Shadowrun Online - The MMO, What are your thoughts? Options

[Kagetenshi]

[paul_HArkonen]

well then how about we give up and never try anything because as you're pointing out people will always try to "camp the respawn" in whatever form that takes.

It's not possible to prevent it entirely, it's just that steps should be taken to try and prevent it, or to encourage people who don't want to play in a world where it's all "camp the respawn" to play. Just because X,Y, and Z people do it doesn't mean it's needed to play. I can play my way, and those people who don't want an RPG can just sit and camp.

[Kagetenshi]

But that's true anyway. What we have is a kludgy solution that doesn't reward alternative solutions to problems but doesn't protect against camp-the-spawn play. Moreover, it doesn't reward "valiant failures", whereby an attempt with merit may be karma-worthy even if it failed. That said, I can't say that I see a way to do this, but the absence of a better solution doesn't make a solution good.

~J

[paul_HArkonen]

except that even in the actual Game, IIRC, Karma is only supposed to be given out upon completion of the run, if you need an exact quote I can find it, I think.

Either way, It's better to try and encourage role playing, by basing experiance off quests, thus giving runners who have a goal in the game, whatever it may be, a chance to earn enough Karma to "level up" without ever having to go look for enemies to kill for no reason other than to level up.

[Kagetenshi]

Yes, you only get karma after a run. That doesn't mean that Run X is always worth 5 karma no matter how you complete it, and always 0 if you fail to accomplish the objectives.

~J

[paul_HArkonen]

I don't know, I would hope that run X would be worth 5 Karma unless you did in some way the was beneficial to either yourself or the J, like with no deaths, or no traces, or something like that. But either way you should get no Karma for not finishing it, and no extra Karma based on kills.


Actually another concern just came to me. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to use Lone Star/ corporate payback squads?

I mean a lot of SR is based off of staying in the Shadows and not getting cuaght. Any SR game, done right, would have to have that element to it, but how it would be done I don't know.

[=Spectre=]

Grey Pawn, you made a very interesting suggestion before about using Digichat to try and work out the problems. But to truly succed, you'll need to stage up the difficulty.

What you'll need to do is, as you said, create an online virtual world similar to White Wolf's Jade, New Bremen, and other persistant chat games. But you will need to create this world and sustain it using only AI run scripts. GM's can watch and adjust the scripts to balance things, but as the MMOG will run fundamentally on AI interaction, so too must the chat game version to work out the kinks.

on top of that, you'll need to craft a completely computer run character approval system. Again, this will simulate you running the MMOG via the perosnal computer, but you'll need to completely eliminate book searching and websearchign for parts. You need a completely self contained creation system to pass MMOG muster.

Last but not least of the game process, you need a self sustaining combat system where players can decide in an instant if they want to go into combat. This may be a bit flexible however, as you could theoretically go 3rd person camera over shoulder(Max Payne, Freedom Force) for combat so you can do ranged and melee with relative ease and have a more action packed game. But then again, doing so means you put more twitch-factor into the game, and less reliance on speed-boosting cyberware, powers or spells.

If you can use the Digichat or another web-based chat engine to solve this problem, the actual mechanics of making Shadowrun into a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game may indeed be a possibility. But there is one other option you may have in regards to the game. Take out the Massively word of the MMOG concept, limit your servers to a few hundred people per gameworld instance, and run it as a Multiplayer online RPG. That would lower the level of tweaking and concept shredding you'll have to do and make the game a little easier to build.

[bitrunner]

personally, i'd rather see more of a format like Fallout, with maybe the option of having up to five other players, like NWN...get the mechanics, environment, and such for this type of game first, and see how it sells, then move on to the MMO...
but, if you're driven on the MMO front, i'll say that i've liked CoH so far the best in terms of overall gameplay - how it handles missions, the environment, etc...

[Cynic project]

Well, COH would be a good start,but you need more complex NPCs,skills,and gear.

[the_dunner]

Corporate payback squads and Lone Star are easy to incorporate. Any decent MMORPG tracks your reputation with the various factions in the game world, and this one would also. Of course, instead of tracking faction with Pirates and Fey, you'd be tracking reputation with various corps and organizations within the Shadowrun world. If youre face showed up on vidtape a few too many times with Renraku, it could trigger a payback squad showing up. Similarly, roaming Lone Star cops would have various attitudes towards PCs based upon past experiences. Further, a street encounter with DocWagon could result in an HTRT showing up to clear up a mess.

Somebody else mentioned that guilds shouldn't exist. I, on the other hand, would very much expect them to. Guilds would be represented as things like Gangs, Initiate Groups, and Shadowrun teams. In tabletop terms, your regular group of PCs would probably belong to the same guild. I doubt most would have a logo, but they could certainly have a name that they go by.

Similarly, a combination of instanced Shadowruns and a well coded random generation system could come up with a very nice variety of runs. If players selected their contacts at Character generation, those contacts could determine which runs were available to them initially. Then, as they improved their reputation with a given contact, that person might introduce them to new contacts who offer other runs.

Since MMORPGs update on a regular (often monthly) basis, it would make a great deal of sense to have the run generation system change regularly, with a theme. For instance, one update might have a lot of runs that deal with a Mob war. Another might deal with a corp trying to develop a new product line, and the competition that entails. After that, a big plot could center around some media star's rise to fame.

The possibilities here are pretty expansive. Sure, there are a lot of kludges and a lot of sticking points. But, given time and thought, this could be made to work quite nicely.

Someone suggested that Riggers would be unbalanced. I'd agree that it would be very possible for them to be. However, other MMORPGs have certainly enabled "pet" classes in the past.

Another person mentioned that a level system would destroy the game. I'd agree with this also. However, there have been skill-based MMORPGs before, and I think this would be the direction that the game would have to move.

