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Would you play this if it got made?
Sekbron
Member Posts: 10
Hey guys,
I read this forum quite a bit but never created an account. Despite that in the years I've been lurking, I can't help but notice the lingering sensation that everyone is burned out on traditional mmo's ( myself included ).
So, more to the point, I have been developing an MMOTPS engine for a couple years and am pretty much done. So now comes the content stage. So I figure I'd go directly to the players.
My request is simple, I'm gonna write out a general game description for what we're building, and you guys can tell me what you like / hate about it.
Would you play a game where:
-Sci-Fi
-Your character is a modable tank.
-Combat actually requires real time precision ( non automated ).
-If there is grind it's generally against other human players.
-Territory can be won / lost, which actually changes the mob spawns etc.
-The inventory system is comprised of hardware components for your tank.
-Inventory spec is primarily responsible for how a character plays.
-Inventory spec cannot be changed out of city.
-Inventory spec is based off managing heat, power and weight rather than attribute requirements.
-Attributes help enhance specific areas of play rather than create requirements.
-Three factions blow each other to pieces to pursue their ideals.
-Mobs can be affiliated to a faction and help defend.
-Time invested widens the gap but does not completely shut out players from killing you if you're sloppy.
-Quests deal more with current needs and random encounters than predefined pickup.
-Combat consists primarily of 'RvR'
As an indie developer with a full time non game job, it's getting harder and harder to motivate, so I feel that getting people involved would push me to finish it.
So, thoughts, comments, suggestions?
Looking forward to your feedback.
Comments
First of all GRATZ dude! Can't believe you actually made an engine must of been tough solo. I like your ideas it's really great stuff. You asked for suggestions and didn't know what I should put so I'm just telling you what I would like in a game and maybe you might consider some of them. I like the Sci-fi based plan you have too it hasn't really been explored all that much in games.
Ok, if your even considering this stuff or you may not be there yet but a game with a well balance of classes and skill based mmo would be awesome. Now some people say you can't have classes and be skill based but you can if you think about just think about CoH/V or SWG pre-CU, or CU. Also a game that has a good balance of PvP and PvE for both audiences. Alot of people would prolly just tell you "I want a sandbox!" but alot of people don't really realize what a sandbox is. If you ask me a Sandbox is a game were I am not forced to do anything and I can still progress, lots of creativity, and Freedom to roam anywere and explore everywere. If that makes any sense. of course there are restrictions to a sandbox their like the walls but I don't want to get too side tracked.
Also I know this would be hard but try not to make the game repetitive because I think thats what gets alot of people. I suggest looking at the LFG section of the Forums to see what people are wanting if you haven't already done that.
Gratz again on the Engine,
Deck.
P.S. A game that is also strongly player based would be nice to if it isn't too risky.
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END
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(names used in previous games)
-Desitre -Desiboy -Verra -Auroras Borealis -Scaven
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looking forward to...
Bioware's MMORPG
Stargate
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The op is talking about the game EVE right ??
The fasted thing in EvE is a webbed frigate getting blown up.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Sounds like Jumpgate except with tanks instead of space ship fighters.
I actually thought it sounded sort of like Auto Duel.
Eve does not use real time aiming. The only Pay to Play game that does that right now is Jumpgate Classic and once released Jumpgate Evolution and on the human avatar side DDO to some extent. But DDo still has to hit rolls. If you swing and the guys jumps out of the way you get not roll at all if you swing and make contact you get to roll. Jumpgate has no rolls if you manage to hit the guy it does something.
Neocron and Tabula Rasa have FPS=like action, but its automated aiming and , in the case of Neocron, to hit rolls as well. These games are not real time aiming they simply limit targetting and play around with selection and interface to have a more "shooter" feel. I think its a fun thing but its limited.
The biggest thing that would turn me off on this game is the same thing that turned me off with Eve online. I can not get into the role of playing an inanimate object whether it be a tank, a spaceship, a car, a flower, a rock, a grain of sand, etc etc etc etc. There is no emotional attachment for me to an inanimate object, there is nothign that I can more readily empathize with, if that makes sense.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Well technically Auto Assault was a lot like this, but it also did not have real time aiming. A lot of people called AA Auto Duel as an MMO. But AA was not real time aiming although its sticking targeting was slightly collision based and you could sort of manual aim turrets it wass essentially sticky targeting or a sort of catchall target if you used a cone based manual aim target.
However AA also had classes like DAOC with class powers and those interacted with the loadout via power useage or weapons so that is not really a great comparison even if people made it a lot.
Load outs themselves are a very common thing in vehicle based games really. They all follow similar trends in how they handle them and what they do.
For example in Jumpgate you can change your Capacitor and your Power generator. This affects your power cap and power regen rate. In addition your throttle affects your regen rate. So if you want to fire a lot of lasers really fast you need a great generator or you need a mediocre generator and slow down some. Conversely you would need a big capacitor to shoot a slow firing powerful laser.
