Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
Well basically you don't go on these dangerous missions yourself you send a remote drone instead. Drones cost money to build, equip and maintain. The equipment you give a drone determines what it can and can not do on a mission. So if a drone is destroyed during a mission you have no choice but to build a new one. So one of my concerns is that players might get a little upset if they just invested a million credits into building the most advanced drone money can buy, only to have it destroyed on a mission where the reward is only 10,000 credits.

As to how long a mission can take well I'm not sure I do think they will take maybe 5 to 30 minutes? I'll have to play test and find out.

I think you misrepresented your game in your first post. The first post made it sound like you were supposed to charge into the zombie warehouse. Then, the game would suck. The only strategy is to run in, expecting to die, but learn where the first couple zombies are. Then, you run in, kill those zombies, learn where the next couple are, die. Then, you run in, kill the first zombies, kill the second zombies, find where more zombies are, die. Then, you run in, get killed by the first zombies, die, uninstall game. Like those old Contra games.

Now, you're saying that the intention isn't to run right in, but to be sneaky. Here, you don't want to be seen. Here, you get maps and guard schedules. Here, you get all the things you would need to properly stealth your way to success. Now it sounds more stealth, less shooter.

As for the losing a drone thing. I have three thoughts, and I think the three together are better than one alone:
1) That's the risk. A more expensive, more gadgets drone probably has a better chance of succeeding, but is a more costly failure.
2) Make drones cheaper. Make it so they are fairly expendable, but you wouldn't want to lose many of them.
3) Don't let the player make the ultimate drone. Make him make trade offs. You can only install so many gadgets. This, with the previous one, means that you may need a significant investment because you may need to send more than one drone in to complete the mission.

Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth

Quote:Original post by Terlenth
I think this is actually not a bad idea, in the sense that you can have impossible missions. Wait, and hear me out first.

The mission would only be impossible should you try to face every enemy head on. Should you come up with an alternative, going with the OPs example of the zombie infested warehouse, like bringing cows outside of the warehouse and luring the zombies out with the cows. Then the warehouse wouldn't be so much of a problem.

--Ter'Lenth

That is sort of the plan to have to player use environment, avoidence, and tool strategies to complet missions rather then confrontation. Although I could probably still allow you to attach a mini gun to your drone and let you gun down innocent zombies left right and center but I'll decide that later. For now you have short range stun gun as your only weapon.

I agree with the previous poster that what you're saying now doesn't match up with your first post. Your first one you said that each mission is "almost certain death", as if you expect the player to die a bunch of times before he can complete it. If instead, what you actually mean is stealth-based play instead of FPS-based play, then sure, the Thief series does it very well. But Thief is not a game where each mission is "almost certain death"; it's only almost certain death if you choose to fight the guards head-on.

Well said.

When you are faced with what should be an unbeatable challenge, and you face it scores of times, you can't help but metagame. On 00 difficulty in Goldeneye, I took advantage of the fact that enemy bullets couldn't cross gaps or railings, and neither could their eyesight. Thus, I could walk out on a catwalk, line up one headshot, fine-tune my aim for a second, and then fire two consecutive perfect killshots. The remaining enemies would turn, fire ineffectively at my position, and then charge through a hail of my bullets until they came around the invisible corner that restricted them. That's not James Bond fighting terrorists; that's me cheating at a video game.

I don't want to sound like I think every video game hero should be invincible. Just not being bulletproof doesn't necessarily make a game hard. One shot could kill you in Contra, and I wasn't the only guy on my bock who could beat the game without dying.

If you can make a game where there's always a maneuver that will avoid the inevitable defeat, then it becomes a puzzle game, like the earlier Splinter Cell games. If somebody saw you in the first Splinter Cell, you were hosed. Your gun was useless unless you scored a prefect headshot, which could only be achieved with considerable preparation. Your melee attack was laughable, and a single untrained guard could take at least half of your health if he spotted you. There was always one chink in their pattern, or one shadow, or one exposed vent that was the solution. It was a puzzle game.

Don't confuse a puzzle game like that, or Full Spectrum Warrior, with a "difficult" action game. In an action game, the precision and tactical appropriateness of your actions determine the outcome. Viewtiful Joe is an example of a balls-tough action game. You have to react to a dozen stimuli and keep ahead of a screen full of enemies. If you have to know a secret, or do one special thing to "beat" an area, it's just a puzzle, like decoding a combination lock.

The warehouse is full of zombies. You run in. The eat you.

The warehouse is full of zombies. You sneak in, one eats you. Restart.
The warehouse is full of zombies, you sneak in and chop off the one's head. Quicksave.
You climb a ladder. The zombies see and eat you. Quickload.
You throw a rock to break a window. The zombies look at the window. You climb the ladder, the zombie at the top eats you. Quickload.
You throw the rock, you watch through the floor until the zombie goes away. You climb the ladder and chop off his head. Quicksave.

And on and on and on and on and on. It's crappy game design. If it's a procedurally generated warehouse, with randomly placed zombies, then it becomes a super-tough action game. I go in there with my machete and fight the zombies. Maybe I try to use the environment a little. If I get bit, I'm toast.

To try to be a little supportive, I think that with extraordinary level design and a marvelous control scheme, such a game could be made practical. Look at Resident Evil 4 for the GameCube. The village scene in particular. You don't feel super-powerful, especially when the chainsaw dude shows up, but you can use windows, doors, ladders and an array of weapons to put up a good fight. If you made a game that was a series of situations like that one, I'd play it over and over again. Heck, that's just what Capcom did with the Mercenaries mini-game, and it owned. I'd pay ten bucks for a disc that just had a dozen Mercenaries levels on it, and maybe four or five characters to use.

You might be looking for turn-based gameplay. If you want the tactics, the desperation, and the sense of achievement, I again advise you to take a close look at the Mercenaries mini-game in Resident Evil 4.

You have the choices you describe, but without the overt selection process. You have to choose whether to stand and fight, to go out a window, to climb a ladder, or to use a precious grenade. You can make a hundred such decisions every minute, but still be working toward a simple objective, like "reach the high ground and grab that health powerup". If you get cut off, you have to quickly formulate a Plan B. There's a timer running all the time, which you can increase by grabbing icons, but that's a double-edged sword. You want to have enough time to earn the high score, but every second you stay in the game after that is another chance to die and lose everything. It's brilliant and addictive, although the learning curve starts out a little steep.

Honestly, if you haven't played this game before, rent a GameCube and a copy of it. Heck, you can probably buy a GC for $50 now. The game's coming out for PS2 soon, so that might make it more accessible to you.

The important thing, in my mind, is for the maps to be more like arenas than levels. If there's a clear start and finish, and one real path through, then you can't improvise. You should be able to rework your strategy all the time. Try plowing through, but then try to lead them into a corner and give them the slip, and then try to lure them into traps, and then hide out and heal a little, and finally just make a break for it. That's flexible combat.

And change the name of this thread. I always forget what it's about, so I click on it and wind up typing a big old post in here.