Hey everyone, I have been looking over this forum for some time and I think its great ;) Quick notes: First of all, I have been thinking about this concept for a long time now and it gets changed a lot, Also note I have had this concept for a long time, before all these post-apocolyptic Titles have come out. So bare in mind that any theme can be changed, its just a guide line at the current moment in time. I also have a close friend working on some character concepts, which I will have up in a week or two. Also, I'm not here stating, 'yeah, I'm going to make this game and i need people'. I am just getting a basic input here :) But that said, if there are any people interested enough, please contact me. ;) ALSO- final: I'm not saying that yes I want this game made with all this in mind, if I was to start with the game we would go for early set objectioves... like basic death match or somthing, adding more at in our own time. Thanks :) Intention: The Idea is to take the concept of a basic First Person Shooter and evolve it adding elements of Role Playing and maybe Real Time Strategy to create a new experience. Set in a Post-Apocalyptic Future where two opposing factions are fighting over what is left of the human race. A Large number of players would play at once, as in 50 vs 50 or so... (Not sure what game engine can hadle that? But would love feedback on). Introduction/Backstory (You don't have to read lol): The concept is set far into the future were technology is far advance (I have been working on a big back story, but I am just stateing the dot points). Earth is united and everyone lives in a somewhat peacful (still crime etc, just no war/racisim) soiceity. But for all mans evolved technology, they could only sit back and watch as seintists discovered a massive amount of some type of cyrtalized rocks that were on a par with Earth. It was reported for the shower to last for 1020.25 (random lol) years. Half of the population left for other planet in the far distance of space, hoping one day they would reach this planet and repopulate it with earths people. The other half were left behind, and continued life... (etc whatever lol). They built buildings that led underground for protection, and became for the most, self dependant and would not have to venture up for many years. But the orginal sientits were wrong and the first wave hit earth before everyone was ready. For the many that were safe underground, there were many that were not. Others went up to save the people after the wave of showering crystals, but the people they found were not the people they remembered; they were violent, dazed and their eyes had changed to an inhuman bright green. Seintists dumbfounded gathered samples of this crystalized rock... blah blah And it turn out, that it can be applyed in many differn't ways. Through experiments they were able to create some sort of 'magik' compound. Though it laid a toll on the people who used it, made their bodies weaker and weaker. But there were also other propierties of this rock. Eventually the more they dicovered and the more the reiglous power took intrest, the more it turned to greed and a war broke out over its power and two main factions were formed. Between showers the factions return to the surface to collect this resource and many skirmishes break out over it, many people are killed. And the people that were oirgnally in the first shower started conolines of their own. Concept part1 (The Factions): Note: Basic Guide line, concept can change. Order of the Hurran: They Believe their existence is a sign that they were the greater of people, meant to live on and somehow through perseverance fix the world, one day returning it to normal as though the 'apocalypse' was just a test for humanity and by large 'the ones who failed were not of the strong, nor the righteous.' Sojourn and the Embrace: Accepting the world as it is, and moving on for a clearer resolution the people of Sojourn believe there was no real reason for the current state of things, just the ways of man and instead of placing blame have tried to adept to their new world pushing for inner and outer peace and prosperity though because of the Hurran have been pushed into war to survive. Outlanders: The Outlanders are on nether side of the war. They are desert or jungle people who have basically devolved into 'lower beings', losing basic reasoning skills they are much more like animals than human and an are extremely violent race. They colonize in small groups, alone are not a threat but in numbers can be devastating to unsuspecting victims. *The Outlanders are a non-playable race. Concept part2 (Game Workings): Note: Basic and Changable... (may be complecated?). Basics first: In game you have: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A health bar/armor: Self explanatory... A Nano/magik Pool: You use nano bots along with the power of the crystal to do many things from buffs and curses, to summoning and dmg spells etc. Focus/Stress: This bar has a pointer that sits in the middle... to start with... If you crouch perfectly still for long enough, you'll raise towards focus; you'll be more acurate and cast spells stronger... But if you get shot at, shoot at enemies for too long or cast too many spells too quick it will lower to the stress side of things; decreasing acuracy, you take hits harder and spells you cast may not cast effectivly or at all. SO good thing to keep this in the focus side. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Points system: The game bases itself around three main inputs to a character, there are: Stats, Skills and Weapon/Armor Tiers that players can poor Xp into and they all interlock with each other in a few ways. You distribute Xp points into Either/all three of these trees... Placing points in stats/skills will only raise it a % making it impossible to max anything and also putting points in one thing will lower another slightly, creating balance. Under stats you have: Stamina: Lots of exercise and working out improves your health which is vital for you're survive-all. Points in this will increase your health and melee damage, but lowers your Intelligence. Intelligence: Controlling all those Nanobots takes a lot of mind power and arrogance. Points in this will increase your Nano-Pool, but lowers your Focus. Agility: You spend more time becoming quicker than stronger. Points in this will increase your agility allowing for higher jumping, quicker running and faster attacking with melee weapons, but lowers your Stamina. Focus: You sit all day in silence with your eyes closed listening to the world while eating Cheetos. Points in this will increase your Focus for better accuracy and slows your stress allowing for longer skirmishes, but lowers your Agility. There are Three Base skills and they all have 3-4 Skills trees inside of them: Note: remember you can put points in all these classes if you want to, finding balance and a play style you like is all about trail and error, but putting points in one will lower other skills in other areas... (Haven't Named as it changes a lot): Deals with all your weapon skills (discludes snipers and such) and strength/agilty based skills... Think of the warroir class in RPG games. Magik: Anything from Buffs & Curses (heal also) to Summoning, 'Elemental' Damages and Illusions. This is all your Mage style play right here. Stealth: Your rouge class, it deals with being quick and agile, skills involve sniping, speed, high jumping and wall running (acrobatics) etc. Weapon Tiers: Putting points in Weapon Tier raises the amount and quality of weapons you have access to... Starting from basic pistoles and smgs, to high grade/dmg shotguns, assult rilfes, snipers and rocket lunchers or so. This doesn't effect your skills or stats, but say every 5 levels will get you to another tier of wepaons, so basicly if you were a mage you would proberbly prefer to spend time putting points into your skills and just keep the pistole/smg group of weapons. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Game Play: Game bases on timer respawns... you can be brought back to life through power of cstryal or somthing... ;) There are a few differn't types of game play here: Death match: (10 - 50/50 players) With a Timer (till next crystal shower).. So in other words your taking out the enemy to gain control of suspected impact area. Crystal Collect: (10 - 50/50 players) After a shower, there are main amount of crystal areas on a map, your job to collect as many as possible and return to base. Teams to have the most crystal gained at end of round wins (or till the crsytal amount runs out). Take and Hold: (10 - 50/50 Players) Control all areas on a map... basic. Survival: (from 2-10 players or so) Traped team must survive attacking waves of outlanders (involves levels of outlanders with bosses etc). Time between waves to distrubute points. No weapon Tiers here, just what you can find in imadetate area and no respawns. Game Maps: Big enough to host a number of players, include big open areas and small, built up areas... many accesible buildings to hide and snipe etc... enough cover and well balanced. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusion: Well there is a lot more in my head lol, but this is all I can get out for now thanks for your time, please I would like feedback on this, would people like to play it, do you think you would become drawn into the game? Anything I should advance on, Anything to take out or add in? Thanks again, Wyatt. P.S, sorry for spelling, I get carried away in my head blurting this out while trying to keep some kind of lay out thats readable.. and I don't have any spell check software.

