posted
Basically its Survival Horror, we could make it an MMORPG and have each server cater to a different disaster (Zombies, Alien Invasion, Riots, etc) and basically at the beginning of the "game" your in a random start location.
-A Bus -A Train -In a car on the Bridge, tunnel, highway, suburbia -In a building (school, work, home).
Lets say at night for most thrilling psycological effect, I haven't fully through this through but its complete sandbox game, there's no objective other then to survive, thats it thats all... well in the case of an alien invasion scenario you can help fight it off I geuss that takes more thought though.
So the focus for now though is survival, so you need to figure out how to pick locks, need to find food or sources of food and clean water, keep yourself alive and healthy as injuries could slow you down...
And you only get one life so when you die your character is permakilled and have to make another one so survival is important! You have to find weapons and ammo for certain weapons, maybe even make your own ammo.
Finding, repairing and maintaining vehicles for cross country travel should go in. And in all this time things will be constantly trying to kill you, including other players who go eff it lets kill them so you have to watch out for everyone.
Things like temperature matter, you don't want to be outside if its getting to freezing temperature! So you will want to keep yourself warm and find firewood and make sure your wearing proper clothes!
I can imagine we could put in some kind of (accelerated) harvest moon type gameplay so you have to grow some food if you want though this still implies finding your way out of the city! And who knows if any transportation method will still work?
So far I invision two main angles, the Alien angle where you have 2 main NPC factions fighting it out and your stuck in the middle and have to make hard choices, or zombie survival horror.
I think I am on to something here, if it can be refined so its realistic enough yet still abstract enough (like say with accelerated day/night cycles) people could have fun with this.
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Specifically, what you have just described would be a niche game far smaller than even EVE. It might be enjoyable, but it would never have more than 10,000 players. I suspect that adding permadeath to a hostile setting with default PVP would do a pretty good job of driving away the casual player.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Thats debatable as alot of people will at least try out a zombie survival horror game even if its Nintendo Hard level of difficult where they might have not tried out a space sci fi game.
Like I said its the idea, balance and what not can be figured out later, its getting a solid gameplay plan of what this would offer to you as the player that matters.
Basically what I want is to combine several of the aspects of a few games like left 4 Dead, Half Life 2 and Fallout 3 with some possible "empire building" aspects and plop in a sand box and away we go and from there tinker on an additional layer for the Alien Invasion bit.
People are driven away from Perma death games usually because the time they invest into their character is akin to emotional tramau when they lose said character, if this can be kept to a minimum and possible made so that when you make a new character your technically starting gameplay wise where you left off the emotional blow while still great shouldn't alienate players.
So if theres no experiance and levels and everything is done through practice and your own skill at manipulating mouse and keyboard keys then your not really losing an emotional investment its just you and a crobar and whatever you find along the way.
Though there are arguments FOR a more oblivian styled leveling systems with skill usage but that can always be decided later.
But niche game or no niche game it is still a good start.
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posted
The show was a decent concept, not too well implemented, but a few pretty interesting bits.
Basic premise was that the military created a perfect facsimile of the real world and then simulated a nuclear apocalypse on it. Players could enter the game and until one took over the game and warped it.
It was one of three shows that Chris Carter made when he got bored of The X-Files and was trying to escape. Then Fox cancelled every one of them and made him continue X-Files which must have been fun.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: The show was a decent concept, not too well implemented, but a few pretty interesting bits.
Basic premise was that the military created a perfect facsimile of the real world and then simulated a nuclear apocalypse on it. Players could enter the game and until one took over the game and warped it.
It was one of three shows that Chris Carter made when he got bored of The X-Files and was trying to escape. Then Fox cancelled every one of them and made him continue X-Files which must have been fun.
And my idea for a game? Any comments?
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posted
There haven't been a lot of survival horror themed MMOs (I think I remember hearing of one, and that was on the all-text interface level.) MMOs need a client base that will stay, and more to the point, they need not to have a significant number of people who run away and tell everyone they know who plays MMOs not to waste their time.
Even if a player doesn't lose much more on a personal level than equipment for dying, coming back and find your faction has been hacked to bits isn't going to encourage people. Permanent death combined with PvP seems to promise a griefer's paradise- a jerk kills you, and the next time you meet him, he kills you with the shotgun he took off of your previous character's body. Little bands mob the starting location, killing off new players for their starting equipment. The first person who finds an exploitable loophole becomes king of the world. And so on.
