Hi guys, I need opinions on some mechanics that I have in mind.

Imagine an online role playing game, played in first person. A game, where there are rooms (or servers), hosted by players. Those rooms can take from 2 to 64 players. In that game, there is a smart human-like alien race trying to eliminate all humans and conquer the earth. The earth, as a reaction has formed a United Army with soldiers from many different nations.

The players take the role of one of those soldiers. All aliens in the game are computer-controlled. Meaning that this will be an online game where people have to team up to fight against aliens (controlled by computers).

There will basically be no PVP at all. When entering one of those rooms (or servers), you will not be brought straight in the action. You will be taken to a city that is safe (alien-free). There you can start a talk with other people, buy/sell goods, train your skills,... But you are one step away from entering the battlefield and fighting for your planet.

This is what I have in mind. I need opinions on these mechanics, because I would like a game like this, but I don't know if other people would too.
And this would be a very time consuming project so I don't want to waste time on something that will not be played in the end.

Why do I let people host servers, simple, because I don't have the resources to host massive servers myself. So I let the players host small servers. That is also the cause of a brain cracking problem. Since this is a role playing game, player stats are saved in a database. And servers hosted on 3rd party computers access my database containing info about all players in order to be able to read and save stats.

By letting players host servers, I enable a lot of security risks.


Here are my 2 solutions, but I don't know how secure they actually are:

I'm thinking of letting the master server (hosted by me) send data about how to access the database to those servers once they get started and are verified by the master server as being the latest (and being a legit) version (through an MD5 check sum).
This way, they would not be able to decompile the server and fetch info about the database.

Then there is memory editing stuff in the server by the hosters which would eventually result in manipulated stats being saved to the database. I will solve that problem by using an anti-cheat method I developed for a flash game.

Also, only verified servers get added to the list of servers in the master server. This would eliminate all modified and outdated servers.

Anyhow, that's about it. What do you guys think? Would you play something like this? Do you know any games similar to this?

I think your post needs to be in a different forum-- Basically this forum concentrates on the mechanics of writing with game design only being incidental to the writing itself. Just don't make a new post. No doubt a moderator will shift your post sometime today.

Alright, hope this will get fixed then I thought this was the most fitting board for posting this.

Why do I let people host servers, simple, because I don't have the resources to host massive servers myself. So I let the players host small servers. That is also the cause of a brain cracking problem. Since this is a role playing game, player stats are saved in a database. And servers hosted on 3rd party computers access my database containing info about all players in order to be able to read and save stats.

By letting players host servers, I enable a lot of security risks.

Here are my 2 solutions, but I don't know how secure they actually are:

I'm thinking of letting the master server (hosted by me) send data about how to access the database to those servers when they get started.
This way, they would not be able to decompile the server and fetch info about the database.

Then there is memory editing stuff in the server by the hosters which would eventually result in manipulated stats being saved in the database. I will solve that problem by using an anti-cheat method I developed for a flash game.

Anyhow, that's about it. What do you guys think? Would you play something like this? Do you know any games similar to this?

Not sure if this belongs here. You might peruse "Multiplayer and Networking Forum" for information existing there.

Imagine an online role playing game, played in first person. A game, where there are rooms (or servers), hosted by players. Those rooms can take from 2 to 64 players. In that game, there is a smart human-like alien race trying to eliminate all humans and conquer the earth. The earth, as a reaction has formed a United Army with soldiers from many different nations.

The players take the role of one of those soldiers. All aliens in the game are computer-controlled. Meaning that this will be an online game where people have to team up to fight against aliens (controlled by computers).

There will basically be no PVP at all. When entering one of those rooms (or servers), you will not be brought straight in the action. You will be taken to a city that is safe (alien-free). There you can start a talk with other people, buy/sell goods, train your skills,... But you are one step away from entering the battlefield and fighting for your planet.

Okay what I have from this is you are simply at an idea stage. You don't necessarily go into that much detail or specifics. For example is each room a literal clone of another room i.e. the same city or does each room represent a different city on the world and the data you collect back shows the overall success of the war etc. Do you plan to have resources transferrable through different rooms i.e. war supplies in excess at one room could be smuggled traded to another room to help with their battle. I guess what I am looking for is more detail as to how your game is designed in terms of the game itself not just the physical setup.

Thank you for your response. I'll go into more detail.

In this game, there will be 2 - 3 cities, for the first playable version.

Meaning that when hosting a server or room for the game, the hoster has to choose which city it wants to host for.
Then, when a player wants to play a game, it has to choose a room/server with the player's preferred city.

Simply put, there will be a bunch of servers/rooms and every one of them will be hosting for one of the available cities.

Why am I saying hosting FOR a city? Because those rooms/servers are part of something bigger. All crucial data regarding player stats, money, items,... will be calculated by those rooms/servers, but eventually saved to a database managed by me. Whenever a player logs into a room/server (hosted by someone that is not me), that server will fetch that particular player's data (his items, money, stats,...) from the global game database (managed by me).

So yes, you can transfer goods from one room to another.

EDIT:
I also made a modified version of this post for the Networking and Multiplayer board.

EDIT:
I also made a modified version of this post for the Networking and Multiplayer board

My advice is you go to that post and fix it up properly so that it only addresses the networking issues that you want an answer to. Remove the creative game design aspects.

Okay so far I am not seeing a great deal in terms of the actual game design. How is the war waged, what weapons are involved, is this ground warfare only, why are the aliens not able to use the gravity well to their advantage, what happens if you defeat the aliens, Do you have levelling systems, research trees, what language do you intend to build the game in etc.

My strong advice to you is to look through the forums and other websites for Game design documents. Read them and deepen your understanding of the sorts of things that would make your post a far more effective one. I can see a lot of potential in the idea you have, but what you are bringing in your post is not nearly developed enough for other people to get interested in to help out with feedback and advice. Basically it is up to you to bring us your "A" game or at least a good starting point from where it can be worked with.