Quote:Original post by Sandman

I really don't like this mechanic; it basically seems to reward and encourage boring play.
Either you just camp and snipe, or you run around killing things for a bit and then spend ten minutes doing nothing in some remote corner of the map waiting for your meter to refill. Neither of which is particularly enjoyable either for the player himself, nor for anyone else in the game.

It would not take ten minutes :P more like two - three seconds, and remember putting points into this stat increases the amount of stress a player can take.

I figure it would balance spell casters (no casting of 10 spells one after the other, more of a 2-4 depending on strength of spell... wait three, four seconds... cast more).

Also would make sniper a camp skill (since its what its design to do), no cs style sniping of 'jump out, snipe, run, snipe' knid of stuff... It would be a skill that you have to place alot of XP into stealth perfecting your acuracy and shooting over time, since it would be a 1 - 2 shot kill the stress would be high pershot, making you only able to shoot 2,3 shots before you start to loose acuracy, makes snipers have to think more.

But Also... I forgot to add that putting points in skills would decrease the effect of stress on that skill, so for the 'warroir' type class there are alot of weapon profesencies and placing points in the certain weapons class would lower the stress involved in shooting them, making it possible to never even have focus lower to stress... (also hit stress skills etc).

It would even out player builds, meaning if a player tanks the 'warroir' skills they would be able to take alot of damage and shoot in skirmishes for longer peroids of time than a spell caster build or a stealth kind of player.

Which should force a stealth player to play more of a stealth game and a spell caster to stratigize more.

