yeah, the only way to do a game like that is to make it so that the CHARACTER has to know the information for it to really be of any use to you.
You use an alt to learn Player "John Bauding" is an agent for Faction "Majestic Honour", and you want to kill this agent with your main character. Opps, your Main doesn't know anything about John Bauding, so even if you walk your character up behind John, pull out your piano wire, you have no option to kill him. Why? Your Main Character doesn't know John Bauding, and therefore he can't harm him.
Allow Alts to pass off information learned, BUT, there is always a risk of it being caught doing so. Double agents are part of the game, what players do you trust? how do you work in a world where the next new guy you meet and talk to might be someone from the other side selling you out?
Secrets in a Virtual World
Quote:Original post by Talroth
You use an alt to learn Player "John Bauding" is an agent for Faction "Majestic Honour", and you want to kill this agent with your main character. [...] Your Main Character doesn't know John Bauding, and therefore he can't harm him.
Although the point of being a double-operative is to gather information and subvert the opposing side, not to just hang out and not die.
If one player found out he was a double-op, he could tell the rest of his faction and they could vote him out or keep him out of any important strategies. ANy subversion that he attempted would be met with "Ah he's just a double-op, ignore him".
The fact of the matter is that it's the knowledge that's important in a game of secrets, being able to act directly on that knowledge is kind of moot.
The character idea sounds nice. However, I feel it really is destroying the point of the game. I believe that deception, manipulation and in-game espionage are mean to be valid tactics. What he is trying to avoid is improper distribution of information through cheating.
It would take several levels of encryption to keep information relevant to gameplay without being available to the player. I think it's possible to run everything based on "character knowledge".
Limit travel to map navigation and "location hotspots" that can't be reached without knowing where they are or following someone who knows. You could blindfold characters and transport them to a location, and then late drug them and dump them in a ditch, and when they woke up, that player would be totally unable to find his way back to the location, even if he gets on MSN and has a chat with his "captor" about the place. You could get on MSN and say, "Hey, I'm going to bury a map to the base under the park bench three blocks south of the warehouse where the first NPC mission is," and that would work, but the characters have to go bury the thing and dig them up, which means they can be seen doing it.
Truth be told, I envision this game being less of a 3D world and more of a command interface, where you tell your character what to do and then draw conclusions, Clue-style, from the outcome. "Surveil man in black coat" would yield a collection of data about what that guy did, maybe who he is, who he's interacting with, etc. Or maybe you won't get any info at all and your guy will wake up in a parking lot with a headache and a vague recollection of telling Mr. Blackcoat an awful lot of pertinent information while enjoying the euphoric side-effects of the interrogation drugs.
Limit travel to map navigation and "location hotspots" that can't be reached without knowing where they are or following someone who knows. You could blindfold characters and transport them to a location, and then late drug them and dump them in a ditch, and when they woke up, that player would be totally unable to find his way back to the location, even if he gets on MSN and has a chat with his "captor" about the place. You could get on MSN and say, "Hey, I'm going to bury a map to the base under the park bench three blocks south of the warehouse where the first NPC mission is," and that would work, but the characters have to go bury the thing and dig them up, which means they can be seen doing it.
Truth be told, I envision this game being less of a 3D world and more of a command interface, where you tell your character what to do and then draw conclusions, Clue-style, from the outcome. "Surveil man in black coat" would yield a collection of data about what that guy did, maybe who he is, who he's interacting with, etc. Or maybe you won't get any info at all and your guy will wake up in a parking lot with a headache and a vague recollection of telling Mr. Blackcoat an awful lot of pertinent information while enjoying the euphoric side-effects of the interrogation drugs.
i was asking about something in a similar direction a while back, and someone mentioned the idea to make each piece of information an in-game object which can be copied, traded, stolen, etc etc.
here's the thread.
with such a system, it wouldn't matter if someone put up a website or instant messaged their friends outside the game; their characters would not be able to use that information in-game.
here's the thread.
with such a system, it wouldn't matter if someone put up a website or instant messaged their friends outside the game; their characters would not be able to use that information in-game.
