Since I probably never will get the time, nor the skills to realize this idea, I'm going to propose it here and hope someone will be inspired from it. This idea struck me from nowhere, I think it's rather original and might be great fun. It's a persistant multiplayer rpg, where the goal is to survive as long as possible. I guess it could be expanded to a mmorpg, but that's not important for the idea, just the scale. Besides, leaving out the massive, it would be saved from Gabe's Theory The basics is that you and your friends set out in a group just like in any other kind of rpg in a city-style map (for those who read Pratchett, I imagine it quite a bit like Ankh-Morpork). Now being in this city is like being in a moving labyrinth. You might start out in one spot, walk a bit, decide to go back and you find that the area you expect to find has disappeard and there's some other part of the city there. Internally, the game would (probably) produce different part of the city in pseudo-random way, so that the city in theory might appear to be infinite, but some areas might (and probably should aswell) look very similiar to each other, causing the "hm, it's look like I've been here before.." feeling. And to add to this confusion, the engine would also cause the players to scatter up every now and then. One way of doing it would be to let the different players have slightly different information about each other positions stored. So, to player A, the rest of the party would seem like they begun to stray behind, but to the others, it's player A who's lagging. Once they're isolated, you move (in this case) player A to a different part of the map. Seamlessly of course, to player A it's supposed to seem like he's walking along the city with his friends, get a little ahead of the others, turn around and find that he's completely alone and that his friends are on the other side of the city. Now to the challenge of the game; it's supposed to be a day/night cycle, where it's realtively safe during the day and you can walk around exploring (I want exploring the be a big part of the experience, the diversity of the city should fuel the "cool, I just want to go and see what's inside that church over there"-factor), healing up wounds, hunting down weapons/scrolls/misc. aids, etc. However, during the night , the monsters begin to crawl out and it's time for you to use your stealth, wits and combat knowledge to stay alive from the dangers lurking around, just waiting to feed on some unexpecting victim. And with that we come to THE MONSTERS! (wooOOOooO) There should be quite some diversity in the beastariy, where most should be sneaky bastards (it's a survival/horror game)...and wouldn't it be really cool if there were some one-of-a-kind monsters that you rarely (if ever) see? Say for example, you walk around at night and try to find some safe house of something to cast a healing spell on yourself (maybe you attract monsters if you do it in the open), walk through a doorway to...wait, that was NO doorway . Congratulations, you've just wandered into the games only mimic Something like that would probably cause some reaction to the players ("What the *beep* was THAT?") While talking about monsters, I might aswell explain a bit about the character development and combat. It's a survival/horror rpg, so the I figure that a person shouldn't be able to just rely on combat. In fact I think that should be a safe way of getting yourself killed, there could for example be some monsters that are unkillable or maybe just unpassable (they won't kill you, but you have to take another route, effectivly parting you from your group). The game should rely as much on sneaking and wits as on combat. And finally, some things that I couldn't fit into the text above. There should be different "tilesets", so you could begin in a claustrophobic city architecture with lot's of alleys, stairs, bridges and whatnot, then after a while the environments begins to change, so you're walking around in a open lighted part of the city with lots of trees, pools and parks. Then you enter the ghost-city style tileset and after that you maybe come back to the claustrophobic style.. And the reason why it's (m)morpg and not singe player? The game should rely pretty much on group interaction, thus it would break the suspension of disbelief to have to be around sub-par intellegence NPC's. Now, I had quite some trouble forming my ideas into words, but that's the core of it anyway. Please ask away if something is unclear or if you think something's wrong. I'll be happy to expand on this idea. EDIT: Oh, I forgot. In the spirit of what I consider "true" RPG:s, the characters never "beef" their stats, you get new skills as you play, but you never raise your stats. This would also conform well with the survival/horror theme in that you never become some kind of semi-god who can take on anything... and there should be permadeath of course, otherwise it wouldn't be much point of the "survive as long as possible" goal..actually it's a bit how I play (and I guess, many other) play nethack. I don't really expect to beat the game; I play it to see how far I can get. (No, I'm not a serious nethack player ) -Luctus Statisticly seen, most things happens to other people. [Mail] [edited by - Luctus on May 3, 2004 8:32:08 PM]

that sounds neat, excpet for one thing: what is the point of exploring if that area will be replaced randomly as soon as you stop looking at it?

quote:Original post by krez
that sounds neat, excpet for one thing: what is the point of exploring if that area will be replaced randomly as soon as you stop looking at it?

The bigger reason to take a look while it''s there But really..if the architecture is really cool (some parts would of course have to be prebuilt, making it a one-time experience, but anyway..), why would you NOT want to take a closer look? Besides, inside houses etc. there''s a possibility you can find something usefull.

-Luctus
Statisticly seen, most things happens to other people.
[Mail]

Hmmmmm... Paranoia. I remember my Gamemaster saying he never had a group managing to survive to the end of any story...

Also i have nethack and other games in good memory. maybe it is really time to change to a kind of multiplayer-rpgs were player don''t mind of perma-dying.

I like this idea a lot. You''ve got to have some kind of motivation for staying alive besides just staying alive though. For instance, you still gain experience and equipment to help you like other games, and you get more money the longer you stay alive.

Here''s an idea.. you''ve got levels, like in other RPGs, but unlike other RPGs, you don''t gain experience to gain levels by killing things. You gain experience, or time points simply by staying alive. The longer you stay alive, the higher your level, and the more places you can go. Of course you don''t get time points simply by staying in an area that is safe for you. For instance if you are a recently rez''d character, most areas are far too dangerous, but staying in the safe areas won''t earn you any points at all. The more dangerous the area, the more time points you get per minute of being alive.

So the key to the mechanics of the game is to always require the player to be in areas that are too dangerous for them. If you wander around an area that''s a fair challenge, you won''t get any points at all.

As for the labyrinth idea.. that complicates things. I still like it though. Maybe certain spots in each area change frequently, and you never know how tough those spots are going to be, or even quite what''s going to be there -- but they often block your way, so you must either go through them or turn back.

I dunno.. I''m just spouting off random thoughts. Nice idea Luctus.

@Sneftel
I didn''t think of that aspect of the idea, but it certainly fits in very well in the theme

@Irbrian
Yes, since I didn''t really intend for it to be centred on combat, I thought of the "gain xp by time" as well. But since I imagined to be equally difficult everywhere (actually, that''s pretty much implied by the fact that there are no absolute locations in the game. It should be completely run-time generated), The xp can be distributed evenly over time..or maybe different tilesets could indicate how "hard" the area is?

And as for "safe" areas, there won''t be any Not at nighttime anyway. Since the whole game rotates around staying alive, and it''s meant to be neverending, it should also be insanely hard no matter what level you are, a really high-level character should pretty much have the same risc of getting killed as a newbie if (s)he''s not being careful enough. This game should keep you on your toes constantly

-Luctus
Statisticly seen, most things happens to other people.
[Mail]