And finally I forgot to add the fact that each of the main 3 skill trees involve their own weapon class skills, though the warroir type will have all except sniper available to them.

I will if you'd like post a more involve post on skill trees once I have finished them.

Thanks for the feedback, :D
Wyatt.

{edit)

Also forgot to mention what I thought having focus/stress for is it builds a game.

For example:

Early game, its a slow, everyone is quite balanced but as people gain the XP the game becomes more and more intesnce as people can survive much longer, people are moving faster, stronger and bigger range of spells, weapons and skills until the very end it becomes a very quick paced game...

I figure it would involve players alot more, let them get into the swing of how they're going to play the match out.

And if you just want instant action severs would be able to give players a much higher Xp rate, or a set amount of XP at the beginning so you are able to jump straight in ;)

Quote:Original post by Guthur
Have only digested the basics (i hope), but i was wondering...

Is the player characters persistant ie do they develop the PC over a number of matches.
How would you balance the matches then or would you even bother.
Whats the longevity, are the PC advancements really numerous and time consuming eg WoW, or do the players just restart as a different class.

I have thought of a number of differn't awnsers over the last couple of months and come to the conculsion that Players start a game at 0, new game, start at 0. For balancing issues as well that the managment of a players progress would be too hard to keep (unless you could only play on that one sever per character but even then you wouldn't be balanced since new players join the sever would be at a massive disadvantge).

So, I just thought I would stick with each new game, everything is reset, though keep in mind, a sever could apply a mod/patch that keeps players Xp etc... (think Cs with RPG mod levels).

I hope I am awnsering your question correctly :P

Thanks,
Wyatt.

(EDIT)

Also, XP rate can be modified by each sever, so you could have very slow WoW progress, or just extremly fast...

I mainly conclued (for now) that you can gain XP from: Kills, completing objectives (such as capturing land in take and hold etc) and a slow, very minamal timely xp rate (as in, just for playing your xp will increase, the rate wont be anything to compete with kills and objectives but just is there for a handicap purpose). Also as your number of skills or amount of xp gain (if severs can follow that with ease) increase this timely xp will decrease in amount.

Also, I figured that early game there could be mutant animals, or outlanders that spawned in the center of both sides of play/randomy area of levels (that is balanced though so not one faction spawns with all animals on there side). and have them for early xp rush (once again not on par with xp from kills, but early game would certainly help ;).

[Edited by - Morbid Addiction on December 17, 2008 6:34:01 AM]

Yeah I did think about that but wasn't sure if that would balance to well, for exmaple... if one team gets the upper hand, how do you balance it back, it would just be pure ownage for that side for the whole game...

Unless it was balanced like

- loss of xp from death = 1/2 xp gain from a kill +

or even less like 1/4 of a gain from a kill.

Becuase you have to remember 'n00b' players have to get some level of enjoyment out of a game.

BUT, oence again this can be a sever prefrnce which opens up to even allowing for pro severs.

You could for instance even have an anti-rape mechinisam where if a player is doing farrrr to well constantly on a sever the players stats are cut inhalf or lower more OR even kicked from the sever (severs could have this turned on or off).

Quote:Original post by Guthur
You could increase the XP over time value for the team that is losing so as to give them a wee boost. You could also maybe move players but thats not a great option.

Edit: actually moving players gave me an idea. If you could maybe add any new players to the losing side you could maybe balance the teams with sheer numbers ie making the losing team out number the stronger team

Its an Idea!!

But remember, the raping faction would most likely have a leading in skills, stats and weapons... which tier 3 weapons for example are going to rape any player on tier 1 as long as the tier 3 player isn't a totally newbie.

Acually I would add the new players to the winning side, since their side can protect them/help them out more. And on the other hand the opposing side would gain more of a chance of gaining xp from these new players.

I do want to stay away from player swaping as players would most likely get anoyed at this, in a normal FPS its fine in most cases as its normaly very basic game, be for yourself and kill any enemies. But in this there is a lot of team work and I'm only guessing that players would prefer to play together with other friends on the same faction. (such as clans).

Another Idea I have was, for kill xp rates to be on some level to the killed player...

That way, if a player thats raping is killed by another player, they would gain a much higher xp rate than the gain from someone either below his own or even on the same level of xp. Which also creates a balancing beam of its own... since players who wish to receive the greatest rewards for kills are going to target the stronger players rather than the weaker.

Thanks,
Wyatt.

[Edited by - Morbid Addiction on December 17, 2008 7:36:19 AM]