mfb
May 17 2006, 05:51 AM
indeed.
it's worth pointing out, by the way, that
i'm not some lone nutjob, at least not in this instance. there are a lot of unhappy fans out there.
James McMurray
May 17 2006, 05:53 AM
I don't think anyone is saying that there aren't unhappy fans out there. To say that you'd have to be pretty much blind.
mfb
May 17 2006, 05:55 AM
ARE YOU CALLING ME BLIND!?!!!?!?!!?!?!
/self-deprecating humor
James McMurray
May 17 2006, 06:38 AM
Not unless you're trying to say that there aren't any unhapy fans out there. Or of course if you're actually blind.
ShadowDragon8685
May 17 2006, 08:59 AM
QUOTE ("Hot sehks and win") |
[THE BIG ‘D’] Good evening.
[WORDSMYTH] Again? What is it this time?
[JUNGLE CAT] This vile trickery doesn’t become you.
>UMSONDO JOINS
[THE LAUGHING MAN] Is this related to the previous discussion, oh wily wyrm?
[HECATE] Fool me once.
>HECATE LEAVES
[LADY OF THE COURT] Melodramatic much? What is this about?
[THE BIG ‘D’] Sorry to inconvenience you once more, dear friends. But there is something we must discuss. It concerns the fate of the world.
[THE LAUGHING MAN] Doesn’t it always?
[WORDSMYTH] Such is always the nature of things.
[THE BIG ‘D’] Truth, but this is different. Will you hear me? I trust I did not disappoint with the revelations gleaned from our last similarly clandestine meeting.
[LADY OF THE COURT] Yes.
[WORDSMYTH] We will hear you.
[THE LAUGHING MAN] Count me in! I’m always up for a bit of enlightening.
[UMSONDO] I remain and will listen.
[JUNGLE CAT] Very well.
>>>>>CODE: FILE EXECUTE-SHADOWRUN-FPS [Shadowrun.com] >>>>>BEGIN? [Y/N]> Y
[WORDSMYTH] So… they wish to delete us?
>JUNGLE CAT SEETHES
[THE LAUGHING MAN] Well, it was a good run!
[THE BIG ‘D’] I’m afraid it is all true. Your own sources can confirm what mine have. The creators wish to wipe us from the fabric of existence, and start anew.
[THE LAUGHING MAN] A veritable etch-a-sketch end o’ the world!
[LADY OF THE COURT] Why would they do this?
[WORDSMYTH] Public appeal. A broader vision?
[UMSONDO] I perceive neither.
[THE LAUGHING MAN] Isn’t this folly? Are they not cognizant of that?
[UMSONDO] The consistency of an imagined world is its very foundation. Remove this and everything falls.
[JUNGLE CAT] Treacherous ingrates. Our blood and sweat and toil have borne their world and the following it enjoys. It is in our existence and perpetuity that they find life!
[THE BIG ‘D’] Now that you’ve had first glance, I’m publicizing the document and opening the discussion. This concerns more than just us.
>>>>>CODE: PROPAGATE*.LTG SHADOWRUN-FPS [Shadowrun.com] >>>>>BEGIN? [Y/N]> Y
>HECATE JOINS
[HECATE] What?! They aren’t serious, are they?
[THE LAUGHING MAN] No riggers, no deckers, no orks, and a complete eradication of history as we know it. Hilarious!
[UMSONDO] With the annulment of our collective histories, they hope to provide our universe with a rebirth. I will watch, but it is not for me to judge.
[The Big ‘D’] You will not be able to judge from oblivion, my friend. In their vision, we no longer matter. The rich tapestry we have woven over the past few decades will unravel into nothingness in short order. The stories, the journeys, the glorious adventures of the 6th World are undone. They do not remember that it is not how a rock falls, or a bullet wounds, or a how a spell is cast, but rather the effects of these things in a lasting and rich world. With a tunnel-vision view on the “How”, they have ultimately neglected the “Why”, and excised us from this new realm. They have forgotten us. They have forgotten what we have added to the reality of running in the shadows. That in our characters and stories we have added a sense of permanence- that we have added lasting purpose.
[WORDSMYTH] And depth.
[THE LAUGHING MAN] And laughter.
[CAPTAIN CHAOS] And joy.
[CHROMEACNT] And respite.
[DEUS] And fear.
[ATZCAP] And challenge.
[LADY OF THE COURT] And allure.
[FASTJACK] And tragedy.
[LOFWYR] And intrigue.
[H COYOTE] And mystery.
[JUNGLE CAT] And glory.
