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Would you play this kind of a game?
Neherun
Member UncommonPosts: 280
I ran into an amusing small game people were playing on a DayZ shard. People turned their game into complete grayscale with pitchblack night and hunted each other with axes, sneaking about, this gave me an idea:
The concept:
While technically not an RPG, the game would be MMO focused on surviving as long as you can, there would be no NPCs, no levels, no "gear" aside from traps, parts of traps and primitive weapons. The twist is, everyone is competing about surviving as long as you can and besides surviving, the only thing in the world to do is murdering players. Classification? Survival psychological thriller stealth-action MMO.
To start in-depth explanation, first I need to go through the world and graphics style:
The game would feature randomly generated worlds that are large in scale, each time you log in you hop into a different "shard" that features the randomly generated world. However, you are always assigned in a game with bunch of players around you to make sure you run into players (plus your friends list is prioritized). Running to the edge of the map would transfer you to the otherside (ex from west to east) of the map. The artstyle of the game would be grayscale, with a lot of shadows to hide in, players themselves would be almost as dark, so you couldn't visibly spot them from shadows unless they move. (For easing the imagination of graphics, imagine a 3d world that looks similiar to this, not exactly but you should get the idea: http://www.desktopaper.com/wp-content/uploads/fantastic-limbo-in-real-life-by-midwinters-twilight-dzwv.jpg ).
Gameplay:
The game is played on third person with a crosshair, however you will not see players behind your character (so you can actually be sneaked up upon, and the area behind you which you cannot see can be checked with an key you hold down). You can turn your head around to look around. The core concept of simple: Whilst you can block enemy attacks, its one hit and you're down.
This leads to the core concept: You are supposed to sneak upon unwary players and strike them down, but since the game features so many hiding locations you'll never know if you two are indeed alone. Whilst you're sneaking up to someone, can you be sure you were the only one watching? This promotes camping, which is countered by the moonlight feature where randomly a moon will shine upon the world, revealing all the shadows for a short period of time. Now since if you're camping and you are revealed, you cannot be sure if somebody saw you or not. Movements faster than sneaking or walking generate loud footstep noises. So running is an option, but will reveal you to everyone. The plot twist is: You can only attack once every ten seconds, and once you do, you cannot block and your movement is decreased by 20%. This is to prevent people mindlessly running about and swinging at every dark corner in the map, but its also to promote the purpose of sneaking up on people and to generate more tension. You just saw a player, you saw him moving to that shadow of a rock with his back faced towards you, and you know he did not turn around because it would have generated movement in shadows. Now, do you approach and kill this person, knowing that you're the one who is forced to stay in that rocks shadow for the ten second period, being completely vulnerable if a third party shows up? The weapons in the game are limited to melee weapons, such as axes, spears, daggers. Each have different range, but there are drawbacks. That spear of yours isn't going to exactly promote hiding behind a tree too well, is it?
Spicing things up, there's the trap generation system. You can build traps of your own consisting of somesort of sandbox system that allows you to attach a boulder to a rope, and when somebody walks into the rope the boulder will swing towards them, or you can just find a bear trap and place it somewhere, waiting for some poor man to walk into it. The thing is, whilst laying traps (that take a brief amount of time to place) you'll naturally be vulnerable (and most likely visible) to other players, so the person laying the trap has to make sure he's alone for his own safety. [Possibly the traps would generate a slight sound when placed]. Note: traps disappear 5 minutes after the player goes offline.
Simply stated: The whole point of the game is to get your adrenaline flowing, and keep it flowing through increasing tension for every action you make.
The sounds play important role in the game, the ambient sounds are purposefully kept creepy, there might be small static noise in the background every once in a while, then if you were in a forest, for example you could hear nightlife (which isn't in the game though). Or if you were in a town you could hear wind striking the windows / doors shut (there would be minor weather system for ex. rain and wind to even lessen your vision).
Communications though? Non-existent. This is to prevent friends ganging up, since all characters look 100% the same and the game would not feature voice communications or chat, people would have hard time finding their friends (especially when the art style doesn't exactly give out landmarks). However, playing with friends would be sort of automated, since when joining a game it first checks whether you have friends online and pairs you into the same world.
The game would be bland without risk vs. reward scenario though, but not having levels all you can lose is the current gear you're carrying. I did not find this an incentive enough, so here's the last part: The floor system. Every player once they log in with a fresh character starts from floor 1. There are 150 floors and in order to climb up in the floor system, each floor requires x in-game time and x kills. Players then are always paired up with players from said floors, with some variance (ex floor 1 includes players from floor 1-9, floor 10-20 and so forth.) This is designed as something for players to reach, but it also increases the difficulty, as naturally the best stalkers will later on be paired with just one another. There would be a wall for everyone reaching the 150 floor, and a small scoreboard to showcase the top players with their survival time and kills. Naturally once you die everything is reset. I previously mentioned friends pairing up with one another, but they will be unable to join the same game if they are 15 floors apart (this isn't exactly a game you play with friends anyways, since they'll most likely murder you the second they have a chance. Sure, risk it yourselves if you wish)
And that concludes the basics of the "Purgatory project". If you actually read the whole thing, thank you for your time. Please provide feedback and cast your vote whether you'd have any initial interest in such concept, or would flat out never touch anything close to this.
Comments
That's where I'd be completely open to ideas. As I personally would like to see some progression, but on a level that it doesn't completely kill your entertaiment value if you perish. That's why the floor system would be initially in place, so players could feel some sort of progression. But for the concept, giving players levels / etc would annihilate the original idea of the game.
no .. does not sound fun to me.
no progression ... to much pvp ... don't like survival concepts
The gameplay have holes everywhere .
People can add they own voice chat as they want , you can't stop them
If you want people play surviving then give reward for the one have highest surviving time ,
Each week you reward real money for the highest surviving time player.
You can log out but your PC still in game and in sleep stage , easy get killed .
Surviving time reset after reward giving or you get killed .
People surviving because they want to live ,
players play surviving because of the reward , that's basic core of the game .
At lest , before build gameplay , build the goal that everyone want to archive .
And at the end , this game must be build for mobile , so people can check anytime they want .