quote: Original post by Kinmii
B) It would not be so easy for someone to become godlike and it certainly would nto happen "very quickly".

Depends on your definition of "godlike". A skyscraper is godlike to a giraffe, but a giraffe is godlike to a mouse.

Having someone start the game equally is easy, just wait til at least 5-10 players sign up before your world become persistent, and as long as their isn''t any major alliances.

I think the question should be about newbie players. Where are you going to place the newbie player, and how is a newbie going to defend themselves against a 60th level kingdom?

The problem with a MMORTS, is that it''s a compatition . At some point in the future, someone has to win. In EQ, or the sims, there is enough open gameplay inorder for a player to go on forever and ever. But with a RTS, its all PK and no NPC/mobs.

quote:
For those of you who have played it, you will understand why I say your allies will protect you if they can, people who become powerful get a bullseye on their head instantly

True, but if the first and second(and maybe third) most powerful players team up, then is it possible for them to work together and smite everyone? And then settle their disbutes after everyone else is dead?

Verant worked on Sovereign for YEARS, using a full team of artists and programmers, and then canned it, because they realized that a MMORTS can''t be made successful.

There''s an online game called Utopia (games.swirve.com/utopia/, it''s fun and free) It''s not real time, but using some of the concpts from it might make it more feasible. For example, when you join, you control a province in a kingdom. You stay with that kingdom and that''s where trade and assistance (support the kingdom), help for newbies (to make the kingdom better), and diplomacy (kingdom works together) all come from. Perhaps, you could use a similar concept, since it would take care of several of the issues mentioned. Also, don''t worry about huge people. Just give armies weaker attacks/smaller gains/economic sanctions or other penalties for attacking people smaller than them. Bigger penalties for bigger size discrepancy. Then it becomes in your best interest to fight with people around your size. This is also something kingdoms help with. If some big guy attacks a small guy in your kingdom, the big people in the kingdom get him back.

tj963

Army/kingdom upkeep copuld conme into play. The larger the army the higher the upkeep cost. That could possibly tax huge armies.

I completely reject that last statement, MMORTS games are VERY possible and Universal Genocide will prove it!

UG has already been made into a pen and paper game (like AD&D) and I''ve been constantly refining the design in order to bring it to life as a MMORTS game with FPS/Platoon style additions making it ideal for both types of gamers!

UG focuses on single player as well in order to prepare you for whats to come in multiplay as well as allow you to build your world to it''s full potential before heading out, and yes, you read world not army!

Another thing that will be integrated into the MMO aspects of the game is the ability to take on a massive NPC force bent on dominating the universe (again, yes universe). Or, in FPS/Platoon mode you also have the choice to be enlisted by the NPC forces as well!

Yes there''s more! Many things will be used in conjunction with multiple aspects of the game, here are some of those:

RTS Style Gameplay will be able to be configured for personalized gameplay elements, meaning you can play in a style you like - Don''t like the hassles of Resource Management? Automate it! Don''t feel like you have the time to instruct ground forces and platoons into detailed missions? Automate it and the AI will control tactical thinking for you! Many more options are planned with detailed settings.

Resources and Technology will have many faces! Each world consists of it''s own make-up of resources and is always randomized with realistic results. Resources themselves will be extremely varied and plentiful and will consist of many possible technological advancements in order to consume the best and most creatively of each resource.

In FPS/Platoon mode, a player gets the chance to prove themselves in battle, guarilla warfare style, covert ops style, or as the commander of a small force, all in cooperation to their commander - the RTS player and their forces! You''ll have to see this to believe it but the plans are already drawn up on how it will work effectively!

ALL FORCES depend on the individual soldier to ''man'' everything, from 8 man platoons, to convoys, to assault vehicles, to air forces, even the massive roving bases and interstellar forces! Nothing works without your troops to run it.

Battles can amass to outstanding numbers! Allied forces can take form against stronger opponents, sides and factions can be formed, and everything is monitored by the Rules Of War!

Value and power comes with domination and resources. Elect to dominate galaxies or to head up supplying other worlds with new strengths! Just remember with domination comes enemies and with greater domination you could just be targeted by the NPC Forces which plan to dominate all!

Worlds themselves are alive in their own ways. People will either respect you or fear you and they help to determin a city''s resource output, so be prepared for Social Conflicts to be dealt with by your choosing! Life can also be detrimental on the availability of rarer resources as well as providing for civilizations to live and feed.

