We all know of the major reasons why the old FoM was preferred over the new FoM (droppable items, no professions, mining system, character models and skins, factions, etc.) but I’ve decided to dedicate this to the subtle reasons that tend to be overlooked. Shall I begin?

10. Voice Emote Hotkeys

Coming in at number 10 would have to be the ability to activate voice emotes without navigating a menu. Even though every character of the same gender had the same voice, it brought a sense of audible communication that proved to be quite useful at times. One example was LED using “Drop your weapon” during an apprehension and criminals retorting with a “Drop dead” followed by a struggle to resist. For the most part, it helped supplement the roleplay atmosphere for common scenarios that took place. After this feature was removed, many players never even bothered using voice emotes in these types of situations again.

9. Stunning

There was no separate ammunition for stunning and depleting stamina, there were only rubber bullets. As a result, it took more shots to get somebody in a stunned state, which didn’t grant you invincibility and gave your screen a dizzying effect. It was considered a legitimate tactic back then as opposed to its unacceptance in retail. Exceptionally skilled players can take out overwhelming forces by stunning individual targets and nading them or focusing on other targets, that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible with just using lethals.

8. M-Rated Content

Inflicted characters would emit a spray of blood mist upon each hit, not only psychologically satisfying the marksman, but also providing a visual cue for each successful hit. Club 69’s signs and posters weren’t censored, language was unregulated and humping was a popular player-created emote. DPS’ attitude was much more laid back during this period when faction high ranks had the power to manage their own page at fomportal.com with their own content and freely withdraw/exchange faction funds.

7) Armor

What made the armor of day’s past superior to the revision of MS1 was that none of them were faction-specific nor were they categorized in level-tiers. Subsequently, loot was more valuable to the average player as damaged armor was typically replaced with scavenged armor with higher percentages. Each set of armor also had a purpose according to what you wanted to protect yourself against, had practical names and were slick, militaristic and rugged in appearance,  complimenting the gritty models perfectly.

6. Grenades

Everyone agreed that the new grenades were unfavorable. By the time your character stopped clumsily fumbling around with the pin on the grenade, everyone had already scattered like roaches. Although, they weren’t perfect, the old grenades were more efficient to use in combat as you didn’t need to switch from your primary weapon, they were thrown immediately after the press of key, and were also somewhat difficult to tell who they were coming from.

5. Tubes

The old tubes were simply more fluid. While the new tubes functioned like elevators, the old tubes felt like they were powered by pressurized air systems. When entering a tube, you were either sucked up like a vacuum or glided down as if gravity was slightly decreased. You could heal but also take damage inside of tubes so it was actually well balanced. In conclusion, interacting with them was a more enjoyable experience and they were less prone to abuse.

4. Implants

Using the Shield was a staple and you didn’t have to sacrifice your torso armor to use one, nor did you have to sacrifice your leg armor to use a Resistance Amplification. You had a total of 3 slots to place any combination of implants you desired. If only there was wider selection to choose from.

3. Mission Beacons and Abstract Objectives

The allure of mission beacons over the later implemented ‘VR’ mission rooms, as well as abstract objectives over the defined hard-coded objectives were quite simple in nature, the former system allowed user input and flexibility. Missions were completed out of passion, since objectives were hand-fabricated by high-ranking players who would inevitably go over and examine missions and evaluate member performance. Mission leaders also wrote a review/summary of the events that occurred during each mission. Setting up clandestine meeting locations and having to follow the instructions to the rendezvous point was very intriguing, too. You had to be at the right place at the right time or you would’ve been a no show.

2. Climbing

Climbing was one of the leading components of early beta that added an immense amount of depth to the game. Discovering new areas and ways to reach what were thought to be unreachable was an artform. Some players excelled at it, others didn’t, making it a significant tool players used to their advantage in many ways. Covert operations and long-range engagements involved a lot of climbing. Unfortunately, after the severe altering of climbing, FoM’s heart and soul took a devastating crush.

1. Lighting and Shadows

It was basically a toss-up between climbing and lighting/shadows, but this takes the number one spot just because immediately after they tweaked it, the stealth element in FoM was watered down to a shameful facet; it was such a fundamental ingredient that was under appreciated by everyone including Marko. Why was it so important? Because characters can literally disappear in shadows, giving night vision goggles/shoulder lamps a real purpose. Don’t think for a second that turning up your brightness would’ve helped you either, the shoulder lamp was by no means a toy, it actually illumunated whatever area it was shone at, just like how a flashlight would work in real life.

Sneaky players utilized shadows skillfully and effectively, blending in dark surroundings in order to evade foes, stalk prey, spy on targets, eaves drop on unsuspecting players and go unnoticed. It was amazing.

It’s too bad that Marko never realized or noticed how much he fucked the game up. Plus, there was no way you could’ve recreated this in post-MS1, even if you played with the graphics settings. Something went utterly wrong involving lighting/shadows and it was never able to be redeemed.

Honorable Mention

Spatial chat. I didn’t add this to the list because it was present for the majority of post-MS1 beta and retail. However, here’s among the many reasons why it was highly regarded:

“Lupi Yondergirl is just one of the people I had high respect for when I started. She held these giant meetings in the BoS HQ to tell us what our goals would be. She sent two people outside to the soccer field and the train station (the only places people could hear into the BoS HQ from) to make sure no one was listening in. Then she would tell us about our new enemies and how we would be liberating their colonies.” - Meat (from fomplanet forums)

Genjuro aka Sroek

Here it goes , two days ago the FOM developers team released the first version of their biweekly blog to track down the game changes before its new release, codenamed "Rebirth". 

You can find the download link HERE.

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Face Of Mankind Official News (( November 13th , 2007 )) :

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After the shocking news we've heard about Face of mankind the past weeks , it all occured to us that it might and probably will go down or turn completely to a free2play game , but as for the FOM developers , they announced that the spent a lot on this project and they're not willing to stop it now .

Developers' team official word :

The brief on this that the team decided to decrease some services introduced by them as the community site and irc channel and the developing team will afford running the servers , they'll also add a free account in order to increase population in the game ... so just we need to wait for the launch of : Face of mankind rebirth .

For further news check : www.fomportal.com

Sign a new account : http://fomportal.com/index.php?page=newaccount

Download the client : http://fomportal.com/index.php?page=dl_client