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Posted by: EchoFiction84 May 8 2010, 11:13 PM

Ok, I'll begin with this.

I've been playing Shadowrun since 1997 and it has been a wonderful game to see grow. I've been around the net as a young kid - I'm 25 right now - reading sites like Blackjacks SR Page when it used to get regular updates, haha! Just have had some wonderful experiences with the Shadowrun universe in general, namely, the RPG and video games.

Which brings me to my next point, after a little bit of background on my Shadowrun experience.

A video game.

I'm new to this actual board but have been following dumpshock for as long as I can remember so if it's taboo to talk about the possibility of a new game, then I am sorry, but here I go.

I believe that a proper Shadowrun RPG with on-line capacity would kill the markets.

Plain and simple...so...why hasn't any game developer noticed this yet?

Perhaps they haven't had much attention to it, seeing as how the latest Shadowrun installment tanked worse than Project: Hope did back in the day. FPS games like this latest Shadowrun with a somewhat banal storyline/system just don't work and it was evident. Good concept, bad delivery.

But what about a Shadowrun RPG that focuses on all the aspects of the RPG that we have grown to love. You start out, create a character and bam, away you go. With the scales of GTA and Fallout 3, it is evident that one developer should be able to crank out a high-scale Shadowrun game.

Or here is another great idea like I had witness develop over at fireproclub.com...how about this idea.

We start an on-line revolution and WE be the ones responsible for a new game.

I firmly believe that this is possible.

Do you?

Posted by: Thanee May 8 2010, 11:36 PM

Yes, it is possible. It also takes A LOT of time and money for development to do right.

We'll see eventually, hopefully, what Smith & Tinker will do with the license (at least, I think they still have it).

Bye
Thanee

Posted by: Karoline May 9 2010, 04:00 AM

I don't know, I'm not overly optimistic, especially after the butchery that was the Shadowrun FPS. But it isn't just that, but often companies get ahold of something that has support behind it, and just push out crap because they know they'll get decent sales from the fanbase, regardless of the game quality. Movie based games for instance almost invariably suck, but still sell reasonably well compared to the minimal amount of work the company has to put into it. In other words, a quick buck.

Now, that said, good games can come out of a license. DDO for example is a great game, they actually put alot of effort into it and remained fairly true to the rules, changing them just enough to make them playable in an MMO.

I think the problem with getting a good SR video game, is that the fanbase is smaller than D&D (to my knowledge) and so there is less incentive to make a game for it, particularly a really good one. The last SRVG relied on 'Hey look, magic and high tech and coolness' and flash and glam to get people to buy it, as opposed to making a good game (by all accounts it was absolutely horrid, even ignoring how it basically ignored SR entirely).

Okay, I'm just rambling now, it's late and I'm watching a movie while typing this.

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 9 2010, 04:29 AM

I would hazard that it's because you're incorrect


Not really, not at all; Shadowrun in a form that resembles the RPG is very much a team game. Without the Rigger, Decker, Mage, Face roles all filled, it's very difficult to get anything done without serious contrivance, and it's difficult to get those in fewer than three characters while still being reasonably effective.

So right from the get-go you're looking at either playing a game that needs to be played in small groups (good luck) or taking on the very hard problem of creating a teammate AI that doesn't make you want to shoot it.

Then there's role. The difficulty of allowing the player to do anything but shoot stuff. A whole lot of other problems that I don't have time to devote analysis to.


Better start your revolution somewhere where the cease-and-desist orders don't reach. I'd also suggest having a pretty big gameplay-design document before you start asking for code donations.

~J

Posted by: Caine Hazen May 9 2010, 05:40 PM

Kage is correct, there were at least 2 previous efforts to do Srun MMO-style games that have been shut down by Microsoft. They currently hold the vijeogame licenses and don't much feel like sharing. After the abysmal FPS sales and reviews, I think they'll just sit on it all a while longer before giving anyone any rights to doing Srun on the computer (which is also one of the driving forces that keeps us from having offical software chara gens)

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 9 2010, 06:29 PM

It would be a lot of fun if they made a SR FPS similar to Deus Ex. You could incorporate a lot of fun shlock into it. You'd only get on-screen HUD information if you had a Smartlink, and otherwise you wouldn't even get a reticle unless you toggled Aim Down Sights. Wired Reflexes would let you turn bullet time on and off. Astral projection would let you float around in noclip spectator mode but your vision would be all jacked up. SR2 style decking would be like a FPS mini-game that looked like Tron. Hell yeah!

Posted by: Stahlseele May 9 2010, 07:08 PM

i still have screenshots of the loading screen and log in screen of the shasowrun online MMORPG that microsuck killed to guard their shooty piece of trash from quality competition . .

Posted by: TomDowd May 9 2010, 07:37 PM

Even before I left FASA I was involved with two SR multiplayer online games. The first effort was intended to be either on one of the early enhanced BBS systems, either America Online (shortly after it changed from Q-Link) or GEnie. A decent amount of design work was done before everyone realized that to do the core ideas right it was just too damn big. A few years later, Jordan Weisman, myself, Sam Lewis and a few others locked ourselves in the FASA conference room for three days and whiteboarded out everything that an online multiplayer SR game would need, and again it was decided that it was just simply too big. (One of the cooler ideas we had for the earlier project was that we were going to recruit some of the various SR writers, like Charrette, Hume, Stackpole, Findley, etc. and have them act as the "CEO"s of the various megacorps and ask them to provide a couple hours a week time to providing overall corporate guidance and direction to their Johnsons. "This week is "Bend over Fuchi week". Have at'em boys!" The actions of the player-characters would affect a "corporate stock market" and so on...)

