A Gaming Fantasy (LONG!)
 

Today I dreamed of a game that shall never be, but I thought I'd share it, because it seems like it's worth talking about. It's something others have probably thought of, but it only just occurred to me today, so bear with me...

It's a game that deals with a war. A war, epic in scope, between two armies, and the reason for the war is unimportant, because it's all about online play -- and the only objective there is to win.

Lately I've been inundated at Gamestop with all kinds of questions about upcoming PC games -- FPSes (squad-based and non-), RTSes, and MMORPGs, or, basically, the whole gamut.

My dream combines them all.

In each battle, two opposing players square off RTS style. These players manage the army's overall resources, and choose what gets built where, as well as deciding the overall strategies to be employed by their respective armies.

Beneath them, there is another tier of more numerous players, who operate on a more tactical level. These players operate in a squad-based FPS style. When the 'Generals' speak, these are the guys that are listening; once the General's orders are established, it's up to these guys to set waypoints and decide on the best way to capture their objectives.

Finally, beneath the 'Commanders,' you have your soldiers, who are basically playing an FPS game. These guys would be tasked with executing whatever orders their respective Commander issues.

And then, as orders filter down and are executed, results filter back up and are decisive in the outcome of the battle. As the Generals build new facilities, more unit-types become unlocked, but only a certain number of a particular unit is allowed in one army at a given time, ala Star Wars Battlefront. Vehicles could be incorporated too, with the Commander players deciding where they fit into the gameplan.

The coolest part is the way it shakes up a lot of solid gameplay foundations. Playing an RTS game, when was the last time a shoot-out wasn't based completely on a given unit's power? When you deploy your troops, it's really a game of rock-paper-scissors against your opponent; either you have the guys to counter his guys, or you don't.

In my idealized game, a lot more of the outcome would depend upon the individual skill of the players involved. Predictability isn't always a good thing, IMO. In shooters and other video games, miraculous comebacks do occur, just as they occur in real life; they don't happen on the scale of a single shootout in an RTS game. As a General, the one soldier you just saw wipe out a whole enemy squad is a nice surprise; if you're that one soldier, you're on an unbelievable high.

Same deal for the Commanders. It's up to them to do most of the tactical thinking, and make decisions like who mans the .50 on the back of the jeep; stuff you see in any squad-based shooter. But how often, in remembering the squad-based FPSes you've played, did you wish your troops weren't so goddamned stupid / so smart they're almost broken? In my super-game, each unit would be a controlled by a player -- prone only to mistakes a real person would make, and only as good as the next blind FPS corner.

The pure FPS players would have my favorite change. Basically, as the battle shifts back and forth, they would be constantly getting new Objectives to complete -- just like the squads you manipulate in an RTS game. Rather than one flag to capture over and over, or some other objective which keeps repeating (standard Deathmatch being the most pointlessly repetitive), they'd have new stuff to do all the time; a great way of capturing the compelling, mission-oriented feel of single-player but with the competitive aspect of multiplayer.

The obvious problem is that no one wants to get ordered around by some dude online.

To me, this isn't nearly as big of an issue as it seems at first. Everybody wants to win, right? If that's the case, soldiers don't really have any choice but to follow their orders, as they aren't capable of seeing anything larger than the next objective. Commanders are similarly limited -- without access to the army's resources and such, they're forced to rely on the Generals. Generals, meanwhile, get to do all the grandiose planning, but none of it means anything without the players working under them.

Just imagine... The RTS player highlights a squad, and clicks where he wants them to go.

The Squad Leader moves his troops to the designated area, choosing his own route and deciding contingency plans under the power of his own initiative.

The FPS players move to the first waypoint, using whatever FPS-y tactics are necessary -- covering fire, snipers on lookout, and all that jazz.

Wouldn't it be awesome?

Of course, it could never happen. But it sure is nice to dream.

And Savage has been so successful
 

You're pretty much describing Savage.

The problem would be how does building troops work? What if there are no players to fill the role of troops? What do excess players do while waiting for you to build?

