Since some of you have admitted to not playing Guild Wars.  I'll give a brief description.

You have quests, and Missions

Quests are your average run of the mill grinders.
Missions on the other hand, were the story line.
Missions always advanced you through the story, and the landscape at a very rapid pace.
About 75% of the time you did a mission, it would lead you right into the next mission.
These missions even had in-game cutscenes and spoken dialogue to enhance the story.


Now on to the actual Multiplayer aspect of that game.

Instances.
The only way you would ever see another human player in your game, is if you actually invited them into your group.  
Because once you leave towns/stations.  You are all alone.  Inside your own instance.  No POSSIBILTY WHATSOEVER of some random dude coming in to grief you.
All PVP in this game is done in a fashion that guarantees all parties are consenting to PvP at that time.  Or rather, it has a Mode that lets you make a full level character just for the PVP Arenas. (Doesn't that sound familiar to you? It Should.)


At the very least, the MMO possibilty should be considered just because of the Economy aspect of the game.

I hope you realize that there are a large number of MMO's that are going the Free-to-Play route lately?

So your argument of paying a monthly fee if SC2 were to become an MMO is null and void of any substantial reason not to consider the possibility.

Plus,  if people chatting on an MMO bothers you.. you can Minimize the chat bar.   Brilliant idea, I know!

You act as though just because a game has a possibilty of Multiplayer, that you're absolutely FORCED to use that aspect in order to enjoy the game.  You're wrong.

I NEVER once had to rely on Humans to get through the entire story that was Guild Wars.   Although I did prefer to play it with humans.


The issues you bring up is the same retardedness that I have witnessed on  Bungie.net as of late.    People talking about going dark, because they don't have enough self control to IGNORE all the threads that are trying to spoil the story for them.  It's like you either click on the video to watch it, or you don't.   Same here, you either ask a few human players for help,  Or you play the game BY YOURSELF.  What I have envisioned for the MMO portion of this game, would in no way require you to HAVE TO interact with other players to play.  It's just there as a possibility to add more substance to the game,   Because humans, add more substance to a game than any AI you could ever program.  

And if you need an example of  how to make an MMO function as a full fledged Single players game.  Then look no futher than Guild Wars.

To put it another way, I'd like the possibility of playing Star Control in an MMO fashion without forcing other players to rely on the human to enjoy it.
You on the other hand would prefer to leave the possibility out entirely, FORCING us to have to play it by ourselves, for the entirety of the game.

What if I just labeled it co-op Campaign, up to 8 players...would that make you feel better about it?  The only difference is.  The lobby where you ask people to join in your campaign is a space station..instead of your average Diablo 2/FPS lobby system.

Oh, and one more thing.

If your playing against human players,  They won't have to waste their time programming the AI to account for it being the only competition you'll ever get.  They can spend that time on making a better story instead.

Then you just follow the same route that Guild Wars did,  (which kind of killed the game for me)  When the player base dwindles a bit, or gets to spread out over the landscape.  They added in customizable AI Henchmen.  It basically was the nail in the coffin that turned Guild Wars from a multiplayer game into a Single Player game. Guild wars was a much MUCH better game when humans were the primary choice to bring along as help.  Now it seems most noobs are to scared to be a noob in your group, and they won't even respond the group invites anymore.  I mean,  Why the hell people buy MMO's to play by themselves is beyond me.

Single player games are still sold, yes.  But honestly, most of them burn out really quick.  You know why? because Single Player games are just that.  A game that you play through a Single time.  Multiplayer games are played through multiple times.   Its pretty simple really.

Ok, you all seem to be nitpicking as though I want EvE reskinned.   No.  Just....NO.

In fact I hate eve, Eve is too much sandbox.  Void of pretty much ANY story.

That's why I will say it again.  I SPECIFICALLY REFER TO GUILD WARS.  When I want you guys to look at the theory of how the Online MMO portion would play out.

If you haven't played it, then you have NO business trying to make MMO's out to be some kind of plague that turns games into big grinding machines.
When I first started playing SC2 back in the day, I probably did more grinding during that time than I ever did on Guild Wars, Or most MMO's for that matter.
So I'm not sure why anyone in this forum would even make an issue about it, since it's one of the gameplay elements that defined SC2 back in the day.

And in terms of people coming in late and missing some story elements.  So what.  If all the elements were able to tell a coherant story from the moment they started playing the game, would it really matter if a portion of the player base never got to the ending of that story?.  I don't think so, because it's not the end that matters...its the journey.  And your just a character in that story.  Whether or not you become the Hero of that story is up to you.  If you actually finish the story within the 6 months, then maybe you can get rewarded with a Hall of Fame type deal.  That gives a hell of incentive to play the game if you ask me.