[HECATE] And redemption.
[UNIBRO-4-LIFE] And immersion.
[The Big ‘D’] But take Heart. It might not be that bad. And perhaps someday in the near future, we’ll get to come out and play. Perhaps the experience will be engaging and entertaining, and will bring whoever dares to pick up the controller or mouse truly into our world, if only for awhile. Until then.
>SHADOWRUN LEAVES |
Whomever wrote that should get a medal.
In other news... FASA dropped the ball. They didn't just drop the ball, they dropped the ball that set off the rube goldberg machine of fury and rage. Hopefully, it's going to fly around and kick them in the ass.
What has this game got going for it, ignoring all I.P., and treating it as a straight-up first person shooter? Things that few if any FPS's have ever done?
It has:
Multiple races. (Arguably. While other FPSs may or may not have races, they tend to have weight classes.)
Magic (Which is non-offensive, and relegates players to the support role. We all know how open-play guys LOVE to be the support role, right?)
What it has flying against it:
Windows Vista. The computer gaming crowd is not going to want to upgrade their O.S. just to play this game, especially as XP has several years worth of life left in it yet.
No singleplayer support.
It's a game that will be moving in direct competition with Counter-Strike: Source, which costs a whole lot less, whichever Unreal Tournament is currently "in", and America's Army, which is FREE.
The guys who coulden't care about Shadowrun and only want an FPS will wind up being unimpressed by it and go back to playing Counter-Strike: Source.
Worse, the few that DO like it and find out there's a PnP RPG (if they ever do, because M$ is certainly not going to mention it, as it dosen't get them any money) are going to buy SR4, and be all "omfg wtf is thiz hax? This isen't Shadowrun!" And then the Shadowrun guys they talk to will say "Sorry to say this mate, but that is Shadowrun. That shit Microsoft put out? They only got to use the Shadowrun name because of some legal name-pirating. Go ahead and try SR4 though, you'll find it's a lot better than the game. If you have any patience, that is."
"Patience? WTF is that shit? NM I GB2CS".
Worse is that making this a Shadowrun game would NOT HAVE BEEN ALL THAT HARD. Not at all.
You wanna know how? Here's how.
The game started development before SR4. So you set it in 2060, before the YotC and all the SotAs. This is to limit the PnP material you have to browse through.
You go through the guns and equipment and cyber lists and magic lists of the SR3 core book, pull out the useful stuff. You might have to drop riggers because of the "OMFG that drone just eradicated the whole team" factor - then again, you might not have to. Depends on your implementation - if you only use the small and light drones that can be destroyed with firearms, then you can keep riggers. Alternatively, do like BF2, and make anti-vehicle weapons common, and you can keep tank-truck/heavy drone riggers.
Come up with a good reason for this to be a CTF game. How about, I dunno, a scaled-up version of Urban Brawl? Urban Brawl Championship will be the In-Character reason for it, with anyone and everyone who wants to try to participate allowed to do so.
Bam. Story, not even all that implausable.
How to implement magic? Simple - a Stun and a Health bar. Each one imposes penalties, of course, making your aim more wobbly and slowing you down until you recover. This also gives people a reason to carry nonlethal weaponry - if someone is fast with healing spells on the enemy team, you can use the stun to put people out of action since they can't heal stun. Then when everybody's out of action, you can geek them. Or leave 'em to rot/kill themselves (thus losing points) to respawn.
Implementing decking? Easiest thing in the world. Just create an extra "zone" to the map that's outside the "physical world" zone. When someone jacks in, their meat body stays in the physical world, vunerable and undefended unless someone is defending it, and they can fly around in the extra world. What does it do? Make it so using the Matrix right is either VITAL to success, or Very Helpful - things like hacking the enemy base's turrets would be good. A short hack would simply put them offline until someone reset them in the Matrix, a long hack would change them to target the team they were supposed to protect. Or simply require the door to the flag room to be hacked open. You can simply forget all the IC and stuff, and make the only form of Matrix defense to be an opposing player in the Matrix - not inappropriate for a closed-system Urban Brawl match.
