A good deal of Shadowrun video games have been made through the years (My personal favorite being the RPG for SNES), but nothing really BIG and interactive has been done. I think Shadowrun is a game, above most others, that would make the transition from P&P to MMO quite easily. The more I think about it, honestly, I hope some great cosmic entity plucks the idea from my head and places it into the dreams of some bigwig game designer. I envision it being a good deal like Anarchy Online (If anyone played that) as far as the futuristic urban sprawls and indoor missions. What do you guys think. Would you like to see it? Would you play it?

Personally I see it as a co-op game, like Left 4 Dead (campaign mode) than an MMO, but that's just my taste.

I so wish I worked for a videogame company, first game I would suggest would be a Shadowrun game. I was thinking a 3rd person shooter, with AI or other players taking on tactical squadmates, kinda like Rainbow Six Las Vegas.

I make flash games and making something ShadowRun-esque is on my list of pipe dreams.

It would work well in either left 4 dead style coop or City of Heroes style MMORPG.

As an MMORPG I could see it working quite well. You'd pick your general class (Mage/Shaman, Adept, Cyber, Technomage, Rigger) and go from there. The Astral and Technomage bits would effectively be a layer over the main game that only certain classes could see. You could run around and meet fixers, then do instanced dungeons near your targets (so you might have a run against the local ganger hangout, or whatever). The game could have a leveling system of sorts where your level sets how much money you get, what gear is available to you, your initiation grade maximum, etc.

As L4D style, it's pretty obvious but without the leveling.

JaronK

http://awakenedmmo.org/

Count me in as someone who thinks that a (well done) Shadowrun MMO would pretty much suck years off of my life. I've spent more than a few hours on a slow day at work thinking how I'd like to see different things implemented. I just doubt that I'll ever see it, or that what I get will be what I actually want. *sigh*

I know that if I was the one making the mechanics I know I'd rebuild them from the ground up trying to match fluff as much as possible--that is, direct combat spells such as Stunbolt aren't taxing on the caster, but are ineffective on objects, while physical illusions are moderate drain but DO effect objects--while maintaining balance (though Balance and Diversity are inversely proportional). I have no problems with mages filling any given roll in a group just as well or perhaps slightly better than a mundane, provided they can't fill many rolls to the same degree.

I would love an MMO or a co-op like Left 4 Dead! I would even enjoy a turn based game (like X-com).

What I wouldnt enjoy, is another piece of shit game like the slapped together fps on Vista.

I'd be interested in seeing a decent treatment of one; it couldn't be much worse than the Microsoft game, could it?

I'd vote for multiplayer co-op Mass Effect style game over an MMO. Even though it would be cool to run around Seattle with thousands of other Shadowrunners, I don't like the fact that the missions/quests in MMO's are so generalized so that they can mass produce them. I'd rather have a handful of unique, scripted events then thousands of "go kill 10 of these" quests.

This looks like the Shadowrun MMO that M$ killed threatening legal action a while back.

Nope. No MMO for me.

Give me a good single player RPG any day of the week. Something with a solid story that keeps me engaged, lots of places to explore, and a customizable character and I'm happy as a clam.

I'd rather avoid paying 15 dollars a month for a glorified chat room where combat consists of "I click, and then we wait to see who runs out of hitpoints first", grinding away trying to get the next shiny piece of phat lewt, and dealing with the maturity that internet gaming seems to bring out in people.

I'd rather have the single player as well. Fallout 3 meets Deus Ex, it makes me excited just thinking about it.

I, too, would prefer a single player RPG done well than an MMO.

Agreed!

I would like to see it opened up like the GTA series, but with better missions.

Now THAT would be exciting!

Well, that's why you'd want the City of Heroes style instanced stuff instead of Evercrack or WoW style "kill 10 X." With City of Heroes, you'd have a few missions of the "kill 10 X" variety, but most involved entering a building which created an instance dungeon, and then you'd have a specific mission such as "get to this position and activate this thing" or "wipe out all enemies." Obviously, the former would be better for Shadowrun.