ALSO...
As for the ships not being balanced for an online Multiplayer arena.....
Look  at a few games that actually have different classes of ships/character/etc that are totally unbalanced from each other because they fill a different purpose.  Yet they are all tossed into the same match together and they somehow make a great game.
A few games that have done this:  Crimson Skies, Return to Castle Wolfentstein,  Call of Duty.
You know the types,  Medic, Soldier, Engineer, Covert Ops.
I'd imagine seeing alot of twink'd team builds, revolving around the whole team using Chmmr Avatar's. Etc.  But you see, it does balance itself out because the other team can use the same kind of tactics.
Super Melee, if it was presented in the same fashion as Crimson Skies battles were presented.  Multiple Ships with completely unique abilities flying around in the same arena all controlled by human players.   You would  have to make/present it in that sort of 3D fashion to make it work. The top down method that SC2 is using just isn't able to handle more than a 1v1 situation unless you had the camera zoomed out to the max the entire time.

And if there is one thing that is for SURE.  The next Star Control needs an update to super melee to allow for actual Fleet Battles.  Instead of the One on One thing.

I think if there was a decent sized pool of plotlines to choose from, it could succeed, so long as they all followed the lore of SC2.

And as for not wanting an MMO...

All I can say is, if you've every played a game like Guild Wars, you would understand that the conversion to MMO would not in any way hinder the games ability to tell a story in the same fashion as if it was just single player.

I SPECIFICALLY refer to Guild Wars when I want you to look at the MMO possibility,  because that game is quite simply a Single Player game with the "possibilty" to play with other people.

Multiplayer is where gaming is going, so if you fight against that idea in general, then we are done here. 'cause I fear I might have to start attacking you for wanting to live in the past instead of the future of gaming.

p.s. I know what you all want for the next Star Control and I'm telling you...  It would be a complete waste of their time, if all we got was SC2 reskinned to complete the story it started.


Times have changed.  And if you want Star Control to succeed....and I know you do.  Then you need to realize that Star Control will have to compete with todays gaming market.....it  won't succeed in that if they're too busy catering to the fanboys of yesteryear.

A while back, there was a conversation that took place between TfB and the community.

In that conversation, one of them had referred to the possibility of a remake of SC2, that would become available through the current Console Marketplaces.  XBox live marketplace being the specific one referred to.

What's going on with that?

If you guys don't jump on the ball, you're going to miss your window of opportunity to get in and become the "standard" space exploration game.

EvE Online
Jumpgate Evolution
Mass Effect
etc.

You're letting these games steal all your glory.  But not all of it...because they all lack something that SC2 had.  Memorable Characters with  Witty dialogues


My advice to you if you are still indeed, hell bent on making another Star Control game.
Take Diablo,  Eve, Crimson Skies, Guild Wars, X-Com, Mass Effect, SC2, and mix em all together.
And you should end up with something that looks like a,


3d space exploration battles (Crimson Skies)
w/ FPS missions on planets/starbases.  (Mass Effect)
With randomized worlds/ loot drops/Bueprints (Diablo)
that you research at your home base to improve your ship, or main character(s) (X-Com).
Space Stations that function as giant hubs to trade or make friends to tackle storyline missions with (Guild Wars)

In fact, I would go so far as to say that your entire universe should be randomly generated , but with key storyline elements randomly tossed in.
Have the whole world run on a 6 month cycle, so after the 6th months everything is reset and everyone starts over.  Kind of like the Diablo 2 ladder resets
But be unique about the storyline elements.
 
For example.  Lets say the first 6 months randomly generated a world centered around the original storyline of SC2.  The next 6 months might randomly generate a storyline centered around stopping the Shofixti from outbreeding the rest of the races and taking over the universe with all their offspring?  (Somewhat thinking about the Krogan Rebellion type lore that was in Mass Effect).

Anyway..I'm done, and this forum and the way it handles typeing out  and  editing a long post like this is starting to annoy me.  So I'll stop here.

I fully support this! Stardock should be able to make something good! I hope they keep the exploration element intact. Not too many games seem to have that quality! We can't go to other star systems in real life, so I very much want to at least be able to do so in a video game!  I just hope it's not PC only and beyond what my computer can handle. Maybe I'll have a new computer by then though.

Oh.... crap.... I kinda also hope it doesn't just end up being some MMO! I hate those because it's like a drug.... they get you addicted, then you're paying them for as long as you play. Unless the fee isn't bad. I wouldn't mind paying $25 a year, but most MMOs are quite a bit more than that.

