The game Foxhole is I think a interesting twist on the mmo formula, though I haven't played the game in quite some time (it became too grindy to get to anything fun, and the game devs seemed to cater heavily towards clan gameplay).
Pretty much, the game is an MMO war between two factions, the Wardens and the Colonials. The crux of things is that every weapon in the game has to be made by a player (no random drops and no NPCs anywhere). Players will pick one side to play for each "war", where once one side is winning enough (I forget the requirements, I think it used to just be decided by the devs but it's semi automated now) the map will be reset for another "war."
The game does have an institutionalized place for 'sheep' in the game, since both sides need weapons, equipment, and bases in order to fight. So you could actually end up with some players ('partisans') sneaking through the lines in order to kill logistic players who have to transport raw materials to the factories and then finished weapons from the factories to the frontlines. So the next logical step was indeed to have players on your side gather up forces in order to quash a group of partisans, and the mechanics of the game make it pretty much impossible to set up bases behind enemy lines you can respawn from. You could technically set up respawn points behind enemy lines but they require you to run through a lot of hoops: you need a slow and vulnerable construction vehicle with a bunch of building materials (impossible to transport in bulk without another vulnerable vehicle), soldier supplies (which you need in order to respawn at bases, also hard to procure and transport in bulk behind enemy lines), etc etc which means that they only really happened when the anti-partisan guys were really off their game (read:non-existant) anyways.
At the end of the day you could always set up structures that broadcast whether or not there are any enemies nearby as well, which would guarantee certain roads' safety so long as they were present, so the traditionally assymetrical battles between 'sheep' and 'griefers' (in quotes because they almost transcend the role) could definetly be made equal within the mechanics of the game.
Of course foxhole isn't a full pvp game where you can do anything. You can't set up rival factions (though the clans do try!), and it's against the rules to be a spy (there are no mechanics for it, but there are still people who make alternate accounts to sabotage efforts on the other team and view their team chat).
I don't really know what the state of all of this is like now, especially since they added :train-shining: to the game. By far the best thing to come out of foxhole was the logistics strike though. I think the developers recently announced a new game, set as like an 18th century mmo war game? But I really don't know anything about it.
I just found this video and it looks like yeah the logi union is pretty much dead and a lot of veterans have just burnt out of the game, which is a shame, and the progression towards needing larger, more cohesive groups of players (clans) in order to actually run things is still happening. Bummer, but I'm not too surprised.
That's too bad, but I understand why. It's an extremely demanding game. All the logistics players going on strike until the devs made changes to the logistics systems is definitely one of the coolest moments in gaming to date.
The game Foxhole is I think a interesting twist on the mmo formula, though I haven't played the game in quite some time (it became too grindy to get to anything fun, and the game devs seemed to cater heavily towards clan gameplay).
Pretty much, the game is an MMO war between two factions, the Wardens and the Colonials. The crux of things is that every weapon in the game has to be made by a player (no random drops and no NPCs anywhere). Players will pick one side to play for each "war", where once one side is winning enough (I forget the requirements, I think it used to just be decided by the devs but it's semi automated now) the map will be reset for another "war."
The game does have an institutionalized place for 'sheep' in the game, since both sides need weapons, equipment, and bases in order to fight. So you could actually end up with some players ('partisans') sneaking through the lines in order to kill logistic players who have to transport raw materials to the factories and then finished weapons from the factories to the frontlines. So the next logical step was indeed to have players on your side gather up forces in order to quash a group of partisans, and the mechanics of the game make it pretty much impossible to set up bases behind enemy lines you can respawn from. You could technically set up respawn points behind enemy lines but they require you to run through a lot of hoops: you need a slow and vulnerable construction vehicle with a bunch of building materials (impossible to transport in bulk without another vulnerable vehicle), soldier supplies (which you need in order to respawn at bases, also hard to procure and transport in bulk behind enemy lines), etc etc which means that they only really happened when the anti-partisan guys were really off their game (read:non-existant) anyways.
At the end of the day you could always set up structures that broadcast whether or not there are any enemies nearby as well, which would guarantee certain roads' safety so long as they were present, so the traditionally assymetrical battles between 'sheep' and 'griefers' (in quotes because they almost transcend the role) could definetly be made equal within the mechanics of the game.
Of course foxhole isn't a full pvp game where you can do anything. You can't set up rival factions (though the clans do try!), and it's against the rules to be a spy (there are no mechanics for it, but there are still people who make alternate accounts to sabotage efforts on the other team and view their team chat).
I don't really know what the state of all of this is like now, especially since they added :train-shining: to the game. By far the best thing to come out of foxhole was the logistics strike though. I think the developers recently announced a new game, set as like an 18th century mmo war game? But I really don't know anything about it.
I just found this video and it looks like yeah the logi union is pretty much dead and a lot of veterans have just burnt out of the game, which is a shame, and the progression towards needing larger, more cohesive groups of players (clans) in order to actually run things is still happening. Bummer, but I'm not too surprised.
That's too bad, but I understand why. It's an extremely demanding game. All the logistics players going on strike until the devs made changes to the logistics systems is definitely one of the coolest moments in gaming to date.