The Astral plane? Same deal, except you don't need a jack-in point to project. Projecting into the astral plane is simple - you occupy a new characture of yourself and fly around in what is essentially noclip mode. Some things (the ground, the boundaries of the arena, the skybox) are impassable, ICly you can say these places (as well as some other places, like the enemy spawns) have been warded against astral movement. Give the astral player moving a lot of speed, give him a speed toggle so he can either move super-fast as is Astral-norm, or move carefully. Let him see ordinary objects blurrily and indistinctly, thus making landmarks a little hard to follow, and make people out there in the meat world visible. Make Watcher Spirits on the astral out so that they show the mage a picture-in-picture view of what they're seeing from the astral in the top of his screen - not really canon, but it's a good fascimile. Other sorts of spirits, of course, you can order around with a simple but option-rich (not an oxymoron) map-view command system. "Go Astral. Go here. Manifest. Kill everything. Go Astral. Go here. Manifest. Kill everything. Go Astral. Go here. Manifest. Kill everything. Go back to step 1." for example. Bam, you just set up a three-point patrol. And this of course, introduces the reason for having the astral - spirits are difficult to combat in the world without AV weapons, but in astral combat a mage percieving is about equal to them, and a mage projecting has a really good chance of punking them down.
Bam. Shadowrun, the FPS. Instead, they chose to do some wierd shit.
Kagetenshi
May 17 2006, 12:48 PM
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685) |
What has this game got going for it, ignoring all I.P., and treating it as a straight-up first person shooter? Things that few if any FPS's have ever done?
It has:
Multiple races. (Arguably. While other FPSs may or may not have races, they tend to have weight classes.) |
Not even arguably. The first, but not the only, example of this to come to mind is UT2k4, though it's an optional setting.
QUOTE |
Magic (Which is non-offensive, and relegates players to the support role. We all know how open-play guys LOVE to be the support role, right?) |
Maldavria (Q3 mod) and Clive Barker's Undying (commercial game) both have magic.
~J
blakkie
May 17 2006, 03:22 PM
Just to clear up the delusions, we'll see SR5 before we see a strict canon RPG. Fan made or otherwise.
That site was just someone trying to lobby Microsoft to build a SR RPG or MMO. Microsoft is currently right out of the MMO business. The cut it some time back, but for some odd reason had picked up Brad McQuaid's gang Vangard...which they just offically dumped distribution of earlier this month.
So there isn't going to be a SR as you know it RPG, and sure as hell no MMO.
P.S. As far as I can tell from the datestamps on the news, when that site openned up FASA was already nearly a year into development of this current game.
hobgoblin
May 17 2006, 04:31 PM
QUOTE |
Maldavria (Q3 mod) and Clive Barker's Undying (commercial game) both have magic. |
to bad the mod nosedived and the commersial game was a pure one player game.
hell, after reading some of the stuff linked from the forum-thread that mfb linked to, its clear that its a cheap CS clone made to attract people to the "live anywhere" service. way to butcher the IP property microsoft.
by the looks of it, they could not handle the richness of the background, so they had to boil it down to gun and magic to get the basic idea thru to the execs. and at that point the execs said: FPS! end of story
James McMurray
May 17 2006, 05:46 PM
QUOTE |
Magic (Which is non-offensive, and relegates players to the support role. We all know how open-play guys LOVE to be the support role, right?) |
Can mages not carry guns?
blakkie
May 17 2006, 05:57 PM
QUOTE (James McMurray @ May 17 2006, 11:46 AM) |
QUOTE | Magic (Which is non-offensive, and relegates players to the support role. We all know how open-play guys LOVE to be the support role, right?) |
Can mages not carry guns?
|
Of course they can. Magic is in a supporting role at a personal level. It is a tool. Even rezing someone, though obviously a "support role" at the team level, appears to be a really well paying (in ingame currency) sideline for the caster.
James McMurray
May 17 2006, 05:59 PM
Cool. The poster made it sound like all you could do is support.
ShadowDragon8685
May 17 2006, 06:31 PM
No, my point is that nobody is going to support, because rezzing somebody will give you penalties. If you've ever played an Open game of CS or BF2 or something, you know what I mean, especially BF2. How many people play a support class? About none of them. Those who do never actually do the supporting they're supposed to, they just play it because they like the weapons available and the fact that they can support themselves.
They never support the team.
nezumi
May 17 2006, 06:50 PM
QUOTE (mfb) |
it's worth pointing out, by the way, that i'm not some lone nutjob, at least not in this instance. there are a lot of unhappy fans out there. |
Well, not in this case anyway.
(I'm sorry!!! I'm really being mean today, but they're just too easy!!)
blakkie
May 17 2006, 07:04 PM
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ May 17 2006, 12:31 PM) |
No, my point is that nobody is going to support, because rezzing somebody will give you penalties. If you've ever played an Open game of CS or BF2 or something, you know what I mean, especially BF2. How many people play a support class? About none of them. Those who do never actually do the supporting they're supposed to, they just play it because they like the weapons available and the fact that they can support themselves.
