Dear FoM Community,



many of you are waiting to hear word from us about the future of Face of Mankind.

Since we have been informed about the cease of service by Ojom at the end of november, we had to do a lot of thinking and planning. The main questions were whether we would be able to continue hosting the game by ourselves and if we would be willing to take the financial risks involved.

We have spent a lot of efforts, diligence, money and even health into the project, and we are not willing to give it up that easily. So we decided to go on, with a few changes, but at least go on.



In order to be able to host the game on our own, we need to simplify everything a lot. During the last weeks we've come up with a concept for this, which I'd like to present to you roughly.

By simplification I mean the game, the server structure and the portal.





1. The Portal

The portal will be reduced to the minimum necessary to present the game to the public.

We will no longer host an official forum or irc channel. We want to give that into the hands of you, the community. As the developer we will present all necessary information through the portal or the game. Also, we are going to implement a biweekly development blog with all kinds of information that would be interesting to you, both official and internal. That is to give you an insight view of how hard it is to create and manage an MMORPG.





2. The Server Structure

The server structure has to be simplified in order to allow for an easy administration, setup and expansion of the cluster. There will be a master server to which all available world servers will connect. Clients who are registered on the master server, will receive a list of world servers they can connect to. The importance of the world server will be increased compared to before. You will find out what that means when you are able to test it for yourself.





3. The Game

The changes to the game will be rather dramatic. But rest assured, these are necessary changes for FoM to survive and hopefully grow later on.



First of, the accounts. There will be two kinds of accounts, a free one and a premium account. Free accounts have no time limitation (so they can be used forever) but limited features. With such account your character can't evolve beyond a certain point. With premium accounts all limitations are lifted. They will cost a yet to be defined monthly fee. We are also considering the option to purchase premium game time to remove the necessity of having to "subscribe".



Next, there's the game mechanics. During the last years with FoM we could gather a lot of experience and let's say "maturity". We've tested a few very revolutionary features, if we remember the first versions of the mission system. After a few more iterations, we have to admit that some things just won't work, at least not yet. Some have worked out, others rather not. We took a very honest view at all of the features in FoM and decided to do the following changes. I'm going to list them here as notes only.



- Introduction of Clans

- Factions: each faction will be turned into some sort of profession and the old professions will be removed, each faction will give the character a speciality

- Planetary Overview when logging into the game, no more travelling between worlds through vortex gates

- There are worlds for combat and worlds for socializing

- Local economy only, "what is generated on the world, stays on the world", this includes everything from mining, production, market sales and removes transporting

- Storages work like safes

- Introduction of Bio Updates: Character stats, features and options can be enhanced

- Introduction of Bases: On each world, there will be a certain number of bases that can be conquered by clans. Bases consist of a number of linked energy plants that have to be taken out for the force shield to come down. A lot of the PvP oriented gameplay will be about bases

- Turrets are linked to bases

- The mission system as we know it will be no more, instead there are going to be tasks with waypoints that can be defined by clans on a world

- Permanent death will be removed

- Re-Implementation of aliens

- Other world AI (birds, rats, civilian NPC's, server controlled vehicles etc) has to be simplified, the chat AI will be removed and NPC responses will be streamlined





4. Timeline

What we cannot do is giving you an exact timeline. What we will do is trying to keep posting regular (weekly or biweekly) development updates on the portal, so that you can get a picture of the progress yourself. Before the relaunch, we are going to set up another closed beta test to make both the client and the server as stable as possible.





5. The Future

This first relaunch will be called "Face of Mankind: Rebirth".

If things are going well and the customer base grows, additional world servers will be added step by step.

When we reach a state where we are able to generate a stable income, further development steps are planned. The next stage will be called "Face of Mankind: Evolution". We are not going to give out any details about that yet. They are still too undecided to publically announce them.





At the end, we would like to thank everyone involved in the creation of Face of Mankind again and each customer for their loyalty. We will try our best to bring the game back to life, since (and you will most likely agree on this) the concept deserves it.



The Face of Mankind Staff

I've recieved too

I hope the game come back to life \o/

ps: I cant believe , Free Account 

Was Marco drunk when he wrote this :/

Face of Mankind Rebirth.....I mean.....the comunity made JOKES about these kind of names....:/

I never got a chance to try this before but if the community comes back with a bunch of free accounts then i will definatly try this.

The only reason why i dont play FoM is, there are to few players.

Atm you need high level players, to level your self. They have to give you quests. But when no one gives you quests you cannot level.

But when it gets a free to play method and some new content. I 100% give it a secound chance. This game is really cool.

I remember my first day at the FoM Police where i have to do a training to get fullmember. No autoquest, it was training with other players.

But, I think these changes will sux =/

I realy like the Mission system, or the permanent death, all worlds is free to kills, patrol missions on led (realy miss this <=[ )... That's what FoM is diferent, and they will change it TT,TT

At first I thought all these changes were COMPLETE ASS!!

Then I thought it out. And I think these are really good ideas. But i depends on how they implement them.

The stats thing could be done right if "PERSONAL SKILL" is still a major factor in combat instead of stats. Like other games.

Worlds for socializing and worlds for combat. Could be done right if they dont just say "Hey you can take your gun out here" Socializing worlds should have the option to kill someone. But the chances of you surviving are slim.

They should keep vortexes in. Or atleast give us some kind of travel.

Originally posted by DragenSoul

At first I thought all these changes were COMPLETE ASS!!

 

Then I thought it out. And I think these are really good ideas. But i depends on how they implement them.

The stats thing could be done right if "PERSONAL SKILL" is still a major factor in combat instead of stats. Like other games.

 

Worlds for socializing and worlds for combat. Could be done right if they dont just say "Hey you can take your gun out here" Socializing worlds should have the option to kill someone. But the chances of you surviving are slim.

They should keep vortexes in. Or atleast give us some kind of travel.

As for safe havens etc i thought that was why turrets where introduced.  FOM would have attracted a lot more RPG people had it not gone down a PvP orientated route.  Makeing things more realistic would have worked wonders.
 Being able to kill someone with just a couple of shots would have helped, this would have created a more realistic society, people woud be more willing to group together for saftey ,  people wanting to kill would be reluctant to open fire around  even small groups  people as they would die quickly themesleves without any reward.

LED and FDC would have more sence of purpose and rewards in patroling and guarding , more roleplay in body guard duties , guarding faciities such as DMC would be better too , we would not see farces like having a couple of people just  being able to run up hacking doors while having to be shot with a thousand rounds before they got anywhere near dying.

Sorry but these changes just simply are a poor attempt to fix the stable door long after the horse has bolted.

Translation :

'We are going to invest no significant cash ourselves.  But will keep the name alive in the hopes that someone else will pick us up and give us money.  We will get rid of the most challenging parts of our design (at least on paper) in the hopes of becoming more mainstream and attracting an investor/publisher.'

Good Luck

I'm waiting for  you ,FOM.