   Congratulations! Youve just been hired as lead Game Designer! Your task is to...
  Congratulations! You’ve just been hired as lead Game Designer by a large game design company. The company that hired you has developed several games that have been well received by the public due to the quality of their games. BUT – the company hasn’t developed a game the public heralds as a landmark game (for example the Quake series). The company you now work for has decided that they feel like they can be a common household name (amongst gamers) by developing a MMORTS. This is where you now have to put on your game design hat.The Goal: Brainstorm and design an MMORTS that will run in real time.The Variance: The storyline behind the MMORTS must be ever changing in response to the populace actions in the world of the MMORTS. So for example if Race A took Races B capital then during the next server maintenance/update period a story change may be released allowing players from Race B to ally up with Race C to purge Race A from their lands. (That’s just an example! You don’t have to design it that way!)Not only has the company asked you to have an ever changing storyline but they have asked you to design the game to cater to players who enjoy the RTS aspect of games as well as the city building aspect of the game (ala Caesar and Pharaoh). In other words if a player signs up to play the game essentially they may focus purely on city building if they want. Or they may look solely for opportunities to use their strategies on the battlefield. Somehow both of these types of players must mutually exist and provide benefits to each other.What would you do to design this game? There are obviously a lot of issues that surround developing a MMORTS but lets just try to put those aside for the time being and focus on what the core design and gameplay would be of this game (in other words don’t come in here and post that this game isn’t feasible due to the massive netcode that would be required or all the servers and yada yada yada or whatever problem there may be) This is also a real world scenario. You don’t just have a blank check to solve all your problems that surround designing this game, so please provide answers that you feel would stand the test of time and work in the long run. Hopefully this will prove to be a very enlightening thread and get out creative juices running!   
  Is generally helps to get a thread going like this if you throw out something to start with. [wink]   ;  Sounds interesting, but what happens if team A completely wipes out team B? Since it's a MMO with an evolving world, it can't simply be "game over." Just thought I'd bring that up.   ;Quote:Original post by zer0wolfIs generally helps to get a thread going like this if you throw out something to start with. [wink]Alright. I guess I will start then. I guess you guys can pick up the reins after me. :)Towns: Players will be assigned a town and a plot of land within the realm of their race/nation that they choose. At first the plot of land doesn’t touch border to border with any other town. As time goes on and players promote the growth of their town the border will grow to the decisions they have made. So for example when you first sign in and get your town, it may be surrounded by multiple resources. If for whatever reasons you decide to harvest resource A over resource B (There will obviously be some reasons. I have some. I just want to be vague and see what you guys add on.) your towns border may start to grow towards resource A and creep away from resource B. Or if your town happens to be a center for trading your towns borders may shrink as your need to harvest resources directly isn’t as important as trading. So not only will a player be controlling a town but also a plot of land within their borders, and the borders are ever changing.The borders are important as they provide those players with certain economic and tactical advantages. So for example if you start harvesting resource A while it is outside of your border, you may have a slower gathering rate until your border encompasses the resource where your gathering rate may increase.Now at the same time that other player’s borders can grow and eventually touch your border, your plot of land will never be completely taken over by a players expanding border. There will be a set default plot of land that you will have and the only way you take it is by taking over that players city (or through some other means?). I have other ideas. I just want to get some discussion started and see what other people have to say and my ideas. I want to be able to respond to your ideas and have other people respond to your ideas.   ;Quote:Original post by LmTSounds interesting, but what happens if team A completely wipes out team B? Since it's a MMO with an evolving world, it can't simply be "game over." Just thought I'd bring that up.This is very true. This would cause a lot of gamers a lot of heartache too as they spent so much time developing their city and/or army. But to me I envision several races being present in an MMORTS. Each race, naturally, has a capital. The capital provides players with certain benefits and leadership. So for example one benefit might be that players in turn have a "national" army that will support the races best interests (whether that be protect a certain region or conquer another one). The army may come to their aid. There are also a lot of other benefits that can be thought of.But as opposed to having a capital being conquered and saying game over for that race it would ultimately affect every player in their race. Their towns may, for example, go from a mass producing town to a more resource conservation town. Also all the units in players armies may change from battlefield hardened veteran to relying on guerilla tactics to try to push out the enemy from their capital in whatever brutal and terrorizing way that they can. This change in attitude for all units in the players army would have some positive and negative consequences on the units.Again, from my OP, that was just an example of how a storyline might change. I would presume (and try to design) the take over of a capital to be very challenging. It would, in my mind, be like having SOME (because every player may not be interested in conquering an enemy capital) players from one race challenging EVERY other player from the opposing race to defend their capital (maybe if a capital gets attacked every town has to send X amount of units to help defend?).   ;  You have a very basic problem here in making an MMORTS. that is this: players of RTS games generally expect the enemy to be beatable. They want to wipe them out. An MMO though would need the faction to remain alive if set up as you suggest. It would not be fun for the faction players on the losing side if the faction died if you are setting up the game for them to feel permanent, yet you take away a lot of fun if you cant roll over your enemy completely.I suggest keeping the game to one species/race but instead have many factions. A player could start a faction (like a guild) and other players could join it. If the faction gets wiped out, they have to join another or start over. If you need diversity between these faction in the tech they have you could develop some system for the faction leaders to develop new tech through, which would be mostly lost if they were wiped out (though maybe it could be scavangable or capturable?)This would allow players to roll over the enemy completely and really fell like they won, yet the players who died and lost their land have recourse. Allowing ways of recording achievements that stick with the player and maybe allowing the player to sneak out with a laptop full of scematics for any tech the faction had would allow for the player to not feel like he was starting all over.   ;  How about two sides start at different ends of the galaxy. there are portals that remain open for a short time that will allow the two sides to come into contact, and there are plenty of other AI civilations to destroy/ ally with as you make your way toward each other over say 12 months. After that, all survivors pool together to take on the Newbians, players who join after 12 months and begin at an even further extreme of the universe.   ;  Oddly enough I am a lead designer on a project, recent to about 6 months, I can say that sadly my duties aren't as exciting as dreaming up systems for MMORTS, more usually investigating galaxy spanning portalways in hope of finding my enemies, gold or love.   ;  For me, the biggest conceptual issue to tackle is this: how is the game fun anymore once I have completed the tech tree?To keep me interested, STRATEGY would have to be the real zinger. Starcraft is fun when you are developing your base, but once everyone gets Battle Cruisers, the game is boring.  What happens when I have played a MMORTS and all of a sudden can produce as many Battle Cruisers as I want?I do like lovegooses concept of having newbies spawn in a new, possible 'unreachable' area of the galaxy.  After a certain amount of time (during which the newbies could face AI enemies and races), portals are discovered that allow them to compete against other human factions.  At this point ... a new 'newbie' zone is opened.  Or perhaps there are 10 or 15 zones going at once, with portals opening and closing randomly, with newbies being placed in the zone with the least openings to it.  This would give different factions time to repair -- as well as provide an interesting political aspect to the game when you must travel through another factions land to get to the faction you are warring against.   ;  The technology trees would have to huge, and the limits unknown. Rather than have players play as scientists - who really wants to be a scientist in an mmo? Do like civ does and have you recieve scientific advancements from the aliens you come into contact with on your way to the enemy, either taken as a gift, in a deal or by force. You should still be able to collectively put money into research for your side, but advancements will take a long time. You should also be able to take back things you've found and gather research from those.