Part of the problem of metagaming that you describe here is a problem with identifying events with people. One solution might be to allow the people to change their identity... new ID card, new passport, plastic surgery, etc. (see Bourne movies, Gattaca). If Agent A is identified as John Smith of Majestic 12, then a change of haircolor, added moustache, fake glasses, a nosejob, and a change of clothes could be used as game mechanics to give him a new identity in the event that he gets in trouble.
a secret agent mmo? how are you going to actually sneak around other players? I don't think the graphics are there yet.
the only way I see secrets working is if a dedicated development team is constantly evolving the game world. writers, more or less.
the only way I see secrets working is if a dedicated development team is constantly evolving the game world. writers, more or less.
FunkyMunky, I don't think Platinum314 actually ever said it was a 'secret agent mmo'. Nor did he say that sneaking would be a major game component, although that could be implied by theft of information. I don't think graphics could really limit that sort of action anyway. Sneaking can be done without fancy graphics, although it can be more complicated.
I like krez's response more than the others. Have information as in-game objects. Although, I'm not sure of Platinum's intention for what this 'information' will be. If this information is dynamically generated by the 'faction leaders', such as war plans or construction or sabotage missions, then this wouldn't really work. In this case it's human-useful information to know. It's not really usable as an object.
I like krez's response more than the others. Have information as in-game objects. Although, I'm not sure of Platinum's intention for what this 'information' will be. If this information is dynamically generated by the 'faction leaders', such as war plans or construction or sabotage missions, then this wouldn't really work. In this case it's human-useful information to know. It's not really usable as an object.
Quote:Original post by Platinum314Quote:Original post by Way Walker
Embrace it. Make it part of the game. Make multiple accounts one way of acting as a double agent. Advertise it as "blurring the line between game and reality".Quote:Original post by NathanRunge
Then you have the problem of people knowing information from both sides, without the real skill of manipulation/sneaking to get it. In a game with a lot of information/knowledge based gameplay this could really be a problem.
But it seems to me that the assumption is that, if you belong to a faction, then you know everything that faction knows. Why is this true? Why do you have all the information your higher ups have?
Make it so a second account is a valid way to be a double agent. Let's say I have two characters, character A belonging to faction A and character B belonging to faction B. Someone in faction A gives information to character A. If that information becomes known to faction B, then faction A would have evidence that my character B exists. Maybe one of their double agents even heard my character B hand over the information.
Basically, the character is actually the person playing while their characters are more like disguises they can wear. Griefers are ok because, at least in my vision, bringing about chaos could be a legitimate goal (I'm thinking of Deus Ex' "Dark Age" ending) and hopefully they'll be kept in check by not reaching the upper levels of trust.
By the way, what's the win condition you're envisioning? What makes one side the one that's "in the lead"? What sorts of information are picturing people sharing? What sorts of things are they trying to get?
Quote:Original post by Funkymunky
a secret agent mmo? how are you going to actually sneak around other players? I don't think the graphics are there yet.
the only way I see secrets working is if a dedicated development team is constantly evolving the game world. writers, more or less.
How have people sneaked computer equipment off countless University campuses? Stand tall, put on a shirt with a collar, comb your hair, and put on a smile as you carry a computer by a guard and complain about how the university is too cheap to provide good carts to people working in computer services.
Secret agent sneaking isn't about dressing up in black and dramatically dancing your way through shadows.
A world doesn't need writers to constantly evolve. Sim Earth was constantly evolving nearly 20 years ago. We can do a lot better these days. Would it be easy to do in an MMO? No, but then MMOs aren't easy to do in the first place.
The key to a game like this would be the player gets to use and act on information the CHARACTER knows. Limit the use of 'gut feelings', your character can't randomly walk up to some guy and start spying on them or collecting a lot of information. Populate the world with procedurally generated NPCs that walk around as background filler, (aka, extras in the movies, that woman in the cafe in the background that has the magic glass that is full, empty, 2/3 full, empty, etc all in the space of 30 seconds) to give real players something to 'hide in plain sight' in.
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