The Crossing - A New Way to FPS?

1up has a look at Arkane Studios' extremely ambitious new project. Called The Crossing, the FPS title looks to combine single and multi-player modes in a new way. From the article: "In the simplest sense, story missions are single-player shooting with an exception: Naturally intelligent human opponents take the place of A.I. There are two types of players: Elites and skirmishers. Elites are gamers playing the game in story mode. They're beefed up, heavily armored, and heavily armed. They have to be able to hold their own against a swarm of skirmish players. Skirmishers are gamers who typically play on multiplayer maps: well-trained, rank-and-file soldiers playing primarily to have some quick fun and increase their rank through defeating the occasional Elite. Skirmish players can also invade story maps and 'possess' A.I.s ala Agent Smith in The Matrix." So even if you're playing through the story, you'll still be challenged by the 'NPCs', all of whom will be played by a real-life human. Sounds like it could either be awesome or a total flop. Which side are you leaning on?

I'm going with Flop...

[le0p]

Mostly because if a player wanted to play against another player, they'd play online. Personally, the last thing I'd want is to be playing the story mode and have TeHUb4R1337GuY show up. Maybe it's just me...

How would you balance for skill?

[sinij]

I see problem with this - skill gap between people that typically play single player FPS to enjoy storyline and people that play multiplayer competitively is so huge that no armor, health boosts or anything will help.

Re:Single Player... Vs Multi

[MuChild]

Yeah, but that will only be true until they get used to the new style. Ultimately, I bet it will produce a player that can fight in both styles equally well.

I can't wait. The Hobgoblin of story-based FPS is that predictability of the NPCs. Even when they're pretty smart, you can count on them to behave in certain critically flawed ways. Or, they're un-realisically fast and impossible to deal with.

Not to mention, re-play will be much more interesting.

Re:I'm going with Flop...

[shadowcabbit]

I'll disagree here. How many masochists are going to jump at the chance to be in a "one vs. everyone else" setup? The role of the Elite will attract the attention and interest of those who feel they're the best of the best, and can back it up. Sure, people who have no business playing FPS games online (like, oh, I don't know, me) will try it, get frustrated, and give up; but to be honest, for those people who've ever played Counterstrike and thought "screw my teammates, I can plant the bomb/rescue the hostages all by myself", this will probably be their dream game.

Anyway, didn't Splinter Cell do something similar, with a "one spy versus the rest of the counterterrorists" game mode?

Depends

[bogie]

Depends if your idea of fun is to have NPC players replaced with 12yr olds that would like nothing better then to ruin your single player game. IF you can can ensure that the NPC players are of a certain quality level and stay in character then yes it could be cool. Pay the NPC players a fair wage and have players rate them and maybe you'd have something.

I do see that some of this is addressed in the article but overall it appears you'd have to be very rigid in making sure your NPC player strictly follow a story line as opposed to just hoping on and treating this like UT, BF, or any other PvP online game.

Re:Single Player... Vs Multi

[FormulaTroll]

Don't be an ass. There are plenty of subpar online players as well, and undoubtedly plenty of people who excel at FPS but would rather not be bothered by the hacks and cheats and immature behavior that flourishes in so many of the multiplayer venues, so confine most of their playtime to the single-player games and/or maps.

Re:Balance for profit.

[drinkypoo]

One player -- who probably is not a die-hard PvPer -- against a swarm of PvP-savvy opponents?

But the experienced players are going to be playing the single player's gimpy opponents. Presumably they will be handicapped somehow according to difficulty.

Griefers & ratings system

[PIPBoy3000]

I'd also have concerns about my son playing a game where live human opponents might jump in and interact with him. We were playing soccer in Garry's Mod and within minutes a griefer jumped on, stole the ball, and wouldn't let go of it. I explained to my son what a griefer was, turned off the server, and turned it on again with a password. Fortunately Sam couldn't read at the time, so he couldn't see the stream of obscenities showing up in the game.

An entire game that involves folks like that is going to make me steer clear of it. I suspect other parents may feel the same. Kudos to the company for trying something different, though.

Re:Single Player... Vs Multi

[Thraxen]

You do realize that there are many of us that play both, right? I always complete the single player campaigns in any FPS as well as participate in multiplayer.

Re:Can you say...

[somersault]

Just sounds like it'll make the game more realistic to me - why shouldn't the enemy stick together and guard strategic locations? This does sound like a cool concept, having 2 levels to play on in one game (serious / throwaway). You can kind of do that in some online games already (not that I play MMORPGs, though I have mudded a few times, and I like CS with the warcraft mod :p ), but this sounds like a fun experiment. Of course if the gameplay sucks balls then nobody is going to play, and it will be pretty difficult for newbies to play against experienced players (as with most games I guess), no matter which side the n00b is playing.

Re:How would you balance for skill?

[Thraxen]

I think it's a safe assumption that the game will be playable offline as well. So I'd have to assume that most people who just want to play through the story will have that option. So you will likely have people purposely taking on the additional challenge of human controlled enemies in the story mode. Thus, it wouldn't surprise me to see a fair number of the skirmishers getting their asses handed to them because, due to opinions like yours, they thought they were going to have some easy prey to take down. I agree with a comment someone else made... I think you will have people who want to prove themselves in a 1 vs everyone challenge playing the single player.

