Shadowrun MMO (Dumpshock Vision), Not here (yet?), but what would you want Options

[Lindt]

[hyzmarca]

ADIPD

All Death is PermaDeath. No resurrections, no continues. This would prevent characters from becoming too powerful and it would prevent characters who do become very powerful from just slaughtering bunches of people single-handedly. Characters who go crazy and start killing masses get killed themselves very quickly. ADIPD would also make PvP very scary for high-level PCs and less so for low-level punks, as it should be.

[Kagetenshi]

Then the griefers use low-level characters in mobs. This is a solution?

~J

[Black Irish]

(Cross-posted in the other thread)

I think an SR MMORPG that doesn’t rely on grinding is a lot more workable than others have made it seem. The key is implementing a set of self-regulating controls (namely legality and availability), as well as several different (and somewhat related) resource sources.

First, Frank's idea about coding for GTA-style police attention is spot on. Set a security rating for each area, with restrictions on weapons carried and allowed actions. Break the law in the wrong area and find yourself drowning in Lone Star. In effect, this drives certain activities (PvP, griefing, high-noon shoot-outs with Panther cannons) to lawless areas like the Barrens, which is perfectly in line with the Shadowrun world. It also adds concealability as a factor in the gear grind, because all of the sudden that “+0 Predator� is a lot more appealing in certain situations than a “+5 MP-Laser.� Same could be done with foci – carry your bound Power Foci 5 into the arcology, and magical security all of a sudden is three feet up your ass.

Next comes resources, namely Karma, Nuyen, Gear and Reputation/Contacts.

Karma: awarded ONLY for completing jobs/quests. IIRC, something similar to this was done for D&D Online.
That’s one control right there – there’s no grinding for karma/xp, so players’ only method for advancement along the karma track is to do what the game is all about – taking jobs, whether that means shadowrunning, fixing, gang development or what have you. It also provides a nice death penalty: you die on the run, you get nothing (except medical bills and lost equipment).
You could have jobs for various occupations available: random or instanced shadowruns, ganger quests to eliminate neighborhood rivals, bounty hunter quests to bag paracritters, even fixer or Johnson “quests� (ie., get a fixing job with the Yaks to sell a certain number of HK-227s, or set up a certain number of runs).
As a result, there’s no karmic benefit to grinding or wandering the Barrens shooting bums and barghests. By making most runs too difficult for anything but a superhuman individual to solo, you enforce/foster teamwork, as well. The only way to get ahead on the karma track is to cooperate.

Nuyen: There should be tons of ways to get it, and as many ways to lose it. Charge for everything – the pad where players keep their extra gear, medical treatment, training, bribes, etc. – so players are always wanting more. Found gear could be sold (for varying percentages based on the type and level of a character’s contacts). Grinding could be allowed here (those bums in the Barrens don’t have much, but it’s something) but the reward ratio should be small compared to other avenues. And money is only as good as the contacts you have to spend it with …

Gear: The trick to gear is strictly enforcing availability and illegality ratings. Sure, everyone wants a Panther cannon or two to stash in the closet, but you won’t hold on to it long strutting around downtown in full daylight. Losing carried gear would be another good penalty for death or arrest. If PCs are constantly looking over their shoulders for Lone Star, they’re likely to make do with “sub-par� and easily replaceable gear except for specific runs. The heavy stuff will stay in the safehouse until needed for an appropriate run.
High-end “drops� could be used for some items, but developing the appropriate contacts would be the more likely avenue for acquiring high quality loot of all types (weapons, magic gear, cyber, etc). Randomized inventories or a system that gave a contact a percentage chance to have an item could also help control high-end loot and foster a PC economy.
For certain equipment, such as beta- or delta-grade cyber, there might be only one or two sources. Want a move-by-wire system installed? Better get in good with Doc Swanson at Shiawase by performing certain runs or building contacts. With the possible exception of some sort of organ-legging quest system, “looting� cyber or bioware probably should not be possible.

I’m not that familiar with SR4, but the variety of gear in SR3 is sufficient so that I don’t think you’d really need “+5 Predators� – sure, anyone can pick up the basic version at Weapons World, but with the right contacts and reputation (or skills) you could have a weaponsmith add a custom grip, extended mag or burst-fire function. There’s always ammo, too – hit the right warehouse or develop the right contacts for a couple clips of APDS, for example.