Imagine, if you will, a game that played like this:

You've got your Shadowrunner, perhaps a Shaman. You go to a designated "Shadowrunner Haunt" which is the usual place to get groups together, and is essencially an LFG system. You get together a group with a cybered out combat guy (Street Sam), a B&E style cybered guy, a combat adept, and a drone rigger. Now you do a command to "call your fixer." The fixer gives you a mission based on your level and the number of people in your party over the phone... maybe you have to meet a Mr. Johnson, maybe not. In this case, your mission is to head into the Barrens and find a hidden underground facility where Aztechnology is testing a new widget. Your group heads through the barrens, fighting through a few gangers, and then drops into the sewers. From here you enter the facility. At this point the game creates the "dungeon" with the appropriate mission set up. Upon arriving, you decide to scout. The drone rigger sends out his scout drone while you go astral and do a quick sweep of the place. This gives you a map of the facility to work with, and lets you know about the hellhounds that they have guarding the place (yikes!). You battle your way through part of the facility, and once you're close enough to the widget the B&E adept sneaks up past some of the harder baddies and gets it, and you get out of there. Now you leave the dungeon and head back through the Barrens to your meeting spot and drop off the widget, getting paid in karma and some cash.

JaronK

Sounds too much like Breach, Bang and Clear than Sneaky Entry to me.

I would dig something like a moderated instance more, or that the facility is closed for others that don't have a job there. And if somebody else got a job in that facility while there is someone else in there... happy shoot out over the booty.

I'd go more with small but many servers, something with 100 players max where the players can simulate the Shadow Community appropriately.

Well, I was just giving one example. I would hope that missions could be solved in a variety of ways... through stealth, through direct firepower, through precision firepower, etc. In theory, you'd want to balance it so that the best strategy would be to use a combination of tactics.

JaronK

The real question is would the game be pink Mohawk or not.

So you're saying something like NWN where you have a big mod community potential. That would be cool, though a single player could rock too.

Any which way you go it has to be better then the M$ arena fps.

yes i would.
i am still sad about shadowrun online being canceled -.-

Count me out. I don't want to deal with the identity crisis of 13 years old kids. I don't want to be out of the game just because I prefer to discover things by myself rather than spend hours reading the guides. I don't want to spend my days bringing 100 devil rats tails to a fixer who never seems to get enough of these. I don't want Neo217841 and 300 other players to spam my chat window with some unreadable message about selling some custom predator.

When I play a video game I like to follow an interesting story and/or to have some fun gameplay elements. No MMORPG I've tried had either. They were just boring games all about getting a bigger dick than anyone else by doing the same boring thing over and over.

And this is something that can be avoided, dont'cha think? Not every MMO is World of Warcraft.

Most MMOGs are like WoW. Even those that were different tend to end up like it. Grind Grind Grind.

Sadly it can't be avoided. Why? Because to develop and run a commercial MMORPG you need money. So you need someone to fund the project.
And such producers will prefer to fund a copy of the most successful game out there than something completely original, especially if it's aimed at a niche market. Let's face it: people like WoW more than they'd like my ideal MMORPG...

Could be great as an fps style mmorpg with free player vs player combat and only light instancing.
Could also include running against other teams so you the game becomes less repetitive.
The game would need a huge rebalancing though, hard capping initiations at rather low levels and redesigning some implants.
I do agree that those rat hunt missions suck but then youo simply could stay faithful to the pen and paper rpg by awarding karma for successful runs and not for kills, thus making a sneaky approach equally rewarding as an all out assault.



That statement is as wrong as it can get, especially for an mmo.

The majority of what I think would make such an MMO successful would be the mechanics that set it apart from the standard MMO. A damage track that doesn't improve with level. Point-and-click combat rather than target lock and click. An eve-style sandbox that allows for contracts, bounties, and player driven content. Sure, you could do some repeatable "kill 10 X" missions. Go kill 10 devil rats and bring them in for the bounty, or whatever. That even makes some sense to me. But quest chains could include the legwork to gether intel for a mission, culminating in instanced runs against small facilities. Smash and grabs, sneak and peeks, extractions...

That game would totally be doable as an MMO. My only issue is that I'm not confident that, that is the game I'd get.

I'm still dreaming of a SR MMORPG with a built in gamemaster tool where you can bulit your own runs from prefab elements and the GM is in control over the NPCs. AFAIR Vampire:TM Redemtion had such a function. Of course a MMOG would have to work on a much bigger scale.

Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes offer advanced options for such "GMing", but I am not sure if they are up to your vision.

It's been a while since I've read this series of articles but it talks about this issue.

Development is continuing. They were in negotiations with M$ for a while to allow the project to continue. About the time FASA Studios was closed, M$ changed their mind and let the project continue as long as they didn't produce the product for profit (as M$ technically still owns the right to the name). The feeling the the project is that once the new company (sorry can't remember the name but it is something like Tic Toc Games) has full rights to the game that they will adopt the project's work and finish the game.

this is probably the best formt to use. its also similar to mabinogi or the phantasy star mmos

Sorry, can't read it. Somehow the site manages to crash my firefox.

But it's pretty straight forward actually.
Competitive gameplay will attract competitive gamers. Those will choose the class and gear which will allow them to win easier.
Some people will choose other classes for roleplaying reasons or simply because they want to be unique but the majority goes for so called cookie-cutter setups.
This even gets worse over time, when new players get tips and tricks told by older players that sound like "if you want to pvp take the troll bow adept".
If you have 100 bows but one is hands down better then the others all you will see in game is this 1 bow and that list goes on ad infinitum.

This is close-ish. Level-less system that puts full focus on skills. Fantasy based, though. It does have shipbuilding, hover-tanks, seige cannons, and grenades though.

The closest thing so far was/is Neocron.
Has a matrix, cyberware, magic(well, psionics ), drones, tanks, bikes, cars and so on.
Unfortunately pretty much dead thanks to a horrible rebalancing (after being rather badly balanced before)

After some deep soul searching I've come to realize that there's no way I could enjoy any sort of Shadowrun video game. Unlike the usual Tolkien-esque D&D settings, the Sixth World in my head could not be adequately translated into pixels.

I would have to disagree. Just take the original Star Was Galaxy for instance (before they screwed it up), it was great and showed that a non-fantasy setting is quite possible. I think the key to having a great SR MMO is to keep the feel of doing runs for major corps. Have basic "runs" the follow the strengths of each archtype (example extraction for SS, data theft for hackers, clear magical threat for mages, and have a good vehicle engine for the riggers (I would die to have a good racer minigame in an MMO)).

Darn. Doesn't crash mine. Odd.



I do believe that was my point. If you have imbalance with your choices then everyone picks the obvious best, exactly as if you had no choice at all. Balance and Diversity of options are inversely proportional: the more options the less balanced they'll be, by balancing everything perfectly you get an illusion of choice (see: D&D 4e), and the more choices there are the harder it is to figure out what that balance is.

A Shadowrun MMO would be great. I'd live there, I think...so maybe it's a good thing it hasn't happened.

If any of you have been following City of Heroes at all (full disclosure: I work on the COH franchise, but I promise, I'm not shilling!) they've recently been beta testing a system which allows players to create their own missions for other players to experience. In a SR setting, this could mean you could play a Fixer type by creating your own 'runs' then 'hiring' runners to go and do them. The Fixer could be rewarded based on teh success of the run (and the rating the players gave it) while the runners could be rewarded via the contents of the run itself. Definitely good stuff!

The *biggest* hurdle to a Shadowrun MMO, though, comes from the "Three Worlds" problem: There's the normal world geometry, the Matrix for when you go "all in" and the Astral. If you stripped out the ability to go completely into the Matrix and stuck with AR, the whole thing could likely be done much more easily, but still not without expense.

Corp jobs aren't the be-all, end-all of Shadowrun. There are also criminal syndicates, government organizations, religious groups, and even freelance adventures; all of which are part of the same large tapestry.

Not every RPG system can be easily plugged into a digital counterpart. Class-based games like D&D (which is the obvious precursor to WoW and Ultima) are a natural fit as they work on a principle of "leveling up" using quantifiable experience points. Shadowrun doesn't work that way. How does a video game reward clever problem solving or good role-playing? SR is more like Second Life than WoW.

I've seen a game that had a VR "overlay" as it were. It was very much SR without the trolls and the magic (so cyberpunk, but had many of the facets of shadowrun's non-magical universe, the Matrix isn't seen much in the normal cyberpunk genre as far as I am aware, that is, it exists, but isn't utilized to the extent that it could be). Other than the entire VR thing being almost completely pointless (the tutorial mission I played had a very boring VR: every computer terminal you hacked into lead only one place and through a very long and twisting pathway (that more than once decided that "down" was now "that" way) and offered no obstacles. Other than your meat body could still be shot by the opposing team (assuming there was one). I didn't play any MP as I wasn't all that impressed.

But the ability to do the matrix and the astral is there.



ShadowRun does have Karma, but you're right. There's not a lot of opportunity for Good Roleplaying, which might have to take a seat in a traditional MMO. Though...we could have a "roll of the dice" determine which of 4 responses you give to NPCs, if your diplomacy is better (or whatever) then you get better replies, rather than "pick one" and all four possible choices are already there, it's just a matter of not being a douche to the NPC to get a good deal.

It's actually not hard to code the "three worlds" thing. For each object in the game, you have to have its real world presence, it's VR presence, and its astral presence, along with flags that tell it if it can react to things in each of those worlds. Thus, a random ganger is visible in reality and astral, but can only react to (and be attacked by) things in the real world. You can't hack him or target him astrally. Meanwhile, a non materialized spirit is only visible in the astral, but can react to the astral and physical (and can materialize to attack the physical). And so on.

JaronK

Oh, of course. It isn't even difficult -- World of Warcraft has been doing 'overlay' events since Burning Crusade, and WOW is hardly cutting edge tech. No, the difficulty lies with the number of art assets needed -- three "worlds" doesn't necessarily mean three times the art assets, since there are tricks you can play with shaders, overlays and such but it does mean MORE art assets, and art is one of the major costs for MMO development.

For a time I was playing EVE Online and it has a skill based "leveling" system. Basically you increase your skills and get better equipment, rather then go up levels like in Ultima and WOW. It was a simple system that seemed to work well.

The Astral really only needs a desaturate/blur overlay on the Material world, with some glow for Auras and a bit of code that says "this object is astral-visible" (no overlay), etc.

The matrix I see as needing scant few actual art assets, as I'd prefer to see it represented as a truly obvious digital fabrication (glowing wireframes, binary data streams, etc) than the way it's portrayed in the fluff (exceedingly realistic, modeled however the designer wants, only no smell).

Ummm Ultima Online is a Skill based game... my mage can choose to unlearn magery and instead learn to use a sword or be a blacksmith

A game that i would like to recommend for anyone working on the Astral part of a Shadowrun game is Legacy of Kain, Soul Reaver. In this game you could 'jump' to a place that's is something like an Astral Plane, with spirits and everything else. Besides the textures, the architeture of things change a little too, with distances turning a little diferent.

In my opinion the game should be a tird person shooter/adventure/RPG hybrid, in wich you switch betwen modes (melee, firearms, spellcasting); the attributes should affect the gameplay in subtle but relevant ways, strenght makes you punch harder, but it will also reduces how much recoils trowes your aim off, or it will be required to hancle properly some weapons (for example to wield an heavy pistol with a single hand you need a strenght of 3 or face a penality to accuracy), agility will make stadier the aim (especialy appreciable when using sniper rifles) and will reduce the time for your aim to recover from recoil, reaction will allow you to act faster, intuition will make object of interest sharper and give them greater contrast making them easier to spot, etc.. The game should have no classes but allow you to build and improve your character as you wish, the game should also play heavily on the reputation, with multiple types of reputation (pink mohawks won't recive stealth job offers until they prove they can handle quiet jobs), and multiple reputations with different entities (Corps, syndacates, gangs, smugglers, associations, etc.), and reputation should dictate the advancement, you won't just move to a new area and go to the fixer and get the job for the simple reasons that people aren't too kin on investing money on unproven shadow talent, nor fixers are willing to put their reputation on the line by hiring out complete strangers whos professionality is yet to be determined, and that we are speaking of criminals, they can't just open a shadow-employment office and do their buisness, they have to watch out for cops undercover, protect Mr. Johnson's privacy, and watch their own backs so the system is based on the word of the mouth. If the game is a single player it could have alot of effects that are hard to reproduce in multiplayer (such as subjective time) and the story can be developed in greater detail as it can be built around a single character (it shouldn't be that the world revolves around the main character thought, the world of Shadowrun is distopian and uncaring so it's the character that has to crave his/hers own desteny out of it and not it waiting for the character with open arms) adding possibilities such as romance, contacts development and their relationship with the main character and detailing the consequences of the character choises; if the game is multiplayer it becomes difficult to flesh out many aspect of the world because the interaction of multiple players causes too many variables to be able to go in detail, however the consequences of the various runs could be felt by the player community (thing that isn't that frequent in other MMORPG), the corp could change strategies to cope with the developments, syndacates could go to war, gangs make or breack aliances, etc., all things that can affect the players making the world alive and giving the players a wild ride (and preventing the players to end up doing the checklist of what runs they have taken and what they have yet to take, kind like runs were collectibles). The biggest problem is due to death in Shadowrun being not reversible, this makes sense in the PnP version but creates many problems in an MMORPG (especialy if done like I've suggested), a solution could be making players burn a point of edge to awake in the mourge were they are supposed to be dead (kind what happened at the beginning of the SNES SR game), you lose all your equipment and have to escape (maybe you weren't at the mourge but were given to the organleggers) but it could be done.
As a last thing I would like to point that there should no devil rats quests, maybe there are bounties for devil rats but nothing more than 1 /rat, however there should be activities similar to GTA, bounty hunting, betting on sports (or competing yourself), doing errands (wich later could become courrier runs), matrix tournaments, etc.; the closest thing to the rat quests should be goul hunting, and gouls shouldn't be just some random critters.