Shadowrun to be done right, needs multiple worlds: a physical world, an astral world, and the Matrix. The first two have related, but still different, graphics requirements, and the third is off on its own*. And the three need to be synchronized, and you have to be able to swap between any of the three relatively easily. Layer on that the multiple game systems you'd need, and the backstage infrastructure for generating and managing "runs" and so on... The scope is enormous and significantly larger than anything out there, when all is said and done.

Will it ever be done? I don't know. Do I wish that someone with a skilled team and the funding would take a crack at it? Hell yes. Would I want to be involved? You're damn right I would.

TomD

*Now, understanding that this was probably 1993 or 1994, we even went so far as to bring in some computer graphic specialists and run some numbers as to whether or not it would be feasible to have the physical world and the astral world share the same geometry but have different texture sets. The question was whether or not both texture sets could be stored simultaneously in video RAM so that the magician characters could swap between astral and physical perception at will with minimal lag. The answer was it could be done, but the amount of available texture space for each "world" would be insufficient for creating a cool world. Certainly today video cards have far more VRAM available, but the expectation is proportionally higher as well. I suspect the same problem would persist even today.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 10 2010, 03:09 PM

See WOW, the dead world after you have been killed.
Also, the Matrix needs to be made to look like Tron to be successfull *nods*

Posted by: Caine Hazen May 10 2010, 03:54 PM

funny you mention that Mr Dowd... I used to bug Sam Lewis when we were playing Star Wars Galaxiesb about that sort of thing. He mentioned it had been thought about some, but not that you had all meet about it

I do love Sam's take on video game economics, so it doesn't surprise me at all to hear about using the writers as a Corp CEO of sorts. He seems like he'd be into a Srun world with someone actively in charge of the economic situation.

Maybe we just need to get you guys locked back in a room with a whiteboard

Posted by: tete May 10 2010, 04:08 PM

I think if the World of Darkness MMO actually comes out and is even 1/2 as successful as EVE is for CCP, Shadowrun may get an MMO. The problem is everyone wants then next WOW and WOW had a certain right place at the right time factor on top of being a solid game.

Posted by: Tanegar May 10 2010, 06:58 PM

WoW's spirit world isn't really comparable to Shadowrun's astral space. It's the same geometry and the same textures, just rendered in monochrome. The only thing that changes is the sky.

Also, see Tron 2.0 for Tron in videogame form. Yes, Shadowrun's Matrix needs to look exactly like that.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 10 2010, 10:09 PM

I liked the game Tron2.0.
It was hellishly hard, especially the boss fights, and the ending sucked, but else it was pro ^^
Also:
It could have been!
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4596349497_c7aa92579d_o.jpg
It should have been!
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3284/4596965254_c07ec0f837_b.jpg
But alas, poor yorrick, it wasn't meant to be . .
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1365/4596965156_8f278600d8_b.jpg

Posted by: EchoFiction84 May 10 2010, 11:52 PM

I agree with a lot of people, good ideas.

I read that Mr. Dowd had commented on size limitations and what Shadowrun could conceivably require in terms of disk space...I'm no gaming designer but I'm pretty sure that with it being 2010, it shouldn't be a problem.

If I am guessing correctly, it would require more space to say, present a game like Grand Theft Auto where there are constant changes and a seemless and endless game play, i.e, no "scenes" like in the old Genesis version when you'd taxi between districts/cities. I would think that a Shadowrun game with that "cut play" style where it's basically just a bunch of scenes that you can go through would be pretty interesting, however, allow enough time for free form in the play but have the majority of it isolated places, buildings, arcades, blah blah blah. Anyone remember that Westwood Games version of Blade Runner?

With regards to the astral/physical/matrix aspect, it would be tricky, yes, but not impossible. I am sure that the various "other" planes of astral and matrix would suffer in the long run in order to dedicate more effort and interest in the real world, that doesn't mean those avenues wouldn't have an entertaining aspect of two to them. For instance, again, the Shadowrun on Genesis...for that time, the matrix game play was amazing, IIRC. There were rave GamePro reviews for it, I had that issue. I think with some re-working, a matrix would be greatly possible, not to mention an astral...

However...for some reason, I find the astral aspect of the game seeming to be a lot more difficult to represent. That whole "monochrome" comment up above sorta crushed my idea, lol! Remember on [insert old Nintendo game here] when you'd encounter endless bad guys, all the same, just a different color swatch. Exactly. Just cast a few new colors over the world, teak some aspects of technology and what possesses how much essence, throw in some baddies and bam, astral!

I'd like to see the real world detailed, however, and I believe that is where a lot of the gamer attention would be focused on. Games like Second Life give us a great psychological profile of what people seem to like in video games and it just proves that people, evidently, don't mind or might enjoy to various extents, that of living a second life inside a virtual world.

With that said, I will leave the conversation at that. Just think of the possibilities that one marketing team could come up with, things to entice players to the game. Just think...in the Shadowrun MMO, you could garner tons of consumer attention by having them do menial things but its fuuuun...I have friends who play The Sims, don't you? Including that aspect in it would bring a whole new level to MMO, in my opinion.

Whereas WoW is more of a dungeon crawl, there aren't many options like their used to be with say, Ultima Online. No more puchasing small hamlets and setting up shop.

...Just imagine...

...You log onto the Shadowrun MMO website, checking out the updates...You read that in 8 days, 925 various rooms will go on sale at the newly-opened Renraku Arcology. You buy your stuff, you hold something rare, it creates and demands respect in an on-line world.

If the Shadowrun MMO was to be a modern-day frankenstein, all of the parts needed exist in various games today.

