12 games listed as representing SR and not a single one of them is Syndicate? You must be a young'un.

Hah, no i played the hell out of syndicate. You're right, it belongs in that list. I just overlooked it.

I think my biggest argument in favor of Rockstar's format is that just as in most MMOs, you wind up doing a lot of courier type missions early on which simply involve getting from A to B and back and even more advanced missions still rely on that mechanism not only as part of the requirement but also because simply getting from one mission to another inherently involves some method of real-time travel as the prime means. It's my opinion that a game that relies on those mechanics should make the act of getting from A to B fun enough that someone could still enjoy the game without ever doing a single mission; or consequently, even after all of the missions are completed.

Current MMORPGs don't seem to have mastered this as well as Rockstar games have.

In a modern-day MMORPG, the only things to keep a player occupied between missions are:

• pretty scenery
• killing things that can be easily ignored

In Rockstar games, you have:

• immersive environments that encourage and reward intimate exploration
• challenge in moving from one area to another (cars can run into you, you can fall off ledges and cliffs, crowds can slow you down, all of the above become obstacles when in-vehicle, disrespecting traffic laws raises your wanted level)
• entertaining denizens (npcs) that randomly autopopulate areas and unpredictably engage the player and one another; they wreck cars, they get in fights, they yell at you, they speak to each other, they get arrested
• the ability to utilize fun-to-drive vehicles that physically interact (albeit in generally destructive ways) with the environment
• the ability to explore watery areas by swimming, to enter buildings through doors
• interactive interior environments (you can go order food from a vendor or restaurant; you can go bowling; you can play pool; you can wager money; you can work out, you can go to a bar and get drunk)
• player and environment physics (ragdolls for bodies that go limp when struck, vehicles that operate as if they have real weight, you can run, jump, climb ladders, scale walls, leap from great heights and suffer damage from collisions and impact
• a world that not only allows but responds to chaotic behavior [you can go rob a clerk, but the police will be alerted to you; you can be arrested, you can escape]

I can't imagine a Shadowrun game where the only fun part about getting from A to B and back again is hunting awakened critters and ghouls along the way. (Though in certain environments that should certainly be an option!)

Hope I'm not necroposting (Thread isn't THAT old)

I actually wrote some long-ass Word document on how I'd like a SR MMO to run, but I lost it when my computer crashed.

The ideas on Finis' wiki are pretty in line with my own thought-process

- Skill-based instead of class-based ''leveling'' system. Can't be impossible, isn't this how City of Heroes works?

- As Finis' wiki puts it, a ''Phazed zone'' setting, where the Astral, Physical, and Matrix realms are (initially) invisibly layered over one another

- Random Run creation... like how the code in the Genesis game does it.. except obviously more complex than that.

- Player-created Runs. If you keep tabs on the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, you'd see a lot of potential players pushing the devs towards making player-issued bounties. A simple set-up/template with a few parameters (Type of run, payment, location, etc) shouldn't be too far-fetched.

- All the basics of SR gear. Guns, foci, programs, vehicles, drones, the whole sh'bang.

- A good housing system. My kingdom for a good (and useful) MMO housing system.

- Reputation, Notoriety, Street cred. They could almost work like ''level caps'', with high-level runs being limited to a certain Rep or Notoriety rating.

- Active NPC (and possibly PC) law enforcement. Certain actions increase your ''heat'' (again, Finis), and the likelihood of being stopped or hunted by LS or KE.

- Basic intarwebz integration. Send actual emails, personal IMs, etc through an AR ''interface''.

- An advanced crafting system. I'm tired of standing infront of a forge to make some half-assed armor that Raid armor laughs at. Seriously, most MMO crafting is downright useless (Take EQII. Very few tradeskills actually make any difference. The most prominent and profitable of all EQII tradeskills is making food. FOOD is more useful than player-crafted armor, weapons, etc.). SR has a huge opportunity to add a whole new level to tradeskills. Fake SINs, heavy gear customization, talismongering, and such. Instead of ''raiding'' a NeoNET Corp building 15 times to get your team some new program, get a hacker to build one for you.

- Active Factions. Gangs, Crime Syndicates, Megas, all of 'em. A real-time ''warzone'' of factional fighting would be neat. If a few 'runners (PCs) did runs against Ares for Horizon, have a ''Horizon Influence'' go up, and Ares go down. Benefits and disadvantages on each side. Give the players the ability to sign up with either side for other advantages/disadvantages. Like in the Genesis game, you could hook up with the Yakuza and buy the strongest armor and a neat focus at the cost of being hunted by Mafia/Eye-Fivers, alternatively the Mafia gave you free lodging and discounts at the Crime Mall. Do enough runs for a certain corp? Maybe they repay your loyalty with discounts on their goods.

