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So much potential gone to waste.
jsw40
Member Posts: 214
I played FoM during the open beta, and I was just thinking back on it a few days ago. It had a fresh idea behind it, absolutely no grinding and an atmosphere and gameplay style that promoted roleplay - and actually worked. Pretty much everyone roleplayed; you had cops patrolling streets and arresting terrorists, you had the military constantly running defense missions against attackers, etc. It was genuinely fun for the first few days.
But, the game had its downfalls. The combat was completely crappy, you could shoot someone in the head for minutes and have them not die, or a single person could take down an entire squad with questionable tactics. There wasn't much to do besides the crappy combat and roleplay, so every faction was at war with eachother to find something to do.
All in all, if this game had a better combat system and a lot more depth, it would be my #1 MMO by far.
But, the game had its downfalls. The combat was completely crappy, you could shoot someone in the head for minutes and have them not die, or a single person could take down an entire squad with questionable tactics. There wasn't much to do besides the crappy combat and roleplay, so every faction was at war with eachother to find something to do.
All in all, if this game had a better combat system and a lot more depth, it would be my #1 MMO by far.
Comments
Still it was great while it lasted and I would love if someone decided to steal the core concept and make a much more polished game from it.
I played FOM on the open beta for a few weeks before it finally went live.
The player driven politics affecting alliances, even the possibility of interfaction violence in some cases impressed me most. The players at the top ranks of the factions and companies effectively run the government, which I've never seen in a game before.
On my first weekend of play (I had joined the Freedom Defence Core, aka FDC), I was still trying to find my way around the game when the Shadow (mercenaries) attacked Tiergarter in Berlin. For the remainder of the weekend the Freedom Defence Core had constant attack missions running to retake Tiergarter. By Sunday evening, while our missions were still classified as attack, we were merely running mopup and patrol missions while enforcing martial law.
During that weekend-long battle (remember that one hour in real life is four hours in game), several civilian players (typically players working for one of the corporations) were killed when they would wander into the middle of an ongoing street battle between the FDC and the Brotherhood of the Shadow. The spate of killings caused an outcry by the corporations, whiched forced the police (the Law Enforcement Department, known as the LED) to send LED members as "monitors" on all missions with the Freedom Defence Core ensure that the soldiers aren't just shooting at anything that moves. Effectively, placing such soldiers under arrest.
In the game, getting arrested lands you in jail, where you have to work (during game time) until your release.
I started out in Paris, and found that using the sale terminals there caught many players off guard when their characters were robbed and murdered by petty thieves (living in South Africa, my cautious ways to not turn my back to just anyone came in handy there). Once killed by another player, and the game server perceiving your death as having been committed in cold blood, you'll find a chit in your inventory after you respawn (assuming you have clones left). By passing this chit to an LED terminal, you effectively report the crime. Eventually, the LED will run into that player, and arrest them.
I myself found it difficult to not run out of cash all the time, (having to equip myself to help the cause, while the cause was not helping me), and I was eventually recruited by a team of Freedom Defence Core members who were selling protection services to the corporations. We were essentially mercenaries, and the money from our work paid for our weapons and even our allowances. We were properly outfitted, and it made me a happy soldier.
However, as FDC command realised that sub factions existed that weren't following supreme orders (unless our commander okayed it first), they tried to disband our group. It came to a head when, while we were guarding the EuroCore buildings in Paris, the building was blocked off by conventional FDC soldiers (mostly rookies), who attempted to storm the installation. These were the same soldiers who weren't properly equipped by the army. We taunted them as we heard them chatter outside.
After failing to take the building, the ranking FDC officer that caused the building to be stormed did not get his way (our commanding officer made an agreement with Field Marshall De Winter to incorporate us as a seperate battalion reporting directly to him), he quit the FDC and joined the brotherhood, which in turn sent a small squad of mercenaries to attack the EuroCore building on the same day.
A few weeks after I had stopped playing, I heard from other players that Field Marshal De Winter was assasinated (by perma death). It was probably staged, but the political effect is important.
I believe there is much to this game, and it should be developed even further. If the game engine works well, and the concept of earning game cash by doing missions as work is fluid, that a politically affected game is quite possible. Now if only I could more easily get around, and not get murdered every time I spawn in Brooklyn...
Revisiting the website almost a year later, I can say that the site has not changed at all. I still struggle to use the interface, odd bugs appearing here and there. I wonder whether the game has had any success since?
Ta,
ObseloV
I played for a few months towards the end of Beta, and the first month of P2P and I too agree that it had a mass of potential, but was wasted. I remember when Ace Stars of Eurocore used to run around hacking and own our entire squad, I remember giving meds to the highest rank BoS when we raided Pegasi 51. I remember calling the GoM 'tree huggers' and mas producing meds and ammo to hand out before raids. I remember the last day of free play when i got given 2 million from a GM in game when i asked sarcastically for some spare change, and when i told some others about it and they tried to get some too, the GM spawned monsters and killed everyone. Got some nice pics of some of the colony dancing in a friend's penthouse that day....good times.