That's why you say to stardock, that you plan on using the business model that Guild Wars is using.  Instead of charging a monthly fee,  just make a bunch of expansions.  Don't know how much money their sitting on from this plan of theirs but it must be working since GW2 is on its way.   Hell if you could just take GW and give it a spacelift,  you would have a damn good drawing board for your game and a base for mixing multiplayer and story together seamlessly in a way that would feel like "riding a bike" when compared to the flow of SC2.  When you consider missions that replay historic moments in SC2,  when the shoftixti blew up their sun...or the humans were first enslaved.

I think in order to make another Star Control that will survive they have to revive SC2 for the masses, with todays tech, but don't just stop there.  Add more to the story,   add the prelude to war......hmmm idea just popped in my head.      You come out with the first installment........in that game you have the prelude to SC2   all the things that happened before humans got enslaved, etc.   Let it run a year.   Then you come out with the SC2 expansion......let it run its course...then you follow it up with the hunt for the precursors, and what happened to them, what happened to the andosynth...etc.     But unlike GW, you need to have different starting points.....if I decide to play a thraddash, you don't want me playing the game from the same starting point as a human now do ya.

Just feel like spilling some ideas out for everyone to chew on.


It would be cool "if": 

*I could jump into a super melee that consisted of an 8+ on 8+ team space battle or 16+ Free-for-all (all human controlled), that consisted of any combination of ship types. Instead of 1v1 with a line up of ships. Hell, you could give each player their line up of ships anyway (Max Lives gametype), but HAVE them battle multiple enemies at once. "Then" that would be cool!

*Toys-for-Bob would make Ur-Quan Masters for Xbox Live Arcade with the new MMO Features as described above.  "Then" you might make a bit of cash and draw in a new following
(you might have to spice up the graphics a bit more though).

*Toys-for-Bob takes these SAME EXACT thoughts into suggesion if they get a chance to make Star Control 3 (or 4). "Then" We shall all rejoice!


More thoughts.

Has anyone had a chance to play Space Rangers 1 or 2 yet. NO!?

This is the bar they have set for -YOU-
A dynamic Universe that changes every time you start a new game.

This would be a bit too drastic if you decided to make the "new" game a persistent online world.
But perhaps you could program an auto recycle on the universe every 3 months, that would make it a mad dash to get out there and start exploring each time.   6 months

GUILD WARS
This is the bar they have set for EVERYONE.
A persistant World with a few dynamic elements, mostly economy based until you get into Factions, where clans can take control of towns and change an aesthetic border that appears on the oveworld map.

They have found a way to make a massive playerbase that could rival Everquest an perhaps all the losers playing WoW, -AND- it has remained free to play beyond the initial retail price. 
Play it, find out how they can keep it running without charging a monthly fee.

I only pay a monthly fee to Xbox Live for ONE reason, It applies to all games on the system and consoles go a long way for making the battlefield even as compared to PC's where My $5,000.00 Computer will go a long way in dominating everyones $700.00-$2000.00 Computer.

This is why consoles are better for "actual gaming" than PC's. So hit that market.

.

.

.
PS.  Why Wow is for Losers.   Watch Southpark: Make love not Warcraft.


Moderator edit: lowercased the subject. No need to shout.

Talk about integrity, calling me a cretin when I have my back turned shows how much you know about integrity.  And if you say, Activision won't approve of the resources to make a multiplayer game, what makes you think they'd even want to look twice at this proposal of a game without multiplayer? 

Activision is a company that knows the market, and last couple of games I've played online have had Activisions name on it.

And what you don't realize is, an SC-MMO would not involve grinding and killing monsters for weeks on end just so you could lvl-up and take on an area.   The grinding part of MMO's that your referring to won't even exist.  Not all MMO's are the same.

If you haven't already, go play guild wars.  They are on the right track, even their business model is right, no monthly fee to play.  But it has it's flaws. It's major flaw comes from making the game more friendly to the avg player,  before you knew it, you had everything unlocked, you've tried every skill and skill combination and there was nothing left to do. Other than that, it's a great online game.  One of the best.    I still play it, just to keep my skills up for the upcoming expansion.

If you want to make another SC2 then go play SC2 again.   But if your going to make a new one, make it worthwhile and get with the times. 


I didn't want to post again, but someone called me a cretin, for actually putting an idea forward. on what could be done with the game.  Too bad your all too selfish and socially inept to realize it.

your all sad little people, selfish too. 

I say selfish, because you'd all have TFB make a game just to appeal to you, a handful of nerds who played and still remember SC2 from back in the day.

Don't overlook perhaps the greatest thing to happen to video games because you don't know how to interact or ignore immature 14 year olds that bother you with what they type on chat lines.    It's not the people that are chatting away in the game that are socially inept. It's you people who get so flustered by the fact that people are actually using the chat lines for WHATEVER reason.