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 11 2010, 12:14 AM

I'm not seeing the comment you refer to. He refers to the scope of the nature of Shadowrun as vast, which it is (as mentioned, three and a half worlds of varying separation), and the scope of the resulting plumbing as being similarly vast, but I don't see any mention of asset size. Or did you mean the comment about textures in VRAM?


Nope. The trouble with seamless is that you need to load it while the player is still running around doing stuff (and maintaining acceptable performance for the stuff they're doing), rather than being able to stop everything until your assets are loaded/processed. There's no inherent space increase, although you're probably going to get some extra padding springing from the fact that you now have not just point A and point B but also the route between them, plus you might not be able to use some aggressive compression anymore. Anyway, that's not a significant factor.


So is getting a medal in the Olympics. We're not looking for "possible", we're looking for "achievable"


This right here is part of the big problem: Shadowrun is so huge, conceptually speaking, that things need to be sacrificed to bring it down to a reasonable scope, but by the time you've done that you don't have Shadowrun anymore.


I thought you wanted a Shadowrun game, though?

~J

Posted by: TomDowd May 11 2010, 12:45 AM

I wasn't referring to disk space, which would still be significant, but rather the amount of character and object textures needed to be kept in a video card's dedicated memory at one time. Going by the current (April 2010) user statistics for the Steam service (found http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey) about 36% of all systems profiled had 512 Mb of available video memory, which while significant can get chewed up rather quickly.

Streaming has pretty much replaced the old pause-and-load technology these days, so that would not be an issue for loading large worlds. It requires careful level design and implementation to ensure that old areas aren't being swapped for new while other things (like say, physical/astral/matrix/vehicle combat) is going on.

With enough players attracted to all of the aspects of Shadowrun you pretty much have to committ to delivering on all fronts if you want to do something that is actually Shadowrun.

TomD

Posted by: EchoFiction84 May 11 2010, 01:22 AM

So would you say that the Genesis version wasn't real Shadowrun because it lacked an astral plane?

You as well as I know that you have to make sacrifices at times in life and not putting as much work into the astral plane as say the alleys and club scenes in a Shadowrun game isn't gonna cause waves.

At least, not too big of them.

I agree with the saying that Shadowrun is a vast and open concept, which is why this hypothetical game would require such as vast and revolutionary game play in order to capitalize on the whole stop and pause game style.

Posted by: TomDowd May 11 2010, 01:27 AM

A fair point. I think there are some different expectations today, however, but it is still a fair point.

TomD

Posted by: tweak May 11 2010, 01:45 AM

I thought the Shadowrun Sega Genesis game did a good enough job of getting Shadowrun right. I'd love to see an upgraded version of this game on the DS.

Posted by: KarmaInferno May 11 2010, 02:56 AM

The irony is that there is a Shadowrun-ish MMO out there, but it'd probaby be considered to be firmly on the Pink Mohawk side.

Anarchy Online.

It has cyberpunk. It has magic. It has the matrix. Its even got the whole megacorp-vs-gutterscum-vs-megacorp conflict.

But most folks don't think of Shadowrun when they look at AO.

BTW, isn't Sam working on that Cartoon Network MMO these days?



-karma

Posted by: Karoline May 11 2010, 12:13 PM

I remember Anarchy Online. I used to play that year and years ago. Didn't realize it was even still alive. I hadn't really discovered SR by that point, so I never thought about it, but yeah, it is fairly SR like, and was a good game.

Posted by: Teknobabel May 14 2010, 01:53 PM

I felt I had to log in to post in this thread (it's been a while, although the system still has some pm's in it from 03).

Designing a game for shadowrun comes down to one thing: How many features can you pull out and yet still have a game that resembles Shadowrun.

You can either go for the 100% experience (open world mmo) or you could go for a limited subset (fps, urban brawl, combat biker game, anything that implements a unique aspect of shadowrun in a game with nothing else).

The 100% experience will never occur other than in a subscription based stream of content releases mmo, where the content that everyone wants will be steadily released over time after the engine got developed. The odds of this happening are slim to none, because WoW pretty much has the mmo market cornered (cept in places where the fanbase is loyal to the point of insanity, see CoX). And the expectations placed on every new mmo that has a great license (take Vanguard, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online) these days means it'll invariably be labelled a WoW Killer before anyone has even seen a screenshot.

The limited subset has great promise, but you have to start the game from the position of the IP first and then engine, not the other way around (which I still reckon is how the Shadowrun FPS got made). As a matter of fact there already exists a game with hacking, cyber implants and classes (read species), it's called http://www.dystopia-game.com/overview and is pretty much a 2/3rds shadowrun game as it has no magic or astral. Could the shadowrun dev's do what Games Workshop did with Chaos League? Would be a smart thing to do, but I'm dreaming if it'll ever happen. Not to mention that you can continually expand the game to add extra game modes like combat biking (add vehicles) or urban brawl (as already done in UT).

Few screenies to get the idea of cyberspace in Dystopia

http://www.dystopia-game.com/media/v/screenshots/levelspix/cybernetic/cybernetic11.jpg.html

http://www.dystopia-game.com/media/v/screenshots/levelspix/cybernetic/cybernetic12.jpg.html

I'll take a game like Dystopia until a Shadowrun game comes along, the cyberspace element of dystopia is what sets it apart from other fps'es out there right now. Having an astral mode wouldn't really improve it as you'd be stretching the players on each server even thinner. If you can't find the action as everyone is in the physical while you are zipping through the astral all alone, it won't enhance the gameplay, and gameplay is what you want.

Posted by: Thanee May 14 2010, 03:56 PM

The MMO that came closest to the feel of Shadowrun was Neocron. It was quite buggy, and set in a more advanced future, but nonetheless it had many, many great ideas (some of which even current games struggle with) and was a lot of fun.

