- Chantico
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- Exalted Member
It would be a nice change of pace to have a MMO halo. It's a largely unexplored type of game, but I think the obstacles, such as lag, are easily avoidable. You're not going to just create one large map with thousands of players' every action reported to everyone else. Instead, you could have the map sectioned off into many smaller maps with some limit to how players can move into one space from another. Also, you can have several of these large maps that might have affect one another, but without players actually moving from one to the other easily.
One way to manage such large teams of players could be to introduce elements of an RTS. You start with a formal ranking system as in Halo3, but maybe more complex/refined. If there are two 5 star generals on a team of say 10k players, they'd actually be in command of half of their team or 5,000 troops each. These 5,000 players would get further divided with lower ranked generals heading up the divisions, and then further down the hierarchy you'd go until you have commanders leading groups of 3 to 9 or so players.
How much of an RTS you introduce into the game at the higher ranks is debatable, but it would allow a high degree of control of player/vehicle/weapon placement. At the highest level of command, a player might have an interface similar to risk or axis and allies, where they are mostly managing the positioning/movement/formation of troops. At lower levels of command, the interface would be similar to the Halo RTS game, where you are directing individual units and spawning upgrades/weapons/vehicles. Then at the lowest level of command you'd be simply using your voice chat to coordinate with your 3-9 troops and relay any objectives from higher up in the chain of command. This kind of model for a MMOFPS has a lot of potential, but would require those in command to play regularly and not goof around (though you could easily limit the negative impact on a malicious officer). Of course, just because you have a high rank doesn't mean you wouldn't be playing FPS style a lot. Afterall, the commanding officers would only represent a fraction of the total team. Maybe you would join a team for a week and get to command troops; and the next week you play in a different game with a different number of teams and a different scenario as a basic FPS troop.