A View From the Road: We Need More Giant Robots Pages PREV 1 2 3 NEXT | |
I like the way you think, what problem wouldn't be solved with a giant robot. | |
Well there have been a number of PnP RPGs that have approached the subject with various degrees of success, and I could see it being done with an MMORPG. Heck we've even had computer RPGs like "Xenogears" and "MS Saga" that have approached the issue, not just with upgrading gear, but even changing entire suits and their specific components (arms, legs, weapons, etc...). I could easily see it being done. The big questions of course come down to whether or not someone can come up with the budget to do it right. See, doing stuff with sword and sorcery is not only pretty straightforward as far as conventions go, but you've also got thousands of games to draw upon for inspiration (or just steal code and ideas from). What's more it's so stereotypical that guys doing the pre-made engines like "Unreal" probably put some thought into "how will we make this work for people who want to build Sword and Sorcery games for it?". With a Mecha-Game your basically looking at someone creating an RPG engine almost totally from the ground up, which also means it's not going to be as polished looking as yet another derivitive game. Your also not going to be able to yell "Havoc Physix!" as a way of justifying how awesome your physics are going to be (translation: someone made a good Also I'd figure that to do it "right" you'd probably wind up wanting to focus on both people (the pilots), and the giant machines themselves. That is how it is in a good mek-wank. That means designing what is probably going to be two co-existing engines. This gets back to the question of "why haven't we seen a science fiction game, where I can both fly a ship planet to planet, mine astroids, and do stuff out there, and then land on planets and do normal adventuring?". The simple reason is that it would involve designing TWO entire game engines, and then spending more time to splice them together. Basicaly twice the development, coding, graphics, testing.... etc.. which would then be being sold as one product. Star Trek Online is so far the only game I've seen even making pretensions of setting all this up from the beginning (and arguably the only game to do it at all was Star Wars Galaxies, and the space stuff there was a cruddy cockpit shooter). I mean it could be done, and would probably attract a definate, reliable niche audience just by it's nature. BUT it would require a big budget and a producer willing to settle for a slower return of their money, and less potential profits, than they believe they can get by producing a derivitive WoW clone. :P | |
Well there was a Gundam MMO for a while that basically had a system where yes, you existed as a pilot outside of your mobile suit but aside from walking about and shopping, or crafting your own MS/vehicle/etc, you weren't going to be doing any fighting. The combat was strictly handled whenever you were in an MS or other fighting vehicle. Sure the pilots could be customized to look differently and so forth but they weren't used for any sort of fighting. And it kind of worked. Course the MMO is gone and a fan project is taking the engine and hacking it to be more like a shooter. But I remember there being combat skills as well as utilitarian skills like crafting. | |
Two words. | |
Attempted and Canceled, unfortunately http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer_BattleTech_3025 And given the problems with the new Mechwarrior game (i.e. Harmony Gold) it doesn't look promising. | |
The popularity of Macross Frontier and Gundam 00 disagree with you. | |
Yeah I remember that vaguely, but a new Mechwarrior game is high on my wishlist. All these problems just make me sad. | |
Oh, and I almost forgot. Look up a roguelike called "Gearhead" it's pretty good and if you like roguelikes it will definatly sate your mecha addiction. I've played it quite a bit. | |
Ya, I'd pretty much play any RPGs without a subscription fee. And mechs are cool. I liked them in Metal Fatigue. | |
I'm not sure about the proficiency part. Perhaps a compatibility thing? Y'know, like: "Oh, this new awesome mega-gunblaster isn't fully compatible with my firing systems. Perhaps I could get some practice in with the gunblaster, see what it does and update my firmware to compensate. It'll never be fully compatible, but it'll get pretty close." | |
Eve had the potential to be brilliant, except the pacing was crap. replace Eve with giant robots and make it so the players actually had to participate in the game to level up, and you would have Funk's brilliant idea. | |
Let me re-iterate the thread: Giant robots. If the giant robot can fit into the underground place, a manned rocket can escape it. | |
This sounds awesome. Uh... Like, you walk over human towns and shit. And blow stuff up. And yeah. | |
Drill Rocket also BIG BANG PUNCH! | |
FRONT MISSION ONLINE! WORLD OF GUNDAM! TRANSFORMERS MMO! | |
aren't most of those limited to people who can read oriental languages? well there was a game called Age of Armor (it had giant robots) but i think the makers stopped updating it | |
I don't even have to read beyond the article's title. to know that I agree with everything you just said John. I will, however, read the rest of it anyway to be polite. | |
Screw it, Super Robot World | |
Screw it, Super Robot World [/quote]okay.. SD gundam's? also hard to belief that would come out somewhere other then japan (Correct me if i'm wrong) | |
okay.. SD gundam's? also hard to belief that would come out somewhere other then japan (Correct me if i'm wrong)[/quote] Also, if it doesn't have a damn V-fin it's not a gundam! | |
WANT! Edit: Ok I should probably justify that :S | |
*Sigh* Because every movie gets watched | |
Apparently you missed the point (i.e. you were presumptuous) so I'm going to just keep going. Let's do video games now. -Border Break my point being these are all games that in the last year or so either came out or are coming out. If the mecha genre was dead in Japan you would not be seeing this. It's not like people make games that can't sell, even in a place as wacky as Japan. | |
Yes they need to make Gundam MMOG (a good one <.<)! One based on Gundam00 would be nice but just any Gundam/ArmoredCore/ChromeHound cross hybrid would totally indulge my mecha/tech fantasies! Good idea Funk Good idea ^.^ b p.s. Anyone remember the LIFE-SIZE GUNDAM they built and displayed recently <.< | |