Bye
Thanee

Posted by: Dumori May 14 2010, 06:57 PM

Ive seen similar things done shaders can be used as well as a full texture swap.

Posted by: Starmage21 May 14 2010, 07:38 PM

Iono about you guys, but for me, grand theft auto games ARE shadowrun, just without magic.

Posted by: Karoline May 15 2010, 12:18 AM

Or hacking, or cyberware, or paracritters.

It does have the 'run' kinda feeling to it though, as you go around doing missions and such.

Posted by: Drace May 18 2010, 07:38 AM

Not going to lie, an MMO for SR would be amazing, and the party/team work angle would work nice with how people play them now, but I honestly doubt it would be even close to a success. Look at almost every game that has come out since WoW. Most are toted as the next best game, or as previously put, a WoW killer, and honestly most of them are better. But soon enough, most of the player base jumps ship and leaves to the next big MMO, or goes back to WoW. Happened to EVE, WAR, AoC since I played them. Even the majority of the ones that came out years ago couldn't keep a stable enough player base to have a WoW comparable profit, and most companies wont bankroll a project that wont make them any money.

A single player SR game may be good plan, if done right it could have the graphics and include all the material needed for it to be SR. It would just lack the team aspect, which is a huge problem. It would need to be a plot-tracked game like the Genesis and Nintendo versions, or have the runs tailored to be done several different ways (astrally, magically, force, guile, techno, matrix etc) which would mean having a much smaller game since all the coding would be for customized gameplay. But if done right, who knows, could possibly make enough of a stir or get enough attention to green-light a future MMO down the road.

Posted by: Teknobabel May 18 2010, 10:51 AM

You might be able to get Bioware interested

http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davidgaider

Posted by: Karoline May 18 2010, 01:36 PM

Hehe, and I was just thinking 'You know, NWN would be a good way to do the SR game.' That way you have it totally playable as single player, and go ahead and include the tools and capacities to go online and do a GMed session.

Posted by: EchoFiction84 May 20 2010, 10:39 PM

All good thoughts, above.

I was thinking about this for a while now since I lost my password I'd jotted down on a piece of paper and am now just getting back to logging in, HA!

As for the game of Shadowrun itself, someone made the comment that GTA was Shadowrun just without the magic...That is a sad statement, sorry.

As I think back to when both Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2013 were getting off the ground, there were two distict lines, among others, in the rpg/sci-fi world that shunned the aspect of magical natures (those people usually played CP2013) and then those who took a mystical approach to it and bam, we grabbed Shadowrun. I should also mention I am a HUGE fan of CP2013/2020 - fuck v3.0 -.

I got out my SR2 rulebook and compared it to the CP2020 main rule book, both of those books an update on the prior system, SR1 and CP2013 respectively. I started to notice that CP2020 is much more "hip" to violence and the death culture, whereas Shadowrun addresses death and struggle as a part of life, Shadowrun didn't contain things like CP2020's "Body Lottery". Or, for another example, most all of the rules contained in CP2020 are combat-oriented. Everyone from back in the day knows that CP2020 is way more violent and brutal than Shadowrun. And that's fine.

It's easier to make a video game like that.

I think that a base Shadowrun game could be established and from there just use DCL content, with occasional new titles, if needed. With the nature of Shadowrun, DLC packets could contain so many things, it's endless.

Hell, the factors in making an actual Shadowrun game are endless. Just think if it factored in what sort of clothing you wore to a meeting with a Mr. Johnson? What if say you had a better chance of [insert game parameter] because you spent $4.75 on the recent Shadowrun DLC pack, which infact, contained the Mortimer of London 2056 Fallcut Black duster. Ohhh, ahhhh, DLC, $$$.

A base game would do well, something simple. People mention that everyone needs to be done properply, and I agree, but you can also do it one-at-a-time. You don't just BUILD a house. Release the base game with all features but say, the astral isn't the best. Ok, well, it takes another 9 months for the two packets to be released that really energized the astral/Magician aspect of the game.

The smell of garlic 'ghetti sauce from the kitchen is good, I must get going, Haha!

One, another thing...

MMO = The worst idea...ever. Details as to why.

Posted by: Tanegar May 21 2010, 09:40 AM

Charging for DLC is a fabulous idea from a business standpoint, but speaking as a player it pisses me right the fuck off, especially if there's no gameplay. If you're going to make an expansion, then make a goddamn expansion. I comprehensively refuse to pay money for virtual clothing.

Shadowrun without magic is not Shadowrun. Astral space, astral perception, and astral projection are integral parts of Shadowrun's magic system. Take that away and you turn a Shadowrun mage into a WoW/WHO/EQ/generic fantasy wizard.

Posted by: Karoline May 22 2010, 03:24 AM

But you also don't sell the skeleton and then say in a year or so you can spend money to add a roof, and if they get around to it, maybe sometime you'll even be able to buy walls.

Posted by: mrslamm0 May 23 2010, 06:33 AM

Actually there was a fan based shadowrun mod that was in the works a while back but went missing called Shadowrunner nights. It was pretty interesting though now all you can find of it (last time I checked) was a modern d20 mod instead. *Shrug*

As far as a SR MMORPG I would love to see and would drop wow in a heart beat for it but im not holding my breath. I am curious to see what the shadowrun awakened team is planning to do with there project but that will be a while from what I have seen.

If you cant go a mmorpg route on it I would like to see a GTA/Saints Row game made of it but with a LAN/Internet option for it so you and some buddy's can go shadowrunning together.One can dream =)

Posted by: EchoFiction84 May 23 2010, 05:34 PM

You are right, you don't do that...but you get formica counters at first, then marble when you can afford it.


