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MMO concept: Players as the Enemy in PvE.
adam_nox
Member UncommonPosts: 2,148
Lotro experimented with this on a small limited way. And if this is a redeux of previous topics, my apologies.
You know what's wrong with normal factional pvp? Neither side is meant to lose. Okay that's not all that's wrong, but that's a fundamental source of discontent magnified by the slightest imbalances in classes, population, and organization.
Imagine a system that can appeal to hardcore perma death crowd, full loot pvp'ers, give a sense of achievement to one side, and be non-threatening to those on the other? It's literally an mmo for the full spectrum of mmo gamers. Maybe you see where I'm going, but let's flesh this out a bit.
One side would pick your normal classes, and play like many mmos already do. The good part of about this concept is it does not dictate what kind of leveling system should be used. Skills, levels, etc, all can work. Good guys play the normal mmo, except that some enemies, like goblins, orcs, bandits, etc, all the way up to dragons are controlled by players, who will try to use their wits to overcome the distinct advantage in raw power good characters have.
Most enemies would still be npcs, and those enemies can be killed by both sides. The monster players would be the 'smarter' races of monster. Each area balances the level/power of both sides, much like GW2 does, so that there's an opportunity to do some more interesting things regarding enemy players.
For example, permadeath. An enemy player chooses from a few race/class choices, and picks a spawn location. They get an overhead view of the area, and can try to avoid or ambush a player. If they are careful, they can skulk around killing npc monsters to increase a few levels (very quickly). Players who die to monster players drop gold. When a monster player dies, it's permanent. All levels, gear (if any) etc are lost. There would be a leaderboard, with all time, monthly, weekly achievements of the various monster tiers that died with the highest level, most gold, most player kills, etc.
Upon death, a monster player could spend their gold to reincarnate as a more powerful monster (otherwise, they go back to tier 1 choices). But outside of the lowest 2 tiers, the slots for enemy players is limited. That's so that these higher tier monsters can start to be real threats without zerging. As more slots for a tier fill up, the gold point cost goes up as well. Imagine accumulating enough points to reincarnate as a dragon. Hard to kill, lots of abilities, and a major threat to anything less than a full group of players, but only a handful of slots open (or per instance).
Good characters earn special bounty points for killing enemy players, the higher the tier, the more they get. They can use these points to buy elite level equipment and items.
The vision is to have packs of organized monsters picking their prey, causing real trouble (oh I forgot, their ability to kill town npcs as well), usually eventually dying. Eventually some packs becoming legendary with the amount of xp and levels they've accumulated, but always having to be careful and avoid running into organized groups of players. And on some occasions, perhaps due to server events or modifiers, instances where monsters go all out war on towns and players have to push them back.
God what a disorganized mess of a post this was.
Comments
This is the FUTURE.
Unfortunately, this is forward thinking. It takes years for the masses to realize potential.
There are two kinds of people in this world. People who pick their nose.. and liars.
Players as PVE bosses is a flimsy enough idea. Mentioning permadeath makes it even worse.
Asymetric PVP can be tons of fun, and I'm certainly open to games trying out new formats of PVP. It's tough to balance so you end up using certain tactics as failsafes (like games where both teams get a chance as an attacking team which is allowed to be slightly overpowered, but both teams are competing to have the faster victory time.)
An easy-to-imagine example would be 10 vs 10, Zerg vs. Protoss. The 10 protoss players control 10 zealots with tons of MMORPG style abilities like you'd expect in MMORPG PVP. The 10 zerg players control individual zerg units in a giant swarm of AI-controlled zerg (which tend to move in formation along the player, but they're zerg so it doesn't feel like a formation). When a zerg player dies instead of respawning at base they respawn in a nearby zerg unit almost instantly (probably one fighting right on top of the player they were attacking.) Each individual zerg unit has a smaller set of skills than a single zealot, but zerg players would also influence the units which automatically respawn and AI-move to their location, allowing them to act as sort of Battlefield Overmind for a small squad of zerg.
Certainly you can replace it with Humans vs. Zombies or Humans vs. Goblins to fit with a more classic fantasy setting, and the idea of controlling singular powerful creatures or a swarm of respawning creatures would be more or less the same.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There are two kinds of people in this world. People who pick their nose.. and liars.
I don't want to PvP. That's what's wong with it.
I wrote a thread about IF GM can control monster before.
Only have 2 post and they ask why GM , not player. I don't answer it because it will pain for me , my engrish's bad.
