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.

[Laodicea]

I'd recommend checking out the video game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

A lot of its mechanics are rather similar to shadowrun 4E. Obviously it's lacking the depth of either Vampire: The Masquerade, or Shadowrun. But what they did works well.

One clever thing was making your firearms skill & stat effect the size of your crosshairs in FPS mode. The bullet goes to a random place inside those crosshairs. This automatically makes the necessary difficulty adjustment for long range. Targets further away are smaller, so you're less likely to hit them.

The main problem of any P&P game converting to a real time game of any sort is initiative. The player who is quicker with his mouse is quicker in the game. Wired reflexes wouldn't mean anything.

[Blastula]

And if it's an MMO type game, I would suggest looking at Anarchy Online. It's a good example of a futuristic MMO, but uses a lot of mechanics for MMO's that are wholly generic.
It's got a lot of Shadowrun type ideas in it, like cyberware, magic (sorta, it's nano abilities), tons of guns and tons of other gear. Totally misses in terms of flavor though.

Shadowrun has a lot of ideas that could lend themselves well to an MMO type setting, but it would require scrapping the Tabletop rules in favor of more real time action. A big hurdle would be kicking things like Classes and Levels to the curb though, since Shadowrun has never incorporated those things and advancement has always been based on Karma as opposed to Experience Points.

I'm not sure how many MMO's there are out there that have character development that isn't class based, but I'm sure it's not many.

[UmaroVI]

Two out of every three posts on dumpshock would be "omg nerf mages QQ." The other third would be "OMG nerf street samurai QQ."

[Makki]

i imagine it would be fun to tamper with the players' mouse speed and acceleration according to their Initiative and IPs. the street sam has full control over his mouse, only limited by his own gaming skills, while the ini6 IP1 mage is struggling to target his mouse.

[Starmage21]

i imagine it would be fun to tamper with the players' mouse speed and acceleration according to their Initiative and IPs. the street sam has full control over his mouse, only limited by his own gaming skills, while the ini6 IP1 mage is struggling to target his mouse.

I was just thinking this actually. It's probobly the BEST way to simulate the differences in reaction times between various PCs with enhanced reflexes.


ALSO PCs with higher reaction attributes and dodge skills will see bullets fired in their direction travel slower (enabling a dodge much easier)

[Draco18s]

ALSO PCs with higher reaction attributes and dodge skills will see bullets fired in their direction travel slower (enabling a dodge much easier)

Problem is you can't mess with perception like that. Either the bullets move slower or they don't. Otherwise the guy firing the gun will see a "hit" before the guy dodging sees them even reach the half-way mark as he starts dodging.

Now, as for how the game would look, I would personally use a similar method to how Borderlands did weapons: throw some sh*t together at random and let the player decide if its better. I ended that game with two different shotguns: one that regenerated ammo, had a high capacity, reasonable rate of fire, good DPS (including reload time). The other had 3 shots (with 300% burst--so all three fired on one click), HUGE damage per shot, and awful reload time. The former was for general use, the latter was for "this has to die, now." I killed a crimson lance, point blank, while in"incap/dying" mode by shooting his neigh-invulnerable shield.

Players should always have the option to buying weapons and mods. The one thing that Borderlands lacked was the ability to customize your stuff. Mod slots should be more limited, based on the design of the gun, and the "tech level" (higher tech stuff isn't (much) better, it just gets more slots).

Quest/mission wise it might want to borrow from All Points Bulletin. I haven't played, but I've heard it has a great mechanic for pitting players against each other. This would allow for much more interesting fights than your usual NPC dungeon for some missions (rival gang wars, and such). But you'd also want to include standard story missions where the baddies are NPCs, as it gives a greater depth, such as attacks on corporations where the opposition isn't going to be characters that could be filled by players. Now, having two groups of PCs attack the same target and have to fight each other for the McGuffin, that's also brilliant. Yes, someone will lose, but that's dystopia for you: sometimes you can't win.