The biggest problem I forsee is just how many variables the game would need to track for each character. You'd need to start with everything that NSRCG tracks, and then add in so much more. Further, since it's a cyberpunk game, you'd need a costume creation option that would be comparable to the one in City of Heroes.

This is an enormous project to seriously consider. It's possible, but the number of man hours it would encompass are astronomical. Just the number of artists that would be required to model and skin everything is mind boggling.

[bitrunner]

exactly - a good start...you could certainly do worse than to build on their engine...

[Cynic project]

Evercrak,anyone?

[James McMurray]

I haven't had much time to look at it (about 5 seconds) but I have one sugestion: change the layout to be a dark background with a light font. Its much easier on the eyes (they've even done ergonomics studies about it, which show it to greatly reduce eye strain).

[Kagetenshi]

[GreyPawn]

Run completion would not be the only source of player advancement or karma gain, most definitely. And like I said earlier, spawns would be completely unmappable and completely uncampable due to a dynamic spawn system and instancing. Karma could theoretically be recieved any number of different ways, through profiteering, monster-killing, bounty hunting, player corp leadership, etc.

It would be theoretically impossible to prevent the same -type- of run from being experienced more than once, but a randomizer with intuitive touches could generate dynamic missions and runs enough to break the monotony and certainly the possibility of encountering the same run would be improbable at best.

It -will- be possible to subcontract runs. Players will definitely be able to become Johnsons themselves in this fashion.

[GreyPawn]

[Kagetenshi]

And then we get into the question of how far away from Shadowrun you're willing to let this get.

~J

[GreyPawn]

That depends entirely on your interpretation of what is Shadowrun.
Is Shadowrun the rich world, the stories, the lore, the characters and peoples and events which have shaped the universe through myriad numbers of sourcebooks, communities and gamers..

or..

Is it the fact that firing a snub-nosed revolver from the back of a moving train at a dune buggy results in a modifier of 12 (plus -2 for light conditions)?

Important question to ask oneself. What is the world of Shadowrun made of? The substance of it, or the way the substance is relayed?

--GreyPawn
--Shadowrun-Online.com

[Kagetenshi]

This isn't nearly that fine a distinction. One of the big things about Riggers is that they pack the most punch by orders of magnitude with some of the best armor and mobility. The balance is that they pack the least subtlety (or the most fragility when they are subtle), high costs, and some unique difficulties operating indoors.

That's more balanced in a tabletop game than a MMORPG. Remember, not everyone is going to be there to role-play; the vast majority of the market will be there to do anything but. Meanwhile, you either overpunish them and make them useless, or you let them smack anything down. Sure, they may get taken out by a hit squad later, but in a MMORPG it just doesn't matter so much.

Which raises another question, despite the fact that you haven't answered the last one: when a character dies, what happens?

~J

[FrostyNSO]

When they die, they're dead.

I'm sure this will be remedied by the all-powerful Doc-Wagon. However, I think that there should be a limited maximum number of Doc-Wagon response teams in the game world.

If all the Doc-Wagon response teams happen to be busy, you're SOL. There is a set amount of time that Doc Wagon has to arrive before you're dead for good. (based on body attribute)

Furthermore, Doc-Wagon teams will need to be sufficiently bad-ass to prevent people from "Camping" Doc-Wagon. (killing somebody with a contract and waiting for the paramedics to arrive and hijack their ambulance)

edit:

Also, you could allow other players to drag dead characters to the nearest street doc or hospital. They'd have to do this within a certain amount of time (based on body attribute).

[Kagetenshi]

This makes the problem of PKing Riggers even worse. Kill off a lot of peoples' worked-on characters, get wasted by the Star, then start working on your next PKing Rigger (or Streetsam, or whatever).

~J

[FrostyNSO]

The Star could act similar to CONCORD on Eve-Online. They will come to interdict gunfights in higher security areas, and as the security rating decreases, so does the response time. In Z-zones, there is no response whatsoever.

This would (in theory) keep most of the PK-ing localized to low security zones. When a character ventures into these zones, they should know damn well by then what they're getting into.

[Kagetenshi]

Not with a disposable PK-character, unless you want to have response times in under the amount of time it takes for a grenade to be thrown, explode, and kill the person it hit. Or for a vehicle to accelerate and ram a player.

~J

[FrostyNSO]

Good point.

Before i get too much ito this, let me make it clear that I am against making Shadowrun a MMO, I'm just bouncing ideas here.

Another idea could be to have a sort of points system.

In a NASCAR game my uncle used to play, it would keep track of your crashes and whether you were at fault. If you had to many crashes to your fault, it wouldn't allow you into certain games (depending on what settings the game creator set).

This could be modified to disallow access to districts?

The disposable PK player would have to be fixed by something like (either, or, or any combination of the following):

1. Limiting the number of characters you can have on an account.

2. Imposing a time limit between creating and deleting characters.

3. Making players pay for each additional character.

4. Allowing only 1 character per account at a time.

[GreyPawn]

Death is a tricky subject.

After careful consideration, yes, DocWagon will most probably function as a catch-all to prevent character death.

If you die, you re-appear at a local DogWagon clinic. No karma penalty, no Hand of God, no gear loss, but depending upon where you were, its possible that you've lost the items that were in your inventory. Death will function very similar to World of Warcraft in this regards.

While I'm pretty sure that this will have some detractors, especially amongst the more die-hard SR purists, players of games don't play them because they want to be punished or they enjoy downtime. Making death as painless as possible appeals to a greater number of people than making death painful would, simply put. Permanent death cannot be an option in any competitive online game.

--GreyPawn
--Shadowrun-Online.com