They never support the team. |
I've played open server TF and Tribes/T2. I haven't played BF2. If people aren't playing the classes at all I would say then that it was a poorly designed game in that regard. It wasn't a fun to play option, so of course people aren't going to want to play it. Sounds like it is a class that should have been cut.
On the otherhand in Tribes 2 there were lots of jobs to fit different tasks. Pickup games were still relatively unorganized, but you could work effectively in teams of 2 or 3 people too even if the whole of the team was disorganized.
As for the specifics of rezzing currently the the caster gets a 50% take of what the player he rezzed makes from that point on. Given that cash is what you use to buy more spells and gear i'd say that's a pretty strong incentive to overcome tying up about a 1/3 of your casting reserves.
Rez two people and then go find a hidie-hole to crawl into.
ShadowDragon8685
May 17 2006, 07:35 PM
You're assuming he's going to make anything. Which means you'll have people out to ressurect the top players, the top players console-killing themselves to get out of debt, and the newbies on their own anyway.
Yeah, real equitable there.
blakkie
May 17 2006, 08:08 PM
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ May 17 2006, 01:35 PM) |
You're assuming he's going to make anything. Which means you'll have people out to ressurect the top players, the top players console-killing themselves to get out of debt, and the newbies on their own anyway.
Yeah, real equitable there. |
I'm not sure what you are talking about with console-killing themselves? You mean if someone rezzes them they'll just kill themselves and not earn any cash at all vs. earning 1/2 cash?
Rezzing the truely feeble isn't so much a problem as they'll soon free your Essense up again, and a player that is really good might leave you with a long wait and a dangerous situation before you can rez him.
You rez someone and your team is strengthened and you stand to gain some unknown amount of cash out of it. *shrug* The actual percentage cut the caster gets is likely something that tweaking would help on to find the right psychological sweet spot. But all in all a game that has well designed avatar options will have them all used in some reasonable extent.....which gets us back to it being helpful in building a good game to avoid being a slave to the literal rules of a game in an entirely different medium, and being willing to cut "features" that get in the way or doesn't add to the gameplay.
EDIT: One obvious area where a problem could develop is surrounding TKing. But without a stringent background anti-TK script running or an human admin present public servers tend to turn off team damage anyway.
James McMurray
May 17 2006, 09:19 PM
People play support classes in WoW all the time. Why would this game be any different (assuming the support class is fun to play).
mfb
May 17 2006, 09:22 PM
haha! woo. MMO players are a whole other breed from FPS players. guys who play both MMOs and FPSs act completely different from one game type to the other.
Kagetenshi
May 17 2006, 09:27 PM
QUOTE (James McMurray) |
People play support classes in WoW all the time. Why would this game be any different (assuming the support class is fun to play). |
People play average schmoes in Silent Hill all the time. Why would this game be any different (assuming the average schmoe is fun to play)?
~J
Shrike30
May 17 2006, 09:53 PM
Show me a Silent Hill game where you're up against other players, and I might get more out of this...
Kagetenshi
May 17 2006, 09:56 PM
But that's exactly the point—they're different kinds of games. It happens that WoW and CounterRun have more in common with each other than with SH*, but they are still different games.
You dismiss my SH comparison, I dismiss the WoW comparison, both times for valid reasons.
~J
blakkie
May 17 2006, 10:02 PM
QUOTE (James McMurray @ May 17 2006, 03:19 PM) |
People play support classes in WoW all the time. Why would this game be any different (assuming the support class is fun to play). |
You don't have to go outside the team PVP set of games to find people on public servers playing all the various roles. Can't say what the specific issue with BF2 is, but TF and T2 had lots of people with engineering and medics loadouts/character types and a mix of offense/defense. I believe that at one point some TF servers did start putting caps on the number of players that could choose a given type. But that problem had to do more with teams running all snipers i believe, which resulted in the other side pretty much needing to run all snipers. It would then devolve into a sniper vs. sniper war.
The biggest problem in T2 was the learning curve on piloting where some noob would jump into the pilot seat on a transport or bomber and then proceed to run into something and flip it over or fly it at missle-bait altitude (anti-missle flares being a limited load out) getting everyone killed.
Which is another design boo-boo to watch out for to make the game public server friendly. Senarios where a single player can easily cripple a team through poor play to the point where it would better if the team was down a couple people rather than him being on the team. That's why the option is normally included to turn off friendly fire or at least have an anti-FF script running.