- Other options to Running. This is where people might really get on about me, but I get tired of always being some sort of hero/horde who does the same damn quests 50,000 others are doing. Give the players other opportunities in life except shadowrunning (or to complement it). You can make just as much money and excitement starring in Urban Brawl. Do a little side-hacking or programming and open up a Matrix store that you maintain between runs, earning that little bit of extra nuyen. (Lord have mercy on me for what you all are gonna do to me after this one xD) Hell, even give the player the opportunity to join a Corp. Rise in the ranks, earn a fat check, and spend your time arranging PC-made runs against other corps to increase your wealth and influence

- Runs make a difference. Every other patch or so, maybe introduce a few ''blueprints'' and a deadline. Blueprints for a new product are given to one company, and other corps stage runs to acquire it. Once the deadline is reached, whoever owns the blueprints ''wins'' the item, and that corp is the one to produce it. Perhaps certain corps impose a modifier, such as Ares giving weapons an additional damage bonus, or Aztechnology lowering the Drain of a spell that would otherwise be unaltered if, say, MCT owned it.

- Did I mention Urban Brawl?

- Make Toxic Magicians playable (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Alright. I'm done ranting. Oh, and personally.. I don't think I'd enjoy Rockstar owning Shadowrun. Just doesn't ''feel'' right.
Kinda like Microsoft.

If your public awareness is high enough are movies being made about you? Can you then con your way into said movie and play yourself?
(A friend of mine did have PA 10 at the end of our one campaign...and he was the face...)

The fundamental question about what happens on character death has never been answered to my satisfaction. I've had several ideas about it. The best I've come up with: Have an edge stat, lose 1 edge per death, when you reach 0 edge, permadeath? I dont know.

Player Vs. Player runs would be a critical part of the game to me. You talk to a Johnson who essentially puts you (and your party) in a queue for a run, when another team has spoken to an opposing Johnson and also queued up, you are pitted against them. This could apply to several mission types. 1. Escorting: one team escorts a VIP, the other team tries to off the VIP. 2. insertion: one team is trying to get into a facility to get whatever mcguffin, the other team is trying to stop them. etc.

The problem is, if you have any kind of hardcore permadeath system, and a PvP system, people are going to lose characters OFTEN. Anyone who plays COD or counter-strike knows: most of the time, more than 80% of everyone involved dies. In very few cases does one team roll over the other without a single death on their own side.

Not unless they rewrote the game from the ground up since I left. CoH uses the standard class/level system, with the admittedly fairly awesome twist that you get to pick the flavor of your powers. A Blaster with ice powers is basically the same as a Blaster with fire powers, but the look and feel is different (and the secondary effects, I think, like ice slowing targets and fire inflicting damage over time).

I'm heavily in favor of NOT having permadeath. It'd violate the "ShadowRun ideal" but it would be in favor of player experience.

However, what you could do is take a hit to public awareness/street cred/notoriety for a while. "You messed up that big job, so I'm not going to trust you on stuff for a bit."

You would need a few different aspects.

First is the game similar to hitman. Missions and different ways of performing missions rather than a linear way to achieve the objective.

Second is there needs to be a reknown system where notoriety and reputation mean something. Reputation increases difficulty of missions and payoffs. Notoriety limits your missions and reduces the payoff.

The game needs to be multiplayer, but not massively mmorpg. Just limited to 8 players as part of a team.

The game needs to have user built missions. I think this would help tremendously. Response triggers, map design, and a few other actions.

Eeeh. I'm not sure about 8-P multiplayer over mmo. I already don't-play Alien Swarm (no maps) and L4D 1&2 (no people to play with, no good maps, don't like versus, no inclination).

An MMO on the other hand would mean that there's ALWAYS people to play with, that missions/maps are somewhat controlled. Players would be able to define goals and pay (which people could decide that the guy is crazy to only pay $1000 for that job) but not anything else (think about a really shitty L4D or TF2 map and how much you wanted to be anywhere else).

Psh, play yourself in a movie? Of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I don't think many MMO players are fond of permadeath. Granted, there are hardcore players who only do permadeath (At one point, EQ had a server with permadeath added. Notably, it was the server with the least number of players. It may have been cancelled or ''merged'' with another server, but I'm not entirely sure about that). Again, I liked the Genesis Shadowrun game's way of handling death. DocWagon came, swooped you up to save your butt, and took a (10%?) fee of your current nuyen ''guaranteed not to exceed 5,000''. Maybe death causes you to lose a karma point or two and some cash? No respawn until after the mission is finished/failed, or a short-timer when not on a mission (PVP)?

