Over at the Ancient Gaming Noob, Wilhelm discusses briefly his need for a flight sim MMO and then posts about World of Warplanes. Â He asks in the title and at the end, “What else do we need?”
I’ll tell you what we need: World of Submarines.
The best part of this idea is that it wouldn’t need a high-end gaming system because I wouldn’t want to have a vehicle shooter where you drive around in your sub, strafing as you launch torpedoes at other players. Â No, I’m talking about 688 Attack Sub type play, sticking closer to reality. Â The player gets the deck of his sub, from which he can get status readouts of his hull and other systems, sonar screens, maps. Â The only time “real” graphics would come into play would be through the periscope and if the game is restricted almost entirely to submerged play then all the periscope would get you is a view of other periscopes. Â In fact, you could even remove it altogether and include “periscope depth” as just a place to go to get communications and other elements.
Taken a step further, without a new for huge graphic worlds, you might be able to have multiplayer subs, with people connecting together to run various stations. Â Sure, you can run a boat on your own, but wouldn’t it be more efficient to have a sonar tech giving you the readings, a driver taking your directions and someone else loading and firing your torpedoes? Â Damn right it would!
Someone, somewhere needs to get on this immediately!
How would you “man” a station? Puzzle Pirates has players man their stations by playing minigames. Seems to me a MMSS (Massive Multiplayer Sub Sim) could be good fun, but the stations might be boring in all but those crazy moments of combat.
The multi-person crew was more of an afterthought. I’d be more interested in just a submarine MMO that didn’t rely on what are currently the traditional MMO playstyles of RPG or Shooter. Using maps and imperfect sonar to guide my ship around… I just fondly recall the days of 688 Attack Sub…