If you read anything at all of my previous posts, you'd realize that I am very adamant about including all aspects of the game and not leaving one of them out, especially magic, which made SR different from CP.


If a SR game was to appear, it'd have to have revolutionary concepts in order to bust the mold. You couldn't do the whole adventure and kill shit like in WoW...you'd need different and interesting concepts to catch players attention.

Have you noticed that in the last 10 years, video games have taken on a more "mimic real life" mentality. Second Life in Japan, for instance...The Sims in America....people getting married in WoW...sure, some might be isolated instances derived from a hardcore gamer...but it starts with one, then three, then ten, then thousands. Wildfire affect.

Include new systems like a stock market, having to find a place to live/rent, make it challenging...all of those aspects are and can/will garner attention/interest. Remember Wall Street Kid on NES?


Shadowrun without magic isn't Shadowrun but a Shadowrun game with a constantly developing and growing magic system is Shadowrun.

Posted by: EchoFiction84 May 23 2010, 05:37 PM

I didn't see where I said DLC couldn't include gameplay expansions...

Posted by: Dumori May 23 2010, 05:39 PM

What would make a good MMORPG woul be real death. Its an iffy concept but done well it can make a totally different MMORPG. Dieing is permiment would add a permium to items in a diffrent way and would also make combat a different kettle of fish. Teaming up and stashing gaer in safe house would mimimise the probelems and ofcorse there would have to be some for of account wide bank system other wise dieing would mess you game up too much.

Posted by: KarmaInferno May 23 2010, 11:25 PM

What would ruin an MMO will be... other players.







-karma

Posted by: Tanegar May 24 2010, 05:32 AM

No, you never said DLC couldn't contain gameplay expansions, but the one specific example you cited is the one that pisses me off the most: the kind of DLC that consists of mainly aesthetic elements, yet has just enough mechanical benefit to make it attractive enough to the hardcore set to blow $5 on it. This is one of the more insidious forms of power creep, IMO. Sure, all else being equal, a player who has this package is only at a slight advantage over a player who doesn't. But you make enough such packages, and after a while you see that the players who have the most disposable income to devote to the game are at a huge advantage over players who can only pay the base subscription rate. This has two effects: first, it breaks the base. Now you have to choose who to develop future content for: the hardcore players who buy every DLC and thereby contribute far more per capita to your profit margin, or the (probably much larger) group of players who buy some or none of the DLC and therefore cannot handle the same power level threats that the hardcore players can. The second effect is that it serves to deter new players from signing up. If there's a laundry list of DLC that are considered "essential" to play the game the "way it was intended," that's an enormous barrier. Even if there are only five such "essential" packages, that's an extra $23.75 surcharge on top of whatever the regular startup cost is.

You wanna do expansions to an MMO, look at CCP, developers of EVE Online. Every few months, a huge expansion, with new gameplay elements, balance tweaks, bug fixes, you name it. What do they cost? Nothing. Bupkis. Nada. Zip. $0.00. The development of these expansions is paid for from the subscription fees. That's how you expand an MMO and build a loyal customer base at the same time. EVE might not get the press that WoW does, but believe me when I say the players over there are super hardcore. I oughta know, I used to be one.


Also, this. Having to deal with the endless asshattery of other people is the primary turnoff of MMOs for me.

Posted by: Karoline May 27 2010, 01:04 AM

I've seen this done and work in MUDs, and it tends mostly to be on games where RP is more important than having 1337 5ki11z. Combat tends to be done only in groups, and only sparingly, and great caution is taken with what you fight and such.

The other thing about combat in that sort of game, is that it takes like 3 minutes to kill something, because they want to make sure you have time to run away, or even get disconnected and jump back on and maybe still have a chance to come back.

The trouble with doing something like this on an MMO is that combat generally needs to be quick, and SR combat is quick, with .75-1.5 seconds being plenty of time for someone to die. Now obviously the time frame of death would have to change for an MMO, but it would still generally be too short to have any chance of coming back and surviving. And of course with SR being largely a team game, you have the serious problem of getting morons in your group that train a bunch of enemies at you, or people who get dropped and suddenly the entire team falls like dominoes.

I think what might be better is to see alot of enemies using non-deadly ammo like SnS or gel rounds instead of bullets, and deadly ammo having the chance to be circumvented by DocWagon (Which you could call before you go critical to improve your odds of survival). In the first case you'd come back outside the prison with all R and F items removed from your person (maybe a good SIN could let you keep X items, or some kind of plaming/con roll) and a big chunk of money missing (for bribes, once again adjusted by negotiation or some such) and likely some kind of penalty for running against a particular company for a while (they now have your prints and DNA sample, so they'll have an easier time figuring out if you break into a facility). Waking up from deadly ammo would have you with your items and such (Or not, depending) and a huge hospital fee with emergency rescue.

Still, the largest problems you have to get around are people getting disconnected, and protection against idiots. For the first you could maybe get to pick some AI to run your character until you get to a point where you can drop out of the mission or reconnect. The AI could be something similar to the FFX.... was it 13? The one where you could basically set up battle tactics for your characters by doing things like 'heal anyone if at 30% or less health' and such. Basically set up something like that to run if the game ever detects that you've been disconnected.

As for handling idiots, I figure an account based 'referal' system of sorts, where people can write that you did well, or know what you're doing in general, or that your a moron who will train the entire compound onto you. Include of course a -100 to 100 score that others will see to get a quick idea, and maybe even have it affect the person's karma/nuyen gain rate. Some potential for abuse, but it could be handy.

P.S.

I think the other reason you don't see permadeath in MMOs is that if you've worked on a character for ages, and then that character dies, you might be inclined to give up the game, and MMOs want to minimize any incentives you might have to give up the game.

