MMO NPC Factions (A look at Shadowrun Corporations)

robert4818 · 2004-12-06T14:56:50

If anyone has played the Shadowrun game they know how the game is set up. It takes place mostly in one city (for arguments sake lets leave it at Seattle) Players play puppets for those in power and thier actions may or may not result in a change to the game world, however thier actions will change the way the game world reacts to them. There are numerous powerful factions in the game that are at odds with eachother: -The big Ten corporations (all at odds with eachother) -The criminal organizations (Against eachother, police, and some corps) -Political organizations etc. I'm primarily going to focus here on The Big 10 corporations and talk about Factions. In most MMO's the faction system is soley there to guage how certain NPC's react to the players characters. Its usually pretty simple in terms of your faction with one group goes up, while your faction with another may go down. But it doesn't have an effect on the game. Part of this has to do with the fact that the world is spread out so that the factions are seperate from eachother. Faction A is in this zone, while Faction be is in this zone. In Shadowrun this is not the case. The Corporations are ever present, just like 10 seperate big brothers...all vying for power against eachother. This of course is how the shadowrunner earns his bread and butter...doing the dirty work in the chess game that is corporate politics. Helping one get a leg up on the other. To Capture the feel of Shadowrun, the MMO Should not (and I would go so far as to say CAN'T) use a static world approach. So I suggest the following: In a nutshell as you perform missions the balance of power changes, and the world changes as a result. You might not change the world by yourself, but with the playerbase working on things you can topple one corporation, or try to make another one ultra-powerful. How does it work? Well in number terms you start off with a common faction pool of about I'd say 1,000,000 points (All numbers are subject to change and are pulled out of my *^%.). When the game starts off, each corporation gets an equal share of the pie. 100,000 pts apiece. As players start to do missions from one corporation or another, the point totals shift, 1-10 points at a time, from one corporation to another. The total # of points (1 mil) doesn't change, but the portions do. As a corporation's power shifts so does its effect on the city. Some stores change owner ship, others change prices and/or goods. Security at sites beef up as they try to slow thier descent. As a corporation starts to decline missions offered start becoming more powerful in terms of impact (5-50 points a mission) the difficulty goes up, but the payment amount decreases as the corporation becomes more strapped for cash. However the XP gained from such missions goes up. The Opposite starts to happen as corporations get more powerful. When a corporation loeses points from its total, its focus turns on to getting revenge (its hate total for corporation faction towards the other corp goes up by the same amount as its total faction points went down) And whichever coroporation has the highest hate from say corp A becomes corp A's primary target. Missions from corp A towards its targets start to be towards the upper scale of its difficulty (on a 1-10 point mission these tend to be above 5) This sort of faction between NPC organizations creates a dynamic world that I think would add in some life to the game.

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by robert4818 November 12, 2004 12:01 AM

25 comments, last by robert4818 20 years, 2 months ago

robert4818

Author

138

December 03, 2004 06:10 PM

Quote:
Eitherway, it would be really cool to see someone make more Shadowrun games. :D

I definately agree.

We got a little off topic. The idea of the post was using Shadowrun Corps as an example on having a system where players not only change thier standings with an NPC faction, but also change the game world by changing the NPC factions amongst themsevles.

Overall does the idea look feasable?

Ideas presented here are free. They are presented for the community to use how they see fit. All I ask is just a thanks if they should be used.

Gyrthok

412

December 06, 2004 06:34 AM

I'd say its definitly possible, but might take abit to develope. It would go a long way to creating a more dynamic gaming experience though, seeing as how most games involving factions are usually statically polarized towards each other, not changing the game world very much. The biggest issue i can see, is deciding exactly how each faction might interact with each other, and how far those actions might go. One faction may enlist the help of another, or they may gang up and wipe one faction out all together, it depends on how far and varied those interactions are. It could potentially be a content nightmare with all the what/if scenario's needed to be programmed for all those interations and potential missions, unless they went by a standard formula of reactions (or a selection of randomly selected missions based on the level of interaction with other factions).

Like for example, the Assassins and Fighers guild gang up and wipe out the thieves guild. Now, this might be a critical stopper for the theives guild, but it could be made to only wipe out their headquarters. Other theives would be alright, but you may not be able to play any theives missions. Or, there may be pockets of theives groups as a result, and they give out missions to theives to rebuild the theives guild, and reopen their operations and allow Guild missions again, repeating the cycle of Faction involvement (unless of course they hunted down and killed all the theives, than its anyones guess).

GyrthokNeed an artist? Pixeljoint, Pixelation, PixelDam, DeviantArt, ConceptArt.org, GFXArtist, CGHub, CGTalk, Polycount, SteelDolphin, Game-Artist.net, Threedy.

robert4818

Author

138

December 06, 2004 02:56 PM

Of course if the "thieves" guild gets wiped out the developers need to of course have in back up another guild that has the ability to come back in and even up the score with some strong missions while being immune to missions against it for a while....this should bring things back up to par...having the new rival push its way in...

Ideas presented here are free. They are presented for the community to use how they see fit. All I ask is just a thanks if they should be used.

MMO NPC Factions (A look at Shadowrun Corporations)

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