The big impact on your game world that it might just not fit into is the aspect of all your races featuring different gameplay types and potentialy differing goals. While perhaps you could have an avatar for each, this may be a rough and problematic perversion to the gameplay you intend for many of your races.
One of the 2 games I am in the process of developing (1 on contract, and 1 on my own) involves something that may also fit your bill outside of spirits. And that is bloodlines.
Attach the gameplay to a particular family, and play through the generations. You could even introduce stat perversion through cross breeding within sub-races. This would give you a fabel esque attachment to the development of your particular "sub-race". This could be shown graphicaly as well, and would create an indefinate amount of immersion.
The player may then lose a bit of the connection to the charactor, but if you create a decent formulae for respect for a family and an individual , and balance the two , you will create a strong connection to the family line, and a reason for the player to not sacrifice himself.
If you wish to offer a way to die and "respawn" easily, have people (behind the scenes) store their information in "memory capsuls", which are transmitted over some intersteller wi-fi to the home (or something similar for each race) This would include account data (bank accounts, unless you wanted a centralized family account), quest status (if applicable), weapon proficiancies, etc, and the location of the body to retrieve weaponry and such.
Though in intersteller warfare and RTS like atmosphere, most items such as body armor and laser guns can just be disregarded , as they are just not expensive in respect to the big scheme.
This would make death a nuesence, but not the end of the world, Create a sense of loyalty and attachment to your charactor(s) and family, provide a very sensable storyline attachment to the whole "infinate life" thing, explain managing large bank accounts, as well as a whole wealth of depth it would add with the whole side scheme of finding the best genes for your breeding (want to make your charactor more apt in telekenetics... breed with one gifted, upon death or old age / retirement he/she will take over. In addition, upon death you may have a selection of charactors of fighting age to choose from, dependent on the breeding statistics of the race in question, and the ferociaty in which you took to breeding.
If you want to guarentee there is always a "next in line" simply give them a child at the start of each generation.
In this far of a future, physical aptitude will probably be more genetic, and technology or biogeneticaly effected anyways, so "leveling up" can be safely removed. A previous post of mine, I dealt with the removal of HP and basing it on 3 basic statistics, 2 of which would pass on quite easily through memory capsuls. Feel free to refer to the post as an amendment to this post.
Richard
What's not to like about playing a spirit?
I've never understood posession gameplay; it's awkward in implementation, story, graphical presentation, etc. To top it off, it's not really a ghost or spirit ability.
How about interaction more along the lines of Lemmings or an RTS? You influence characters into doing what you want with different abilities. Maybe even have each character react a bit differently. As to what end you do this, I'm not sure. It's just a suggestion to think about.
How about interaction more along the lines of Lemmings or an RTS? You influence characters into doing what you want with different abilities. Maybe even have each character react a bit differently. As to what end you do this, I'm not sure. It's just a suggestion to think about.
I am amazed that no one has mentioned Soul Reaver's Raziel ability to phase from the Spirit Realm to the Physical Realm, in Defiance, he had to posses burried bodies in order to reach the Physical Realm, to me it was pretty good gameplay, something similar where the player poseses living creatures and people would be pretty cool.
In the Soul Reaver games, the spirit realm was a distorted bluish version of the physical realm where the player could not interact with most physical contraptions (levers, doors) and was inhabited by evil spirits and wandering souls.
In the Soul Reaver games, the spirit realm was a distorted bluish version of the physical realm where the player could not interact with most physical contraptions (levers, doors) and was inhabited by evil spirits and wandering souls.
Hmm... I don't know why, but there's something about this explanation of spirits possessing characters that I don't like too much. It's probably the whole problem of indirection and being harder to relate to the character.
What about this alternative to keep it simple: Go with bloodlines, but more abstracted, by making the player only know of the member of the family that he's playing with right now, and a couple more. The player would control a member of the family at a time, and nothing more.
The family is considered big enough that it's not relevant to show them all at the same time; this removes the problems associated with having no offspring, waiting for a child to grow, and the conditions in which he/she grows -- because the next member in line simply "pops up" into existance, and you're free to attach whichever story you want to it, as well as age, and stats due to past experiences.
A nice way to implement this would be to give the player a random pool of generated characters to chose from when the previous one has died: you don't necessarily need to keep a list of all the members of the family.
To help in relating with the new characters, they would all have the same last name (many times the character would be refered to only by this name -- this would have a bigger impact than it might seem at first, because the player is reminded of the connections of this character to the previous ones); and anything common to the whole family would be useful as well, like joint possessions, enemies of the family, and anything that can be carried from one character to the other.
What about this alternative to keep it simple: Go with bloodlines, but more abstracted, by making the player only know of the member of the family that he's playing with right now, and a couple more. The player would control a member of the family at a time, and nothing more.