Anyhoo, I think the idea of centralising colony actions, wars etc on the higher rank players was good, especially as it was something I hadnt seen, although naturally there were a couple of downsides, such as limited money appointed to them to be offered for missions, and ultimately they never gave out very big rewards to conserve it, and the missions tended to be rather empty patrol missions. Naturally, this would be the case because if you died you lost everything aside from up to the 3 guns you had equipped and your physical money. The more real you make things, the more risky it becomes, as the surrealism is something that some people desire, and the more 'real' the cost of death is, the more scared people become. Still, at least you had the ability to kill people of any rank as soon as you start. No exp limits for anything.....at all. The game went P2P with no use of exp. the only use would be incorporated by players, and its past use for the BoS being the first 2 ranks was scrapped almost as soon as i achieved the exp
But money was a problem for multiple reasons. Some people learned to hack regarding money, so could make a shedload of items and sell them extremely cheap. Not too cheap, or itd be notiecd naturally. Second, the production system originally could be left alone whilst you run around, so tons of people were producing many at a time, and the gradual decrease in cost meant that much money was saved. The system then changed near the end of beta, and the cost figures were bizarre. i had spent a while writing down costs and testing but i couldnt figure it out.
But anyhoo....i didnt play for too long, but it was relatively fun. got to know a lot of people, still keep in touch with a couple of them, since some games in different ventrilo channels i now play, but ill never forget it. Its one of the games that you dont forget since its so player orientated and you have to involve yourself. Hope the fixed it all up for the sake of the players. ill hold onto my pics and 100mb trailer to remind me of the past, and hope its problems are all better now
I agree with most of the above, actually. I was halfway up the LED COC for a short while, and while the game was interesting and had some nice concepts, it all falls apart in practice. There's little "meaning" in a game like this, where the majority of the story is player-driven RP. "Leaders" in the various factions simply can't exert any control over faction members, especially given the above lack of an overarching storyline, and the "law enforcement" factions (LED, FDC) have no real power at all, given that they are beholden to the exact same combat as the rest of the factions (you can be excellent at combat as an LED or FDC member, but why bother when you can simply join an "outlaw" faction and do just as well without the RP restrictions?), and are thus frequently outnumbered by players of equal or greater skill.
A huge waste of potential - this could be a great game if it were more focused and had a more effective way of dealing with troublemakers.
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Note: PlayNC will refuse to allow you access to your account if you forget your password and can't provide a scanned image of the product key for the first product you purchased..... LOL
Everquest - 2000 - '02
Anarchy Online - '01-'02
Earth and Beyond - '02-'04
Star Wars Galaxies - '03-'06('07)
World of Warcraft - '04-'07
Age of Conan - '08 - shelved.
-Waiting on-
Star Trek Online
SW: The Old Republic
Ah yes FOM back in mid open-beta was amazing (pre-alien era)
I worked my way up to to president of Eurocore and had the most fun I've had in any MMO I've ever played. It seems from what I've read that the game has lost all of its magic since then. Such a shame.
Good times back then.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I remember playing FoM in open beta.
The LED was nothing but shit. Absolute shit. No-one helped you,everyone shot you (including LED people) and generally they were a bunch of assholes thinking this was some kind of online FPS. Needless to say I left them after an hour.
The BoS were more helpful,but suffered from 'spies' or general assholes going around killing people for no reason. Did the odd patrol route though with them.
Only when I joined the GoM did the game actually start to pick up for me. I could finally start to build up some stock to be able to fight people with. I remember they had a high-ranking Merc buddy who would do favours for them.....at a price. Mercs,BoS and even LED strolled into GoM HQ from time to time. We had a bit of an open door policy,but people were reminded not to go around shooting us or they'd be shot back. A policy of CoS (Clone on Sight) was usually used. We had the occasional rampaging maniac who snuck in and went on a hacking rampage,and thus the whole base went on alert as we found them and killed them.
More importantly,the GoM were very helpful. I really enjoyed FoM at this point but I took a break from it,and came back to find out it had gone P2P. Gutted,because in all honesty FoM didn't seem to me to be worthy of being a P2P. The combat was a bit dodgy after all.
Still,if Face of Mankind ever goes to F2P I'll be one of the first to return to it,as it had great RP'ing and purposeful PvP potential.
Heh, I'm playing GW:EN too.
But hopefully FoM turns a corner as they now have a new CM and there have been a flurry of patches within the past month. Another one to come this week.