Everquest tried it briefly

[nahdude812]

EQ tried this briefly on their test server maybe 5 years ago. On the character selection screen you were given a "Monster" option. It didn't work, and they took the option off there.

It's got several problems. None of them are insurmountable, but I would be surprised if any game company could successfully overcome all of them without several significant attempts.

1) Players will not fill the role they were designed for. Or more accurately they will deliberately choose to disengage from their intended role since that's tedious. You'll end up with all the monsters from a given level grouping up together for a single assault, or camping and taking pot shots. In EQ they had monsters from the level 10 area wander down to the level 1 area and grief the level 1's until someone bigger came along and wiped them out (only to start the cycle again 10 minutes later). You can design a game which prevents the monster from straying too far from their intended purpose, but then how fun is that?

2) Monster balance and player balance are very different things. Monsters are buffed in certain ways to make up for their lack of real AI. These same buffs are unbalanced when those abilities can be used intelligently. These different levels of buffing will make it challenging to make player controlled monsters balanced for all players. Also as a monster your intended role ultimately is to be defeated by the player. Why do you want to go into a situation you know is likely to defeat you as your primary purpose?

3) What do you do as a monster until the player arrives? Maybe you're switching around a lot between monsters so you are always near the player, but what if the player skips you (or you don't find the player)?

4) Especially in games that are approached as single player games, you really need to have a nice challenge gradient. It needs to be doable and the player needs to succeed more than they fail, but not have success be overly easy. Otherwise the player will get bored or frustrated.

5) If you successfully overcome all of these obstacles, how are you really any different from any other pvp game that has classes? Zomg my rogue can take out a priest before they even knew what hit them, or my hunter can two-shot a mage. What is the real distinction here other than one player vs many (and how do you make the many aspect interesting enough that it's not just a standard pve game all around, and how do you keep it from being so interesting that noone wants to be the single player?)

The only thing that's different about this from MMO PVP is that one side is the good guy (maybe) and the other side is evil (maybe).

Re:Can you say...

[PingSpike]

I'm going to have to assume that the games levels will be designed so that there isn't only one entrance to a vital area...thats been a hallmark of good DM maps for years now, there's no reason to abandone it.

And why shouldn't the players work together? They want to win and they have a common goal. Its makes a lot more sense then the standard moron AI most games have where they wait to fight you in order so that you don't get overwhelmed.

Ain't that good?

[Wooky_linuxer]

People usually complain that NPC sucks, the AI isn't advanced enough... so if they set traps, why bother? A single person rushing into a storm of baddies isn't supposed to be easy. Of course, FPS aren't remotely realistic in that aspect - Gordon Freeman beating a crapload of aliens, Doom Marine disposing of hordes of demons, Masterchief, pick your poison. Even the dummiest and underarmored grunts would eventually overwhelm a lonely player. Jedi Knights would probably make an interesting fight though (Clone Wars style, not the pussy they were in movies).

Re:Can you say...

[Harlequin]

There are ways to mitigate the ambush factor. For example, confine opponents to certain areas (that are smaller than the levels). Allow all the NPCs in each area to congregate (I mean, that's a strategy they should employ). I think some sort of real time balance system would also be helpful. Maybe make the NPCs weaker the higher the percentage of real humans there are. Maybe balance the levels assuming all NPCs will be human controlled and add extra computer bots if there aren't enough humans playing. Maybe use some sort of skill ranking for people who control the NPCs and have that determine how many NPCs there are on a level (or which types of NPCs they can control... as you play the NPCs more, you can become bigger and badder creatures).

What seems key in this type of game is getting people to actually sign up to play as an NPC. I think they should offer a free client that lets anyone play as an NPC while only people buying the game can be the hero. They could limit the power or level of NPCs used with the free client to lure people into buying the full game.

Re:I'm going with Flop...

[Kelbear]

The skill matching mechanism better be top notch. It will suffice to say that I am good at FPS games. I would have a blast as the Elite. But god save the poor bastard who has me spawn into their story-game. They will be tea-bagged to hell and back for hours. *Ahem* /could be/ I mean. I would never do something so crass, and I certainly wouldn't repeat such an action until the victim becomes fed up and quits the game forever in frustrated anger.

But it is indeed a valid possibility that these developers may want to take into consideration.

RTS?

[MindStalker]

I think this would be a lot better if the simple players were controlled from just a few humans view overhead map controls like an RTS. Let the AI take care of the small details and let a human take care of the strategy. Would be a lot better than the CONSTANTLY dying that would occur in FPS mode.

Animal Crossing

[tepples]

The Hobgoblin of story-based FPS is that predictability of the NPCs

NPC predictability gets even worse in another video game (albeit not first-person, not shooter) whose title includes "Crossing". The game Animal Crossing for Nintendo GameCube is intended to be played in at least 730 sessions spanning 365 days, but the NPCs run out of things to say after about seven.

Flop!

[Banner]

One of the reasons I don't play multiplayer PvP type games anymore is because I don't have the time to play continuously, only now and then. So I don't have the skills that 14 year olds who do nothing but play all day (and who have all the lastest exploits and robot hacks running), who do nothing but trash talk and rnu around blasting everything that moved.

So to sum it up: I go there for enjoyment, not to listen to crap and get 'powned' by L33T uber hackers without a life. Probably the vast majority of FPS players feel the same way.