[vladthebad]

What I'd love is for the game to be about team based crime. You get a mission, group up with your runner contacts, and go about it. Missions would be a mix of play types including stealth, interacting with NPCs, information gathering, and of course combat. Think Deus Ex mixed with GTA on crack. Combat would have a range of style from loud/big gun/michael-bay-explosion combat to quiet/stealthy/slit-your-throat combat.

Louder combat brings more furious security response, but has its place in providing distractions or making a fast escape. In an MMO environment, I imagine people could train up their loud combat skills in desert wars PvP play.

Quiet combat would be a mix of equipment choices, martial arts, learning to use stealth to sneak up on enemies. Ample places to use those within the sprawl, pretending to be batman or whatnot.

This post has been edited by vladthebad: Aug 29 2010, 04:30 PM

[Ascalaphus]

I agree that special rare/random item drops can be fun, but they'd be rather weird in Shadowrun. Maybe you could replace them with social connections? The rare chances to make friends with people who can access hard-availability items, or help you out in difficulty situations?


An issue would be missing uniqueness; grinding missions for the small chance of getting that special drop clashes a bit with Shadowrun I'd say.

[Laodicea]

i imagine it would be fun to tamper with the players' mouse speed and acceleration according to their Initiative and IPs. the street sam has full control over his mouse, only limited by his own gaming skills, while the ini6 IP1 mage is struggling to target his mouse.

I had considered that option. The problem is, it's not fun. It makes for a perfect hardcore shadowrun game, but it's not fun.

[Stahlseele]

Permadeath for characters.

[Starmage21]

Permadeath for characters.

In all MMO models, this sucks balls. The idea behind MMO being keeping your player playing for long periods of time.

For permadeath to work, bonuses must be small, and accrued quickly.

[Stahlseele]

i don't care, i want permadeath for characters.
yes, this would open up worlds of griefing.
but face it, that is what the world of shadowrun is.

[Sixgun_Sage]

A compromise might be areas where permadeath happens, others where your Docwagon contract is , y'know, affective. Not utterly realistic but more so than the standard.

[Draco18s]

Permadeath has never, ever, worked well for any MMO.

I only know of one design that even took it into account in a way that would be fun from the player's perspective, and that was that they didn't so much play "a character" but played "a family" of sorts. Their excess characters would do the resource gathering for them (even while the player was offline) and if a character died: no biggie. Got a bunch more just like him back home.

The goal was that the world and the story were emergent and that's what you influenced by playing. Characters themselves were fleeting. Character death usually would create new stories and missions for many people to investigate (as magic was highly forbidden, so if a magic item exploded killing your character it influenced quite a lot).

But this game was the brain child of a friend of mine who...well, he's a little crazy.

So yeah, permadeath only works when the rewards for playing are small and quickly accumulated. Where death is, essentially, a slap on the wrist (thus negating any impact permadeath is supposed to have).

[Makki]

Permadeath has never, ever, worked well for any MMO.

i disagree. I never liked Diablo 2 Softcore aka Tutorial Mode. All my friends and I always only played Hardcore mode. The adrenaline level was much higher leading to much more fun. Especially mocking friends who died some stupid death for being afk or alike.
on the other hand Diablo 2 isn't very difficult (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Notsoevildm]

i don't care, i want permadeath for characters.
yes, this would open up worlds of griefing.
but face it, that is what the world of shadowrun is.

If a SR MMO had permadeath, you would have load of basement dwellers sitting on rooftops offing PCs with sniper rifles just for the lolz. That's fine if all you want is a first person shooter where you can just pick a new archetype and jump back in. Background, what background?

But if you want a MMORPG with emphasis on the RP then I think you would need to go for a more cooperative game than a competitive one. Probably even instanced mission runs even though I don't like this so much (but stops griefers ruining your run just for the lolz). You could still have PVP zones where 'elite teams of runners take on each other in no-holds barred combat'. Something like the setup for City of Heroes would work. Note that this game doesnt have permadeath.

For a SR MMORPG to be really good, it needs to support hacking, rigging, magic, astral travel as well as normal firefights. Missions would need to be complex to allow different options for completion, from silent to violent. It would be a nightmare to code, but absolutely amazing if someone could pull it off.

