The problem with selling items is this...I dont really think it would be fair to sell combat upgrading accessories for real cash. Call me old fashioned, but I think I should get to keep what I kill. To me you should get a reward with your kill..your enemies dog tags, his gun, a weapon, ect.That being said, I would really get p!$$3d off if I had just spent 20 dollars in real money to buy a new autocannon just to have some zone-poser get a lucky head shot off and steal it.

Now I wouldn't mind paying a basic fee, but alot of what I like about some of my older games was the ability to make "virtual money" by completing tasks and making kills while playing to buy guns, armor, property, houses, clothes, armor...you name it. If you make it to where you have to use just real money that wouldnt be good.

What you could do is split the difference and make an exchange rate between real money and virtual money...aka set it up where you can pay real money to buy virtual money. Then you could satisfy both sides of the coin.

Of course you would have to limit items you can use based on experience level (no need to have the 1st level noob carrying the autocannon). The noob can kill you, pick it up and sell it...but not use it.

Another thing you could do is allow artists and developers to pay a fee to sell virtual items they make for...a programmers mall where they can sell custom looking guns, vehicles, weapons, ect. All you would have to do is set up a basic template for items and let them make a graphic representation (aka the basic operating parameters for a light pistol would be x strength, x range, x ammo, x number of slots in the inventory screen...but with a customized look). You could allow totally custom items, but you would have to screen carefully for gamebreakers.

Best of all, if your game becomes popular enought (and depending on the style) you can sell advertising space. A commercial at the intro would just p!$$ everyone off...but an animated advertizing board on the side of the road in your game world would be cool as hell.

People will play monthly fees for mmofps. People thought no one would play monthly for mmorpgs but millions of people do. Just look at halo 3 and the amount of people that brought it. Once there are good enough servers and the investment there will be alot of mmofps.

Which i dont understand. We have games like bf2142 that each have 64 people on them. Why can't they just do that at a bigger scale?

They can its just that they need to be able to sell and market the game effectively that they will have players on it for years

Taiko! wrote:
Huntyre wrote:
Companies don't hear opinions...they hear dollar signs.

Amen to that

I 2nd that.

Silent_Hippo wrote:
Taiko! wrote:
Huntyre wrote:
Companies don't hear opinions...they hear dollar signs.

Amen to that

I 2nd that.

Thats how business works... They have to listen to the shareholders. And the Shareholders only want one thing: money. It's why they bought the shares, is because they were convinced that they would make a return profit on spending their money on the company.

/discuss

Well I'm not sure if a free MMOFPS would be the most popular online game ever but Id certainly play it.
If you check the free "pay for special items" games not one of those is nearly as popular as WOW or EQ. That is strange but true.

And design-wise it would be nearly impossible to have one. FPS games require a lot more processing power than normal RPGs. There's a lot of technical stuff to consider.

When you play a normal point and click mmo you are only sending a command action and a couple coordinates to the server. Attacks are also calculated by the server so there's not a lot of bandwidth issues there. On a FPS you have to send the player current direction and every change you make with the mouse in direction also. That increases bandwidth a lot. Also you have to send a signal every time you press the mouse to fire your gun, which is also a lot more than clicking on a monster like in normal rpgs. Because of that normal RPGs use less servers than FPS games. In a rpg you can have one server handling a really big area with a lot of people where in FPS you have to limit the amount of players and to a small area because you have to check for player collision more often, check for bullets, etc etc etc.

You really need a lot of very good hardware to run a server like that. That makes it nearly impossible to offer it for free.