Rep/Notoriety modifiers should definitely affect missions, in my opinion. Do good on a job, get good jobs. Botch a run, and people are less likely to give you any important stuff.

I'd rather see it as an MMO than an 8-P game. MMOs in general have a crapton of potential, and humans innately like to socialize and be around more people, arguably half the reason why MMOs became popular in the first place. It's just sad to see that they're all cloned off EQ/DAoC/WoW, simply because that sells. If I was rich, I'd pay for some companies to make more innovative MMOs.

I think it'd be neat to introduce PVP Runs in a fashion as to what Laodicea described. Maybe just take a standard mission (say, extraction), select PVP, and have an NPC for another corp/syndicate/whatever. Maybe mark-up the payment seeing as the mission is inherently more dangerous? Shadowrun could make for good PVP though, both sides trying to secure personnel for either group, attempting to kill each-other without harming the target, two hackers dukin' it out in cyberspace along with the building Spider NPC.

Good stuff.

@ Tanegar: Ahh.. I must've misinterpreted it then. I saw a video on CoH's character customization, and the layout implied to me that it was skill-based and not class-based. Disappointing really, but even the ability to add your own little ''flavor'' to the class is pretty neat. In all actuality, a skill-based character creation system for an MMO can't be that hard.

Edit: Urban Brawl.

Permadeath for certain high power classes maybe . .
Cyborgs, Cyberzombies, Drakes, free Spirits, HMHVV-Stuff, toxic/blood mages . .
Would make you really think about wether or not you can live(eh? eh?) with the whole world gunning for you . .

I have serous doubts as to whether a shadowrun MMORPG would be viable from a gameplay point of view. I mean lots of the things that limit a player in Pen and Paper are going to be removed and people would just pick the "best things". If you've ever played WoW you'll get what I'm talking about.

For examples, infected? Why wouldn't you become infected? Most of them are just full of awesome bennies that you would be dense not to take if you could. Every player looking for that extra edge is going to want to get infected ASAP.

See my posting above for example.
Perma-Death. Makes you think twice.

Also perfectly reasonable. I personally like what I came up with in another thread about how DocWagon showing up depended on your contract level, higher levels would respawn you faster and if it was soon enough you COULD actually rejoin whatever mission it was. A "no contract" option would exist for those hardcore players that wanted permadeath.



Drakes are high powered?

They are basically POCKET DRAGONS.
Pocket Warships were high powered too.
Flight, Astral perception, natural spell, shape shifting, attribute bonus, armor.
still fits inside most vehicles and buildings as well as any troll. can still handle stuff that requires digits/opposable thumbs.

It doesn't have to be designed for ''best things'', really. The way I see it, almost all skills have a purpose in SR, and even if a few may be very situational, all it takes is that one situation.

Plus, a lot of class-based systems are for ''best things''. Like in EQ.. there were four main arcane caster types. Generally, people preferred the Wizard, since he was the ''best'' damage dealer, but the Magician had a lot of utility to him (Though it wasn't very useful at high-level), and was the second-best damage dealer. While there will always be people who want the ''best'' set-up, there are an equal number of people (arguably) who just want their character to be built their way. Everything can be useful, so there are only ''best'' things such as skills and items for certain situations.. and if you feel like doing the same dang run over and over again simply because that's what you're best at.. go right ahead.

As for Infection, there's some things you could impose to turn the players away from it. There's a lot of prejudice against Infected, despite the efforts of the GLL and the like. Being Infected, in addition to whatever disadvantages/allergies they may already possess, may invoke a negative reputation modifier, for instance, or lowered social skills. Because of these, an Infected might take much longer to ''level up'', since maybe they don't get trusted with higher-level runs, and they take a hit to negotiating over pay.

Having ''best things'' sometimes is good, as long as it's evenly distributed across several classes, skillsets, or concepts. Having too many or too bland ''best things'' happens to just be a serious MMO problem in general, in my opinion.

Or make anybody and their mom hostile towards them. All NPC's aside for some specific ones.
It's basically an alignment switch.or turning coat on the metahuman race and becoming a monster.

I don't think an MMO is the way to go. Rather it should be a single or multiplayer game. Up to 8 different characters where up to 8 players can play together. So players can play 1 character or multiple characters, but missions don't allow more than 8 characters. If you play multiple characters then you can switch between characters like the old ghost recon during the mission.