I remember being so excited for this game when it was still just an idea. Then by the time I actually got to play it, it was empty. I ran around for an hour, then the first person I saw shot me, haha. Months later I tried again, and the game had been improved, but the situation was just as the thread starter describes. It really is a shame, it could have been an amazing game.
_____
We can take these deadites... with science.
I remember getting into the open beta and really thinking, yeah, here's something that could work... it felt a lot different to anything I'd played online before and it looked fun, but I have to agree with the general feeling that it just dived beyond belief. I admit, all throughout my time in the beta I just got randomly killed and felt a bit lost for most of the time but it still seemed to have a lot of potential when compared to say, the snoringly awful land of the world of warcraft.
Subsequently played FoM for one month after launch and well, never really looked at it since. Oh well.
***
teh no0b
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Every time I think of this game I cry. It's the 'perfect' MMO for me - no grind and an active community. Unforunately, one milestone patch ruined it all. I really hope that some other publisher buys this license some day.
From there main site webpage:
Dear FoM Community,
many of you are waiting to hear word from us about the future of Face of Mankind.
Since we have been informed about the cease of service by Ojom at the end of november, we had to do a lot of thinking and planning. The main questions were whether we would be able to continue hosting the game by ourselves and if we would be willing to take the financial risks involved.
We have spent a lot of efforts, diligence, money and even health into the project, and we are not willing to give it up that easily. So we decided to go on, with a few changes, but at least go on.
In order to be able to host the game on our own, we need to simplify everything a lot. During the last weeks we've come up with a concept for this, which I'd like to present to you roughly.
By simplification I mean the game, the server structure and the portal.
1. The Portal
The portal will be reduced to the minimum necessary to present the game to the public.
We will no longer host an official forum or irc channel. We want to give that into the hands of you, the community. As the developer we will present all necessary information through the portal or the game. Also, we are going to implement a biweekly development blog with all kinds of information that would be interesting to you, both official and internal. That is to give you an insight view of how hard it is to create and manage an MMORPG.
2. The Server Structure
The server structure has to be simplified in order to allow for an easy administration, setup and expansion of the cluster. There will be a master server to which all available world servers will connect. Clients who are registered on the master server, will receive a list of world servers they can connect to. The importance of the world server will be increased compared to before. You will find out what that means when you are able to test it for yourself.
3. The Game
The changes to the game will be rather dramatic. But rest assured, these are necessary changes for FoM to survive and hopefully grow later on.
First of, the accounts. There will be two kinds of accounts, a free one and a premium account. Free accounts have no time limitation (so they can be used forever) but limited features. With such account your character can't evolve beyond a certain point. With premium accounts all limitations are lifted. They will cost a yet to be defined monthly fee. We are also considering the option to purchase premium game time to remove the necessity of having to "subscribe".
Next, there's the game mechanics. During the last years with FoM we could gather a lot of experience and let's say "maturity". We've tested a few very revolutionary features, if we remember the first versions of the mission system. After a few more iterations, we have to admit that some things just won't work, at least not yet. Some have worked out, others rather not. We took a very honest view at all of the features in FoM and decided to do the following changes. I'm going to list them here as notes only.
- Introduction of Clans
- Factions: each faction will be turned into some sort of profession and the old professions will be removed, each faction will give the character a speciality
- Planetary Overview when logging into the game, no more travelling between worlds through vortex gates
- There are worlds for combat and worlds for socializing
- Local economy only, "what is generated on the world, stays on the world", this includes everything from mining, production, market sales and removes transporting
- Storages work like safes
- Introduction of Bio Updates: Character stats, features and options can be enhanced
- Introduction of Bases: On each world, there will be a certain number of bases that can be conquered by clans. Bases consist of a number of linked energy plants that have to be taken out for the force shield to come down. A lot of the PvP oriented gameplay will be about bases
- Turrets are linked to bases
- The mission system as we know it will be no more, instead there are going to be tasks with waypoints that can be defined by clans on a world
- Permanent death will be removed
- Re-Implementation of aliens
- Other world AI (birds, rats, civilian NPC's, server controlled vehicles etc) has to be simplified, the chat AI will be removed and NPC responses will be streamlined
4. Timeline
What we cannot do is giving you an exact timeline. What we will do is trying to keep posting regular (weekly or biweekly) development updates on the portal, so that you can get a picture of the progress yourself. Before the relaunch, we are going to set up another closed beta test to make both the client and the server as stable as possible.
5. The Future
This first relaunch will be called "Face of Mankind: Rebirth".
If things are going well and the customer base grows, additional world servers will be added step by step.
When we reach a state where we are able to generate a stable income, further development steps are planned. The next stage will be called "Face of Mankind: Evolution". We are not going to give out any details about that yet. They are still too undecided to publically announce them.
