Level 8 Contests

In the original design, when a Bunny reaches Lv8, it enters PvP realm where the condition to advance to the next level is to fight other Bunnies and win. (The alternative is to have a lot of kids). The following is an alternative design that involves competition but not necessarily combat.


First Route:

If a Bunny reared 1000 bunnies, it will advance to level 9.


Second Route:

Each week, at least one Hermit Bunnies will host a competition. The best performing level 8 contestant will advance to level 9. In addition, the winner of a contest would win a batch/title regardless of level. Some contests require registration in advance, so that when the week starts they could immediately start competing. Registration is done by visiting the contest host Hermit.

1) Baby Bunny Boom:
Rear the most number of bunnies during a three hour block. Bunnies
that have a lot of spouses would have an advantage. The player will
decide when the timer starts. The timer can only start at a home hole.
A player can view the current high-score players to decide whether to
enter the contest. Once the three hour block is over, the player could
restart another trial. The bunnies reared during the contest also
counts toward the overall offspring count.

2) Hermits Visit:
Be the first bunny that visit all Hermits in the world. If
no bunny could find all of them, the Bunny that visited the most
first would win. This contest can be registered anytime.

3) Survival Course:
Be the first to clear the checkpoints along an obstacle course
with predators. This contest requires registration. The race starts
at the same time for all registered bunnies. The race itself should
take less than 30 minutes. Dying during the race will disqualify the
bunny. Other than the fixed checkpoints, each player can decide for
themself which route to take. If no bunny had yet finished the course,
a bunny could reenter the race at the start. If no bunny can finish,
the bunny that went furthest wins.

Re: Lv8 Advancement

I agree about the stress involved in a system where competition is the only mean to advance. That is why I still retain the route to advance by raising 1000 bunnies. I primarily want the player to see the competition not as requirements but as shortcuts to advance:

You could always raise 1000 bunnies to advance, but if you are really good at avoiding predators, or your guild is very strong in finding Hermits, then you have other ways to advance.

I took out the PvP method because that would be too easy to abuse. The fix I had for that is to turn it into a system where the player that wants to advance by PvP cannot choose the opponent. The game would match the player with an opponent.

In the story, passing level 8 is a status symbol. It shows that the player did something really well in the game. In a nutshell, the game is advancing players that have any one of the achievements:

1) 1000 Bunnies - This player is dedicated, or efficient, or have been playing for quite some time.

2) PvP Combat Victory Ratio - This player fights better than the others.

3) Hermit Visits - This player is skillful and knows the world well, or have a lot of friends in the game.

4) Survival Course - This player's Bunny just doesn't die.


I suppose the Survival Course need not be a contest. If the course is sufficiently hard, as long as the Bunny can complete the course without dying they should pass the test. The survival course is fun to go as a group because it gives a better chance to survive. The players could cooperate and just swamp the course. How many bunnies can a fox eat if all the bunnies go at once?

Also, if the Hermits are sufficiently hard to reach, then being able to visit all of them in 1 week could be an achievement. In that case it won't need to be a contest. It could also be that the condition is to simply visit all of them. The difficulty of doing that could be comparable to the other options.

Does it sound better?


I intentionally exclude the achievement of being a bunny with the most calories. The reason is that the food stuff in the world only grow once per night, so if I have such a method to advance, it would make it really hard for the other players (Lv8 or lower) to raise their bunnies and to play the game.


Lv 4 Players Interaction

Lv4 is the part where the Bunny can start looking for a mate. This task is very risky because in the game world the predators do come to interrupt the process. But in the steady state of the game, what should happen, is that some Lv9 or Lv10 players would challenge the local predator and take out the local predator. That is the condition where more bunnies can get a mate, and babies get to run wild feeding. Suppose a region has 5 foxes, it could take a team of 5 Lv9/Lv10 Bunnies to take out all of them and have a total festival for the rest of the day (in real life).

The conflict is bloodless so when I don't mean blowing the foxes into pieces.

The less drastic measure is to join a guild that have lookouts. Have the scouts track the foxes, then go a relatively safe area to sing. When a fox gets close, have a guildmate distract it.


Lv4 Player-Player Bunny Couple

Two Players can also form a Bunny Couple at Lv4. The offspring count is divide between the two. So if the two had 4 babies and 3 are raised, the count for each is 1.5. "Courting" is done by player-player chatting. A pick-up line could be as simple as, "I'm lv4 I need kids. Who else needs kids? Let's have some!!" Players could find a partner like that. But if your partner sucks at raising them, you could find yourself only getting half of the archievement (Partner lost two babies, you raised two. Now the Partner has one offspring and you have one).

A Player Spouse counts as a spouse. So when it comes to actual courting, a bunny that had many player spouses would be at a disadvantage regardless the number of current spouses the bunny has.

If your Bunny is Lv7, and you don't relocate, and you only feed your spouse (AI spouse) by bring food home, there is no chance for your spouse to die and you could continue to have babies with that spouse. At Lv6 your home can get invaded so that is a different story. At Lv6, a Player-Player couple can get invaded when only one of the players is online. (Player couples can go to and stay in the same hole).


House Visits

A player can grant permission for another player to enter its hole. There, the bunnies can just relax, unless the owner of the hole is Lv6.


Lv6 Alternative Conflict

Instead of having an AI rival visit the home hole, an AI rival would appear that picks on the player Bunny. The Rival cannot attacked by other players. The Lv6 player must deal with it somehow. To stop this cycle, the player must stock itself and the Spouse with 8000 Cal. Being able to this implies that the player has a way to deal with that Rival, because the player Bunny couldn't eat so much if the Rival is interrupting.