Not so much permadeath, but loss of the character for so long depending on the wounds. Negative condition modifiers may mean many hours or days that character is out of action. Players can have several characters so they can still play, even if a mission goes poorly.

I'd only really enjoy a non-MMO Shadowrun game (A modern one, the classics are still good for me) if there was some sort of DLC involved, constantly generated to add new things. There's just so many dang things to cover in Shadowrun, always a new thing you could add or refine. It might be easier for an MMO, since they regularly have patch updates and expansion packs, though consoles have been getting the hints and acting similarly as well.

I'd also like for the MMO to focus solely on Seattle, until such a point as a 2nd or 3rd expansion pack, if it got that popular.. for other cities to explore.. maybe Denver, L.A, or Neo-Tokyo?

You know, I think I'd really enjoy an Urbanified, Borderlands like Shadowrun game.

Single player, but with co-op. Big areas, neat things to do, occasionally hilarious quests and neon-signs everywhere.


...not quite open-world-stupid by Bethesdurrrrrr. Just a large world with a good environment and a bunch of missions. For a shadowrun game, I think I'd rather have a finite world with replayability, which is occasionally expanded upon by DLC, than a generic 'mission generator system' which would invariably get old when it starts regurgitating plot points and re-using the same areas.

No, hasn't shadowrun always been about the story, and really involving the players in it? MMO's aren't really conductive to that. Yes, there's 'lore', and then there's -really- drawing a player into a game with plots and decisions they get intrigued and interested in. Just pointing out there's a difference between backstory info(which maybe cool), and active, immersive plot.

I think a good example for how a skillbased mmorpg could be run is to look at CCP's Eve online. Granted it is a space sim game, but race has no influence on your skills (anymore) and given time any character can do anything. Anarchy online also use a point-system though that still depends on levels.

A karma system could work, I believe Acheron's Call used a system where you bought skills for xp and this would work in an SR game as well. The Eve approach could also work though there everything is based on time.

The only hurdle would be to limit Magic to certain characters only. Over time the best "setups" are certain to emerge as are "healers", dps and tanks.

I have to agree that I do not think a SR MMORPG will be possible. Even a multiplayer game will be hard to do. I can see a game either as a merger between the mechanisms of Dragon Age's team game and Alpha Protocal for a single version.
Decking would be a mini game, I fear so would astral projecting. Astral perceiving would most likely most be a "see invisible" ability.

I've actually seen a decent Diablo-like game with a game mechanic VERY much like Astral Perception.

Its called Kult: Heretic kingdoms, and basically you had a button to toggle your perceptions from the real world(monsters, goblins, bearsthat kind of stuff) to an astrally-ghost plane, where various incorporeal monsters could then try to hurt you. I'm sure there's some videos on youtube that can show it off.

The one notable difference was that you stopped existing in the real world - you could actually skip into the dreamworld to get a superior position or as an 'ohshit' button. Unless there was an enemy on the other side too. It was also on a timer(which recharged), so you couldn't do the dreamsight thing forever.

Still, though, its been done in a game before.

Speaking of cyberpunk games, though, has anyone here actually played Neocron?

It's definitely possible, the only matter is how much money is spent on development. Decking/Hacking could possibly be a mini-game, but doesn't necessarily have to.. especially when you get into cybercombat. As you said, astrally perceiving could be like a ''see invisible'' spell, but so could AR/VR.. different ''realms'' overlapping one another which the player can't perceived unless they're ''flagged'', for Astral, being flagged would be pegged as a Mage or Adept with Astral sight that overrides physical sight. Same with AR, though it just blankets the physical sight.. a full VR hacker would no longer view the physical world, and instead only the virtual.

I think the only real ''classes'' Shadowrun would have at chargen is Mundane, Awakened, and Emerged, not counting race, and it wouldn't be infeasible to consider that character creation could mimick the system Shadowrun has now, what with buildpoints/karmagen and qualities, starting skills, etc.

Edit: An old roommate of mine played Neocron and said he loved it. I desperately tried to play it (starting just with the free trial), but I guess the creators are no longer accepting new Neocron accounts.. for whatever reason.

While it would take a lot of time to develop, it could work and make some company a lot of money. Basically, you'd make three games, Shadowrun: Physical, Shadowrun:Matrix and Shadowrun:Astral. In each of those games, you'd only be able to play those types of characters, but you could multi-play misssions with others from different games. These would all be single player with co-op missions and I think it could play out pretty well.

But I agree, an SR MMO would not likely be all that great.