Reputation: This is where an SR MMORPG could really set itself apart, although it could require some complex coding. In addition to an over-all rep tied to karma or completed runs, you’d want to implement a system of individual scores for various groups (corporations, gangs, initiatory groups, etc) and individuals. Higher general reputation could lead to tougher or higher-paying (karma and nuyen) jobs, as could faction reputations. Group reputations could lead to jobs, too (or retaliatory hits), and could grant access to better gear. For example, Fixer X may be able to supply APDS ammo on a regular basis, but you’ve got to gain Fixer X as a contact first (perhaps by gaining reputation with the local Yakuza), then boost your reputation with him (through jobs, bribes, or repeated business).

Magical initiation could be handled similarly, although you could set up a more difficult avenue for self-initiation that requires more karma and maybe certain magical texts or other found materials.

The real kicker would be to set up a reputation system involving other PCs. So, at the end of a job, each runner gets to “rate� their team-mates, resulting in a reputation boost or hit to general reputation -- as well as with every group the rating PC is affiliated with. Word gets around in the biz, so someone that routinely screws their team is going to gain a bad rep with everyone the rest of the team knows. Same with runners who consistently act stupid in secure zones – they gain a reputation as a hot-head punk, hurting their street-cred, which then affects the availability of jobs and contact-related gear.
-------------------
Taken all together, I think those factors would steer most players in the desired direction while leaving a number of viable play options.

Want to build a prime runner? Get a team together, act professional, complete runs and build up karma and nuyen. You’ll still need to spend some time doing social/reputation “grinding� however, if you also want access to high-end gear.

Want to be a fixer? Karma’s less important, so focus on money and contacts, stock-pile rare gear (available through said contacts), then start selling to your less socially adept fellow players. Want to join a gang? Take ganger quests, which could require extortion, brawling with rival gangs, etc. Want to be a street-doc? Build up your Biotech, work up some contacts with a cyberware supplier and run a chop-shop out of your apartment.

Griefing is still possible, but appropriately and realistically punished. It offers no karma and a high risk of arrest or death by Lone Star. But if someone wants to do it, they can. Hell, you could basically build up a character the “right� way, then set up your own kingdom in the Barrens, blasting trespassers and demanding tribute. Seems pretty Shadowrun to me, and creates an appropriate incentive for other players to shell out the nuyen for a nice doss in a part of town with fewer crazies.

But overall, its simply not possible to advance by playing like an asshole 12-year-old. You can’t get karma from griefing, and you can’t gain the (good) rep necessary for better jobs by acting like an idiot. Worst case scenario: some l33t-speaking doofus grinds bums in the Barrens, saves up enough cash to buy a PC-auctioned Panther Cannon, goes postal outside Club Penumbra and gets geeked by security/Lone Star, thus losing said Panther and gaining nothing for the effort. Which would be completely SR-realistic and awesome.

[Kagetenshi]

Please don't cross-post, the structure of the boards makes it pretty unlikely that the sets of readers of the threads have a meaningfully large symmetric difference.

Not a mod, no special authority.

~J

[hyzmarca]

[Black Irish]

[Kalvan]

[FrankTrollman]

[Zak]

If you allow PvP there will be griefing. Griefing will make sure there are not alot of serious players left in the game. Except on private servers.
If you make it GTA style there will be some stupid punk running you over with a Lone Star truck right after you entered the gameworld. anywhere, anytime.

The only way to make this work is on tightly controlled servers, which isn't possible except you allow servers run by players. Which again leads to other abuse problems.

There is just no legal and effective way to punish idiots who ruin the fun of others. And if you dont allow random PvP and random PvE that wouldnt be shadowrun anymore. dilemma :(

[hyzmarca]

[FrankTrollman]

Even in Desert Wars it wouldn't work, because the suicide bombs would be coming from your own team.

Personally, I think the best compromise is that the difficulty of coming back from "severe injury" is based on your character's highet connection rating (which you get from doing jobs for people) and your number of Stars when you went down.

Make it a little bit harsher than GTA as far as weaponry use in public and murder, and you're probably good to go. So if you're walking around and some griefer starts flame throwering the crowd, his character is automatically locked up in jail (removed from the server) as soon as the police take him down, and you repawn in the hospital.

