I'm sure. However, I think the wrong lessons were probabally drawn from the failure of SFC III. Instead of realizing it failed because it wasn't very good, they think it failed because the public had grown tired of that kind of gaming experience.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that any next generation GAW type game would be best served as a type of game that would be very similar to the Total War series of wargames. The map has a grand strategic element with various countries and counties in it. GAW could be similar except that it would have sectors of course. You would instead of placing castles and knights build bases and ships based on your production capacity. When conflict occurs, it moves to a tactical level where the tactical engine takes over. This of course would have multiplayer capability. The way I see this working best is to continue keeping the player run server concept going. The reason is that a massively mutiplayer game would require a large amount of resources while a player run server game would not require as many. The current state of internet technologies IMO with a player based server makes a game with a large quantity of players impractical. IMO the max you'd ever get, or should get, is about 40 (proven time and time again on the D2). The best way to make this work with a low player count IMO is to set it up where with each gaming session you have one controlling player, IE the leader of the race, make the decisions on how things are bought, where moves are made, etc. IE he/she controls all elements on the strategic level. Possibly the other players could assist in some manner as directed by the leader. For instance, you could have one take over ship production, while another deals with fixed defenses, etc. When the tactical fight kicks in however, this is where the other players get into the main action. Under ideal circumstances, ALL ships will be controlled by players. This would happen in that the game would "draft" as many players as necessary to ensure that each ship is human controlled. In this manner, each battle would be a PvP fight, and not a "thrash the AI and get points to run a fake economy" like effort as it currently is. Then add full editing fuctions so that players could easily create their own campaigns and maps, edit ships as necessary, and make the player able to control everything as much as they want (IE - you tell the game that the feds can only buy ONE CAD, or have only 4 D6D's, or only produce frigates - whatever you want).
Anyway, the idea seems to me to be the easiest way to get the things into the game that people want (real strategic elements) and ensure that the tactical fights are always meaningful by also making sure that EVERY battle, as much as is possible, is a PvP fight.
But it could be that some sneaky Lyran has infiltrated my command center and has added something extra to the methane atmosphere mixture. But I don't think so.
Topic: What I would like to see next for the game (Read 5484 times)