Idea-pitching thread!

[Decivre]

In real life weapons degrade and cost money to maintain/fix. For example, if you want to swing your Katana on every run then it will naturally get knicks and knacks on the cutting edge. That doesn't mean the blade is useless but it certainly could lead to a "blunt" edge if you never take care of it and perhaps at one point it will not cut through that Orcs armor next time (critical glitch chance increased?).

The blade has to be maintained (Sharpening of the Blade, Oiling, Powdering, etc) and so do other weapons. As Primetide said, a "small" repair (cost) is probably the way to go in order to keep your weapons working as intended. Additionally, maybe more exotic weapons could require special skill or contacts due to the fact that repairing such an exotic items requires special hard to get parts etc. Just an idea.

Thomas P.

Yes, but maintaining a weapon takes relatively little money overall. To keep a gun oiled and clean costs about 10 dollars a month... and they rarely get damaged. Blades tend to be similar, and require very little maintenance. Newer materials and techniques would probably make swords in Shadowrun's era more sturdy and effective. Monomolecular weapons would never dull by the very nature of their blade. High maintenance costs make sense for armor, vehicles, drones and software. The first three are going to take punishment by the very nature of a Shadowrunner's job. The latter is going to require constant updates to keep up with the cutting edge. But weapons require fairly little maintenance already, and will take a bit less as the tech progresses. The only time they'll probably need any real expenditures is if they sit for decades, are used for something they weren't intended to do (using a sword as a lever to uplift a tree root), or are directly dealt damage.

And if we're gonna have lifestyle costs, those minimal expenditures can probably be swallowed up by that.

[Sangius]

You may throw away a junk gun you found on a dead ganger, but your carefully built drone/focus/soft may warrant a bit more time and money invested in it.

I got a follow up question on that: Was this sentence just serving as a random example, or can we conclude from that, that enemies in SR:O will actually be lootable?

[ghostmode]

I had a though last night about cover and object interaction. I don't know if this is possible within the framework of the system but I think it would be awesome to do these things during combat:

a) pick up loose objects and throw them with respect to weight and CH strength. Because an adept being deadly with a brick at 20M is every bit as awesome as a Troll whipping a car door at security(and these things happen in PnP all the time)

2) pushing or pulling heavier cover items. Using a refridgerator or barrel or other similar object to block LOS, to create a strategic bottleneck, or just to position it better to hide behind.

7b) maybe having even inventory items be throwable. you fire the cheap pistol off till it glitches or the clip is empty, then throw it at the enemy. haha

[primetide]

You may throw away a junk gun you found on a dead ganger, but your carefully built drone/focus/soft may warrant a bit more time and money invested in it.

I got a follow up question on that: Was this sentence just serving as a random example, or can we conclude from that, that enemies in SR:O will actually be lootable?

you can conlcude whatever you wish, who's stopping you?
and yes- we will have lot drops - though I don't want that "every monster drops 5 goldpieces" stuff, so loot is an exception (and in a run, you may want to think twice about going through everyones's pockets)

[primetide]

I had a though last night about cover and object interaction. I don't know if this is possible within the framework of the system but I think it would be awesome to do these things during combat:

a) pick up loose objects and throw them with respect to weight and CH strength. Because an adept being deadly with a brick at 20M is every bit as awesome as a Troll whipping a car door at security(and these things happen in PnP all the time)

2) pushing or pulling heavier cover items. Using a refridgerator or barrel or other similar object to block LOS, to create a strategic bottleneck, or just to position it better to hide behind.

7b) maybe having even inventory items be throwable. you fire the cheap pistol off till it glitches or the clip is empty, then throw it at the enemy. haha

nice idea, but it would require a fully physics engine layer and play havok with our system. I rarely say that, but in this case: I don't see it happening anytime soon, I am afraid.

[ghostmode]

Well, maybe later haha

Though this does make me wonder about throwing weapons in general. I hope we'll still see knives and grenades in game.

11.11.11!