Posted by: Dumori May 27 2010, 08:57 AM

True. I play guild wars with survival in mind thats you die go make an new PC its much harder you play like a sissy and this is a game where death is common. Yes a "perma" death MMO would be dicey ground but if you make "lvling" up not a massive boost and keep most gear low down on the price as it is in SR really. It has potential that other MMOs don't.

Fire-fights in the SR MMO could easily be made more tactical the game would then reward skill in the player not grind time as much. www.mortalonline.com uses similar idea but i've yet to try the game.

Posted by: Teknobabel May 27 2010, 11:50 AM

There is a way that could combo the two approaches, the limited subset and the 100% experience, do what Torchlight did, make a limited subset as a tech demo of your game engine, then release an mmo down the track. Torchlight just broke 500,000 copies sold to, nice way to generate cash flow when you are in the middle of a dev cycle for an mmo.

And as for astral space, piss easy to code, just do it the same way phasing is done in wow, for things like invisibility for mages and such like.

Posted by: nezumi May 27 2010, 12:39 PM

Like in Shadowrun, if you have a bad rep, you don't get jobs, you lose contacts, and some NPCs will just start shooting you on sight. Sure you can blackball someone for no reason, but then that gets back to you if it proves to be false.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 27 2010, 01:54 PM

Perma Death for certain character types would be on another slate though . .
AI's, Free Spirits, Cyber-Zombies and Jar-Heads. Everything else could work as usual.

Posted by: Karoline May 27 2010, 05:43 PM

I'm guessing none of those would be included from the start, and have a decent chance of never being included as PC options without some really heavy modifications. Free Spirits for instance are nearly impossible to kill, though being unable to use the character for a couple weeks after death would sting.

Posted by: LFG May 27 2010, 08:04 PM

Near death was one aspect I really liked about the old sega rpg. I'd imagine Doc Wagon style NPCs could be worked into an MMO or multiplayer game. Could do something like eve online and adjust contracts based on total skills, attributes, and character type. RP wise these rising costs could be tied to expense of saving magically active and high threat areas; imagine having to pay for the death of an npc that came to save you. Base contracts wouldn't even include high threat.

Man, this makes me wish m$oft hadn't messed up their game.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 27 2010, 10:37 PM

Makes Me wish they had left SRO in peace.
As most of the stuff discussed in here was planned for that one . .

Posted by: Teknobabel May 28 2010, 12:16 PM

This has already been sorted out, they'd just make it so that each player has the equivalent of a top level DocWagon contract and you get ressed at the hospital with some negatives to your stats for a while, they do this in City of Heroes (ressed in a hospital), in WoW (but they make you run back to your corpse).

If the street cred system in a Shadowrun MMO was actually written well it'd be 10x more useful than the rep system from WoW, which has changed from back in the day where a rep grind to Argent Dawn would actually take 40 runs of scholomance getting the dragon flesh quest item each run.

And then there's this guy: http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8167/xinhuaninsanity.jpg who'll powergame his way through anything you throw at him.

Posted by: Big Freaky Sean Jun 4 2010, 06:40 AM

Here is something by accident:

http://www.sixthworldgames.com/games.html

Its a video game company studio looking for a personal and a publisher, but they essentially just ripped off Shadowrun. No idea how far they will get with their game as the PC gaming industry is more or less dead IMHO - except for MMOs and Starcraft.

Posted by: gridlinked Jun 4 2010, 02:42 PM

I think it's nearly impossible to do a Shadowrun game that would satisfy fans. The features list is so extensive (and you just need to look at the comments about physical world + astral + matrix), the world so complex, that the required game is either a triple A RPG a la Dragon Age / NWN, or a triple A MMO, specially considering doing a good MMO with tons of content is one of the more expensive propositions nowadays.

If we ever want to see another Shadowrun game done, we would have to accept that the game wouldn't be able to have everything, at least in the beginning. Because it will be extremely difficult for any company to get the kind of budget that SR requires.

Posted by: Blade Jun 4 2010, 04:02 PM

I think it's nearly impossible to do a single Shadowrun product that would fully satisfy 10 dumpshock posters.

Posted by: Stahlseele Jun 4 2010, 04:21 PM

http://video.golem.de/games/3264/deus-ex-human-revolution-trailer.html whoo O.o doesn't THAT sound like Shadowrun? ^^

Posted by: Abstruse Jun 7 2010, 06:11 PM

Yay, dragging up a dead thread!

However, Mr. Dowd was speaking about the processing power of having dual textures for everything in Physical and Astral. I used to play Ultima Online (6 years clean next month) and, in that game, when you died everything turned black and white. Same textures, just the color pallet was turned greyscale. How hard would it be to create a system that did something similar, but any active components (character avatars and NPCs) have a different texture? And, since it's astral, it wouldn't need to be as detailed. One for each character type and just differ the colors based on emotional states (which could be simplified to something like combat ready vs. not combat ready, wounded vs. not wounded, magically active vs. not magically active). If you want more info beyond that, you would then have to attempt to assense the target using your...whatever the hell the 4th ed skill is for it is, I'm too lazy to look it up. Then you get detailed info similar to the sort of AR HUD you'd get on users if you clicked on them (like in UO, you could get someone's basic that were available on-sight by pulling up a menu on them).

Just a thought...I'm just a casual gamer and not a game designer or programmer...just seems like it doesn't have to be as hard as it sounds.

Posted by: Blade Jun 7 2010, 06:29 PM

No, seriously the whole physical/astral texture thing is a non issue. Today graphic cards can do a lot of fancy operations on the fly that would do the trick. Switching between thermo/low-light works seamlessly in a lot of games and making something similar for the astral world isn't a problem.