[Johnny B. Good]

The biggest problem with Shadowrun MMO I can see is that there would have to be a major overhaul of character generation and the Karma system to keep players playing. Players would have to start out street level with bad contacts and little gear, and karma accumulation would have to be slowed down to make for decent playtime. There would be more hard caps on starting stats and gear. Spirits would have to be balanced somehow, and the game as a whole would have to be made much less deadly. They would also have to code two different games, Matrix and Meat. The matrix system would require major overhaul.

I don't like the idea of wired reflexes making it harder to target. I think it should enhance the speed of all actions like firing, reloading and casting. Somebody with wires II will be able to shoot three times faster than somebody without wires. A sammy with wires will be able to swing their sword 3 times faster. I think it should also offer a series of "Maneuvers" such as instant 90/180/270 degree spin.

Also, Permadeath is dumb. I think the way that it should happen is every player starts with a Docwagon contract, good for 1 month. Docwagon is a garaunteed Res, but it costs money and you may not always get back with all of your gear. If you're horribly masochistic you can choose not to renew your contract and save that few extra nY per month, but nobody's going to come for you if you flatline.

Edit: I would kill a man to be hacker in this game.

[Draco18s]

Also, Permadeath is dumb. I think the way that it should happen is every player starts with a Docwagon contract, good for 1 month. Docwagon is a garaunteed Res, but it costs money and you may not always get back with all of your gear. If you're horribly masochistic you can choose not to renew your contract and save that few extra nY per month, but nobody's going to come for you if you flatline.

That, sir, is brilliant.

Edit:
I would like to expand upon that idea:

DocWagon contracts will always res you, but the higher levels of it would "res you sooner" and "res you with less karma loss" etc.

The basic level contract would be "you wake up in a hospital and don't have your gear." I would say that this would be a downgrade option from Standard, the "I die so rarely, its cheaper to just buy new gear." Due to the fact that you'd change zones and start with no stuff, this level of res could happen almost instantly, no need to delay the player unnecessarily. This option will likely be rarely used, but it should be available for those players who want a more hard-core experience but don't want to have real perma-death.

Standard level would be a 5 minute wait, you wake up in a hospital, and have any non-consumable items (armor, gun, etc) but not ammo or drugs. While it's more realistic for people to loot corpses for guns and not ammo it's nicer to the player who died to have their expensive stuff. The karmic dock would be equal to the karma the mission they were on would have gained them (so if it was +30 karma for the whole thing and they died after getting +20, they'd get -30 karma, but only a net -10 from before the mission). Overall this means you can die once every two missions without going backwards, which will we will say is "more often then they should be dying." Karmic loss only while on missions also removes the griefing aspect: you get sniped walking down the street: no karmic loss. Sure, they lose a few minutes, but the player can take a break, use the restroom, get a drink, etc. during this time. The occasional forced break is not a bad thing.

Premium would be a 3 minute wait, wake up in a hospital, have all non-consumable gear and any "market available" consumables (regular ammo, light drugs, etc.). The "you can get it at 7-11" stuff. This option should be sufficient enough that the player would be able to re-join the mission he was on almost immediately. Karmic loss: half mission value.

Gold would be a 2 minute wait (minimum), DocWagon shows up on scene* and resses you, but will not enter a combat scene. No item loss. Karmic loss: quarter mission value.

Platinum would be a 1 minute wait (minimum), DocWagon shows up on scene* and resses you (even in combat). No item or karma loss.

*Possibly excluding interior spaces to fit with the flavor of "not on Corporate grounds." In such a case where any restrictions cannot be met, it acts as a Premium res in terms of time and location. Players would be informed of this restriction when purchasing the contract, and again at death.

Note: all resses would be from time of death. We shall assume that players also have a stun track and that your proverbial tanks will only get knocked unconscious, not triggering any DocWagon contracts.

[Ascalaphus]

You need to make a decision how much of "to hit" is based on player's skill with mouse/keyboard etc. controllers, and how much is based on the character's skills. Too much of the latter feels a bit dumb sometimes, too much of the former can make an unpleasant power difference between players.

