Ideas for a game. (Just for fun)

[Plankie]

Me and my friends thought of some ideas for a game, that would be quite cool. The game would be a MMOFPS Zombie game... You're on this fairly large island, with lots of other players. No NPC's apart from the zombies, which means that the people that have collected lots of stuff can find a building inside the city and open a shop or something. Everything is based on what the players do, and there are NO rules... If the players wanna cooperate to survive for as long as possible, do it... If the players wanna stab eachother in the backs and steal their items... Do it... You start of with a backpack (the same kind of inventory system as in Fallout or STALKER, but you can carry less stuff... It's supposed to be really realistic, and the real world is harsh), a flashlight, possibly a knife and a cellphone. The cellphone is the way to communicate with other people(apart from writing to people close to you, but there is no way to communicate with people on the other side of the island unless you use the phone), and you're given a random number which people need to know to call you. You can send text messages or call people if you both have a mic. The other stuff like weapons, ammo, food and stuff will NOT respawn.. which means you're all going to die sometime. We thought about perma-death... but we're not sure about that... The players will eventually attempt to kill eachother to get ammo and food, it's all about surviving. You can also start clans or groups in the game, which will be very useful, since running around an island full of zombies and possibly murderers can be quite dangerous. That means if somebody kills you, your clan will be vengeful, and that gives you protection... sort of. The zombies will roam around the island and sometimes they will go and look for people. The longer the server has been up and running (it will reset every month if they are still playing the same round), the more zombies and the more they will attempt attacks at the people.
When you start your character you get to almost fully customize the looks of him/her... Like in The Sims 2 or something... and you also get to choose a class, like scientist, engineer and survivalist. They all have skills that other classes can't use, and some skills everybody has. Each class can also have more in a certain skill, like survivalist can have more skill in using guns, and scientists can have more skill in first aid or something like that... Some of the class specific skills can be like... scientists can have for example chemistry (to build bombs and stuff like that), engineer can have building(to build walls and stuff for protection) and survivalist can have traps (like bear traps or mines or whatever). Of course there would be more class specific skills than that, and you can also improve your skills by reading books or doing something that has to do with the skill. You also get a certain amount of attribute points which you can put in stuff like Strength, endurance, etc...
A round would last for days, weeks even, until everybody is dead. There would also be many different servers to choose between, so that if you die you won't have to sit and wait for weeks and weeks to finally be able to play again if nobody would bring you back to life using the doctors skill or something... There could even be servers without the "friendly" fire, which would mean that the players would just cooperate and not kill eachother, or perhaps even a server with no zombies, which means they would HAVE to kill eachother...

I mean like, how awesome wouldn't it be? Think of this scenario.. There are 2 major clans, holding out in these fortified bases with lots of useful stuff, weapons, ammo, food and possibly a few vehicles. They'll be under constant attack from both the zombies and eachother, since they both want food and ammo. Sooner or later they'll have to kill eachother and eat their corpses to survive. Nobody trusts the other one, not even their own clan members...
Damn, I'd love to see a big game company make such a game.

If you have been bothered to read all of that crap, please tell me what you think and post your own ideas. We thought of a lot more things than this, but I can't be bothered to write it all down... and I can't really remember everything...

[mrmedic]

Those are great ideas there

It reminds me so much of a browser based MMORPG I played. Which was exactly the same principle, but with a limited amount of turns in a day.

Balancing will be an issue. You will need to figure out a way to make it possible for a group of 5 to hold a building, and also still challenging for a group of 55 to hold a building. Prehaps have everyone in the building, an instant-party. The server will send out more zombies to bigger parties. And less to smaller parties.

it would be a great opportunity to use physics. Having engineer's find wood planks and boarding up the windows. The wood snapping under too much pressure(Zombies hitting them). Or making traps. Given the freedom of Garrys Mod, and the pressure of zombies, a lot of team cooperation would be needed.

[Plankie]

About the ballance issue.. You could have the amount of zombies going to one area based on the number of people being there, and the people/zombie ratio increases each day or something.. But then again, if a group of 50 people instantly get raped, then you have a shit load of free roaming zombies... Or perhaps that exactly what you meant, depending on what you meant by "instant-party"

[mrmedic]

That's exactly what I meant.

That would be another good feature of the phone. If a team gets wiped out and a lot of zombies were there, a person could phone up a close team and tell them about it.

I think you have covered it, but you could use it for reinforcements. An easier way to do it, would be to divide your "instant-party" into smaller groups. "Alpha/Beta/Gamma" etc. The commander would take into consideration everything that is happening, and coordinate his groups.

So for example, have Group Alpha on top of the building, stopping the zombies from getting in. Have group Beta keep the building defences intact. Then when the commander gets a phone call from "W3 R l33t" party, asking for help, the commander could keep his party here, and lose respect(Some sort of permanent record would be kept of you?). Or move Gamma to help them.


Heres some sort of RPG elements for commanders(If commanders were included)
All this data would be visible to other players.
(No levels, It would be so lame to see "LVL UP!")
This is more of ratings than RPG.

Respect: A good commander has great respect. A commander with no respect won't get picked for many parties. Things like helping another party out would boost the respect. Things like, running away from his soldiers, or not helping out a party without valid reason, would lower it.