At the end, we would like to thank everyone involved in the creation of Face of Mankind again and each customer for their loyalty. We will try our best to bring the game back to life, since (and you will most likely agree on this) the concept deserves it.
The Face of Mankind Staff
-----------------------------------
This game is toast.
Too player driven? That was most of FoM's allure. I'm convinced that's whats caused the game to fail. As player driven aspects were slowly removed, the population slowly died.
Two years of retail, not bad for a completely new idea.
I Was with FOM from CLOSED Beta , it wasnt until Open Beta I really found out how wonderful FOM could be when I rose up to become a R6 LED and Warden of DMC (guess who !) This time is still the best MMORPG experience I have ever had and will most likely ever have, I Still reminisces about DMC and the things that went on, I have even backed up the hundreds of screenshots I have and cherish them, something I have never ever done with any MMORPG. oh the stories I could tell and the fun that was had I do not think of any MMORPG in this way, so yes FOM had the potential to become the best ever MMORPG ever known to man.
However the developers made mistake after mistake. Who remember the graphics engine change halfway through Beta? With this engine change saw many other changes, along with a shed load of new bugs, that made the game grind to halt, no more dark places to hide in DMC for example, TURRETS ARGH..( bane of my life and my downfall, but thats another story), not being able to drop items on floor and many other little things that gradually removed all kind of role play features, simply not allowing items to be dropped ruined what little of DMC role play was left after the turrets killed DMC roleplay. One of the fun things was seeking out weapons drops and caches inside the prison for example.
FOM became more of a PvP and overrun with immature kiddies who had no idea what roleplay is let alone knowing how to interact with others, and so FOM quickly died. IN end it seemed like the developers were trying to make it into too many different things, The main unique selling feature of FOM was the player driven role play and the politics and alliances that can be made, spying and espionage was fantastic could go on and on, but no they decide to make it PvP, if I want PvP I could play almost any other MMORPG going, but no lets listen to the kiddies who want to play with guns all day.
Too many mistakes and wrong directions and decision making ruined FOM and now we see it almost dead. I am not surprised to be honest, I am just sad something was killed before it had a chance to grow, otherwise I would still be playing FOM , there is no doubt about that.
Face of Mankind Open Beta was the best gaming experience I've had in the 16 years of PC gaming that I've gone through.
It had its faults, and those that says it was bug free clearly don't remember some of the pretty nasty bugs and flaws that it had. But even with those bugs it was fun to play because you could still win by playing fair and by the rules (because it was that kind of game).
The people I played with came from a wide section, everything from real life business managers to real life activists to the average everyday person and the society we formed, I call it a society because it really was, was just simply amazing. People held real beliefs and it felt that everytime you logged in you where part of something bigger and fighting for a cause no matter your faction. I personally went from a guy who knew nothing about that game and was on the verge of quiting after the first hour to the leader of a faction within a couple of months. Getting to that position, and then holding it were real challenges and I will always remember the people that I met and played those long nights with.
Unfortunately, like the op posted the devs went left when they should've gone right so many times. FoM failed because of those bad decisions, a lack for proper project management, and of course a lack of proper leadership. No matter how much you like a game you burnout, and have to leave or take a break. Too many people left and those holes were never filled. Which is the reality that is FoM, it requires talented, and dedicated people to succeed and that I would have to say was one of the major causes of its downfall.
My quest for another MMO will continue and I'll always have the screenshots and videos, this reincarnation might be worth a look, so I'll wait and see.
Good bye FoM.
license, heh, its a copy of Fallout, publisher better off buying Fallout MMO.
Face of Mankind, has never been anything like Fallout, hell Its an insult to Fallout to say this game was anywhere near like it.
Fallout has a cult following, and was a great series (1 and 2). Face of Mankind is just a niche game, small, and content less mmo with a rabid fanbase.
What do I think FOM needs?
I think FoM needs to turn into a free-to-play MMO. They would get a lot more users, and they could throw up ads on their site and have an item shop or something to make extra money. They would make a lot more money with 200,000 free players, then 5,000 p2p people. And get a lot more publicity.
I remember playing FoM when it was p2p. I was in the LED and it was pretty fun when we did city missions, escorts, etc... But 90% of the time I was stuck guarding the stupid prison. I was a hero at one point, meaning in what I did. We were on an escort mission throughout the prison, escorting some high ranking leader of GoM. Some assassins were sent in to kill them, about 8-9 of them and a few of them were killed by the guards at the door but those guards were ran over by the rest. They ran up behind us and took out some LED High Ranking Official on the escort with me and I turned around and killed the 6-7 of them remaining. It was the only outstanding moment i've had in that game. Other then that, I never really liked the game. I was sick of standing around guarding the prison day in and day out.