[Decivre]

you can conlcude whatever you wish, who's stopping you?
and yes- we will have lot drops - though I don't want that "every monster drops 5 goldpieces" stuff, so loot is an exception (and in a run, you may want to think twice about going through everyones's pockets)

Yeah, but you always have enough time for the obvious. Our street sam has gotten some of his favorite weapons just grabbing guns off of corpses (often mid-fight). I always request that they take any commlinks they can afford to.

Though admittedly, there was one run where we had access to a large truck. Because we were able to get through the run without any alerts going off, and without the Star getting called, we decided to go the extra mile and take every body we could get. We made a pretty good killing with the street doc, after he stripped every bit of 'ware from their bodies. Plus all the equipment. Great run.

That said, you probably won't have that problem anyways. It wouldn't make sense for enemies to drop much money in Shadowrun. Stealing from someone's SIN-tied accounts is probably impossible thanks to biometrics, and what sort of beetlehead takes credsticks to work?

[Sangius]

Well, technically there are even forging rules for SIN-tied accounts and money on it - but it's hard enough to do to justify not letting them drop the sticks directly. But depending on the area, people might really have hardcoded, non-SIN-linked credsticks with them. But it's true, it would be awful to 'grind' gangers to loot 6-8 Nuyen from them each. Haha.

[Dimetime]

Yes, but maintaining a weapon takes relatively little money overall. To keep a gun oiled and clean costs about 10 dollars a month... and they rarely get damaged.

Having owned and operated a wide variety of guns since I was 7 years old, and having been in the military for a long time and operated even more firearms in many varying circumstances I can tell you this is not true. Firearms in a combat environment take a serious beating. It certainly takes more than $10 a month to keep them properly.

Primetide said this iteration of Shadowrun was going to involve lots of fighting. As such that's lots of shooting and wear and tear. I don't know that I have ever read that the materials to make normal swords was a more advanced process. If it is cool. If not, then the amount of wear and tear a sword takes hitting armor, flesh and sorts of other things (concrete, wood, other metals) would certainly warrant more than that a month as well.

I've personally witness a decent variety of well kept weapon fail due to lots of usage, some with fatal results. Certain weapons even require that you replace certain parts completely after a given amount of usage. Considering the setting, I could see that reached for sure.

Outside of the above, Nuyen needs a use and needs to be valuable. The past has shown us too many MMOs where the game's currency was all but worthless. It would be a nice change to not see that here. I'm confident a reasonable medium can be achieved where people aren't having items degrade to the point of disappearing yet still lose a fair deal of their "power" (or become unusable) until they are maintained/repaired.

Degradation doesn't have to me the item has a certain amount of life points and after they tick down you lose the item forever.

[ghostmode]

I have given this some thought.

Perhaps regular gear could degrade to the point of failure but never be destroyed, magical items should be different but still never be destroyed. Maybe after a period of use a magical item would degrade into an inert state at which point karma(not cash) was used to re-activate it. Magician would still of course need to have cash for lifestyle, debts, magical healing, and other disposable magical supplies.

[Dimetime]

I have given this some thought.

Perhaps regular gear could degrade to the point of failure but never be destroyed, magical items should be different but still never be destroyed. Maybe after a period of use a magical item would degrade into an inert state at which point karma(not cash) was used to re-activate it. Magician would still of course need to have cash for lifestyle, debts, magical healing, and other disposable magical supplies.

That brings up an interesting question when you mention magical items:

1) Will we see "normal" items like we are accustomed to in SR or will there be "Colt Manhunter +2" boosts to what are normally just regular items?

2) If not, will we see "normal items" have variants that possess traits or characteristics such as a Ruger Superwarhawk (Rending) where "Rending" is a trait that does extra damage to armor?

3) Or will we at least see the standard where we have various types of ammo listed in the main book?

Personally I hope for #3, would be interested on CP's take for #2 and would not be so keen at all on #1.

[Decivre]

That brings up an interesting question when you mention magical items:

1) Will we see "normal" items like we are accustomed to in SR or will there be "Colt Manhunter +2" boosts to what are normally just regular items?

2) If not, will we see "normal items" have variants that possess traits or characteristics such as a Ruger Superwarhawk (Rending) where "Rending" is a trait that does extra damage to armor?