Yup, I was thinking of Savage and the mod for half life Natural Selection the whole time. Except for the intermediary between the soldiers and the commander, they are the same thing.

Wow. I never heard of Savage before... and it's a FREE game now? Still, the pictures seem to give it a fantasy-esque feel, which I'm not sure will work too well in an FPS.

Personally, I'd love ThunderousWrath's idea in a Warhammer 40k setting. Plenty of races, plenty of units. And why not have a kind of bidding system for players? You can click a person's name to see their stats, take their skill with various unit types into account, and use points or something to try and get them on your team. That way, players who play a lot will be very valued ("Oh my gawd! It's xXSniperPwnXx!!! I bid 500 points! Now I just need to unlock the Sniper class as fast as possible...) and a commander can still win with a team of rookies because they will get MORE of them.

The only problem I can see coming is the selection of a commander. Some people are naturally more inclined to RTS or FPS, one or the other - and because these numbers are about equal, there will be many more people wanting to be commanders than getting to be commanders. In the end, people will probably just host another game just so they can be the commander, and that will lead to much smaller games than are intended. This could be solved either with the option to include bots, or the creation of smaller-scale commanders. Maybe have squad leaders who have a more zoomed-in view, and who can tell individual soldiers where to go?

Plenty of wrinkles to iron out. That's probably why this hasn't been done yet... well, in the suggested manner.

This seems like a really interesting idea.
The only problem I see with it is that there would have to be hundreds, if not thousands of people playing one war in order for this to actually to gain momentum. All of these people would need a good network connection so it wouldn't lag a lot from the hundreds of foot soldiers.

I love this idea though. I think that it would be great to have this kind of complex, multilayer gameplay that is part strategy game part action FPS game. I also like the idea of having individual soldiers who can think for themselves playing, if one saw a way to achieve a goal better then what their commander said they could do it. No kind of AI could do that.

Never heard of Savage, but it definitely bears looking into.

The problems Barrel-hating Sycophant pointed out are part of why such a game could never really exist. Building troops, I figure, could be handled in the usual way -- you build a Barracks, and you spawn'em from there.

Perhaps the Commander class would be able to view players' stats, as Kerensky287 suggested. When the General decides he's in need of a Sniper, it then falls to the Commander to decide which of the Soldiers would spawn as the Sniper.

As to when dudes are waiting to spawn... Hell, I don't know. Stick'em in a chat room, I guess. I hadn't considered a possible shortage of players wanting to play the Soldier role... I was banking on the popularity of online FPS games to see me through that one.

Kerensky287 also pointed out that two of the three demographics being covered would be too divisive for online play... A simple answer would be that the game could be playable in a strictly-RTS format, or perhaps a universal format where a single player could shift between roles however he saw fit, whenever he felt it was necessary.

Of course, that somewhat defeats the purpose, which is to provide satisfaction on three distinct gameplay fronts in a single package.

Yes, it's all very ambitious, but yes, it's also very much a dream game.

I've tried it before. It's neat, but not terribly great. There's a lot of focus/power in melee combat, and most of that relies of latency and wondering wtf you just died instantly.

Still, the human faction can get quite a lot of FPS feel once you unlock gauss and energy weapons. M'fond of the repeater and coilgun, myself.

Another game to look into is Planetside. It's got the commander/soldier thing in the persistant world MMO enviroment, but no "Generals". It also suffers from the ubiquitous "Nobody listens to meee!" whining from the CR's. Which isn't entirely undeserved, honestly. You don't just order your troops to suddenly abandon a base they've managed to hold for 5 hours simply because you want to just lose that continent and redeploy them elsewhere.

Here's an idea. To get mostly-equal numbers of RTS and FPSers, why not have the game mainly RTS, but give the option to hire FPSer mercenaries? That way, you would be able to rely more on your units who can pay attention to you (no more of this "Attack this!" "Where is it?" "There!" "It's dead now. I'm leaving."), but still have one potentially better player. The PvP is still there - merc vs merc - and you can have objectives as loose or as specific as you like. You can even have an almost purely merc army, if you pay enough... because win rankings would probably translate well into cost.