lets make a game

[warsloth]

my personal progress, 5 handwritten pages, with margin diagrams. 6 pages of condensed (lots of small figures) concept sketches. 7 typed pages of pure mechanics and story concept (these do not include info from the handwritten pages) with no spacing.

I am looking for SciFi race concepts. I already have a handful that are being developed visually. The story for them so far is general but explains a lot of the why's and how's of this "universe".

I will also need ideas for the economy. Like, how to balance resources/loot/crafting/money so that it all works in a somewhat balanced fashion.

Anyone with strong feelings on this stuff please help me out.

In your dream game, what kind of things would you want?
Also, what kind of systems would you implement?
I know a lot of you have to have thought "if I made a game it would have...." so just lend me your thoughts

[Jabe Adaks]

So like what is this game about? Working title, etc?

Jabe

[warsloth]

you didn't want in on it, but some of us have been passing info back and forth in email and PM's. I will tell you that it's SciFi, involves space and ground warfare, but has nothing to do with known "universes" and is an original storyline and creation.

Hopefully the story can be told in ways that inspire RP, and give an ongoing reason to keep playing.

[Griven]

Economy:

You could impliment a faucet and drain economy system like in SWG. Money comes in from the faucet and goes down the drain (the latter being much like real life, eh?).

The faucet can be anything from SWG-like missions, quests, sale to NPCs or loot. From there, the money would swirl around as players trade the money for player made goods. The drain could be NPC vendors, but since you mentioned to me that a player-based economy is ideal, that wouldn't fit in too well.

Honestly, I don't know of any other drains besides NPC vendors that would take the money out of the world and keep a sort of balance to things. With no real drain to make money disappear, the economy will eventually become completely inflated. That is, unless, you turn off the faucet. How you would work that out, I don't know.


Races (no real titles):

Human - Basic race, well rounded to most tasks. There could even be sub races that are more specialized. These races are perhaps humans that were discovered on other planets when the basic humans left Earth in search of the stars.

Brutes - For those who love ugly and buff melee types. These people are well suited to manual labor and ground combat. They are pretty stupid and clumsy, so whatever form of magic and meticulous crafting that you may have wouldn't be well suited to them. These are a very warlike people.

Ex-Slaves - This is a healing and resurrection race. They were once enslaved by one of the other races (possibly humans to add a twist?). As a race, they are strictly against any biological enhancements whatsoever, and prefer to develop things naturally either through rituals or their own brand of magic.

Dominion - Not recommended as a player race. These people are a dark and sinister race, and have created an overwhelming presence throughout the galaxy by way of political or military manuevering.

Beasts - These are much like the Zergs from Starcraft and like the bug race you mentioned earlier. I love the idea of being able to upgrade through evolution. If you've ever played Natural Selection, you should try it. The aliens have an interesting evolution system. However, I'm envisioning this race less like bugs and more like the aliens from the Aliens franchise.

[warsloth]

you have revealed to much to them! PULL UP!!!

[warsloth]

So Jabe, are you a believer yet?

The outline Griven gave is pretty good, but it's gotten a bit deeper than that.

[snado]

YEEESh... War your on fire man. Hell, You got any ideas for weapons yet? Will the characters be very customizeable? Just out of curiosity.

[warsloth]

Hopefully Given will clear his post in a couple days (reminder to everyone that I am super paranoid)

But Snado, the characters will be customizable in ways that will blow your mind. Not just levels, not just stats, not just clothes and armor... Mind boggling awesomeness!

I want as much of this to stay hidden to public prying as possible, for many reasons. And one is so that expectations aren't raised to an unattainable level.

If an engine can be developed to support about half my ideas, then this game would be the "Be all end all" of SciFi MMO. I may not have a huge existing franchise to base this on, but I have enough that I could write a book or two about this "universe" so people could RP more out of it

I am keeping my thoughts contained to a certain level of "possibility" due to the many limitations of existing graphics engines. There is a wide range of things that could be included in simple engines, meaning this wouldn't have to be as complex as Steam (by any stretch) but that doesn't mean this game would suffer in such a wonderful engine.

My focus so far has been:

What makes for fun gameplay
What would be an interesting environment
What lends to story depth and character development
What kind of economy is competitive without being frustrating
What would I pay a ton to play

If you doubt that my ideas are good, without seeing them, I will fight you.

That is no lie!


PS (edit) Hopefully the artwork will get you going. I have submitted my makeshift garbage "Drawrin's" to someone with actual talent. Hopefully it all stays under wraps until something actually gets rolling. Eventually I plan to lobby this before some reputable companies to see if anyone bites. One thing I want to do is make sure that our ideas are protected, and that credit is given where it is due. (thanks for all the help to those that are!)