Posted by: Stahlseele Jun 7 2010, 07:31 PM

that is the EASY part though. . .

Posted by: Abstruse Jun 7 2010, 07:31 PM

Frankly, I wouldn't care if the graphics were on the level of Nethack...I'd still play it.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Jun 9 2010, 01:45 PM

It'd be neat if the Astral WASN'T a clone of reality, that it was depicted as similar but distorted, like the way the astral plane in the Soul Reaver games was depicted.

Like in an urban blight area the buildings grow slightly and look even more oppressive and gloomy, while a wilderness area would look even more wild and lush. You could even have areas become more or less accessible due to the distortions.


-karma

Posted by: Fuchs Jun 10 2010, 10:44 AM

Did anyone check into APB? All Points Bulletin, new MMOG/FPS.

Posted by: Stahlseele Jun 10 2010, 11:35 AM

A Point Buy?

Posted by: CanadianWolverine Jun 11 2010, 03:45 AM

http://store.steampowered.com/app/57500/



.....

Oh yay! We are talking about one of my favorite subjects again!

First off - Forget a ShadowRun MMO, it would suck. The biggest point of "suck" for me IMHO would be essentially once I paid for my digital BBB (or DVD boxed set if you still retail despite most brickNmortar treating PC gaming like a-holes) for x amount of $ plus the mothly subscription ... and then it runs out, my character's involvement in that world goes *poof* and I have some useless digital form of a BBB on my digital shelf. Oh, I want to use it again? Better fork out for another month! *gags* And you thought the DLC cash grab was sick.

Next up - This is a way better point than my first negative nancy point. I buy (usually on a 50% or more sale) and play a lot of games and they all have a lot of elements that scream Shadowrun to me:
XCOM, Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Jagged Alliance 2, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, No One Lives Forever 1 & 2, Vampire Grand Theft Auto series, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 (and expansions and DLC and fan made mods and servers), Splinter Cell, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Alpha Protocol (want to get) ... and the list can go on and on as I am sure you are all aware.

I think the possibility of a Shadowrun "video game" is more than just a possibility with all the good games that have paved paths along all the various elements that make up its diverse setting. I believe the games not only represent that the technical and thematic hurdles can be over come but that they also represent there is a market among gamers in fairly profitable numbers even at the ridiculous margins of AA or AAA games after all the involved parties get their piece ... and that is only the start too, when you start getting into expanded content thanks to community efforts and commercial ventures with a stable development platform to launch off of for new content which costs less to produce into an established loyal bunch of consumers who are active in participating in communicating their desires to purchase new product...

Oh, and PC Gaming is far from dead, the big publishers are just pricing themselves out of the market with their inefficiencies due to lack of meaningful discourse with their consumers, that is a power vacuum new and innovative independent (free of most publisher restraints) are moving into, especially thanks to expanding Digital Download platforms or even self distribution they are cutting out the middle men for bigger piece of the pie.

Oh well, I guess until Smith & Tinker wake up and realize that the piss poor showing had a lot to do with it competing in the wrong section of the electronic gaming market (Multiplayer FPS - taking on the likes of the Unreal Tournament series, seriously?) since it didn't hold true to its RPG roots, I'll just have to content myself with all the other games that have elements of the Shadowrun setting and mechanics that new releases seem to have little problem entering into. *shrug*

Posted by: Tanegar Jun 11 2010, 05:05 AM

An MMO subscription fee is qualitatively different from DLC. Running however many server farms it takes to have an MMO costs money, and lots of it. The subscription enables the basic functionality of the game. If nobody subscribes, there is no game. The fact that it also pays for continued development in the form of new features and content is a bonus. DLC is nothing but content, and usually not much of it. (I have to say the first Borderlands DLC was pretty good, though, more like a small expansion.)

Whether or not you are willing to subscribe to the service is, of course, a personal decision, but please don't try to argue that the subscription fee is somehow a ripoff.

Posted by: CanadianWolverine Jun 11 2010, 06:10 AM

Oh, I understand that is why the subscription fee exists, perhaps if an individual could set up their own server rather than have to buy into it I might not disagree so vehemently with the model, but in comparison to other existing models, IMHO, it is a rip off. The expansions of the NWN series and Guildwars series were far more desirable for a customer such as myself. I quite enjoy as well that my copies of games don't have an expiration date that I feel I have to play right away to get full satisfaction for my entertainment $, that's a load off that it is, not having another bill to worry about on top of the essentials already taking up the majority of my monthly income. I simply detest the MMO subscription payment model as a consumer.

I liken it to being akin to if a book I bought goes out of print, doesn't stop me from reading my copy and I don't have to pay again at that. But if I was told I had to pay again in order to continue reading my copy of SR4A repeatedly and at my leisure? I don't think I would have bothered picking it up in the first place.

So yes, I will try that argument, heck I'll live it and not spend a $ on an subscription based game, thank you very much.

Posted by: Dumori Jun 11 2010, 08:47 PM

Guild Wars is a still active and to and extent thriving MMO with out subscription.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Jun 12 2010, 11:36 PM

Guild Wars is an odd duck in the MMO industry. (And yes, I know a lot of folks don't consider it a true MMO)

It relies on purely box sales, which also means it relies on a steady stream of folks purchasing boxes. This is a mix of new customers buying the game for the first time and existing ones buying the expansions.

This however means they make a LOT less profit than a standard pay-to-play MMO. Or even a Micro-Transaction MMO, which is what most other so-called "free" MMOs are.

I can certainly believe they are turning enough profit to be 'comfortable'. I think, though, that a part of the reason they're still around is because they are attached to the MMO giant NCSoft. Since NCSoft has multiple other MMOs out there oing quite well, they can probably afford another one that might not be quite as profitable and thus are willing to keep it around.