You act as though  it is remotely impossible for the races in SC universe to go around spamming nonsense like cheeseburgers and toe lengths to each other.

Keep the combat 2D, it feels right.
 I would like to see an open ended RPG that takes place in the post war, post occupation SC universe. The ability to choose your path and which 'faction' to be part of. ..soldier, spy, merchant, bounty hunter (every name used in Super Melee coud be a war criminal to some one and have a price on there head) and combinations of these.
 The chance to expand your governments sphere of influence or just your own.
 Earth with a balanced fleet! The ability for an Earthling character to command and build their ships so they need not rely on the other races as much.
 The Black Spathi as a place for a Spathi character to gain access to.
 Some special 'gimmik' for each species that is represented as a PC.
 Modable so the friendly programmers out there can share their adventures and make it a living RPG environment.
 The only multi-player option it should have isship to ship combat in an arena type setting as a seperate program. I have never seen an MMORPG that was not dominated by socialy inept people.

I like all your ideas, and in fact they provide the basis to build the multiplayer story mode around.  The fight to control space.  It would be almost like going back to SC1 where you were focused on gaining control of star systems and trying to discover ancient precursor technology.

Referring to a game called Guild Wars.   A team would have to battle for the Hall of Heroes in PvP, so long as that team could hold the halls, everyone from their country (USA, Korea, Europe) could gain access to previously unaccesible areas in the Story portion of the game, where they could then collect and buy items that are only found in those restricted areas.

Now back to SC-MMO. 
Races are fighting to expand their influence in space, and control key points in space that are known to contain wormholes to secret places containing precursor artifacts. 

At certain points or at the descretion of the program or sysops, the locations of these artifacts can change, to keep the universe dynamic. (It would be interesting to see spheres of influence constantly moving around in the space map in a desperate rush to find artifacts).

Some of the artifacts that you find, might consist of something that perhaps a single ship can equip, or an entire fleet that was present during the find might equip.   Maybe limit the kinds of precursor mods they can equip to a single ship or type of ship. 
(Diablo 2 uses a suffix\prefix item system, in the same idea you could randomize the precursor items that they find, just not as extensive)

See where this is going? And again, this is all coinciding with the original SC1.

Now for the more technical aspects of keeping the game alive.

One problem I foresee is getting people to play a good mix of all the races.  Making it difficult for someone to play particular races because everyone is flocking to the chmmr avatars.  One way to fix this is to tie material harvesting to fleet size, maybe even put in a formulae to penalize races with more players so they have to harvest more to keep the fleet intact.  And most of the fleet will no doubt be AI controlled, but the human players will have the precursor mods to stand out above the average AI ship.  Making players into bosses so to speak or the ACES. But not so much so that they are able to single handedly wipe out entire fleets by themselves.  Make the AI difficult.

Also perhaps, have players respawn into a brand new ship devoid of any modifications they may have found previously.

For the spheres of influence, perhaps make systems have a checkpoint similar to Battlefield 1942, once they claim the resource they can rebuild at any of the planets they control.

etc. etc.

Now, how do you tie in the story. It can be done. Perhaps tie in the finding of artifacts to how much of the story is revealed to the player, similar to building the precursor bomb to destroy the sa-matra, you might find artifacts to create a wormhole that takes you to the "next dimension" that the orz refer to in SC2.  In this, some people may finish the game and learn the secret to life in SC universe, some might not ever get close.

These are all just a few of my ideas.

Last post in this thread.

The next thread should be all of you brainstorming on how to implement a multiplayer that consist of more than the simple melee mode, and allows everyone to interact within the "dynamic" universe.  Otherwise, don't even waste your time making the game.

And if suddenly the producers at Toys for Bob decide to make another race like the pkunk, that say nothing but you just got pwned, would you get mad and stop playing.         


I still rest my case that even those 14 year olds you just mentioned, do more for interaction than an AI with a scripted output.

MMORPG is exactly what this needs.

The problem with all current MMORPGS is the npc's,  They make the NPC's control the story of the universe.    Well, my solution hand it over to the players.


Here's an example.

I make a Shofixiti,   Somehow in my career, I was able to become the head honcho over the whole race
(the races will work like guilds)  and I decide to declare a genocidal war against the Vux.   Thus allowing for spontaneous combat between these 2 races.   Maybe perhaps putting a penalty on players for attacking races they are not at war with.

Believe you me, humans can provide more interesting and unpredictable interaction than any  AI counterpart.   Not to mention, it takes a human to make these witty characters, so why not just play with the source.