I always though good gameplay design is when you take a new or old idea that already sounds appealing or can be interesting then can be taken further in detail to further greatness. Not take an idea and mold it and de-level it into what can work in a game.

The problem still stands with the amount of people join each side. If there are too many priests then the vampires might get annoyed for getting killed my a bunch of priests leaving no chance for a vampire to play the game in a way that's fun. If they get fed up they either won't play the game or make a new character that's also a priest. The same goes for having too many vampires. There is no point into making a priest if their are so many vampires to turn you into a vampire that there won't be a reason to make a priest other than getting a late start as a vampire. People who don't want to play as a vampire but find no way to avoid it will stop playing the game.

When dealing with an infection rate that deals with a population number and Player Controlled characters you can't make a real rate at which an infection can happen without the game becoming unbalanced.

Something tells me that making this sort of game system would be very hard to maintain or will be very unbalanced and unappealing.

Quote:Original post by Shadownami92
I always though good gameplay design is when you take a new or old idea that already sounds appealing or can be interesting then can be taken further in detail to further greatness. Not take an idea and mold it and de-level it into what can work in a game.

Well it sounds appealing and interesting to me, but may not to you, and I'm sure there were many who were not sold by the original idea of the sims, tetris
etc etc, so no, thats not good game design because there will always be some people who don't like the original idea.
Clearly though its more often that people get bogged down in a particular implementation that they imagine for that idea, usually based heavily on what they have seen before that is similar, and they can't see past that, or see any changes to that as fixes for it.

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The problem still stands with the amount of people join each side. If there are too many priests then the vampires might get annoyed for getting killed my a bunch of priests leaving no chance for a vampire to play the game in a way that's fun. If they get fed up they either won't play the game or make a new character that's also a priest. The same goes for having too many vampires. There is no point into making a priest if their are so many vampires to turn you into a vampire that there won't be a reason to make a priest other than getting a late start as a vampire. People who don't want to play as a vampire but find no way to avoid it will stop playing the game.

These are all good points and would have to be taken into account - If I were to make this game I would make sure there is a way for the game's manager to control the rate of people going to either side. Although one way that could be built into the game of doing so is the fickleness of the NPC citizens, and simple economics. If there are fewer vampires, the NPC's will not pay such high rates for protection and being a low level priest becomes less appealing.
If there are too many vampires, the gratitude and payment of the NPCs would rise, making it great to be a low level priest.
If too many priests are becoming vampires, then the infection rate would be lowered so that only one in 50 or so bites causes a transformation.
Its also essential that vampire killing and sucking blood aren't the only things to do. This gives the game manager time to change the balance if required, but its also important in the whole atmosphere of the game that there is plenty to do.

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When dealing with an infection rate that deals with a population number and Player Controlled characters you can't make a real rate at which an infection can happen without the game becoming unbalanced.

The rate would need to be managed.

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Something tells me that making this sort of game system would be very hard to maintain or will be very unbalanced and unappealing.

Technically, it would be simple to maintain, but the manager would need to be very good.

I'm sure most of you are more in the loop than me, but I discovered APB today, which sounds like it will be exactly like I have described here...

From wikipedia:

Gameplay

The game takes place in a modern-day, fictional city where there is a constant battle between "Law Enforcement" and "Gangs", and the player will need to decide which side they want to participate on. The two sides battle out for control of the city, with territory within the city being contested continually 24 hours a day, so that players must concern themselves with both offense and defensive moves. Other activities involving missions within the game allow the player to earn extra money, which then can be used to upgrade weapons, vehicles, and their character appearances, all that influence the game itself.[9] For example, several Gang players may rob a convenience store within the game; the game will then seek out one or more Law Enforcement players of equivalent skills and other criteria, and will issue an all-points bulletin for them to stop the robbery.[4] Jones confirmed that players will be able to use the Last.FM service to create custom soundtracks within the game.[4] At a show in Brighton Jones said that a BETA annoucment is 'Very close'. And that 'A boxed copy is more likely than a downloadable form.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APB_(video_game)

Just thought I'd share that to prove clearly what a wonderful human being I must be :)

Before you ask for praise I would like to address a few things. This game isn't out yet so it's hard to see what effects our points may have on how the game is played. Secondly, each side is constant and gangsters seem to stay as gangsters while police seem to stay as police. In your idea you said vampires could have a certain rate to make protectors into vampires which is one thing that makes your game idea seem very unbalanced.