War game idea

Non-technical talk about multiplayer and singleplayer gameplay and game design.
Urre
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War game idea

Post by Urre »

The topic is kind of misleading, but it's late and I can't think of another way to phrase it. Misleading because this isn't a specific idea, but rather something that could be applied to almost any game, and would probably radically change it, even if it's a very indirect change.

Imagine your average multiplayer FPS. These days, that means something along the lines of Counter-Strike or the Battlefield games, or perhaps Team Fortress 2. Those three have a significant likeness with eachother, which is the team-vs-team aspect. It creates a sense of membership and having something in common. In most cases it's pretty superficial and short-lived, unless you play in a clan. But what if it actually meant something, which side you picked...

Imagine a global lives count, for the entire side, be it terrorists, red or axis or whatever. Whenever you die, the entire side loses a life, across all servers. Now there's only 25006 soldiers left fighting for the poor red's, whereas blue are going 32028 strong. Once a side loses all their lives, the counters are reset, and some official kind of site announces a winner of the previous global round. It could even be combined with a global pause across all servers, to make sure a win feels really good for an hour or two, and a loss really stings.

This could create possibilities for all kinds of interesting observations. Which color do people prefer (one side having overall more players than the other)? Are people more careful while playing? Do people choose sides depending on how things are going?
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GiffE
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Post by GiffE »

I have always wanted to see a persistent global war across servers, but I'm not sure how it would work on the implementation side of things.

Would you have a player register to one side and be a member of that nation, team, w/e ?
Urre
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Post by Urre »

As you can see from my previous post, I'm mentioning switching sides, so no you wouldn't have to register, beacuse there really isn't any need for it. The game would only register a death for a particular side, storing it on some master server. It should be ridiculously easy to implement as well, lots of games already store global stats for players and whatnot.
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GiffE
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Post by GiffE »

I don't see how you can connect and really associate yourself with your team if your able to be a regular Benedict Arnold.
I would simply not care about the total count as MY team is not losing... I don't have a team.

That's why I brought up the whole registering.

I truly would like to see the flow of the battle be effected based on how well your team is doing. This would really bring the whole persistent world to life.

How would you bring the world to life?
Urre
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Post by Urre »

Belonging to a team can just as well be a personal decision. People already pick sides in Team Fortress 2, a color they play more often than the other, seemingly for no reason at all. When you go to watch your favorite football team play, it's not like you sign up somewhere to be able to support your team, you just go. It also leaves the possibility of switching teams open, for whatever reason that might be. The reason is often an interesting one too. I'd really be interested in seeing surveys connected to this sort of thing, asking if someone switched teams, and why.

What I'm saying is that when you know from the get-go that there's a global war going on, you will make a personal decision, which ones to side with. A registration in this case would only be annoying fluff, whereas this is a seamless and casual solution.
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Wazat
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Post by Wazat »

Although you do need a way to deal with cheaters and lamers. After all, the best way to fight for your side is to join the enemy side and die like crazy. :D
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Urre
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Post by Urre »

I was waiting for that to come, worried no one would mention it (besides my cousin, who doesn't post on these forums but I presented the idea to him).

This problem already exists in all multiplayer games, and is generally handled pretty well, which is by the use of moderators and voting. Simple as that. They get kicked and/or banned.

The bigger question is wether servers would need to register in order to be part of this global lives tracking system, since it'd be much harder to moderate if Mr. Sad Nolife creates his own server where he dies a lot. I'd really love to say "who the hell would spend time doing such a thing", but alas, that is the way of the internets.
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GiffE
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Post by GiffE »

I would say, create a system which just links a few servers.
2-3 servers linked together, most likely owned by the same person would be much nicer in my opinion. This would also make it so the lamer admin could only effect his own war.. wasting his time.

It would create little communities, rather than a massive horde.

If you really wanted to make it creative. You could make it so your team can only produce so much supplies. Your team can become wasteful and have a period where you are only rationed a little bit of ammo. (of course he will always be given SOME)
It would go back up again if your team starts playing well.

Just some random ideas.
Urre
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Post by Urre »

The idea was to affect gameplay in an indirect way, something which has nothing to do with the current match, to see if something like that can affect the way people play their game even if it isn't affecting them directly.
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pitchatan
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Post by pitchatan »

Mabey a tad bit late to revive this thread but.

ive been considering something like this for a while.
A very simple call of duty esque game.
With "areas" to be conquered by opposing teams, this would need very large maps tho and probably rewrite of the DP netcode/prediction. :)



The game would be using mysql for logins,stat tracking, Positioning etc. Anyways if anyone would be interested in actually creating this project im 100% game.. :]
Team Xlink
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Post by Team Xlink »

oh, How I have loved and thought about this for ever!

Massive wars 3000 vs 3000!


I mean that would definitely be the best FPS ever!

I would actually probably do it the easy way which would be to increase the max players limit, in this case to 6000 and change multiple other engine related things and maybe some QC stuff as well.


Then I would create a huge map with maybe 7000 info_deathmatch entities!


I would use every single one of my Vis Tricks that I know of!

You know what!


I am going to add this to my engine right now, except it will not be on such a large scale, because it is for the PSP.
Error
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Post by Error »

reminds me of the map with 10,000 knights in it :) good times

... I actually took the time to kill every one of them ...
pitchatan
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Post by pitchatan »

Team Xlink wrote: Then I would create a huge map with maybe 7000 info_deathmatch entities!

Quite the overkill there. :D

Why not just have specific team spawn areas and remove telefragging or have specific spawns at specific areas, mabey have the qc check what spawn is the nearest of where you died.


Im actually doing my research about all this and ive been corresponding a little with lordhavoc about certain things.

If anyone wants to work on a project like this give me a shout.
Team Xlink
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Post by Team Xlink »

I would love to work on a project like this!


So here is a shout!


SHOUT!


We could have the war be based on something!


Quake War 1

The Grunts are a very nice race, they are very kind people.
They were first discovered during Quake 500 Q.C.

The grunts are the most technologically advanced race that we know of.
They never do harm, unless someone attacks them.


The knight are very middle age, forming there colones around 200 Q.C. They do not like change and their main goal is to fulfill there manifest Destiny, control all of Quake.

They do anything and everything to expand their territory to great mass's they started in the eastern territory's they were stopped by these strange advanced structures that were unlike anything they have seen.


To be continued...
Downsider
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Post by Downsider »

:lol: Good story, mate.
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