I am sure I could come up with 10 different vehicle games this is similar to. Eve also has a Power cap versus power usage/regen dynamic. Elite, X-wing (kind of), etc etc
I would say though that if you take Eve versus Jumpgate these dynamics mean something kind of different. In Eve power management is a sort of stategic resource useage. In Jumpgate its more tactical because of the realtime fighting. By that I mean if you are pretty accurate and a good pilot you might go for the one big hit type configuration, other people might like to harry the enemy and fly ships that fire often.
In Eve its about the math behind it. You might fly a Crow and get to a certain distance and out fly the eneimies turret rotation. In Jumpgate there are good and bad tactics and loadout depending on ability. There is still a backing math behind it but you have the added consideration of whether or not you can pull it off. You can make a ship that flies like an Eve Crow, but some people may can't fly that evasively or fire in a devastating enough way. And other may be great at it.
In Eve if I am flying a certain type of ship and I see a Crow if it has the right loadout and I have the wrong loadout, I'm probably screwed. In Jumpgate its not so simple because in a similar situation the fast. delicate, hard hitting tactic might be tactically superior but it also has to have a pilot behind that can execute that tactic. And that tactic has very little margin for error. If you think you are a very good pilot at your chsoen tactic you might gamble. In Eve no matter how good I am I would probably warp away. Yes pilot knowledge and execution is important in Eve, but that is different. Its not the same as a person's ability to aim and another person ability to fly in such a way that it messes with that.
If the Eve Crow manages to maneuver itself to the correct rotation you are pretty screwed. Getting there can be tricky and may require some impressive maneuvering. But its a very different thing. Even though the loadout part for the ships is essentially rather similar the thought process behind become rather different.
What if its First Person like a flight simulator and not third person? I think that making vehicles Third person may be a big mistake these games are making.
Both Eve and Auto Assault make their game third person. Eve I dunno it a little differnt, the game itself has a rather distant feeling and it not really a flight simulator anyway. And Eve is so vast in scope that first person just may not make sense.
But a lot of people complained that Auto Assault did not have a sort of "I'm inside the car looking out the wind shield" feel to it.
The fasted thing in EvE is a webbed frigate getting blown up.
Bad situation to be in :S
You took the words out of my mouth. If you can't beat them - join them, become a MMO Developer. Being a fellow Indie Developer myself, I congratulate you, Sekbron.
I understand how much dedication it takes to see a project of this magnitude to completion.
I LIKE games with extreme amounts of character customizing options. I LOVE games with insane amounts of character, weapon/tool, environment customizing options. A modable Tank is a good start to luring me in, but, being able to mod every tiny aspect of the tank/weapons is a hook.
Let me throw a few more things into the mix, and address some comments.
Many people, some in this thread, hundreds otherwise, have argued that Auto Assault's initial lack of a person to play made it very hard to get attached to one's vehicle. People in fact complained so much that they added it later on. Pirates of the Burning Sea underwent a similar transformation, but did so before Beta ended so most people did not notice.
As a developer, I want to make something less like the norm. I am still inclined to omit a person you can actually walk around with. However, this is not about personifying the tank to try and role play it. It still remains about role playing the pilot.
One of the games that I think did this right is Mech Warrior 4. You were driving around large, interchangeable mechs. Getting attached to it didn't make too much sense as you constantly got upgrades and changed it. However, you could customize your mech, paint it different, load it different. This still reflectedindividual play style and character. Furthermore, the player frequently interacted with other characters in game. The dialog, as well as the pilot's image and expressions was enough to sell me on a connection with the cause. That may not be everyone, of course.
So I don't think the ommission of playable persons necesarily shuts out role play as long as those persons are still represented in some way.
As for the loadout comments. The inventory system we have in mind is similar. The battery includes max power, generate includes rate etc etc. Everything will be tweakable. Even individual item settings letting you overclock some things. Many things in gaming require large amounts of time and resources. However, implementing complex math systems usually doesn't take that much time. As such, the inventory customization will be deep, even if there is not alot of content at first ( graphical, and other content takes forever ).
I would try this game. Anyways, I would just like to add my 2 cents. I think it would be cool if you had players/pilots and vehicles/tanks. It would be cool if the players could progress both their character and their tank. For example, you can create your own character, increase skills, and even fight in combat without a tank. The player could then enter their tanks when needed. Anyways, I would prefer more of a MechWarrior type of tank. This could add things like cockpits, escaping your tank when damaged, etc. You could even make it so each individual part can be damaged, like legs, guns, etc. (A system kind of like the Toribash limb damage.) I don't know if it's possible but it would sure be cool.
I don't want to be a spaceship, I don't want to be a car, and I don't want to be a tank.
- Burying Threads Since 1979 -
Well if you manage to do all that and add an interesting backstory so we know why each of these 3 factions wanna blow each other to pieces it would turn out quite well. Iam sure i (and alot of other people) would give it a shot. Good luck with it and hope everything turns out right
I never said I was trying to be different simply for the sake of the difference.
The initial decision to omit players came about because of two factors. Neither of these are stubborn design nor being different for the sake of being different.
The first reason is a technical one, in many parts.
