"PvE Sandbox MMO" based on PS2 universe?

[Tatwi]

I would call this game,

Beyond Araxis

So I have been thinking for several months about this idea that the new Planetside universe would a nifty setting for a sci-fi MMO. The concept I worked out is like so,

Story Explanation:

A significant group of civilians/deserters from the three factions exile themselves to scratch a living off an asteroid belt that resides within the "goldie locks zone" of the Araxis star system. These people just don't feel that all of the fighting over Araxis is worth it, so they've struck out to do their own thing. All three empires agree to ignore these people, so long as they remain neutral and away from the planet of Araxis. As a gesture of goodwill, these off worlders were given some nanite technology for the purpose of limited cloning capabilities.

Player Motivation:

As is the case with any civilization, there are politics and criminals at work in the "off world" which drives the story of the game. Essentially, players will start neutral but will be able to join one of three factions at any point (they will also be able to change factions). This is similar to the Star Wars Galaxies design, only there would be "Republic", "Empire", and "Underworld" (call em whatever ya like SOE) which would be more like having two good factions and one dastardly, yet not quite evil faction. Each faction will have NPC driven stories and motivations, each with their own subcultures and conflicts.

Game Design:

The game would be made of three large space sectors, each with 3 Star Wars Galaxies sized/styled open concept planets (16km x 16km maps). So that's 9 unique asteroids and three space sectors.

When it comes to game play systems such as inventory (3D models again, please!), crafting, housing, pets, resources, "appearance tab", and the economy, this game would be a Planetside version of Star Wars Galaxies, because those are the parts of SWG that everyone enjoyed. Combat wise, this game would be a FPS exactly like Planetside 2, except that it would have NPCs and the rest of the standard MMO things, like quests and what not. This would make for a great marriage, because SWG hotkey/FPS combat was clunky, but the rest of the game was smooth and had a lot of MMORPG kind of depth to it. Granted, some people will not like it, but then people sure are praising TERA for being more fun to play than the traditional "hotkey combat" mmos.

"Space Combat" would simply be the same thing as the flight in Planetside 2 (which is very similar to SWG btw) without the land. People could get around on the asteroids via buggies or space ships.

Final Note:

There just isn't a game out there that offers the game play systems that made SWG a truly unique gaming experience. For as much as some people jumped up and down crying about SWG being a failure for X reason, it was simply ahead of its time and far more ambitions than what SOE could achieve at the time. By the time the game closed in 2011, it had a really solid foundation of game play systems (classes, crafting interdependency, community building systems, variety of things to do, etc). Using that as the inspiration for a new Forgelight game based on the SOE owned Planetside IP would likely be quite successful, because it not only maximizes the appeal of the Planetside IP to all MMO and FPS players, it further sets SOE apart from the rest of MMO world by actually having the balls to make a solid "sandbox mmo", complete with real physics vehicles and unparalled character customization.

Would this be a huge project? Of course, they'd be making another MMO! However, they could use a lot of the assets from Planetside 2 to make the basic game in a much shorter time than trying to make a similar project in a new IP from scratch.

Thanks for reading my babble... been bottling this one up inside for too long now!