Author Topic: Idea-pitching thread!  (Read 3677 times)

Dimetime

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #15 on: November 06, 2011, 06:54:07 am »
Pretty sure PvP missions are already in. This doesn't go into detail as far as type of missions, but shows they are certainly on the table.

Link

Quote
Question: Are there any more infos on PvP?
Quote from: primetide on the blutschwerter forums

    You won't be forced to PvP. There might be special PvP missions  such as gang/faction wars. The reputation acquired in those might be used to get access to special items and/or missions. At a higher risk.

Source.


Hey Sangius, You might want to add a PvP section and main link in the first post of the info thread. PVP is a hot topic that more than a few folks will come in and look for first. 
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Sangius

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #16 on: November 06, 2011, 01:58:57 pm »
I like the idea, but I think the good guys at CP indeed intend to add them already. I like the overall concept, too, to revisit the same maps but with different objectives (start on the other side and defend etc.).

One thing about PvP I'd like to give to consideration: PvP will probably more likely result in char death and failure of mission than most PvE scenarios so either the death penalty (haha, did you see what I did there?) needs to be reduced in those scenarios or the possible gain in these scenarios has to be so big, that it's worth for players that calculate to actually take that chance. And there needs to be some sort of a reasonable matchmaking-system. Else PvP'ing will get quite frustrating for a lot of people.

I am not sure whether you need to cut back on the rewards in PvP (primetide already suggested there will be special items only acquired through PvP) - even when it comes to Karma and Nuyen. It depends: If there are like 20 PvP scenarios and people can pick themselves which mission to run, plus there are only very few PvP'ing at that time, they might really be able to do win-trading and so on. However, if the plan is really to set up the game for 200.000 and maybe 10% of those PvP that would leave maybe 10.000 teams (assuming for now that two player will play per team). So at any given time of the day there will be so many queues running that people forming secret pacts shouldn't be our main concern.


Thanks Dimetime for your suggestion for the Q/A. I originally intended to add a PvP section but the problem was that any more posts in the thread would bring it to page 2, which makes it more inconvenient for people to read and might actually lead to the posting on the second page being ignored by many. I didn't want to risk that. So I had to reduce the number of categories (=postings) and since thus far there were only three postings about PvP but around 40 about character progression, PvP was a logical choice to be cut down. However, thanks to your suggestion, I would add in brackets that the category social-life includes PvP interaction as well :) then people at least know where to head to to inform themselves, although it's not it's own section.

I came up with an idea just now too, but I'll post it as an extra posting.

Sangius

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #17 on: November 06, 2011, 02:54:28 pm »
Reputation as a way to measure char progression

Reputation has been mentioned several times on these forums but usually in connection with factions you can earn reputation with. Although I think this is a good idea, I want to turn the attention towards a different form of reputation used in SR: The street-cred. It's a value that would reflect how well known your char was and/or how good and professional a runner (s)he was considered. Usually, you would simply gain one reputation point for each karma point you earned. However, after the karma was spent, your reputation would stay, thus giving an overview on how much you have been playing that character in the past. That value would, too, be objective to modificators: if you'd do an extra spectacular run, it could go up. If you'd behave in an especially immoral way, that might hurt your reputation as well as failed runs would. Often, this reputation was split: For example it could actually help in interrogations if your runner would be known for being especially cruel (something that might hurt the reputation normally) and if one of your runs would be shown in the Trid that would boost your popularity rating but drag down the professionality rating. However, I do not think that we need to go that much into detail for SR:O. I would suggest to have reputation linked to the karma earned by the characters in runs, modified by a few multipliers (e.g. earning achievements should grant extra reputation). That rating, too, could be hurt as a part of the death-penalty: If a char dies during a mission, (s)he will not be granted the reputation for that run. If the whole team gets wiped out / fails the mission, the reputation of everyone in the group gets hurt and so on. It would create an extra incentive for people to actually try and succeed. Especially since the idea of SR:O, as I understood it, isn't to let players simply brood-force through missions, giving it several dozends tries a day.

That rating could be used in several ways: It could be used to unlock non-faction related missions on a higher level. Clearly, trying to break into, let's say, a dragon lair can't and shouldn't be an option for starter chars: People would just get very demotivated and frustrated if they'd try. So what could be done would be that, e.g., you need to earn 50 reputation first, taking around 10 runs, to move up to the more serious buisness (from gangfight to bank raid for example), to move to even more difficult scenarios at 150 reputation or so. If you include modifiers into that value that would mean too that experienced players who are able to cope with the content much better would be able to do some achievements at the first time of doing a scenario with their new char, thus increasing their reputation quicker and being able to move to the endgame quicker. I am not sure, tho, whether it would be a good idea to let people loose access to missions they unlocked earlier when they mess up too much and their reputation drops. After all, it might feel bad for the players that they cannot run the missions anymore they have been trying before. On the other hand they obviously weren't quite ready for them yet and in the P&P version you, too, find yourself stuck to the less attractive jobs if you went havoc on your reputation.