Gundam 00 games would be nice, outside of Japan, and on modern generation machines. I know there was one for PS2 and one for DS, but as far as I know, neither saw releases in PAL territories, if at all outside of Japan, or even in English. But the show was awesome, so I'd love to see a game on 360 for it. You know, thinking about it... I don't need a Mecha MMO. I want a Mecha Sandbox game. Like Just Cause, or Mercenaries. Buy/find parts. Rivals. Factions. Maybe multiple (huge) world zones - one in Space, one on the Moon, one in the Colonies, and one on Earth? That would just be utterly fantastic. Make it control like... Devil May Cry or something. A game where you have high mobility, power, and lots of guns would sell like mad. Make it an original IP, too, so we can see it outside of Japan! | |
i shunned this article because when most nerds talk about robots or mech they are just masturbating over anime, and (imho - importantly) i think anime is a load of pretentious rubbish but then you started to go into the whole mechanics of a hypothetical game and it made alot of sense Transformers online, that game would rock if it had the design and atmosphere of the films (they would have to lose the 'human' aspect of the film, eurgh), autobots vs decepticons would be your alliance vs horde, you could use your vehicle form to travel, and your bot to fight but have 'Earth' as just one planet on a whole starmap that you could visit, and have only small parts of that planet visit...able. and not a megan fox in sight hopefully you could essentially make whatever you wanted if you are a transformer, customization is limitless, cause your a damn robot! | |
I like world of warcraft thank you very much :P Oh wait................BAM!!!..........I just killed a giant 50 foot tall robot with my warlock. Blood elf Warlock>giant robot. | |
I'd be very happy if they could just localize the blasted Super Robot War OGS and OGG games for the PS2. However that ship seems to have sailed based purely on the lackluster performance of 5+ year old Game Boy Advanced ports. That and the insistance the games be dubbed in English. Front Mission and Super Robot Wars are the big "Turn based RPG" franchises. Although Front Mission is evolving into a Sim. Most other Giant Robot games have been more like "Combat Simulators" than "RPGs". Anyone ever try Mech Quest? I had seen some popup ads for it but never had the time to actually try it. I think the big reason we probably don't see more "Giant Robot" games is they don't sell well enough to justify the extra animations required for Humanoid-shaped robot versus a "space figher/ship". | |
There is a great deal of wisdom in this article. I enjoyed its insights. From a purely presentational perspective, the thing that I've always disliked about Mech games is that the 3rd person camera is placed far too high up. These giant robots should dominate the screen, standing either left or right of centre (depending on which posture you have toggled) and the camera should be slightly angled upward at normal person height. Oh, no! Its gonna tread on me! Should be the feeling as these things stomp around. | |
I'd recommend avoiding that particular game. Yeah, it might be free at first, but certain quest chains, proficencies, and whole sets of equipments and upgrades are limited to those who send the company some money. And since what little pvp there is in that is solely determined by how good your gear is, the ones who spend money own. That, and there's really not much purpose to the multiplayer. It's really a whole bunch of people playing a single player game at one time. A very slow-paced single player game which needs massive improvements. | |
now THATS an MMORPG i would play f#$k WOW, this one would be so damn AWESOME! | |
ROBOTS! YES! I just hope Aion flops soon so that we call all go back to playing what we should be playing... Exteel. As for western Mecha; I see your Macross and raise you Battletech 3075... Or is that; I see your Battletech 3025 and raise you Robotech... Goddammit.. | |
Welll... yeah. Mecha MMORPG would be totally sweet,and would make much more sense. There was actually such a game - called RF Online - but it was average,and it was about human-sized robots,not giant ones. I would play such a game,even despite i don't like anime and don't like MMORPGs. | |
Aye, I know what your getting at Funk, me and a few friend's who play EVE were thinking about it a couple of month's back, we'd probably leave EVE for a game like that, but it would have to have the same skill system that EVE has, since its probably one of the best, if not the best "leveling up" system's i've ever seen in an MMO, and one of the main reason I stay with EVE. We were hoping that when DUST 514 comes out, the next step would be allowing EVE player's to pilot mecha on the planet's fighting alongside the DUST trooper's (since we could still be in our Pod's and it would make total lore sense). Who know's what they'll do next with DUST on the horizon, one can only hope for EVE styled mech's. | |
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I have been thinking about this the past few weeks. You have read my mind good sir! I have however been racking my mind on how this would work and I cannot imagine it working in the sense of an RPG. Unless perhaps you had two different levels of play. Take for instance Star Wars Galaxies and having your character and also having the space sim. You would level up in two different ways. However in SWG the two never met in a mecha mmo they would. I can imagine having the robot be in some ways a mount but really having it be more of your friend, your second skin in a way.
You would need that second level of play to have a mecha mmo because just having the giant robot doesnt really make it any different from any other mmo just the trees are smaller and the combatants bigger. You would need all sorts of different things such as having some players be mechanics which would give you buffs but could also create new parts for your mech. Having a two level type of play lets you allow people to do other things on a more productive and scientific level instead of simply killing but also allowing them to actively be part of the action by giving them a mech.
Something to ponder over and hopefully one day this will happen.