The underlying idea has some potential, but you can't seriously expect people to care about crops and preparing for winter and crafting ammunition and so forth if their biggest worry is that they're going to be blown away by some idiot calling himself "100Z3rPunk" who doesn't care about any of it.
If I were going to take a cue from L4D, it would be this: either dying makes you a zombie, or if you want to play PvP, you start out as a zombie and live with it (so to speak.) Let human players grow and develop (and permadie), and let zombies respawn but remain relatively underpowered and not develop- maybe the only recognition of long life being a kills-since-last-respawn count or some cosmetic change.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
permadeath is largely something I got interested in from playing Necrosis which is a survival horror themed neverwinter nights pw. I think part of the key to it is preventing abuse. I think perma death could work, maybe give you 3 lives per week so if your idiotic youll die and reward you with being careful.
At the least there should be a permadeath pvp server and one where theres a little more effort involved, it radically changes playing styles between servers with permadeath in NWN and servers without it, a noticible DROP in jerkass tendancies in servers with permadeath.
posted
I like the "only PvPers are zombies" idea. Permadeath by itself is going to make the game so niche as to be completely unfeesible.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I like the "only PvPers are zombies" idea. Permadeath by itself is going to make the game so niche as to be completely unfeesible.
Well part of the thing is I like STALKER and like the idea of some faction based warfare so some pvp betwen factions struggling for survival and supplies the idea is to have the setting as crapsack and depressing as possible so that those who sturggle with each other against the odds can stand out as a light in the darkness while those backstabbing eachother as soon as possible seems like an acceptable alternative.
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posted
You could have a place that acts like a opening world, wake up in a hospital if you are human and have to scrounge and get out to find more humans.
Also you could have a few zones where there is alot of people, maybe for trade or to protect small farms or something where space is limited but there is no PvPing allowed there, or snipers that make sure you don't try to attack anyone. Expanding that region to try to make a profit though could bring in raiders and zombies, in which case you can hire people to protect you or get a band of farmers together.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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posted
Blayne, this is a very, very common idea. I've seen versions of this idea posted at least a half a dozen different times at various places around the internet. I do think there's some way this could be great. But all the stars would have to perfectly align. There are so many problems with it, conceptually, that it would require, I think, a team of very creative people to iron out all the details. If you really want to develop games, my suggestion would be to start spending time on forums and websites dedicated to game development, so you can get a better sense of what's already being discussed amongst potential/possible future game developers...
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
"Crapsack and depressing" is a fine line to walk. My intuition says if you have a team of designers with a clear vision in mind of how the experience is going to be crapsack and depressing, you can achieve something that is, shall we say, "C&D" but still evokes the feelings that make people want to return to try again. By contrast, if you invite anyone and everyone who has enough computer skills to go online and fill out an application form to make the game "C&D" for their fellow men, you will succeed in making the game "C&D" beyond your wildest dreams... And make something that very, very few people want to play.
One of the bigger conflicts I see now in the current run of MMOs is the places where PVP and PVE overlap. Again, if I fight off wild animals and cache weaponry and scrape together crops and stand watch for my community against zombies in the dead of night and then get killed off by some twit who I'm trying to help who's fresh off the boat and hasn't made the same time commitment, I'm either going to leave and spit invective on the game in every forum from here to Timbuktu, or I'm going to come back with a vindictive grudge as exactly the kind of person who made the game a wreck for me in the first place.
PVP needs to have firm limits, otherwise it becomes a trainwreck. Look into the early days of Ultima Online. A grim and depressing game that finds spots of hope when players work together could trigger all the right reward centers and lead to interesting social structures. A grim and depressing game in which you have to watch out for other players as well? I think I'd prefer reality.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
So.. is this different that Fallout only in that it would have the horror element?
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
And would be an MMO, and would have an alien invasion element, and would be realistic and maybe hundreds of different reasons, it would be more accurate to say it would be S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky meets Left 4 Dead but Online.
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posted
This would work better as a stand alone (or team) RPG. I don't think there's a way around the griefer problem of MMOs.
I had this idea some time ago for an apocalypse game where you build yourself a compound and try to continue living. Points are awarded for your quality and length of life after the fall of civilization. Possibly the game is extended when your avatar has children.
You would also have to decide who you let into your compound and manage their "Personalities." Every NPC under your control would have personality traits that are slowly revealed and influence how you run your compound including how to distribute your precious resources. If you displease them too much, they overthrow and kill you. (Game Over).