A similar rating could be utilized for the matchmaking in PvP too: Clearly, it's not a good idea to have a team that lost their first ten games go up against a team that won the last 50. What I think should happen is that there is a PvP rating that reflects on how well a player did in PvP and which then should be used to create PvP missions with characters on a similar power level. Since some of the PvP scenarios might actually play a lot like PvE scenarios, just with maybe cleverer opponents, it might not even be necessary to have a dedicated PvP rating. In any case the PvE rating should be the basis of the PvP rating when you first start to play PvP, else you'd have chars who just started playing and went for PvP directly go up against chars at a very high powerlevel who just never started PvP (a freshly created char with some minor cyberimplants and a shotgun vs. a 0,1 essence streetsam with a gatling gun couldn't exactly be called fair). And PvP probably should be unlocked after you actually have the means of getting your dead char back � if you can die in PvP at all and if death isn't treated very differently in PvP than in PvE.

Last but not least I'd suggest that the top 1, or 0,5, or 0,1, or 0,01% in reputation of the charpopulation should be awarded a title like "Streetlegend" to show just how kickass those players are (maybe the titles should be awarded ones a month or so). I think reputation is a good way of ranking the players since it wouldn't be able to be bought and even if you'd be able to boost your char by micro-transactions, that wouldn't change that you need to do runs to actually increase your char-rating � although that of course would be easier to do.

There is a minor risk of implementing 'Tiers' of playing: when new content gets added, it usually just adds to the endgame. Characters who just started often don't profit as much of it as chars which play in the highest tier of the game. However, that is the case with almost all MMOs and no one really seems to bother, as long as the starter content is sound everyone plays it and eventually reaches the point where (s)he gets to see the new content. Afterall, the start content usually motivating enough for new players, but the veteran players on the highest tier of playing are at a much higher risk of running out of content they find attractive.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2011, 11:49:10 pm by Sangius »

primetide

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #18 on: November 07, 2011, 11:05:47 am »
this is getting a lot to read ;)
 short answer (JAo apporaching beta keeps us all busy):
street cred - absolutely. we haven't yet clarified what kinds of reputation score will make it into the game and how they will interact - we also need to be weary of just too many of those.
basically there are two types of rep (and some rep may actually be of both types):
progresison based - unlocks items, missions, stuff
affects skill checks - with contacts, legwork-missions

street cred could be both, faction rep as well, but more limited to certain groups and could affect some negatively (corp rep won't go well with anarchists)

PvP "score" will be more like an ELO ranking, so your matches are counted based on how your opponent was ranked.

but as mentioned - we haven't really touched all that yet and just keep collecting ideas currently.
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Dr. Curiosity

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #19 on: November 09, 2011, 09:57:38 am »
3) to gain karma from a mission again, you need to get an achievement. Achivements are bound to things like: Play Mission in 10 turns. Or play mission without getting hurt. Or play mission with only pistols. Or with only two instead of four runners etc. This way new tactical challenges and goals apply to the same setting.

That sounds like an excellent idea. Multiple success levels, multiple means of success and voluntary handicap options definitely help to keep repeatable content fresh.

Sangius

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #20 on: November 09, 2011, 12:35:34 pm »
Yep. I still think there should be some baseline karma tho (not as much as you gained when you first did a mission, but still some) to motivate players to do runs even if they are not able to do the achievements yet, so to help them progress, and to offer some progress to players who have all achievements already.

About that diminishing but existing base-karma:

Let's say a starters run is to take out a gang. Let's say there are three achievements attached to it: Doing it in 10 or less turns, doing it with pistols only and doing it without getting hit. That would offer a total of possible six karma points for this scenario: 1 for surviving, 1 for finish the job, 1 for playing the scenario till the end (the first time!), 1 for the quick game, 1 for the pistols game and 1 for not getting hit. I still think the first two should be granted on every finish of the scenario (possibly just for chars on that powerlevel tho because it makes grinding too easy for very experienced chars if they can go back and run through the first missions again to grind karma. On the other hand highlevel missions might grant more karma for the survival / finish the job part since those are tougher to do), while the one for playing the scenario for the first time gets only awarded once, as well as the achievement ones.

