring. This is also a general design which I am not a fan of just because I was never a fan of the direct source material that it's trying to simulate. I've always said that a "comic book simulator" would not be a fun game to play, and I maintain that. Any game has to be a game first and only at best emulate the important details of the source material it is inspired by. You don't start with a comic book and think "How can I turn this into a game?" You start with a game and think "OK, how can I make this more like a comic book?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Thanks for the great reply Samuel_Tow. It's always nice to seem someone who can write up a long, thoughtful post even about what they disagree with.

With no clear goals for long term improvement other than "uh you can play better?" it doesn't seem to have any long term appeal. It'd be like an FPS game if done well: something you could hop on, run a map, and then go about your day. It's not something you'd put alot of time into. Certainly not enough to pay a subscription fee.

This just sounds like a superhero themed TF2 or somesuch. Really, I can already play those kinds of games without paying a monthly fee. Why would I subscribe to an MMO for that?

Really, I think a superhero FPS/TPS game might be cool if done well. But as an MMO? Don't see it working.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

As for the OP..... I'd probably play a game like that for a little while. I like watching my character progress from 1 to 50. I like being level 12 and wet behind the ears and gradually getting stronger and stronger. To me, the progression is what defines my characters and gives me enjoyment. Starting out at one level and always staying there is fine for some genres and games, but it's not inherently better or worse, it's just different.