I think generally putting a lot of the "to-hit" in the hands of the character is a good idea, because that works well with augmentations that manipulate the speed at which the character acts/reacts, like Wired Reflexes.

One of the big advantages of a computer game is the potential to display the world in really different ways, to people with unusual sensory spectra (thermographic, ultrasound, radar, low-light, astral, AR..)

Another thing you could implement is to make the effects of low Essence really visible, by perhaps changing the color tone of everything you see towards blues and grays, making everything more unpleasant to look at.

[Draco18s]

Another thing you could implement is to make the effects of low Essence really visible, by perhaps changing the color tone of everything you see towards blues and grays, making everything more unpleasant to look at.

Oh yes, definitely.

Though you need to pick the right color scheme. "Gray" might not be the best option if your dystopia is a "dismal gray" to begin with.

I have though played a game that changed the visuals as you were doing better or worse. It was a 3D rhythm platformer (senior project some time before my own). As you collected powerups by doing very well it moved towards a more saturated environment. As you did poorly it moved to monotone, then gritty/grainy, then to "malfunctioning TV" type static just before you died. Never jittery and flickering to impede the player's ability to make jumps, but just enough to feel like the robot you were controlling was on the verge of collapse.

Astral would also need to be highly saturated, but still pastel in nature to give it the right "feel" to it. Auras of living things would be bright, the natural world a soft pastel, the mechanical dull and gray. Mmmm...like an oil painting, I think: no edges and no shadows.

Edit: I also didn't comment on this.

The biggest problem with Shadowrun MMO I can see is that there would have to be a major overhaul of character generation and the Karma system to keep players playing. Players would have to start out street level with bad contacts and little gear, and karma accumulation would have to be slowed down to make for decent playtime. There would be more hard caps on starting stats and gear. Spirits would have to be balanced somehow, and the game as a whole would have to be made much less deadly. They would also have to code two different games, Matrix and Meat. The matrix system would require major overhaul.

Oh most certainly. But see, you need not follow the table top game at all. In an MMO you can do much much more powerful things and smoothing out the skill curves, rather than having "1 to 6" in everything. Really all you need to do is find or design a generic MMO skill system that works on its own, then layer the ShadowRun flavor over the top of it. (Speaking about spirits, but the same idea applies to the game as a whole) Force 6 spirits are still around, of course, but only because you can only summon them at given levels. It "is" that much better than a Force 5, but there's a long line of player progression between the two. Right when you first get another increment in your ability to summon that larger spirit it's very strong against the things you're expected to fight (though never to the point of "summon one and win this mission" powerful, but closer to "I can summon three that strong today before I can't take the drain, but summoning one will win this fight, but we're going to have more fights than I can summon spirits"*), but as you get stronger and the baddies get stronger, the usefulness will decline, never to uselessness, but almost ("Sure, I can summon one, but it really only adds another person, one who isn't quite as good as we are, but is expendable if it gets shot"). Just before the player begins to feel frustrated with how well their spirits are doing they "get better."

Matrix vs. Meat can be done, there is a game out there (don't recall the name) that did it. Was first person shooter-y. The matrix side wasn't that entertaining, as far as I ever saw, but it did exist. Not Alien Swarm, although it did handle the "protect the hacker" aspect very well. Astral would be sort of a "noclip" with funny colors deal. You'd have to limit how far way a person could get from their body (as well as some other level boundaries) but its all in the name of "for gameplay balance." Player tries to clip out of the level and they get a "there's nothing you need out here" kind of message. Distance from body is just a minor flavor thing, but it keeps the person from scouting too far out and limits them to the immediate information needed ("Is this the right door?" "How many guards in that room?" "Which way now?")

*Think 4th Edition D&D Daily powers. "A daily" if used appropriately will turn a hard fight into an easy one and an easy one into a cut scene. But you only get one per character (not counting Utilities which can be encounter or daily depending, or item dailies which can only be used once each, but you get 1 plus 1 per milestone total--or about 1 every other fight) and could probably get as many as 6 fights in before needing to rest (Tomb of Horrors imposes a limit on extended rests by reducing the number of healing surges regained by a cumulative 1, if you have 8 max, then after your third rest you'll only start that day with 6 after your next you'll have 5, which cuts down on the "rest every two fights" prevalent throughout the D&D system)

[deek]

I'd think a MMORPG is the way to go...