It's a tough call tho: Either you severely limit the character progression, or you risk to reach a point where everyone has maxed out everything and then the motivation might diminish as well.

I got a few ideas that I will post later today, I hope at least one of them might be a good thing to have directly at start.

Decivre

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #21 on: November 09, 2011, 06:14:45 pm »
Yep. I still think there should be some baseline karma tho (not as much as you gained when you first did a mission, but still some) to motivate players to do runs even if they are not able to do the achievements yet, so to help them progress, and to offer some progress to players who have all achievements already.

About that diminishing but existing base-karma:

Let's say a starters run is to take out a gang. Let's say there are three achievements attached to it: Doing it in 10 or less turns, doing it with pistols only and doing it without getting hit. That would offer a total of possible six karma points for this scenario: 1 for surviving, 1 for finish the job, 1 for playing the scenario till the end (the first time!), 1 for the quick game, 1 for the pistols game and 1 for not getting hit. I still think the first two should be granted on every finish of the scenario (possibly just for chars on that powerlevel tho because it makes grinding too easy for very experienced chars if they can go back and run through the first missions again to grind karma. On the other hand highlevel missions might grant more karma for the survival / finish the job part since those are tougher to do), while the one for playing the scenario for the first time gets only awarded once, as well as the achievement ones.

I've also noticed a couple other issues. The tabletop game allows for the possibility of characters to earn more or less points than everyone else through good or bad roleplay. It also makes it possible to create characters that are built with more or less points than other characters. This could be a balance issue within the MMO.

The easiest method to fix this is to have characters that are relatively pre-built from the get-go. Essentially the character creation system would have a series of starting character archetypes with minimal tweaking, and every single one would be built with a matching amount of karma. They could even make it somewhat customizeable with something akin to the Runner's Toolkit's PACKS system, where players pick from a selection of attribute, skill, ability and quality loadouts. This system makes quite a bit of sense, and it's probably going to be better than forcing tabletop players to learn a new character creation system (it's already been announced that characters will start off weaker than they are in the tabletop game... you'll be playing rookies rather than relative vets). Characters built in this manner would probably also have fairly light equipment loadouts, which again still makes sense within the context of the gameplay changes.

The other option is to have a karma threshold for grinding. This would essentially work like this: you characters total karma value can easily be tracked by the game, as well as how much karma they have earned in missions. Because there will be a slight karma difference between characters, grinding could be allowed for characters with lower karma amounts (discounting the amount they've earned through missions). So for instance, if the character creation system can make characters that range from 400-500 karma in value, then the karma threshold will be 500. Characters with less than that much karma will earn 1 extra karma point every mission, that they can earn every time they repeat it until their character is worth the same amount of karma as someone else who has gotten an equivalent amount of mission karma. The advantage of this mechanic is that it allows for characters to take actions in game that would normally hurt them with regards to karma; quickening spells, debonding foci, gaining a negative quality, transferring karma to a free spirit and so on. Doing these things will hurt you in the short term, but you will begin earning small amounts of bonus karma every mission after doing these things until you've gotten back what you lost.

It's a tough call tho: Either you severely limit the character progression, or you risk to reach a point where everyone has maxed out everything and then the motivation might diminish as well.

I got a few ideas that I will post later today, I hope at least one of them might be a good thing to have directly at start.

You are severely underestimating the money market, though. Nuyen is the common motivator for continuing to play, and it probably will be; especially if they actually have lifestyle mechanics in the game. Even in the tabletop game, advancement tends to be very slow in Shadowrun. Chances are that players will be vets of the tabletop game, and will probably keep playing due to the aspects that appeal to Shadowrun players. I just hope they can fulfill those.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 07:00:08 pm by Decivre »

Sangius

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #22 on: November 09, 2011, 06:21:28 pm »
I am starting to think a Karma threshold might not be that much of a bad idea - and it could be raised with major content patches. But it would of course be very bad for those who need a constant stream of Karma to be able to play well. And what would happen to chars that hit the karmacap but realise later on they made a terrible choice?
About that constant stream of karma: Could there maybe be a pool of "Temporary Karma" that could not be used to gain static bonuses to your character, but only for stuff like binding foci etc.? Well, or you transfer all that to nuyen/ecu ... I am quite tired and confused today, so I'll stop here.