Intelligence: Commanders aren't for everyone. Commanders need to organise their party well, take in requests from other parties, tell their scouts where to search for supplies. And where to set up camp.
A great commander will have great intelligence ratings. The higer the rating, the more wanted that commander will be for parties.
Intelligence is more hard to rate, and will be rated by the party members. If the party members quite like the commander, if he told them exactly what to do and where to be, then at the end of the battle, would add a point to his intelligence.
If members did not understand the commander, having not a clue what to do, or what he was really saying, then he would take a point off at the end(Or just not rate him...I'm not sure)

Thats all for now

[Dr. Macon Dead]

I had an idea:

There would be a number of "missions" which would set up the main story(The main game would still be what was described above, this would be a little extra). These could range from simply extracting survivors and scavenging supplies, to finding and eliminating members of a "death cult," which would be a group of religious scientists that believe Jesus came again, as a zombie, and are supporting his divine army by murdering the human resistance and experimenting on zombies to figure out how to improve them, perhaps creating a couple boss fights with some of their handiwork. These could be completed solo or on a team. That is to say, some of the later/more advanced/boss missions would have a minimum group member requirement(say, 3-5). These would be on small, instanced maps, as otherwise some jackass will take a sniper position, bring a couple buddies to watch his back, and just take out everyone trying to do the mission.

Now, why would you do these missions, when you could play alongside 50 other guys? Simple, they give a ticket for a "training session." Here you could increase your skill in firearms, medicine, melee weapons, lightsabers, etc etc, increasing hp healed, damage dealt, damage reduced(a'la armour), etc etc. These wouldn't be huge buffs, but they'd be enough that the story is worthwhile.

Also, I believe a series of dungeons independent of the main story would be pretty interesting. Say, you've got a manor that's been infested by a group of zombies, and the top floor has a huge food storage room. You'd fight your way through and instanced map, then, after you get the thing, you'd fight your way through all the zombies that were attracted by the gunfire. Completing these missions would result in a talent point, which would give your survivor a base bonus(say, an hp regen or a slightly faster running speed). Again, nothing worth writing home about, but an increase that makes the mission worthwhile. Also, there would be some useful items that you'd get upon completion of certain objectives. For example, raiding an armoury you could find a stash of antipersonnel ammo when you hit a certain room, which would be a rarer form of ammo that deals extra damage against zombies than normal bullets, and raiding the above mentioned manner would net you some food which would be...magically delicious. Or something.

Oh, and you can only get each training ticket/talent point one time, so completing the mission again won't net another one, to keep things balanced.

[mrmedic]

That sounds like a good feature also.

It seems to suffer a bit from "Quake Syndrome"....(Walk into a room, bad guys spawn, walk into another room, bad guys spawn, so on, so forth)
Maybe that fits it...but having some sort of dynamic spawn point for the zombies would be good...or keeping the spawn point somewhere players can't get to. Otherwise they could just spawnkill...

[Plankie]

Our thoughts about the game was that it was meant to be really, really free. There are no NPC's that give quests to people, or any missions. We thought about having some weird secret laboratories spread out on the island. (they are meant to be well hidden) Containing information about what happened and lots of useful items. Although, they'd be hard to find, and there would be lots of zombies, possibly weird experiment zombies that are extra tough. The game is what you make it. No rules, just like in real life. Of course you can make your own mini missions and stuff like going on a water run, ammo run or whatever run. That's how we'd like it best.

[mrmedic]

A gift like freedom to do what you want is always exploited. If no rules where to happen, then it would have to be kept well moderated. "Sad" people may form huge groups and aimlessly go around killing people, dodging the zombies. Even helping the zombies. Maybe a sort of ban system could be taken into account, like voting for the person to be banned. But then a group of randomers could run up to you and ban your whole party, taking you hostage so they can rape you....Nah...other ideas needed...

[Blue]

I think something like that is already in development. It has got a city scenario, though, with lots and lots of zombies running around and you being in there somewhere. And no, I´m not talking about Dead Rising, I just forgot the name of it.

Mhh... there was this one screenshot with a guy on a van, surrounded by hundreds of zombies...

[Dr. Macon Dead]

I remember hearing about a game like that being developed as well, but I can't for the life of me remember what the name was or who was doing it.

Also, I was thinking the story elements would be gravy. The main point of the game would be the free, open areas, and the missions/dungeons would be little extras for those survivors that crawl their way to the top.

I think it would be a good idea to put a minimum requirement before a character can attack/be attacked by players, so that a newbie isn't killed within his first couple minutes of the game. Say, you'd have to be alive for a few hours before flagged for pvp, but after that you can't be unflagged.

The point of a free system is so that people are allowed to do whatever they want. Its a social experiment. In reality, if there was a zombie appocalypse, undoubtably there would be a few overly religious assholes that believe the zombies are a divine army sent to wipe out humanity, as seen in the biblical plagues, and would therefore want to become one of god's favoured, and help out the zombies in any way they can(death clutists). Hell, there are cultists nowadays even without a zombie epidemic.

[mrmedic]

Having some kind of "Hello World" to the game would be a good idea. Or "Tutorial World" if you prefer. (Such as in ROSE Online "Babies World" or Runescape "I've never played it...but I know it has one) where people cannot harm you. Have quests that involve zombies and such. Maybe even make it offline, and then you jump online after you have learnt.

[Plankie]

Yeah, an offline tutorial would be good. Allowing the players to make their own private servers would be fun, too.

[Protector]

just read through the whole topic, and i thought that it is all a very good idea, but you cant really make everywhere dangerous, so you could have a few safe zones around the island, like Underground caves or army bases, where if you attempt to harm another player, you are immediately gunned down by surrounding guards, or something like that, and zombies within a close proximity of the area will be shot down by turrets. And in the safe zones you could have sleep points.

And urm, you could have sleep points in the game aswell, so that you could safely log off, and not log on to find 500 zombies raping your ass.
And maybe you could be able to buy camp equipment, and they could be expensive, but you will be able to set up a sleep point anywhere, but could only hold one at a time.

[[AM]Echo 419]

I'm liking that idea

[Plankie]

Actually, there's a game in production (just left pre-production) that's basically what I described, I've been hanging around their forum to get information.
www.exanimusthegame.com/