[Sai'nu]

My focus so far has been:

What makes for fun gameplay
What would be an interesting environment
What lends to story depth and character development
What kind of economy is competitive without being frustrating
What would I pay a ton to play

Your going to have some very big differences in perspectives here. Case in point is that we do have different MMORPGs to pick from. No matter what you do you need to think of a target audiance when considering these.

Will your game have a general appeal to, simply, a gamer? Or, are you targetting the Sci-fi enthusists specifically? I know we'd all like to have that 'end all, be all' idea in any area; I guess I'm saying while aiming high... don't forget to keep some steady footing. I think you've already considered that by taking into account expectations though.

On economy... I think you've got to have some competitive mixed in with the frustration. You game hard and work together to get cool stuff... and eventually have to replace it. This makes the money circulate. The trick is figuring out just how far some will go to amass that insane ammount of in game cash to start up the crazy million monetary value trades. This, in my opinion, can put your in game economy out of whack from a realistic standpoint. I'll use SWG for an example...

"Ten thousand!?!? That's crazy, we can almost buy our own ship for that! We don't have to listen to this...." --Luke

Now... you tell me where you get a fully functional ship for 10k in game!?! If you can maintain some realism and still allow for people to get their 'fun' item without it literally costing a year's sallery in some cases (think of your casual gamer); I think you'd have a piece to a larger puzzle that very well could be a winner.

I'll think some more about the other stuff....

[warsloth]

Batty, let me know if you want to see some of the details on this.

Anywho...

As far as economy, there has to be certain stuff that is available to beginners, and then stuff that is reserved for the more uber players.
Level based armors and weapons are a good way to keep a game balanced, yet you then rely on NPC vendors to compete with the massive demand this creates. Otherwise you have a bunch of beginners that have no armor, and so on. The gap will become more severe as the game ages.

One of the things I liked about Pre CU SWG was the fact I could wear almost all of the armor. This represents a realism that I enjoyed.

If a player can afford an item, and logically would be able to put that item on, or use it, then they should be able to...

however, if say a hobbit buys heavy plate made for a dwarf, then he's not going to be able to move or wield anything very well. (generalized example most should understand) So, while someone may be able to wear a certain item, it may not be a good idea.

So far the weakest area of my plan so far is the economy. Not because I have bad ideas, but rather a lack of them. Then you face things like loot vs. crafted items, Quest rewards, blah blah blah.

[Sai'nu]

I think some key area level based, no trade, repairable items are a great thing in a game. One of the major reasons I did like WoW a little bit. I had a money sink going on because I had to repair my armor as I worked toward the new armor. But not so horrible as to have to buy an entirely new set of armor every few game weeks.

No perma destroyed items is a great model to include in my opinion then. But make repair items. One thing they force you to do is go to an NPC to do this. That's your game's money sink. If you wanted you could make it cheaper for a player to go to a nother player. More often than not the reverse seems to wind up true in MMOs. I guess I'd like to see something that makes a little more sense.

[warsloth]

With weapons and armor, in my DAoC experience they make it so you can have player repairs, but its often more convenient to do NPC repair. With crafting, all NPC sales were of about 80% quality. Crafted items could get as high as 97-100%

So in order to have THE BEST, you would pay for crafted stuff. But with DAOC you needed new armor every three levels, and if you were 10 and wore level 40 armor, the stuff would deteriorate like crazy.

And we all know how things work in SWG. But hopefully something can be established that has more sense/realism, but can also be fun and entertaining.

I have secrets up my sleeve in this area too...

[Griven]

Well, I'm not going to delete that post, because my ideas are open source and available to all. I'd just like to contribute to something.

Here's my general take on armor:
Pre-CU SWG did it right by letting everyone wear pretty much any type of armor. However, race specific armor should be implemented. So, for example, if composite armor is made for the human race, the bug race couldn't wear it. Also make the armor gender specific. I don't like how a peice of armor changes shape completely depending on the gender of the wearer.

Unlike SWG, the armors should be VERY different in what they're made to defend against. Have the armor range in weight from very light to very heavy, affecting movement speeds, stealth, and accuracy.

So as to avoid carbon copy characters, let the crafters mix and match a large variety of designs that can be applied to the armor. This can play into both RP and Guild dynamics by making unique uniforms (bit of an oxymoron).

[warsloth]

Armor variation is an area I have covered.

The mix and match armor parts combinations that go beyond "these pants, and that shirt" is something that is cool, but will ultimatley depend on engine limitations.

There are aspects of customization in my plan so far, that supercede anything in a game I have seen so far. What sucks is that all the planning hinge on what is possible in the game.

I think I need to go into hiding in my dark cave for a while and work on concepts that need more depth.

I hope my generalizations don't downplay the depth I have already acheived with this. I would rather someone see the finished product, than all the garbage and discards in the proccess.

[Jabe Adaks]

Looks like this idea died off. But if anyone is still interested:

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 7&from=rss

Jabe