The family is considered big enough that it's not relevant to show them all at the same time; this removes the problems associated with having no offspring, waiting for a child to grow, and the conditions in which he/she grows -- because the next member in line simply "pops up" into existance, and you're free to attach whichever story you want to it, as well as age, and stats due to past experiences.
A nice way to implement this would be to give the player a random pool of generated characters to chose from when the previous one has died: you don't necessarily need to keep a list of all the members of the family.
To help in relating with the new characters, they would all have the same last name (many times the character would be refered to only by this name -- this would have a bigger impact than it might seem at first, because the player is reminded of the connections of this character to the previous ones); and anything common to the whole family would be useful as well, like joint possessions, enemies of the family, and anything that can be carried from one character to the other.
I believe one of the main reasons ghosts do not draw the crowds are based in the connotation attached from early childhood. I can't speak for all cultures but growing up in the Midwest United States, ghost stories were intended to spook the audience. Walks in the grave yard on a moon lit night were passages of bravery among friends. In fact, other than Casper, who was portrayed like a lovable marshmellow, I can't think of any "good" reference to ghosts in my youth. So basically what I am saying, while there are definately people who would be intrigued to play a spirit, unless there is something to "humanize" them, the vast majority of people (not just game players) are not going to be drawn to the idea.
So to change that the paradigm needs to change and that my friend is a tall order indeed.
So to change that the paradigm needs to change and that my friend is a tall order indeed.
I believe when we talk this kind of game, we're beyond tetris and breakout, the original *all gameplay* style of gaming. So I'll be talking character attachment from now on, and asume the gameplay is good.
And yes, posession mechanics have never been quite decent. Where's my Posession UI, how to know when I'm in proper range? Why can't I posess this guy but this other I can? What are the rules for posessing stuff? (dog food? GET OUT!).
I have this theory, that the attachment to a game character is related to not only story and interactivity, but to the relative size it usually occupies on-screen. If anyone's interested I could elaborate, but in the meantime, I'll just go on with the consequences of this:
In order to relate to a ghost, it needs a face and a voice, and both should be displayed prominently. Think Max Payne, if we stay in the 3rd person action genre.
In *ALL* of the posession games I've seen, the posessed character looks just like before, only now you control it. This lets go of the personality of your ghost character, and since you'll be posessing most of the time, most of the time you won't be playing as your main character.
So to increase attachment you gotta have the posessed resemble the ghost, be it by animation (gestures, pace), voice (check out Matrix Revolutions, Bane's voice after Smith's "posession") or even appearance (you can go wild here, leave the artists to get the right feel for each posessed character).
Another thing that was mentioned was capabilities. One relates if the character has human-like capabilities (we're self-centered like that) and one feels 'cool' if one has more capabilities than in real life. Managing to get these two things together is hard, but the rewards are great. Most RPG players start "only human" and progress to be awesome warriors for this very reason.
About a filamented sphere of energy... that would fall in the *pure gameplay* realm, so for that to work, you'd need DAMN GOOD gameplay.
Btw, this is pure gold right here:
Edit: About FPSes... aren't all main characters of FPS games disembodied right arms? Ghostly floating guns? :)
And yes, posession mechanics have never been quite decent. Where's my Posession UI, how to know when I'm in proper range? Why can't I posess this guy but this other I can? What are the rules for posessing stuff? (dog food? GET OUT!).
I have this theory, that the attachment to a game character is related to not only story and interactivity, but to the relative size it usually occupies on-screen. If anyone's interested I could elaborate, but in the meantime, I'll just go on with the consequences of this:
In order to relate to a ghost, it needs a face and a voice, and both should be displayed prominently. Think Max Payne, if we stay in the 3rd person action genre.
In *ALL* of the posession games I've seen, the posessed character looks just like before, only now you control it. This lets go of the personality of your ghost character, and since you'll be posessing most of the time, most of the time you won't be playing as your main character.
So to increase attachment you gotta have the posessed resemble the ghost, be it by animation (gestures, pace), voice (check out Matrix Revolutions, Bane's voice after Smith's "posession") or even appearance (you can go wild here, leave the artists to get the right feel for each posessed character).
Another thing that was mentioned was capabilities. One relates if the character has human-like capabilities (we're self-centered like that) and one feels 'cool' if one has more capabilities than in real life. Managing to get these two things together is hard, but the rewards are great. Most RPG players start "only human" and progress to be awesome warriors for this very reason.
About a filamented sphere of energy... that would fall in the *pure gameplay* realm, so for that to work, you'd need DAMN GOOD gameplay.
Btw, this is pure gold right here:
Quote:LessBread said:
It's like writing about heaven and hell, the writing about hell is always so much better. It's difficult for flawed beings to relate to perfect ones.
Edit: About FPSes... aren't all main characters of FPS games disembodied right arms? Ghostly floating guns? :)
Quote:Original post by PaulCesar
While perhaps you could have an avatar for each, this may be a rough and problematic perversion to the gameplay you intend for many of your races.