And if you've been playing for a while and have some Yakuza connections, then you can actually be being chased by the cops, get shot in the head by a griefer, and then wake up in the hospital anyway because the Oyabun "pulled strings" (you probably get a message that the Oyabun now requests a favor).

So in this manner, long running characters have "llives" which they can get back by doing faction quests. And mules and instant action characters have only one life. But getting whacked while you hadn't been caught doing crime doesn't even cost lives.

-Frank

[nezumi]

[Stahlseele]

heh, i just found a backdoor(me decker) to the old SRO Boards that were supposedly taken down ^^

[FrankTrollman]

The problem with player created security is that everyone is going to put back doors in said security and then that information is going to be variously disseminated. Other people are going to make the "security" simply be that the area is made out of plasticrete and there's no actual path to the objective. There simply aren't controls on that sort of thing, nor can there be.

I like fan created content, but I don't think it is practical or desirable in areas that people make runs in. Too many areas would be thematically jarring with unfinished or unmatched textures or giant clown heads or huge penis jokes.

-Frank

[nezumi]

[Telion]

Wouldn't zone security codes help ease some of the PKing?
Also posting wanted posters for griefers allowing a bounty hunter type character to be played.
And what about giving those who want pure carnage of destroying anything in their path the ability to join one of the gangs in the sprawl who specialize in that?

Things like if your in a AAA zone your not going to worry to heavily about someone killing you randomly.

Also a reputation mechanic will prevent any lasting character from doing these kinds of things, leaving mostly lower level characters doing this.

This does assume a bit on mechanics but from a concept point of view this would curb it to some degree.

[FrankTrollman]

[hyzmarca]

Or you could include an Alternate Reality component in which the personal information (mane, address, etc.) of chronic grievers are posted on public boards and players are given in-game rewards for beating the crap out of the bounty-targets in real life.

[Black Irish]

I like Frank's 2 and 3, although I'm less keen on the other two options. Another option would be figuring out some way (in-game) to tie a griefer's low-level characters to the established character providing the explosives/other griefing gear.

I thought about adding some sort of ownership tag to equipment -- so the grenades used to bomb the club could be traced to the griefer's character that gave them to the bomber — but I'm not sure how feasible or desirable that would be. Having guns/other equipment tagged as stolen offers some interesting possibilites, as would tying explosives/foci/etc. to their creators.

Another possibility would be to use the reputation system, by creating reputation/connection hits tied to economic transactions. So, if Griefer character 1 (the established character) gives or sells Griefer character 2 (the new character) a satchel of C4 (creating a reputation connection) and character 2 bombs a night club, then character 1 takes a reputation hit, as well, because he's been "doing business" with character 2. This could encourage PCs to only do business with established, well-trusted other PCs (not a bad thing), but could be a pain in the ass overall. I can also see easy workarounds (leave the C4 in an out of the way place, then let griefer 2 "find" it) for committed griefers.

(BTW: Isn't it sucktastic that the majority of the thread is focused on mitigating griefing, rather than fun stuff to include in the game?)

[Telion]

Wouldn't there be some lone star strato drones passing through the AAA air space in reasonable numbers? And I seem to recall astral patrols as well.
Standard police in the area ready to call something in or run over the perp.

In a place like this, your not going to be able move far from a "Killing spree" without being spotted quickly and brought to justice.

A proper mechanic would be to give the player the option to have a safety to prevent the player from pulling out a gun with a missed keystroke.

When I consider a person hell bent on destroying others in a AAA establishment, I see GTA police reactions swarming on the person and other runners taking off to avoid being questioned. Throw in some elementals and spirits just for amusement.

Another mechanic could be that the players ties to a fixer which dislikes their employees being killed, or even the players others contacts who may investigate the players death. Being disliked means your not going to be missed.

I agree with others who have suggested a dynamic means to trace something from 1 person to the next. In general I'd like the game to have a dynamic feel to it.

If I could have 1 wish though, I'd wish that each player had their own apartments and the world had a feeling of having a finite number of objects. So that their could be some personalization rather than everything being copies of each other.

[FrankTrollman]

[X-Kalibur]

[mfb]

[post removed because sometimes the things i type make more sense in my head than when they are actually posted]

[Black Irish]