If shadowrun were a multiplayer PC game-, How would you invision it changing? Options

[Badmoodguy88]

There were some OK shadowrun console games but having a massively multiplayer online RPG or FPS or RTS game all has some game design issues just like shadowrun as a table top rpg has different design issues.

I just want to see what some of you people think the issues might be and what some of the possible solutions could be. Purely as an idle thought exercise.


-One of the obvious changes is that upgrades have a greater gradient. I am assuming that this would not be turn based and so Movement becomes much more important. Small differences in weight, firing speed, range, accuracy, and damage all become more important.

-One of the things that makes a game entertaining for longer is the accumulation of expensive and rare gear. Excluding magical gear, vehicles, and drones the most expensive item in the game is probably delta grade wired reflexes but cyber limbs can be a huge money sink too.

I think there would need to be further room to upgrade in terms of armor, weapons, and cyberware in order for the game to be interesting for longer. There is no equivalent to the super rare drop of loot form a killed enemy. It does not have a logical fit into the shadowrun universe but that element of randomness is part of what makes some games addictive in the same way that gambling is addictive: variable reward paired with variable chance of winning.

Weapon mods and gear mods could be one avenue to have rare items in the way that mass effect did things.

Having henchmen is a game mechanic in a lot of PC and table top RPGs. It gives a player a focus to further prefect. Shadowrun already has this in some ways. Ally spirits, drones, and sprites could all be henchmen of a player, as could other NPC runners.

But all this is just fun fluff. I think the actual mechanics of a traditional shadowrun game would be very very hard to pull off. Hit man was one interesting game that comes to mind that incorporated many ways to solve a mission and elements of stealth and disguise. That game however would not lend its self to multiplayer and it required cleverly set up levels, plus it was not actually that fun a game.

Something more like fallout 3 could be done and so could something like GTA, but those games are single player. Something like Fallout 3 has a complex condition branches for the NPCs that would be complicated by having multiple PCs. Fallout 3 would sometimes get confused with one player showing up where they are not supposed to. Something like GTA has a very shallow set of condition branches. When you are on one mission all the world is set up so that that mission is running. Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 did an ok job of doing a multi player RPG but both were not that fun. Good games but a bit slow.

This is a wall of text but I wanted to get the ball rolling.