Re: Swamp, zombie FPS by Aprone
I'm not online enough to witness too much douchbaggery, really. You'll occasionally get people getting a little rowdy for lack of anything better to do. And I think that's the heart of it.
Disclaimer: The following is just my opinion and may well be the ramblings of an ill-informed madman. I do hope however that I have correctly identified and explained what I perceive to be the issues. A bit of an essay ahead. Tl;Dr at the end
Swamp is on a league of its own when it comes to combining gameplay, emersiveness and an online community. The fact that we have accessible iPhone games is all great and that, and that's where most accessible devs seem to be going for a headlong charge. Probably for profitability reasons - there's still no reasonably ubiquitous Windows desktop app marketplace. The iPhone games though lack community and the raw power that just comes with having more to control it with than a 4 inch touchscreen. And with that being the di rection that developers are flowing, fans of audio games lack choice and Swamp just really doesn't have much in terms of MMO competition IMHO.
Some people are trying to do it, there's several new games on this forum that are trying to be the "Call of Duty" of the blind world, with varying levels of success (I've not played many of them). So they're going after gameplay. But community has never been the strong point of PvP FPS games, CoD and other mainstream games in particular are famed for having foul communities. Swamp, being a mostly cooperative game, again wins hands down there against the new and upcoming MMO challengers.
There are other games that do community. RS Games and such are the only examples that spring to mind, though I admit I've not kept abreast of every new audio game out there so there may be better. But there's such a difference in genre there, that it could attract completely different people.
So, Swa mp has a pretty good position now. That's good, right? Well, no, not quite. Some people are playing Swamp day in, day out. They've mastered the game to the point where they can solo the hardest missions, have all the latest gear and have seen and done it all. Now what? Some choose to help others, which is admirable. But what when there's no one to help? There's no reasonable competition as far as an audio gaming MMO of this size, complexity and communal strength (well IMO), so playing something else isn't an appealing option. But they want to be there, to hang out online and see if anything new comes along. Boredom ensues. And boredom causes trouble. I think, at least, this is why some people are getting a little narky.
As to injecting some team play back into Swamp, that would be great. I'm not sure just outright incentivizing with experience for dragging people along on missions is necessarily the only way though.
Here's a few sugges tions I can think of, feature wise that might help. You've probably all already thought of these, I'm just putting them out there in the discussion.
* More "Defender" type missions, where it is almost impossible to solo. Sure, some level 2,000+ players probably could, but I'm not sure if there's really anything you can do about them.
* Cooperative campaigns: SCS is a great feature and could go far. Cooperative campaigns would allow the community to make its own cooperative adventures. I'm starting to see some interesting single player SCS things happening, though most of them feel a bit like experiments. But I think it's starting to grow as a feature. Long shot, granted. I don't underestimate the size of this undertaking of course, but that could be a fun and expanding thing for groups to do. I'd be happy to try writing one.
* Some kind of in-game events where players must work together to defeat impending threats o
r doom, or achieve/earn something together. I saw a few before, once, where some raiders were, well, raiding on map 2. This was a 1 off event. Another was the Halloween event where people were scouring all over for pumpkins. I was working with a few others, keeping map 2 checked. We had to work together to find them for mutual gain. Of course, some people piggy-backed, but they probably weren't having any fun. Things like this tend to get people involved, maybe it would get the jaded players out of their warehouses too?
Okay, I've talked enough and you probably all hate me for taking up so much space on the page. Aprone, please don't take any of this as an insult, if anything it's because this is arguably one of the best of its kind that it has this problem.
As for perhaps a new game coming along, as Sneak suggested. It's an idea worthy of thought at least. Though starting a game to get to this size is a daunting prospect.
Tl;Dr: Perhaps Swamp as a community is a victim of it's own success as a great gameplay and MMO experience, with not enough competition offering all that Swamp can. There's a few things that could be tried to try to inject some team spirit back into the community and break up the power players's boredom and to give everyone some fun.
And hey, maybe we as players can do our own bits to try to fix some of these issues within ourselves as a group. Just a thought
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