Monday Night Combat and genre mashups explanied by Tycho

While I agree in general with what you have written I miss something in the genre description Team Sport Shooter: The strategy element.

Other shooters (CS) already introduced a shopping systems for weapons but MNC requires you to split your money between upgrades and defenses. You have to choose between buffing yourself and spending money for your team. It even introduces a second 'resource' (juice). If you would add more skills and/or equipment and make objects selectable you could turn MNC into a strategy game in no time.

IMO Strategic Team Shooter or STS would probably describe MNC better.

Yeah I agree "Sport" isn't a very fitting description for a genre.

MNC will go down as a TPS (Third Person Shooter) no matter what cool name you guys come up with.

I think "Sport" is very fitting, actually. The concept of this game will give birth (berth?) to many, many game types that revolve around Team A vs. Team B in a scoring/team based game. Granted, mine is a vague description, but in the scope of what I've seen so far, I think 'sport' is deserved.

Well the genre isn't suppose to be describing the atmosphere/Background story its suppose to be describing the gameplay.

FPS, TPS, RTS, RPG all names describe the gameplay, If you put sports in the genre name it will be confused with actual sports.

Team Sport Shooter sounds like a hunting game.

I'm not saying the term sport doesn't fit, the problem is it fits too many other things as well. Definition of sport according to Wikipedia:

Let's say for the arguments sake that MNC is a physical activity. It fits the other aspects pretty well: It's organized, competitive, skillful...
The only problem is: this is basically true for every other competitive team game, including pretty much every shooter, RTS, racing game, Wii Bowling and what not.

When you add team and shooter it still fits a lot of other shooters: UT, CS, CoD...

I think MNC's defining element compared to those other games is that it combines strategy with a shooter to an extend we have rarely (not?) seen before.

It's all true, can't argue with a single thing o said. Still, would it not fit basically every other online shooter? People working together towards a shared objective? Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, CS bomb placing, BF flags... And I can't think of too many shooters without class based multiplayer these days to be honest.

In MNC you use a resource (you have to acquire first) to improve your basic stats, available skills and defenses on the map in every match. That's a classic strategy element that most other shooter feature to a much lesser extend or lack entirely. It's the core element that distinguishes MNC from the rest of the field imo.

I, personally, don't agree with the genre name o put out there. I'm in the camp that the term 'sport' added to it doesn't describe the genre, but the setting. I think we'll get mixed in with games like DotA, LoL, Demigod and Hon and those definitely do not have any type of sport feel. There is the technical definition of the word 'sport' that does fit, however that's not going to be the first thought of most gamers.

In talking to Tycho about this and spending some of my own time trying to come up with the name to call this genre I had some ideas. The genre is all about players augmenting some sort of never ending battle and gaining strength of their own.

My first thought along this line was: Battle Augmentation Game.
Then I realized that was "BAG"... but then I realized people could say "Oh that game is just not my BAG ... man".

Then I thought of: Battle Augmentation Strategic Shooter
Mostly because everything is better with BASS.

Lastly, I thought of: Battle Augmented by Class Or Niche.

Then I realized that was silly.



So, I'm still working on it. I'll report back when I have a better idea.

Tactical Arena Shooter

Thats my answer

Cant it be both?

The main thing holding DotA HoN and MNC together is probably the creeps. You could call them something like Wave Assault Games.

That is an very interesting point of view!

True. I think MNC takes it a really important step further. You have a resource system, skills, upgrades, even defenses... I think it might actually depend a lot on the balancing if MNC feels more like a shooter or a strategy game.

I haven't played MNC yet and I'm really looking forward to finding out how it works out. But it's like Scathis said: I compare MNC to DotA, HoN, LoL... I would describe the gameplay as Demigod with guns and robots. Then again, I come from a strong RTS background and it's perfectly possible that that clouds my judgment. However if you would send me an alpha build I'd be happy to review it and give you a detailed report on my thoughts...

Scathis, I like Battle Augmented by Class Or Niche, it has a certain ring to it!

I'm actually very tempted to play Demigod now.

They had a free demo, just download and install Impulse:
http://www.impulsedriven.com/download

http://www.impulsedriven.com/dem

You better be good though, they don't like inexperienced players. Read some of the guides on the forum before you go online.

They don't like inexperienced players?

Sounds like a nasty community if you ask me. They don't like beginners? Wow, yeah, that does sound pretty nasty.

games like HoN and demigod like to chew new players up and then spit em out. The communities are not noob friendly and will not help you out much. They often require practice and knowledge before being able to be decent online without a lot of people wanting to get rid of you.

Boy, what a bunch of...oh...what word can I use to describe them other than "assholes"?

Yeah, it's pretty crazy considering that the stats are a joke (they don't work properly and can be exploited) and the achievements are mostly not working. However, one weak player can ruin the game for his whole team by feeding and Demigod is extremely unforgiving if you play at a high level. We always tried to help new players out when possible but few others did outside the mentoring programs. It would have been smarter if Stardock would have given us the option to play unranked custom games.

stardock? or GPG?