Someone mentioned an EVE like corporate setup and I liked that idea. You could have some gameplay that is tailored to hiring runners for sabotage, retrieval, wetwork, planting...not sure if it would be better to instance that stuff or actually have it affecting other user created corporations (I am leaning towards the latter).

Or maybe instead of user created corporations, you take the big ones and make those factions like WoW.

The point being, you could spend your time running and making your character better or you could run a corporation at a higher level.

I think crafting makes a lot of people happy, so have a lot of gear be craftable. Random drops are good too.

I am really thinking a generally reskinned hybrid of WoW/EVE would be a good starting place. Magic and cyberware has to be there. Matrix could be an overlay, so you could possibly have a team going up against mobs in the physical, astral and matrix all at the same time.

I think to make it a workable game, the Matrix has to have direct damage or control results during combat. Hacking for access to doors, cameras and such, would have to be a very quick failure/success, bascially either getting you unlocking stuff or dumpshocked, as you dont' want your party waiting around for a hack like we do at the table.

PvP could get really interesting...

[Draco18s]

Personally I would edge away from an EVE like structure, at least in terms of corporations. Runners really shouldn't be creating megacorps.

Now, allowing them to provide services to other players (and have turf wars): That's all cool and such, but it shouldn't be corporations. I think we should think a little more "street" and call them Gangs.

There might be the same tools available (eg. listing missions, marking other groups as friendly, neutral, hostile, etc. as well as a "headquarters," possibly even a shop/store front) but it should be considered organized crime, rather than a legitimate business. The leader should still be expected to be doing runs on occasion.

(Side note: I've edited my prior posts recently)

[Johnny B. Good]

I'd imagine hacking happening at speed of thought, deckers sifting through cracks in the programming and rapidly punching up nodes, hacking mostly on the fly and editing systems when needed. I think that most situations that require building hacking will probably have to be instanced, and that there should be built-in things for the other group members to do while the hacker does his thing. There should be a spot for the dedicated hacker.

Now, for rigging: How do you balance the character's skill when driving a vehicle versus the player's skill? How do you make black rigger boxes better than default rigs?

Also, I think it would be a great idea if we started a wiki page about this project. An MMO made for shadowrunners, by shadowrunners? I think so. It's a fantastic idea, and if we lay all of the concepts and gameplay elements down, that's half a nice chunk of the development done already.

[Draco18s]

I'd imagine hacking happening at speed of thought, deckers sifting through cracks in the programming and rapidly punching up nodes, hacking mostly on the fly and editing systems when needed. I think that most situations that require building hacking will probably have to be instanced, and that there should be built-in things for the other group members to do while the hacker does his thing. There should be a spot for the dedicated hacker.

Played Alien Swarm? Aside from the classic hacker, not Matrix hacker, interface, it's brilliantly executed.

Now, for rigging: How do you balance the character's skill when driving a vehicle versus the player's skill? How do you make black rigger boxes better than default rigs?

TF2: The Wranger. A player using the Wranger will be able to shoot targets that the sentry can't track, but at the same time, the sentry has amazing accuracy at the things it can see.

Also, I think it would be a great idea if we started a wiki page about this project. An MMO made for shadowrunners, by shadowrunners? I think so. It's a fantastic idea, and if we lay all of the concepts and gameplay elements down, that's half a nice chunk of the development done already.

Go for it. The project wouldn't ever really be able to go anywhere without the copyright (Microsoft still owns the electronic rights?) but setting up a design shouldn't be an issue (any Catalyst people out there want to weigh in on that?) then if someone who does have legal rights to make a game comes along they can use (or not) our ideas: the wiki is a listing of how we the players think the game needs to be structured in order to retain the flavor while at the same time, advancing beyond the table top.