PS: I am not at all fond of a pre-built character creation. I am sure it makes a lot of sense when it comes to balancing (it wouldn't really help new players that much because they can pick up ready made archetypes anyway), but I personally was already looking very much forward to an open character creation without too much boundaries.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 06:26:00 pm by Sangius »

EDChronicler

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #23 on: November 09, 2011, 08:29:56 pm »
On the Idea of PvP Mission Running:

While I love the concept, in reality it can be used as a grief-fest. Team A specializes in Mission X and constantly sits waiting for others to join Mission X, Team B just wants to run Mission X for fun, Team A sees it as their reputation, fun, and whatever other item you want to call it to stomp anyone attempting Mission X and have built their characters just for Mission X. Team B just wants a certain achievement or reward that only comes from Mission X to enhance their fun, but the degree to which Team A has mastered Mission X, makes it extremely difficult for not just Team B, but many others to be competitive in Mission X. While you want some degree of competition and challenge, a challenge that isn't fun for everyone involved, means people stop playing.


On Game Balancing:

Game Balancing to me is often the most dreaded thing I hear. One class that seems overpowered gets nerfed while others get buffed in order to make things fair. I've seen balancing completely re-write games, and heard of it destroying others. I've also seen Balancing change a game into something completely unfamiliar and force me to consider whether I stay with the game or leave. One item I've seen completely change games is the introduction of new classes. Now with Shadowrun, we don't have Classes, we do however have Archetype that are more of "identifiers" than restrictive formats, but if you consider that Drone Riggers and PhysAds are not likely to be in the game to start, then you see some of my concern on balancing. I'd rather see more thought put into balancing with them in mind knowing that there is a likelihood of seeing them in the future.

However, as games need something to expand upon, not giving them out at the start is fine with me, but please don't adjust the balancing down the road because something you just introduced was over-powered, particularly when said new introduction has been in the P&P version for quite awhile.

On the discussion of Archetype Backgrounds:

I'm sure others have made mention of something like this elsewhere, but as a player who often creates non-standard backgrounds, I personally love to have my character's background mean something in game. If I'm a former Tir Tairngire Peace Force who is also the son of one of the Tir's leading "Judges", my contacts and some of the in-game "occurences" should reflect such. If I create a former Yakuza PhysAd bodyguard who's out for revenge upon the people who killed my "Master" according to his dying order before I then kill myself, give me a way to accomplish such. An exiled NAN Member who's wired and lives up to his street name, "Peyote". The Street Mage whose penchant for expensive paper books has him taking missions from a mysterious Elf whose referred to as simply, Johnson (seems to be his first and last name).

Unfortunately in far too many games, creating a background concept, means absolutely nothing and unless you alter the in game scenarios, why would a former Aztechnology Wage Mage take a mission from a Mr. Johnson, who doesn't appear to know who they are? or that they had a connection to Aztechnology? granted there are so many variables in so many of these ideas that it would be hard to program them all, but I can dream.

EDC

Sangius

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #24 on: November 09, 2011, 09:32:30 pm »
I'm sure others have made mention of something like this elsewhere, but as a player who often creates non-standard backgrounds, I personally love to have my character's background mean something in game. If I'm a former Tir Tairngire Peace Force who is also the son of one of the Tir's leading "Judges", my contacts and some of the in-game "occurences" should reflect such. If I create a former Yakuza PhysAd bodyguard who's out for revenge upon the people who killed my "Master" according to his dying order before I then kill myself, give me a way to accomplish such. An exiled NAN Member who's wired and lives up to his street name, "Peyote". The Street Mage whose penchant for expensive paper books has him taking missions from a mysterious Elf whose referred to as simply, Johnson (seems to be his first and last name).
Albeit I would love to see this, I fear it might only be possible if there is player added content. After all, it requires to build special missions and plots just for one character. I do not think there is a way CP can do this. But maybe I am being too negative - I sure hope so ;).

EDChronicler

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #25 on: November 09, 2011, 10:14:33 pm »
I am not a fan of player made content for such purposes, but I guess you take what you can get.

In my mind I see a serious of choices:

Skills
Contacts
Background Extras: Enemies

Creating a series of Missions that might become available to you after various variables are met: Karma / Reputation - Contact Satisfaction (i.e. you have done a few missions for said without failure, here's a special mission or you fail say three missions in a row from said contact, and get this mission option: "One of your former Yakuza Bosses has discovered you come here, sorry chummer, but it was you or me, get rid of them and we can still do business."