[Edited by - Wai on April 22, 2009 3:07:59 AM]

Will there be some sort of genetic algorithm used to mix traits and pass them down generation after generation? If so, how varied can an individual bunny be from others?

Re: Genetics

I don't think I will do genes that much because I don't want the game to be about having epic kids. It is the bunny itself that goes epic. Another thing is that the game itself is pretty stat-less. So a specifically bred bunny would only have cosmetic differences. But the player can already change the appearance of the bunny.


Arcade Episode

[ Bunny Eats ! (Flash) ]

Objective:
o Eat carrots

Control:
[ ARROWS ] Move
[ LEFT+RIGHT ] Eat
[ SPACE ] Show/Hide dialog box

Gameplay / Related Gaming Skills:
o Short-term memory - Carrot spawns
o Movement Rhythm - Bunny hops
o Reflex - Fox pops
o Interpolation - When foxes are far
o Environment tactics - The hole area, the trap area, the open area

[Edited by - Wai on April 23, 2009 6:15:27 PM]

style Choice

Given that the game is a 3D MMORPG about bunnies as described previously, which art style, among the five below would you choose?


Choices...




1) Geometric / Super deformed (think Wii Avatars or the 3D version of )

2) Highly deformed (think animal crackers [1] [2])

3) Cartoony, Humanized but Non-Humanoid (think also Pokemon)

4) Cartoony, Humanoid (think Bug Bunny, Roger Rabbit)

5) Realistic / Photo Realistic / Slightly deformed (think also [photo])

6) Realistic Humanoid (think [The White Rabbit])

7) Human with bunny traits

8) Other

9) I refuse to choose because an MMO about bunnies will not attract me


Choose...

Which style would you choose in the follow contexts?
You can assume that the style is coherent for the rest of the game.

A) Your personal preference

B) The style would you believe would get the most players

C) Your personal preference if you could disregard any or all of the described game rules. ( Which rule(s) would you remove? )

A. 6 would be pretty cool to me. Mostly because you have your classes there, which would probably be represented a bit better on a more detailed avatar. 6 would also make the whole thing be a bit like a storybook.

B. I have no idea.

C. Probably the same as A.

Speaking of 3D rabbit survival, have you ever tried Lugaru? (has a sequal coming soon called Overgrowth). Has a pretty nice 3D engine and acrobatics/fighting system going on that I'm sure you'd be interested in. The game sort of uses something like #5 / #6 / #7 on your list.

[Edited by - Tangireon on April 25, 2009 8:58:17 AM]

Just a clarification about the current concept:

There is no class system. You can consider the picture I showed as costumes. So a suit of armor is something the player bunny could get and wear. It is classless, meaning that a bunny wearing a suit of armor can still breath fire if it has that skill.

Some costumes might be related to community roles. So a Sheriff costume might be only available to or required by GM's or equivalent roles that actually police the community.

Personally I don't want a system like Lugaru or Overgrowth. I only looked at it from your link. What I don't like about it is that it look too much like a normal MMORPG where your avatar is a 6ft tall humanoid combant, you live in an humanoid village, you level up and fight stuff. Your relation to the world and life style are pretty much that of a human, with the only exception that your skin is of a bunny. It is a human world with humans replaced by humanoids with bunny skin.

The concept described so far presents the life of a bunny. It runs on four. That is a bunny that lives in a hole, in a world where the size of a leaf is the size of your head, a hoe is several times your own length, and a human is like a giant. It is a game where you could come upon the flower girl and hope on her lap and take a screen shot. It is a game where you could sneak into the farm house and have the farmer chases you with a bloom. The player plays from the perspective of a bunny in a world with humans, although with fantacised abilities.


Examples of hyper activities:

Bunny Tank Brigade

A player organized self-defense force where each member has a tank to drive away land-based enemies using concentrated pepper/mustard/spice pellets. The tanks are built by or obtained from player bunnies with the appropriate hermit skills to make tanks.


Bunny Biplane Brigade

A similar player-organized force to defend against flying enemies such as crows, bats, hawks and dragons.

Human npc's that saw these forces would not be too surprised. (It is a world where common sense does not exist at my convenience.) For example, when the farmer opens the door in the morning and see a battalion of Bunny Tanks, what would he do? He would get the water hose and just step on the tanks to squash them. If he sees squadrons of Bunny Biplanes he would get a broom. If he can't handle it he would call not the police but Animal Control. Animal Control will come with nets. Getting netted by animal control is equivalent to dying. The player can choose to teleport back and restart at home hole.

The other animals are normal, they don't get hyper activities and don't wear cloths. They can talk to the bunnies, however. Humans cannot talk to bunnies or to other animals, but animals can talk among themselves.


The Stable

At night, Bunnies with good relationship with the horses are allowed inside the stable, where the bunnies host auction, have community meeting or to build stuff. That is the sanctuary where a bunny can get meet and get things made and traded without getting interrupted by the Owls, the Raccoon, the Cats, and the Snakes.


I am expecting that the Hermits would take the style of (6). They would look like garden status or patron saints. There might be no unified forms for the Hermits. So some Hermits might look like a normal Bunny, while some are only spirits connected to statues. Since the statues are craved by humans, they don't necessarily share the same style.

[Edited by - Wai on April 25, 2009 7:30:20 PM]

The World: