That's hilarious.

Anyone from SL who isn't a freelancer. Preferably one who's been banned repeatedly.

I think you guys missed my point. I was asking whether it was possible in a MMORPG, not in an old one player game. The above are endless variations of the same eight runs, not new randomly generated runs. It would be a sad mimickry of real SR.

I was thinking in the lines of:
- meeting with Mr. J
- do background check on Mr. J.
- research and recon based on run type
- planning based on skills possessed by the team and the info from research and recon
- discover complicating factor (AKA Frag up #1)
- more research and recon and planning
- actual run on location with frag up #2 (things not going as planned)
- barely succeeding (or not)
- meeting Mr.J to get money
- aftereffects of the run
and that's just the basics. This includes a dozen of locations and NPCs (with interactiveness and graphics), hundreds of important details (such as map of the location, sec systems layout, matrix host for target corp, etc) and live effects of a game world such as cops, gangers and innocent bystanders. Suddenly every run is different from the last one. Now include the elements that makes SR such a fun game such as conspiracies(small and large), Mr.J's betraying you, contra-runs, yakuza bosses upset that you ruined his granddaughter's birthday party by blowing up that power station on your last run, etc.
Sounds difficult to me, but if it is supposed to be an SR MMORPG it has to be in this direction to deserve it's name. Otherwise I'd prefer an online SR FPS which doesn't claim to be an RPG.
Of course if it's possible to do something like I suggest (the upset yakuza boss is over the top though), it would probably be a success.

Yeah, well that's the rub. The big debate is whether you can actually encapsulate the feeling of Shadowrun into an MMO. There are some issues to deal with for sure.

Is that POS game still around? You have got to be kidding me! It lost me as a customer when it was completely and utterly unplayable at time of release.

Really lame question: How to pass starting page?

Link, please.

Personally - what I think about mmo SR?
It's fit better to me than XBOX FPS.

Rob Boyle.

How is it lame? There are only two images; no links, no other media, nothing really aside from a splashscreen to nowhere.

How, exactly, do you plan to handle this? How is a player going to become a CEO? Imagine the environment of MMORPGs like The Matrix Online. Even in the beta-test, where the vast majority of players were hardcore Matrix fans, there was about zero immersion. Let alone the kind of immersion you'd need to be able to raise structures and make corporations.

How is it going to work? Are you going to take the nuyen you made from killing Johnson X for Johnson Z a thousand times over, buy a "Skyscraper deed", search until you find an unoccupied stretch of land, and place your skyscraper, ala UO?

BTW, IIRC, there were a grand total of 13 legal locations in the original UO that you could place a Castle on. If one player can raise a building, so can all of them. How are you going to adress space problems?


And that's not even considering grief players. In Starwars Galaxies, there are entire guilds of PvP jackasses who are dedicated to hunting down Jedi players and killing them. Yes, Jedi characters do suffer a form of permadeath.

That's not immersion. That's jackassery in the first degree. How are you going to adress that? When your character, which is relatively easy to hide, can be hunted down by jerkwads and terminated, just because it will hurt you. You promised that people could launch RPGs at other player's property and blow it up?

How is that going to work? Imagine logging off for a nice vacation with the family, and when you log back in, you're ruined.

People won't stand for it; and they shoulden't. They are, after all, your paying customers. They're not paying to get dicked over by a complete jackass 13 year old who's out to see everyone successful ruined.


And I'm not even going to get into the situation about players being able to change the geopollitical climate by assassinations and stuff. In very short order, if you actually allow that to happen, there will be no Lone Star, no Knight Errant... Basically all of Seattle will be a Z-Zone, because that's what happens when you have players given freedom. The lowest common denominator prevails, and in MMORPGs, the lowest common denomination is anarchistic 13 year olds who want to pump up and be 1337 and then wipe out everything in their paths.

The only ways to combat that, are, of course, to crack down. In UO, for example, commiting a crime in town meant that people could call the guards - teleporting instakill halberd-wielding guards. They were fun.

And yet, even then, you will find dicks who do not care. People who bank everything they own, walk out in front of the bank and begin chucking grenades everywhere to kill people and get about a thousand guards called on them.

Pandemonium.

And that's just players interacting with each other.

Okay... And how will this be acomplished? Will it be basically a giant horde of NPCs marching in lockstep? Will players be able to move through it? How will it react when inevitably, someone loads up an Ingram Valiant and opens fire on it.

How will NPCs react with players? NPCs are notoriously bad at communications, even moreso when you have voice chat and text chat in the mix. Will they interact through a menu, maybe?

The Matrix Online promised to break the grind, too. They didn't deliver. Even the beta-test experiance levels, which were roughly 1/3rd to 1/4th as fast as the full game, proved to be a grind once you started getting up there. How are you going to break the grind?

And how are you going to accomodate those who, like me, abhor PvP? Consentual 'dueling' is acceptable to me, but the thought of being ganked by another player just fills me with a cold dread, and when and if it actually happens, rage at the company that allowed this 13 year old dick who has infinate time to spent 1337ing his character out to gank me and wipe away my progress.

You say, for example, consentual PvP will be at the forefront - how? PK tags that you can toggle?

And you say PvP rules will apply to areas where Lonestar coverage is spotty at best, are you referring to Z-zones like the Barrens? Locations where Shadowrunners are supposed to thrive, exactly because of that lack of the Star?

How is that going to work?

Ah, and here is your FAQ on customization...

How do you plan to provide enough variety for a worldful of people? Will it be ten or twelve faces plastered on the head of a body type that can be visually varied in tone and size?

And how are you going to handle personality? This is a new one. I thought personality was something only a real person could bring to the table. Yet it seems to be simply a variable you're talking about, one that can be ajusted by visiting a shrink?

How are you going to deal with the kind of person who has a 'pleasent' personality type listed, but talks smack and trash to everyone else?

How is that going to work? Say I decide I want to be a tailor, and design an absoloutly bitch'n line of clothes. Am I going to need to be a professional graphic artist to design the textures? And if I do, and I submit them, and they are accepted, what happens to them? Does my hard work cease to be my intelectual property? How about people who aren't professional graphic artists. How are they going to make things?

Sounds to me like the promises that Second Life made. Only, sure, any goober can start sticking what they call 'prims' together, but you're going to need to be a talented coder, builder, AND Graphic Artist to make anything that's actually any good. That means that not only will you have to have programming skill - which, I assume your game won't need, being less open-ended than SL - but have a clue about 3d modeling, and graphic arts. That means you need programs like 3dSL, unless you're going to have a similar in-game build engine to SL (Hint: SL's in-game build engine sucks,) and will need a process to import textures - which is something that only those with the wherewithal to purchase and use a program like Photoshop can do.

Let's see here - oooh, the Player Housing faq. This may answer some of my previous questions...

Ahhh, nothin' like those long nights in a coffin motel with nothing but a BTL to keep you company, eh? And the Troll-sized coffin next door you rented to stash your gear in.

Can you do that, by the way? Rent a coffin to stash gear in?

And how long will this take? Will grief players have a chance to come in and shoot up my construction crew, just to torq me off? And how are you going to have enough land for everyone?

I thought that Lifestyle included your digs, so why do you need to pay for it twice?


Ooooh, vehicles. Vehicles are always fun.

Why would walking be the primary form of transport? Is walking the primary form of transport for anyone, even today?

This sounds good. Until you realize the nightmare that is giving players vehicles. What's to stop them from, say, going GTA on people and running over people? Will being run over with a car be properly lethal?

That sounds reasonable. But, it does raise a question, how do you raise a skill? Just pay out karma? Do you have to locate a nigh-impossible-to-find 'trainer'?

I don't know. It sounds like you've set incredibly lofty goals, and will probably wind up making an MxO clone, if you even actually get the project flying.

Zero immersion is a result of zero content. Content is king. The cookie-cutter cityscape of MxO, the cold obvious NPC dialogue and aforementioned grind killed any semblance of content. First off, Player Corps will grow from very small organizations into very large ones over time. A player earns enough money by himself doing missions and runs for various Johnsons along a line of primary storyline with optional sidequests. Think World of Warcraft Quest system with an optional randomly generated quest system on the sidelines.

After a certain amount of nuyen has been collected, the player can join his other friends in a group and collectively apply for a Corporate Charter with the Corporate Court. They are then granted a Z Rating and can start issuing runs and scouting for an eventual headquarters. After a predetermined amount of nuyen is built up in the corporate treasury, the corp has the option of purchasing a headquarters. The headquarters can be either an instanced location in an office building (cheap option), a pre-constructed office building or floors of an office building, or choose to build their own on an unused plot of land (UO Style). The "skyscraper deed" you mentioned would be the deed to the land. The actual construction would take place by providing a construction crew (NPCs or a specialized playercorp) with raw materials.

This is not a new idea. Shadowbane and Star Wars Galaxies are most well known for their guild housing systems, and this conceptual design is a step up from those.

As a former Seer and Event Moderator for EA's Ultima Online, I know those spots well. I also know that if those castles could have been protected, conquered or destroyed by a grand alliance of players, then their purpose would have been much greater than simple showcases for gathered rares and neon swords, and the immersion of the game would have benefited. Most of the buildings you see in the maps on shadowrun-online.com will be potentially purchasable, if not whole floors of those buildings. One player cannot raise a skyscraper by himself. A niteclub? Yes. A construction yard? Yes. The larger the building, the higher the corporate rating will have to be, and the corporate rating is based on the number of players in the corp, their standing with factions such as Yamatetsu and Aztechnology, as well as the amount in the Corporate Treasury. Corporate rating will also determine the number of buildings a corporation can own.

Instancing where necessary. Instances, such as the fifty-sixth floor of the downtown skyscraper on 22nd street will cost less to purchase and require less upkeep. However, the big blue skyscraper on the corner of 23rd is a wholly owned playercorp static headquarters. Same deal with personal player housing.

LoneStar won't "guard whack" you, but it will be pretty close to something like that for certain areas. Downtown Seattle will be consentual playercorp or mission-based PvP, meaning that you as a player will have the choice of being a target or targetting other players. Player Corps will be able to declare hostilities between each other in a bid for taking over assets and resources and their people as well as their buildings will be targets of the opposing forces. Redmond Barrens, however, will be a free-for-all zone where every man is for himself.

Most of the griefing-type issues will be addressed by the presence of LoneStar. LoneStar might shoot you, no questions asked, arrest you, in which case you'd better have a lawyer hireling in your corp's HQ, or offer you some missions to do for them in exchange for your freedom.

Changing the nature of the geopolitical climate in the game will be more of an effect that playercorps have and less of an effect that actual individual players have. If a playercorp starts to monopolize the construction and raw materials markets in the city, Saedder-Krupp could very well put a hit out on key NPC hirelings in the playercorp responsible. This would result in a new questline being offered via SK Johnsons to non-affiliated players. LoneStar and Knight Errant won't generally be affected in the longterm by player actions.

If someone did this in downtown Seattle, first off there would be no effect on players. NPCs would be effected, probably blown to bits and respawn within 30 minutes depending on their type. The player's Heat Rating would go up exponentially making him a target to all hotshot LoneStar, Knight Errant and Player Bounty Hunters looking to make a name for themselves. High Heat Rating also makes it more difficult to get the more rewarding shadowruns from Johnsons.

It will look like a normal everyday crowd of extras looks. They won't march in lockstep, but they will be much too busy to interact with, either going to or coming from a job. Players will be able to move through the crowd, and it will actually provide concealment bonuses. Opening fire on a crowd will generate high Heat and is a guaranteed way of getting arrested, shot, or both. NPCs react with players via text, which is optionally run through a text-to-voice generator to simulate speech. (Still discussing this one.) Dialogue options when available will be in menu form, as well as a list of expressions.

They failed because they built the world before they gave it life. You have to do both at the same time, and give designers leeway to breathe immersion into a piece of environment or stretch of quests. Why was the grind so painful in MxO? Because level 4 looked exactly like level 3, and you were trying to get to level 5 just for the sake of getting to level 5. The most shining example of a frictionless grind is probably World of Warcraft, which utilizes quests and lore as a means of generating momentum for levelling. SRO will borrow a page from them in this respect, focusing its karma gain system on a complex and immersive storyline. The ideal is to never notice the level grind.

Consentual PvP will take place in areas where the law is in full force. Open PvP will occur in places like Redmond Barrens, where LoneStar either cannot or will not go. Additionally, Player vs. NPC combat will still be an option for inter-playercorp warfare, as playercorps use NPCs just as much in their everyday operations as they do players. Player Death will not hurt as much as it has in the past, and the concept of one death or Hand of God per character can't effectively be ported over into an MMO environment as discussed much much earlier in this thread. So while inconvenient, death will not be the end-all be-all of the runner's experience in the game.

The level of character customization will be on the scale of City of Heroes, with clothing as the exception for character creation. Hundreds of different face styles, noses, eyes, hair, musculature, etc. Personality will be a collection of several different factors. Your Edges & Flaws will be the basic makeup of the personality of your character, with Roleplay Quirks, Combat Quirks and Style Quirks following a Background. An example would be as follows.

Lispy the Troll Samurai
Edges: Perfect Time [+1], Bonus Attribute (Willpower) [+2]
Flaws: Allergy to Soycaf [-1] and a Phobia of Roaches [-2]
Roleplay Quirks: Speaks with a lisp. (All "S's" appear as "Th")
Combat Quirks: Favors polearm. (+1 Polearm, -1 All Other Melee)
Style Quirks: Leaves a calling card. (+1 Rep, +1 Heat)
Background: Lispy is a loner, preferring the solitary path in life (-5% karma in group, +5% solo). His mother worked for Renraku (+1 Rep Renraku) until her untimely death in a raid staged by Ares(-1 Rep Ares).

Now, along the way, Lispy could make a dialogue choice with a prime fiction Johnson and lose his temper one too many times, where he might get the "Brash" flaw as a detriment to earning reputation with corps. Aquiring the services of an NPC Psychologist could help him to remove the Brash flaw for a nominal fee in nuyen. Removing the Phobia of Roaches taken at character creation would cost him triple what it would to remove if he had earned it as a flaw doing a United Brotherhood quest line. A text filter will translate "Yes, of course I'd be willing to go on several runs for you, Mr. Johnson." spoken by Lispy into "Yeth, of courth I'd be willing to go on theveral runth for you, Mr. Johnthon." to effect his Roleplay Quirk in the game world.

Second Life, not so much. There.com is a much better example of the Player Developer Program we are discussing. If you want to design a brand new, never-before-seen line of clothes as a tailor, you will need to have some graphics skill to create the textures using the in-game editor for submission. To answer your question, yes, the works submitted do become the intellectual property of the game, but your character will now be able to produce clothes using your new custom design. Players will not need to be able to be professional graphics artists in order to create innovative designs for clothing and items in-game. A simple knowledge of Photoshop will be enough to generate new unique wearables. More advanced customization will require more advanced tools and a greater depth to the submission process, but will yield greater results.

The rendering of the custom graphics, items and structures will be done dynamically until a rendering threshold is reached, at which point the newest submissioned will be compiled into a patch and automatically downloaded during gameplay.

Yes.

24-120 hours, depending on the size of the building. No, players will not be able to attack any unaffiliated structure undergoing construction. Alot of players will opt for instances in higher populated areas as living quarters. Others will want a building all to themselves. Outlying areas such as Oakwind and Bothell will provide for ample spaces for living quarters for the medium class runner to set up his digs.

Housing rental or upkeep is included in the Lifestyle payment.

This was meant in terms of cost and efficiency. Walking will get you there, if its just up the street. It would be impractical not to ride the monorail or hitch a ride in a rigger's taxi for a jaunt uptown. Transportation will be the primary service that riggers can offer as a way of making money.

Firstly, most transportation will be conducted on the Grid system. The Grid won't let you run over pedestrians who are crossing the street, nor will it let you exceed the speed limit by more than 20%. Riggers operating vehicles on the Grid will have set choices as to where in the city they wish to take their fare. Operating off of the Grid is an option available to riggers seeking greater freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. Damage can be done to the rigger's vehicle as well as others that the rigger can be held responsible for. Additionally, Riggers offering services must be licensed by the city (no SIN required) and the license grade determines the size of the vehicle a rigger may operate legally within Seattle City limits. Too many poor maneuvers resulting in vehicle crashes or injuries to NPCs can result in a loss of a license or license grade. Non-Riggers have access to fewer vehicles and fewer options using the Grid with a personal vehicle.

A hybrid. The three ways of gaining a skill are as follows-
Pay out karma directly to increase the skill.
Use the skill repeatedly over a period of time in applicable situations.
Locate and pay a specialized trainer who can teach you.


I hope this has answered your questions regarding SRO. I encourage you to visit our site and check out the design docs section for more info.

Warm Regards,
GreyPawn

There are other comparable programs. Some of them even are for free.

I currently have the same opinion, although I'm more than willing to be proved wrong. I'd love to see a Shadowrun MMO.


One troublesome thing I notice in the current plans however is the forced PvP option. By making some areas open PvP, the result is basically removing that game content from me. I have no interest in PVP and find any game that puts that barrier in my way objectable.

As currently planned, I couldn't take my character into the Barrens and who knows where else. Whole sections of the game's content is off limits.

In addition, the whole 'owning a corp' concept isn't IMO part of the shadowrun setting. The game isn't call 'CORP Master', it's called shadowrun. And this is looking like a different game even if its one set in the same setting.

So as much as I'd like to play a SR MMO, I'd have to pass on this one.

I still woudn't.

The idea of thousands of retards running around playing "l33t samuaris" and "gand4lf the wizzard" screaming "STFU N00B" over and over in the streets is enough to turn my stomach.

SR works in small squad-level groups that know and work with one another regularly.

A MMO would be an immersion nightmare.


-karma

Since instanced zones arrived on the MMO scene this doesn't worry me so much anymore as a concept.

I've been playing Guild Wars for example over the last couple of months. There whenever you enter an adventure zone, it's a instanced zone. The only players within are you and your group.

The only time you need worry about the sadly typical l33t player is in the common cities- and you can filter them out in mass if you wish and only talk to your own guild or friends.

Now Guild Wars isn't perfect, they have some serious limits in other respects- but this feature of the game overcomes this common object to the MMO style game.