There would be salvaging missions and farming and the occasional attack from other humans who want what you have.
I think it would be fun.
Expansions could include zombie apocalypses and other things Blayne mentioned.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Mucus: "It's just a game" (quoting the link provided)
Blayne: "Why the hell are you even here? Seriously why did you bother coming here if you were just going to be rude? " (note, two questions asked)
Mucus: Directs BB back to the source of the previously typed "it's just a game" quote.
Blayne: "I don't have questions, I want feedback on the idea for this game to help refine it." (ignoring the two questions he asked less than two hours earlier, and bringing back the thread's "me" focus)
Not everything is an attack, man.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: Wow.
Mucus: "It's just a game" (quoting the link provided)
Blayne: "Why the hell are you even here? Seriously why did you bother coming here if you were just going to be rude? " (note, two questions asked)
Mucus: Directs BB back to the source of the previously typed "it's just a game" quote.
Blayne: "I don't have questions, I want feedback on the idea for this game to help refine it." (ignoring the two questions he asked less than two hours earlier, and bringing back the thread's "me" focus)
Not everything is an attack, man.
What two questions are you talking about?
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posted
Question #1: "Why the hell are you even here?" Question #2: "Seriously why did you bother coming here if you were just going to be rude?"
Both hostile reactions to what was not an attack, but merely a quotation from the link in question. "It's just a game" was part of the opening credits of the show!
posted
The over-all idea is a good one, but there's still a lot of bugs to work out.
Maybe have PvP servers or areas for more Experienced players. I would shy away from the permadeath though;it really is a major turn off, unless it too is on another server. I mean, if you've been playing a game perfectly for three years, then one day you underestimate the size of the zombie horde coming your way, and you run out of ammo, then the last three zombies take turns eating your brains while you try stabbing one to death with your pocket knife, and you have to start all over again, kinda makes you wanna shoot your computer.
I'd defiantly go with a stat system though. Not being able to beat a game because you can't type "sjtushesthdwltucvowasya" or move your mouse in a square then a triangle then a circle also seems like let-down.
Posts: 16 | Registered: Mar 2009
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posted
0Meg: And sorta X-Com style because your individuals would have stats.
Every so often, a message could pop up saying that one or more refugees arrived. Or you could find them while looking the nearby town. You see their basic stats, like one man, or young woman and maybe a few of their traits that could be determined with an interview... (Maybe the old man is a farmer. Maybe the young woman really knows how to scavenge) and you decide if they join or move on.
(I've never played Harvest Moon)
Blayne: I thought your idea was cool and reminiscent of mine. Thus the "I had this idea some time ago" phrase in my original post. I still don't think it would work as an MMO though.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Hey if Lord of the Rings works as an MMO ours can as well
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posted
Pixiest, that's scary. I've had thoughts about a really similar type of game. Even down to the different people having different personalities.
After playing Spore, I concluded that a game of that scope would likely end up being really shallow.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Thats because Spore was overly hyped and was too cartoony. I was only disseminated in the lack of the water mammal phase but other then that it was exactly how it was shown at E3 by Will Write a long time ago so I got exactly what I expected.
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quote:Thats because Spore was overly hyped and was too cartoony.
Actually, I don't think it had anything to do with those things.
I think it's that when you try to include that many game play elements, you don't end up doing any of them that well.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: I had this idea some time ago for an apocalypse game where you build yourself a compound and try to continue living. Points are awarded for your quality and length of life after the fall of civilization. Possibly the game is extended when your avatar has children.
You would also have to decide who you let into your compound and manage their "Personalities." Every NPC under your control would have personality traits that are slowly revealed and influence how you run your compound including how to distribute your precious resources. If you displease them too much, they overthrow and kill you. (Game Over).
There would be salvaging missions and farming and the occasional attack from other humans who want what you have.
I think it would be fun.
Sounds kind of like Stephen King's The Stand: The Videogame. Not that that's a bad thing. (And no, said title does not actually exist, it's just what it brings to mind.)
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
My game idea about the post-apocalyptic-pregnant-woman is coming to mind, although I have a feeling that throwing in zombies could easily ruin the "maximum bad taste factor"
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
There is also this game, that is currently stuck in "development hell" per wikipedia. It's called Winter, and it's a survival horror game with an everchanging environment, as a storm piles more and more snow onto the game landscape.
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