-One off content takes time and resources more than dynamic solutions. This is the difference between procedurally animating something vs keyframing all possible movements this thing can make. We do not have good keyframe support in the engine currently, and we also don't have a strong ability in keyframe content creation. As such, many things are procedurally animated. Vehicles are much easier to procedurally animate than people, by several levels of magnitude. It is not 'easy enough to do' on an MMO scale.
-You also have to remember that making real time collisions accurate over the network is not trivial. Especially so when animations are 'soft' as with fleshy things. A tank is a very rigid body, and because it is procedurally animated, we can very accurately validate shots, as well as diseminate that information.
-The way our netcode works is geared very much towards vehicles. What this buys us is the ability to scale much better than current engine solutions, which is why I made a new engine. Our bandwidth footprint is much much smaller by order of magnitude than your average FPS and even top of the line titles such as CSS. This allows us to fit many more people on our servers than previously allowed. However, avatars break this in a way because they do not have constant turning rate and acceleration. This of course can be remedied and 'faked' but it would make them handle clunky.
-Our current usage of vehicle allows us to do an unprecedented amount of latency mitigation, which involves mathematically constructing the world model client side, without knowing all the data necesarry, and synchronizing it with the world space, rather than always trying to catch up. Avatars would break this math, or at least require a great deal of refactoring.
The second reason is based on design.
-Tanks kill the shit out of people in war, breaking that makes things make little sense.
-The maps are set up to be traversed very quickly, avatar speeds would make the game shit to walk around in.
-An entire inventory system would entirely different game mechanics would have to be devised for a small subportion of gameplay, inevitably making it rushed and shit ( see Pirates of the Burning Sea personal combat ).
Anyways, as you can see, this has nothing to do with me being stubborn. It is simply a decision that was made on fair ground, and with the realistic goal of releasing the game as a small indie team in mind. If it was very easy to put it in and lots of people enjoyed it, we would put it in no problem. However, I don't think this is the case. Regardless, thank you for the comments, the feedback is appreciated.
sounds near my dream game, would definately play it if it was well done. not as keen on the mech tank type part of it, which sounds ok, reminds me of molten core games which where quite fun.
suggestion: have 3 factions loose. ie if you choose to kill someone in your faction you get fully demoted (lose all rvr status/ranks) and kick out, but can join the other factions.
suggestion 2: have one of the factions basically not a faction just pirates/outlaws. so they have a free for all ruleset. they can attack anyone without penalties. this satisfies the FFA crowd, and the faction vs faction croud. you choose whether you want to be part of a massive faction or the wolves who can scrap amongst each other.
My blog:
OP seems to know what hes talking about. either do vechicles or do avatars, doing both is too much work for an indy company and will suck anyway.
My blog:
No worries, there is a back story, and although it's nowhere near complete at the moment, the factions do, in fact, have a reason to blow each other to pieces, three different reasons even since each faction has their own agenda on Verga, which is the planet this takes place on.
Thx for the good wishes, and again, thx for the feedback guys, this actually helps quite a bit.
I'd suggest going with player created factions over RvR. RvR makes sense for WAR because they are bound by the IP. You are not. So instead, give some thought to 'Alliance PVP' like EVE Online has.
And you can still have RvR on the side for casuals. That's what EVE Online does as well (gallente / minnie vs caldari / amarr).
Interesting that you really know what you're talking bout tech side. Sounds very good. I wonder what type of "tanks" do you mean? Just a regular tank rolling around sounds not very versatile
See what makes EVE Online interesting there are many different types of ships like Haulers, miners, carriers, dreads, titans, and so forth
By sticking with a constraint like a "Tank" you are limiting your title to combat only. Instead, I'd suggest looking into also adding support for other types of vehicles as well along with Tanks.
Anyway as is still sounds great what you listed. I'd play. I'd be open to any payment model although I choose 'subscriber' on the chart. Because thats what I'm used to.
- Burying Threads Since 1979 -
The RvR was a point of focus for us. It allowed the team to focus on an initial path, to try and take it slowly.
I did not want us to cast our net so wide as to lose focus and fail before some sort of non vapor release.
However, player faction territory has always been a huge plus for me. For all it's faults, Neocron's system provided me with some of the most fun I've ever had defending our outposts. As such, it is not completely off the table for expansion into this area to occur. Initially though, we will be RvR.
The term tank is used as all encompassing. Many of our vehicles may not be tanks. However, as before, it is mainly meant to provide focus. One thing we won't have is armored cars though.
I actually think you are doing a good thing by omitting avatars. That forces you to think out of the box and plus you are focused on "one mode of operation". Meaning, your artists can focus on mechanical and technical details rather then spread themselves to thin focusing on vehicles + pilots
That is too much
What EVE Online great is that they focused on their strength- ships. They are just now adding avatars and many players consider it 'fluff'
Like you decided, I would stick with one mode of operation. Either go with walking avatars or vehicles. Not both for limited resources.
That is wisdom and that is what MMORPG developers do already. They focus on one mode of operation normally and later, add on the fluff