James McMurray
May 17 2006, 10:23 PM
So there's a couple people saying that FPS players don't do support classes and some saying they do. Does anyone have any backup for their claims? If not I'm going to assume that some people will want to play a mage, even if some of their magic is supportive, because there are people out there that like to be the one that others rely on. And if you get paid for helping people all the better.
blakkie
May 17 2006, 10:27 PM
QUOTE (James McMurray @ May 17 2006, 04:23 PM) |
So there's a couple people saying that FPS players don't do support classes and some saying they do. Does anyone have any backup for their claims? |
I'm still trying to figure out WTF Kagetenshi is talking about with SH (but then i don't play that particular game, so whatever he thinks he's saying is going to need to be a bit more explicit), mfb i'm assuming is going off his extensive FPS team PVP experience, and ShadowDragon8685 appears to be going off the fact that he is sparking up a fat one.
Kagetenshi
May 17 2006, 10:30 PM
QUOTE |
I'm still trying to figure out WTF Kagetenshi is talking about with SH |
Then let me try to distill the concept down to a core essence that perhaps even your feeble mind will be able to understand:
They are different game types. They play differently, and people play them differently.
Now, can we spot two other games in recent discussion that are of different game types?
~J
Austere Emancipator
May 17 2006, 10:34 PM
People playing support roles just to be a valuable contributor to the team are few and far between in team FPSs, in my personal experience (but then I only got in on FPS goodness in CS b3.1, so I'm still a bit of a n00b), but when such action is rewarded there will be people doing it. As an example, in America's Army, on servers where scores aren't being tracked and it's all about frags, you can bleed to death right in front of the team medic and he won't even blink. On some tracked servers, where being an active medic is a great way to score big time, you see medics queuing up to give first aid.
blakkie
May 17 2006, 10:39 PM
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ May 17 2006, 04:30 PM) |
QUOTE | I'm still trying to figure out WTF Kagetenshi is talking about with SH |
Then let me try to distill the concept down to a core essence that perhaps even your puny mind will be able to understand:
They are different games. They play differently, and people play them differently.
~J
|
But why would that make this invalid?
QUOTE |
People play average schmoes in Silent Hill all the time. Why would this game be any different (assuming the average schmoe is fun to play)? |
Basically it comes down to if it is supported in the game and it's fun for people to play with it then people will tend to play with it. If it sucks to play it then they won't.
For some reason apparently BF2 was built in such a way that one or more of the avatar types suck (player has little personal reward to play). It doesn't match up with any siginficant personality group that plays the game and so it doesn't get used. That it is a "support role" avatar is largely incidental.
Kagetenshi
May 17 2006, 11:01 PM
Self-imposed cooldown time, I'll try to remember to address that tomorrow.
~J
blakkie
May 17 2006, 11:07 PM
QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
Self-imposed cooldown time, I'll try to remember to address that tomorrow.
~J |
After cooling down you might want to spend a little thinking time addressing it first. It should save you a post.
mfb
May 17 2006, 11:25 PM
i wouldn't worry about it, Kage. blakkie's not here to hash out anything conclusive, or even just to debate. he's here to be an asshole and piss people off. when he gets like this, it's generally not worth replying to him at all.
blakkie
May 17 2006, 11:46 PM
QUOTE (mfb @ May 17 2006, 05:25 PM) |
i wouldn't worry about it, Kage. blakkie's not here to hash out anything conclusive, or even just to debate. he's here to be an asshole and piss people off. when he gets like this, it's generally not worth replying to him at all. |
You are just a no worries kind of guy, hey? You certainly don't worry about backing up your mouth. Oh ya, only 5 or 6 hours tops to write the backstory in total canon for a great playable computer game. Nothing but Bull and Shit....and Bull just left town. Your solution being just copy and past the P&P game and it'll all play great.
Shrike30
May 17 2006, 11:47 PM
*sigh*
hyzmarca
May 17 2006, 11:51 PM
The more I read about this game the more I think its sort of like Will Smith's I Robot without the robots.
blakkie
May 18 2006, 12:41 AM
QUOTE (Shrike30 @ May 17 2006, 05:47 PM) |
*sigh* |
That's what happens to snipers that sit and squat too long. Someone comes along and drops a grenade in their nest. To top it off he tries to pretend he is all mr. hash out and constructive when really all he's showing up to do is what he specializes in. Bitch, whine, and moan.
mfb
May 18 2006, 02:45 AM
QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
The more I read about this game the more I think its sort of like Will Smith's I Robot without the robots. |
haha, nah. Will Smith's I Robot had a single-player campaign (c'mon, i can't be the only one who though "boss fight!" during the tunnel scene).
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