Another game studio might not be that willing, especially since most of the other studios at most have one MMO running and don't have the 'padding' to spend on riskier propositions.




-karma

Posted by: Tanegar Jun 13 2010, 12:08 AM

Neverwinter Nights is not and never has been an MMO, and is irrelevant to this discussion. Guild Wars, as KarmaInferno pointed out, uses a unique revenue model, and even its own developers http://www.guildwars.com/products/guildwars/features/default.php

Posted by: CanadianWolverine Jun 13 2010, 05:32 PM

Er, I didn't classify NWN as a MMO and it is very relevant to this discussion about a SR "video game". Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the multiplayer side of Neverwinter Nights 1&2? There were persistent community servers last I checked.

Are you trying to say only MMO games are only relevant to a discussion about the possibility of a SR video game? If so, I very much disagree with that opinion. We have plenty of praise even without the nostalgia for a decades old SR single player video game and heap large amounts of well deserved scorn on the more recent SR multiplayer FPS video game - what should that tell you about only using multiplayer games as examples for a possible future SR video game?

Irregardless of classification, if a game uses a subscription model so I can use its mechanics and content only while their servers are up doesn't work for me personally as a customer and I am sure I am not alone in that opinion.

Posted by: Tanegar Jun 13 2010, 07:03 PM

Now I suspect you of being deliberately obtuse. You're the one who brought up NWN and Guild Wars in relation to MMOs, in a thread where the last ~1.5 pages of discussion has been about MMOs.

(emphasis added)

In point of fact, I am firmly convinced that the only way to deliver the Shadowrun experience in a video game is in a conventional multiplayer (not massively multiplayer) format, possibly but not necessarily including realtime GM capability. A single-player game would either need some damn impressive teammate AI, or it would have to be a squad-based tactical game. As for MMOs, once you open the door to every Tom, Dick and jackass on the planet, the experience goes right out the window and it's just another grind.

Posted by: CanadianWolverine Jun 13 2010, 11:55 PM

Honestly, not trying to be obtuse at all. The sentence you put emphasis on, it was not my intention to say those were MMOs but rather games that met my expectations of being able to pay once, play with no strings attached, and bonus, the games provided multiplayer experiences if that is what I wanted but they also provided single player experiences as well. That those games were not MMOs or subscription based is why I brought them up, they served as examples of another option to the problem of a electronic gaming space that would serve the needs for SR game that players could run together. I think NWN was especially good example since it also allowed for the GM interaction in the game play in addition to all the custom content generation with a player side client map designer and if the scheduled instanced games didn't work out, one could visit the persistent world servers with multiple GMs / server admins.

I hope you can see now, we weren't really disagreeing at any point, perhaps I wasn't clear enough or perhaps you didn't comprehend. *shrug* Oh well, neither here nor there but I hope it has become apparent there is stuff there we agree on as well.

Ugh, the grind, the completely unnecessary dragging out of repetitive tasks either to advance character level or complete a gather x items job that doesn't even have any impact on the setting. Definitely a point not in a MMOs favor without a doubt. But how do you feel about instanced mission areas? I heard D&DO uses those to good effect by having goal oriented missions rather than the grind fests.

The Tom, Dick, and jackass thing we manage to over come though by finding like minded individuals, which is usually done just by joining a game in which the GMs of that server promote a particular style of play and joining a gaming community / clan. I find things like Steam and Xfire friend list pretty helpful as a way to end up in a multiplayer game with others I know I will enjoy playing with. I figure dealing with the a-holes is just par for the course of playing a multiplayer game.

Posted by: Mr. Mage Jun 16 2010, 03:14 PM

That does sound fun, kind of a mix between Oblivion, Modern Warfare and well...I guess Deus Ex....hehe....
Until your vision hits stores I guess I'll just have to make do with the three I mentioned though.

I personally would not want to see a Shadowrun MMO, and I have a few reasons:

1) Because even though it wouldn't be SR without separate, Matrix and Astral Planes, that is a bad idea (IMO) in MMOs
Only some people would be able to access each of these worlds so you'd be excluding some of the players outright. Also, having multiple worlds might get a little annoying. It's hard enough making just one realm of existence (i.e. the video games material world...or whatever you call it) but making two more that are supposed to be parallel might get a little difficult.

2) The system doesn't transfer well
I am particularly in love with SR because it has a very deadly system. As you gain Karma points or money, you keep getting more powerful spells, new skills and bigger toys with which to kill your enemies. However, your enemies often already have those bigger toys, and as you increase in karma, you don't tend to increase how much damage you can take before dying. This is a big thing in SR in that character advancement works a bit differently than conventional MMO advancement. in WoW or Everquest, as you gain levels your weapons and abilities get more powerful, but you and your enemies also gain a buttload of hit points to offset that. Plus, SR is a levelless system, freeform, I don't know of any MMOs that are already like that. If you find one and give me a link though, I may change my opinion a bit...maybe.

3) Stop with the new MMOs, I've got plans
Despite my two earlier arguments, and any others I might think of, it will still be SR as an MMO. I will buy it and pay for the subscription just like I did for Age of Conan, Matrix Online, RF Online, EverQuest 2 and Guild Wars (tho Guild Wars is free to play, but I still had to buy the game!) not to metnion the multitude of console games I play both online and offline. I am currently playing WoW only and would like to keep it that way. I only plan to stop playing WoW when and if the Warhammer 40k MMO arrives (which is being worked on by Vigil Games, if you're interested). If a SR MMO comes out, then that is money and time which will not be spent on WH40k. I'm not a millionaire after all!

So I say: NO SHADOWRUN MMO PLEASE unless I win the Lottery...