So to choose one of my prior examples:

Former Tir Tairngire Peace Guard

Choose Skills:
Knowledge: Tir Tairngire 2
Contact: Tir Tairngire Peace Guard Captain
Firearms: 3

Background Extras:
Enemies: Tir Tairngire Noble
Factors: Exiled


If you have a specific group labeled as enemies, then they might be more tempted to shoot you first before you teammates in certain missions. Second, you could get surprise messages from old friends. But the main method would be a series of skill combinations and other choices that create the right option for these particular backgrounds. Which is where the programming becomes more difficult and getting enough combinations etc. And if someone doesn't want go through that much effort. A few basic/default options are available. But one item that makes characters stand out in P&P games and stories are those little details.

And even equipment could be a possible option with these skill choices:
Firearms 1 : Basic Pistol
Firearms 2 : Basic Pistol : Basic Pistol with extended clip slightly less base numbers on accuracy
Firearms 3 + Knowledge + Contact + Enemy : Basic Pistol : Basic Pistol w/ Extended Clip : Tir Peace Guard Service Pistol

Thus enhancing the customization process at creation. And almost simulating the idea of presenting your "character" to a GM to get those little touches.

Just some thoughts:

EDC

Dimetime

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #26 on: November 09, 2011, 11:16:18 pm »
...
PS: I am not at all fond of a pre-built character creation. I am sure it makes a lot of sense when it comes to balancing (it wouldn't really help new players that much because they can pick up ready made archetypes anyway), but I personally was already looking very much forward to an open character creation without too much boundaries.

Same here. Indeed I think pre-built characters is getting too close to hard coded "classes" which is not Shadowrun in my view at all. Yes, there are archtypes to give newbies an idea of what you "can" do in the table-top game. That said I'm sure the overwhelming majority of Shadowrun veterans much prefer the flexibility of choosing their own skills, merits and flaws.
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Stahlseele

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #27 on: November 09, 2011, 11:21:15 pm »
CRAFTING SKILLS!
Of course!
I forgot about them . .
Will people be able to craft things?
Spell/Spirit-Formulae, Programs, Weapons, Armor, stuff like that? O.o
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Dimetime

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #28 on: November 09, 2011, 11:24:10 pm »
CRAFTING SKILLS!
Of course!
I forgot about them . .
Will people be able to craft things?
Spell/Spirit-Formulae, Programs, Weapons, Armor, stuff like that? O.o

Crafting information in FAQ thread.
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primetide

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Re: Idea-pitching thread!
« Reply #29 on: November 09, 2011, 11:44:22 pm »
On the Idea of PvP Mission Running:

While I love the concept, in reality it can be used as a grief-fest. Team A specializes in Mission X and constantly sits waiting for others to join Mission X, Team B just wants to run Mission X for fun, Team A sees it as their reputation, fun, and whatever other item you want to call it to stomp anyone attempting Mission X and have built their characters just for Mission X. Team B just wants a certain achievement or reward that only comes from Mission X to enhance their fun, but the degree to which Team A has mastered Mission X, makes it extremely difficult for not just Team B, but many others to be competitive in Mission X. While you want some degree of competition and challenge, a challenge that isn't fun for everyone involved, means people stop playing.


On Game Balancing:

Game Balancing to me is often the most dreaded thing I hear. One class that seems overpowered gets nerfed while others get buffed in order to make things fair. I've seen balancing completely re-write games, and heard of it destroying others. I've also seen Balancing change a game into something completely unfamiliar and force me to consider whether I stay with the game or leave. One item I've seen completely change games is the introduction of new classes. Now with Shadowrun, we don't have Classes, we do however have Archetype that are more of "identifiers" than restrictive formats, but if you consider that Drone Riggers and PhysAds are not likely to be in the game to start, then you see some of my concern on balancing. I'd rather see more thought put into balancing with them in mind knowing that there is a likelihood of seeing them in the future.

However, as games need something to expand upon, not giving them out at the start is fine with me, but please don't adjust the balancing down the road because something you just introduced was over-powered, particularly when said new introduction has been in the P&P version for quite awhile.
on pvp missions - any party can max out on certain PvP strategies - but it cannot majorize a mission once there are say four parties playing it, the mentioned killer gang will only be able to play one. I am sure people will find ways to combine a crazy long range sniper char with a invisible front-scout to effectively makeing it death from nowhere..that is until the counter mage troll comes and crushed the invisble scout, then sends in his super fast drones to engage the sniper while the group closes range...'tis the way of PvP...

on balancing- any complex system is initially based on certain assumptions which may turn out to be false and balancing needs to be reworked. I wish we could say it won't happen, but that is going to be nigh impossible. I can say that we do try to anticipate new archetypes, but only time will tell how well we did.
Yay for the Flaming Carrot