Being monster's a "job" and it not for player because player are unstable.
They have they real live so you can't count on them to do an important job as in game NPC.
It true that NPC and monster need more smart to make game evolution.
With currently technology , it imposible to have a humanlike AI .
But if human control over them , then it will make a huge diffrence.
My concepts are the GMs , like old paper tablet RPG , control over monster and NPC in the RTS interface.
They give monster more smart tactic and make them lively . Some time control over game's story like monster make a raid on a village.and moving NPC from place to place to run away from monster .
It will created the live virtual world that change through human will.
But the problem of this concept's man power. You can control monster attack and moving easy with RTS interface , but it hard to control NPC.
You will need alot "actor" to control over all NPC. It will cost alot US money to created a complex system like that. Even a top company like EA or Activision Blizzard can't stand how it cost.
You will need at lest 10 to 30 NPC "actor" per town. Controled NPC like soldiers or monsters need less , but they have be control derected by GM.
Well , that's future. Maybe that kind of game willl come out and give the birth for the new job :
GA = "game actor" who get paid for role as in game NPC lol. just like how MMORPG give birth for GM job.
As i ready said , my engrish's bad so i can't complex write out what i mean , sorry if it too hard to read my mess up post lol.
OP either you wrote this reeeal late at night, or something else. If something else, I'll take two
AoW is the first game I know of where players are used in PvE. A few bosses throught and instance summon players as adds. The players try to wipe the group.
You my friend have taken this to a hole new level.
Left 4 Dead! I absolutely love the versus in L4D, where other people play as the 4 survivors and the other side plays as 4 special infected among the common infected horde while having unlimited respawns against no respawns of the OP survivors.
Edit; The special infected can use special moves on survivors that gives a guaranteed kill unless other survivors help that player who is being pinned and helpless against a special move of a special infected, but generally survivors can just one shot the special infected in an open fight.
I only played it for few weeks because the community is from deepest bowels of hell, propably worse than LoL, and on top of that unmoderated, ofcourse. It makes the game completely unplayable unless you enjoy being the only person who is not a raging retard. Anyway, I loved the few moments I had there when the rage kids were absent or dead from some rage-seizure, and I'd absolutely want to see this kind of PvEvP in one of the upcoming MMO-shooters.
World PVP is fundamentally bad PVP, so no surprise there.
Meanwhile asymetric PVP as I described (or, as someone pointed out, like Left4Dead) could be a ton of fun. The demand is related more to the theme and gameplay quality, neither of which are necessarily going to be compromised by asymetric PVP.
Plenty of great asymetric PVP games exist. In fact the best FPS of the last 5 or so years was Natural Selection 2, an asymetric PVP RTS/FPS of aliens vs. marines.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If there were equal progression paths. Become leader of the Bezerkers. Become a mini boss lol. Could work.
This mechanic existed in Demon's Souls on the PS3.
The boss at the end of World 3-1 I think? When a player was getting close to the boss another player would be summoned, that player would take control of the boss with all his normal abilities and try to kill the player, the player attacking the boss fights as normal but the fight is now much harder/easier because another player is in control.
It really was fantastic, if you defeated the player as the boss you got some special items, it was really good fun and meant that although that boss always had the same abilities it was never the same each time you fought him.
So, players (if they want) can control pve with the rules of pve monsters?
Many would hate.
When you think about it, its just pvp against a pre-build char, with pre selected items (unless pve monsters can use items and the pve guy stole some item from someone or found it.....), that can't level, with semi permadeath (player lose their char when die but can just get a similar one minutes after it). And many would hate playing against this char.
Many would complain if all NPC monsters tried to kill them on sight. And here the monsters would not only would try to kill people on sight but would search for them.
My game has this, actually. The normal campaign is meant for players who want a traditional MMO-like experience. There's also a Hard Mode element where players assume a monster role where they are more powerful, but susceptible to permadeath.
Game is still in development though, sorry
I agree, BUT.....some people DO want to PvP and they're entitled to enjoy their playstyle too. But I agree with you 100%.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
It is a cool idea but not a new one.
Even Everquest had this feature for a few weeks before the PvE players demanded that it be removed. It was alot fo fun being a "Large Bat" in front of Qeynos and sneaking around trees to atatck unsuspecting players.
Basically PvE players weren't prepared for the challenge and Monster players used sneaky tactics like jumping players already engaged in combat and fighting as a pack.
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