Question about gear (short and long term)

[kosten07]

I've thinking about Shadowrun and other MMOs and some of the driving forces behind early and end game playing.

I think you could fairly argue that in a lot of MMOs getting better loot, aka gear, is one of the main driving forces to raiding, etc etc.

This in particular made me think about what we would see in Shadowrun.  Other than being a fantastic setting and a what will be a fun game to play, some of the challenges would be in acquiring gear.

In Shadowrun the better the weapon the harder it was to obtain through fixers and what not.  In MMOs its a matter of completing this quest or killing this raid boss.

These awesome weapons were also balanced out with the fact that most of them were illegal adding another element to the game which meant you didn't always run around with your Panther assault cannon.

Sure Ruger Thunderbolts were great but watch out if Lone Star caught you with one.

The PnP game has some built in controls that might be hard to balance in an MMO. 

Any idea's on how this might be handled?

On one hand you could argue that you want loot to be a driving force to keep players coming back to play, on the other hand you can argue that this isn't what Shadowrun is about.   

I'm not taking either side here but I would like to know your thoughts on this.

Perhaps customizing weapons could be a nice balance.  You have to run a few missions and save up your Nuyen for an item for your heavy pistol to bump up its damage a bit. 

[Decivre]

This is probably going to be the hardest parts of making a Shadowrun game. Shadowrun tends to fly in the face of your standard MMO formula. Whereas standard MMO fare has you play as weak and incompetent characters that grow exponentially in power, Shadowrun tends to start you off as well-skilled professionals who simply hone their abilities over time. Whereas most MMOs have items which range from mundane to fantastic and game-changing, Shadowrun's items range from civilian-grade to military-grade, and the difference isn't as epic in scope. A high-end MMO character can slay thousands of low-end NPCs a second; a high-end Shadowrun character can be overrun quite easily with the same tactic. A high-end MMO character has an ungodly sum of powerful equipment and skills; a high-end Shadowrun character has the guns he needs and a very sweet place to crash in. The difference is quite vast.

The real question becomes how they will translate this into an MMO. That, or will they simply go with the tried-and-true MMO formula and alter the game to be more like the rest of them. I hope for the former.

[Dimetime]

While I am not sure right this moment as to what I want that driving force to be (part of it would include story, another part affecting the world as we've been told our actions can do) in total, I do know that I do not want it to be gear/loot focused any more than a tiny percentage.

Considering the SHE team's involvement I would hope to see your runner's reputation from success opening up various new "main story" level story archs for runs that would lead to different locals. This would fall in line with primetide mentioning a desire to have various exotic locals be in game as mission locations.

Maybe even introduce the ability to work toward getting consistent contracts from various Megacorps or other factions which in turn open up the aforementioned mission story archs.

[primetide]

These are in fact three issues:
1) the range of equipment power and character power in the game. As it stands now, MMOs have a much higher necessity for rewarding players with progress/wealth, since the less tangible rewards of a PnP game are much harder to get across. We will have to incorporate that to adegree, so players will start weaker than in an average SR game and grow incerementally (not WoW Lvl 1 to Lvl 80, though). Example: Instead of basically using numbers from one to six, we will use them (current working hypothesis, at least) like Essence is used, with a decimal point- 1.2, 3.4 etc. This means we can give away smaller rewards more often and we can also use a less drastic modifier system with finer tuning possible. This does not alter the final power of a maxed out char, but it makes getting there filled with little advancement steps...
2) Item  scaling - I think there is a lot of room for rewarding items in the same way - especially since we have a much broader number of factors than in non-tactical turn based MMOs (remember, we have aiming, reload, stance, recoil, speed to ready, cost to fire, bullets per burst and a bunch of other weapon stats which can be affected and the same goes for magic , software, drones etc.). So while I agree that we will probably also have to slightly expand the power range an item can have, there is little need for epic items to find ways to reward players continously.
3) what drives the game - well I would hope three things:
- our plots which are somehow related to factions - especially given the players identify slightly with their chars and certain factions over others - hands up for who likes the Azzies?
- greed (get more stuff, get stronger). always a great motivator
- the chance to affect the storyline and actually see oneself as part of a concerted effort to push the plots into certain directions

[kosten07]

- the chance to affect the storyline and actually see oneself as part of a concerted effort to push the plots into certain directions

Prime I think this is what I am looking forward to the most.

[Sangius]

Me too. Together with the first point. That said: Since Berlin was mentioned several times as a possible setting, will you have a 'political dimension' to that scenario? After all, the Berlin described in the sourcebooks is characterized by a clash of alternative and corporate life. I would hope you would for example feature plots regarding one or even several forms of sprawl guerrilla (and introduce them as reputation factions). Will you probably do that? I think it would be a major shame if there would be no attention given to the uniqueness of the Berlin setting and if it would be all the same like playing in Seattle except ... well ... you know ... there's no space needle but the Brandenburger Tor.

/edit: I know there are no concrete plans yet etc. but I just wanted to hear whether you at least plan/wish to do so

[primetide]

not promising Berlin over any other city, but certainly we will have locally relevant factions - so if the dimension is political, then yes we want that reflected. If it is about rival gang turfs - the same. I think Cities need to be more than just a pot to put random missions in

[Stahlseele]

Heh, you said if i could scrounge up 10k i would get Hamburg as a playable location ^^
Also, as long as NPC's/PC's don't drop purpble BetaGrade MBW2 or something ridiculous like that, all is good . .
On the other Hand, selling entire corpses for money to, for example tamanous, could, in theory, open up all kinds of possibilities . . as long as you are okay with the squick factor and the hit to reputation, if word gets out . .

[Sangius]

You offered 50.000 over at dumpshock. Hah, I found it actually in the Q/A thread here. And welcome to these forums.

[Stahlseele]

i did?
i may have.
i'm no good with remembering numbers <.<

[Sangius]

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=34491&view=findpost&p=1101329
Just kidding anyway

[Stahlseele]

Ah, yes, i remember now ^^
Kidding is okay with me, thanks for the nice welcome, by the way ^^

[Sangius]

It's great to read you here. Will more dumpshock'ers follow by any chance?

[Stahlseele]

*shrugs*
no idea, but i had seen the interview, saw there was progress and thought: hey, nice, activity! and PrimeTide invited us over, so let's do this!

[Dr. Curiosity]

- our plots which are somehow related to factions - especially given the players identify slightly with their chars and certain factions over others - hands up for who likes the Azzies?

*raises his hand, then struggles to drag it back down again*

Damned psychotropic black ICE ;-)