3) Or will we at least see the standard where we have various types of ammo listed in the main book?

Personally I hope for #3, would be interested on CP's take for #2 and would not be so keen at all on #1.

Remember that the game does have rules for modified weaponry. Perhaps rather than the clich� buffs that we see in most MMOs, rare items might come to you with mods already built in. Maybe you find a sniper rifle with chameleon coating on it, so it perfectly complements your chameleon suit. Maybe the drone you steal has a valkyrie module attached to it, and can revive downed allies on the field. The possibilities are there, it's just got to be done in Shadowrun's wonderful style.

[Sangius]

I thought of something today, so here we go:

The idea is about microtransactions and what they could be used for: I think it would be a neat idea to let people buy access to special vendors who sell gear that normally exceeds the point of characterprogression they are at right now or that ignore the extra costs (and time needed) for buying certain gear on the normal black market. I think quite a few players might do it and it still doesn't sound that imbalanced to me if done correctly (maybe only sell gear one progression-step higher for example). People who don't want to spend real money could just wait the extra time to get the weapon and pay the multiplier and people who want to move forward quicker would still have sufficient motivation to pay the money.

Thoughts?

[Decivre]

So I was watching the interview/trailer video recently, and I noticed something that gave me a lot of awesome ideas for the game. I figured I should post it in here and see what people think....

So in the trailer, the player has control over two characters. It actually seems to play very akin to a tactical game � la X-Com, where the player controls multiple characters. Then this gave me a pretty great idea for Shadowrun.

You see, Shadowrun isn't really the sort of game where characters "solo". While a heavily-chromed street Sam or a severely initiated mage might pull it off, the game was basically designed for teams. It's less Splinter Cell, more Rainbow Six. In this regard, the usual system for MMO gameplay, where players play single characters, barely fits. The game would practically require you to find a team you could work with, and anyone who has played an MMO knows that forcing the player to party is a terrible setup, especially if even the earliest missions do just that.

So this got me to thinking "Why does Shadowrun have to follow this standard formula?" Why does this have to have the standard one-account-one-character play? Why not change this up? Another MMO did some of what I'm talking about already. In Sword of the New World, players create families with a roster of character. They may use up to three family members at a time, rather than only using one character. When multiple players party up, they end up with much larger groups: a two-player party results in a six-man team; a four-player party creates a squadron of twelve and so on.

So why can't Shadowrun have a similar deal? Instead of making one runner, players make runner stables. 2-3 characters, or perhaps a variable number depending on the mission. When a player parties with others, they do missions which require more than a single stable can afford, or perhaps make every player bring only 1 or 2 of their characters to the battlefield.

This has the potential to create an awesome dynamic for the game. It gives players the opportunity to train up and play multiple characters without forcing them to choose which character to focus on. This also means that characters could share a money pool, making it easier for players to manage their money on what their team needs (so I can have a technomancer, but the devs don't have to worry that my Nuyen going to wasted).

So, what do you think of that?

[Sangius]

I think it's a very good idea. And I don't mean to be rude at all, but this, same as with the PvP scenarios in which two human teams try to achieve different goals, is already being planned on and contained in the Q/A thread. E.g.:

Question: What is your general opinion on multiboxing?

It lessens the atachment to your character a bit, but then it allows you to experience different game aspects and gameplay routes. Anyway, people can always create another account to create chars, then co-op with themselves in a turn-based game, so one may as well offer the options from the start.

Source.


Question: You did talk about running multiple clients, but I have to ask if you guys are going to allow for multiple characters on a single account. Also, is there any possible way that we can utilize multiple characters from the same account at a time to go on missions, in case we don't have any friends online? Would be an interesting way to integrate multi-client play into the game and embrace it, no?

Multiple characters: not at all decided yet. Our philosphy is: no one can stop you from having multiple emails, thus multiple accounts. We may as well make it easier on all of us and allow that. Having your own chars as "NPC hirelings" may be an interesting choice. Our current Jagged Alliance Online works on the premise of running a whole company of mercanaries...

Source.

But there is more ... *points towards Dimetimes signature in the modest possible way*