Great point. Actually, the idea of playing a spirit clashes directly with one of the race designs I had in mind (the J'tiri, vampire-like spirits).
However, I notice that a big part of making this idea palatable is in how well it integrates with the game universe. I'd like to offer a universe of ancient mysteries, fallen gods, and fantastical constructs (like the Mobius Strip, the wormhole network stretching throughout creation).
So what if the idea of spirits was heavily integrated into all of this, such that the storyline/worldbuilding really supports the idea? Indwellings could be fallen gods, maybe tasked by some greater power to protect and uplift the different races. They could be the shadows of species devoured by the monsters in this universe (the Siegers). Or they could even be condemned First Ones, struggling to gain enough power to realize their goals.
I think if the idea meshes correctly, it sets an expectation for what you think should be in the universe-- and that's one of the principle jobs of story/backstory.
Quote:
Attach the gameplay to a particular family, and play through the generations. You could even introduce stat perversion through cross breeding within sub-races. This would give you a fabel esque attachment to the development of your particular "sub-race". This could be shown graphicaly as well, and would create an indefinate amount of immersion.
I thought about either using a pure notion of bloodlines, or even story-connected characters along some significant historical path. But ultimately I rejected this because I think character identification is probably one of the most critical elements of an RPG. If the player loses this, they're playing something much closer to a Sims game.
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If you wish to offer a way to die and "respawn" easily, have people (behind the scenes) store their information in "memory capsuls", which are transmitted over some intersteller wi-fi to the home (or something similar for each race) This would include account data (bank accounts, unless you wanted a centralized family account), quest status (if applicable), weapon proficiancies, etc, and the location of the body to retrieve weaponry and such.
A cool idea, but it's technology dependent. Part of the aesthetic I'm going for is that empires can utterly and completely collapse. So if you're empire collapses, what do you do if the "wi-fi" network is down? You'd have to introduce some "magical" solution, and that's not really any different than spirits.
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If you want to guarentee there is always a "next in line" simply give them a child at the start of each generation.
One of the things I don't like about just giving each generation a child is a thematic glitch with the transfer of control. When does the "next line" begin? Let's say that a character has a child at 20. Does this mean that they stop playing automatically once they reach 40 and their offspring is 20? Or does it mean that they play both characters?
It's a really PITA to dictate to the player, "your character had a child at X age and now you must stop playing him/her because the character is too old."
Although the spirit idea is weird, you at least never have to worry about sequencing. Hosts naturally assume an Indwelling when they can bear one, and Indwellings can travel along bloodlines or even secret sects and factions-- so there would be much more flexibility.
Quote:
In this far of a future, physical aptitude will probably be more genetic, and technology or biogeneticaly effected anyways, so "leveling up" can be safely removed.
I don't like XP-based leveling, but I definitely don't like removing leveling. It's the prime driver for emotional investment, a very strong resource sink, a visible sign of accomplishment, and (in a good way) an addictive feedback loop.
Quote:
A previous post of mine, I dealt with the removal of HP and basing it on 3 basic statistics, 2 of which would pass on quite easily through memory capsuls.
Maybe I'm conservative, but I'm VERY partial to lots of stats, well organized and presented of course, HP in lots of different varieties being one of them. Removing HP I think would jeopardize nuance in combat and hurt many of the leveling / equipping options RPGs are famous for.
I do think it would be an innovative approach, but not quite the direction I'm taking.
Quote:Original post by SonicSilicon
How about interaction more along the lines of Lemmings or an RTS? You influence characters into doing what you want with different abilities. Maybe even have each character react a bit differently. As to what end you do this, I'm not sure. It's just a suggestion to think about.
Thanks, this suggestion would really work if I didn't think character identification to be so important.
In a Sims, god or RTS game, you might relate to your character as if they were your avatar, but that character is never really going to be you. Even if you lose the game because you lose the character, you're still never as emotionally invested as if it's YOU in the game world.
If you're an Indwelling that merges with or subverts your host, then you really have both the abstract interaction and the strong character identification. When you're not completely merged, you're YOU the spirit, with a unique identity that includes stats, abilities and history, and the host is like a RTS or Sim character. When you're merged or subverting a host, you're again still you, this time with a body that can be affected by the world.
Technically, this could simply be a mode, but I think it gives the game universe MUCH MORE gravity if it's integrated and explained.
Quote:Original post by Kwizatz
In the Soul Reaver games, the spirit realm was a distorted bluish version of the physical realm where the player could not interact with most physical contraptions (levers, doors) and was inhabited by evil spirits and wandering souls.
Oh, very cool. I take it there were tradeoffs where you had to deal with one realm in order to progress in other?
I have not decided on whether or not there should be something like this. My instinct says that it might be cool, but not to do it because it would demand so much more detail and special treatment in an already big enough (or too big [rolleyes]) game world.
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