Races also effect gameplay in their own ways as non-human, alienlike races all have their own qualities and flaws that could decide the factors of your domination.

AI will be brought to heightened levels of realistic battle tactics from platoons to fleets and all in between taking care of their respective roles like they should, and in creative as well as destructive ways!

Universal Genocide will come, someday!

- Christopher Dapo ~ Ronixus

This is a discussion forum on the possibilities of traditional army building and Kingdom running RTSs not your life story about your amateur game team that doesn''t understand that making an MMORPG is unfeasble. Ambitious, but nieve to think it''ll ever work out. Now please add yoru ideas to the discussion on hand and put your stupid announcements elsewhere.

In Utopia, being attacked once is no big deal. Because it''s text-based. "Your forces attacked province X and got Y acres, we killed Y men". No matter the fact that those acres just got magically transported back to your province, that your troops just attacked and decided to stop midway and go home.
In a game of starcraft, you attack, and you either lose your troops or you kill your opponent, completely.

MMO games rely on the player to make a connection with his character/empire/whatever. If there''s no time to establish such a connection, there''s no point in the game being MMO in the first place.

Log on, get new empire, play for an hour, log off, get wiped out.
Log on, get new empire, play for an hour, log off, get wiped out.

It''s like a game of Starcraft, you die quickly and go start over again. You don''t have any attachment to your base in SC, and you wouldn''t in a MMORTS where you''ll be killed everytime you log off, which you will. Because when someone comes in to kill you, they don''t just decide to leave halfway through your destruction, they just slaughter you entirely.

So why, would you spend insane amounts of money on servers and bandwidth that can handle the tremendous amount of data that would need to be handled (offline forces aren''t an issue you can just throw aside, online forces take enough power already), when you''ll just be recreating a SC like game where everyone dies and restarts every day?

Yeah, there''s way to get around these, but from what I''ve seen so far on MMORTS''s, they always get cut down to the point where they aren''t worth making anymore.

Now if you want a feasible idea, take something like Savage, where players make up the army, and put that into an MMO format.

quote: Original post by mhays
And I would bet that fairly rapidly, you would have someone who became almost godlike in power, and could portal to other worlds and destroy them easily.

Or the game could be designed with factors like corruption and/or lack of communication with your forces the further away they get from your base/HQ/capital/whatever.

This would place a natural limit to how large players can grow from. Theoretically they could keep growing and growing, but in practice once they get too big they can''t maintain it. Large empires would not be able to adequately defend their borders, and opponents on the outskirts would be constantly chipping away at their territory, raiding them etc.

If that sort of emergent behaviour was designed into the game it would remove the need for manual intervention to keep player balance in check.

I pretend to work, they pretend to pay me.

I guess whether an RTS type game can persist successfully would depend on the AI - if your troops are capable of defending themselves without your direct intervention (surely a worthwhile feature for any RTS anyway) then being logged off for a while wouldn''t be a problem - particularly if you can implement some sort of long term orders - specify certain goals you want to see achieved and a timeframe for them, and then let the AI handle it while you''re offline. Of course, this represents a large jump up in server load... Also, there''s the question of the top layers - I assume you wouldn''t just create an entire world at RTS scale, instead layering some sort of world map on top.

@ Kinmii - It wasn''t an announcement, it was THE ideas

For your info, I''m totaly disreguarding your previous posting, a benifit of the doubt in your favor (due to your degrading and negative statement, I will try to ignore it).

Now, in referance to certain questionable ways to go about making things smoother, I''ll answer with my own thoughts to each:


A persistant world. So people actually build a kingdom like in an RTS single player, but the progression would be much slower and it owudl be realtime. Theere would have to be some sort of mapping system like in 10six, but it would be cool I think.


Yes 10Six did a very good attempt at this type of game, though alot of flaws came about, many of them due to the persistancy, others to do with PvP balancing issues and general PtoP interaction elements which could have been (generaly) more thought out.
On the part of persistancy, along with progression, it (10Six) was done way too slow to really allow players to enjoy the game in the way it was intended. You were given (IMHO) a bare minimum to start off with and, if you were stuck between some tough enemy lands, became an all too easy target to pick off.
Now, as with my own idea mentioned, if you had time to prepare for conflict, including the ability to remain ''out of contact'' while you surveyed your surrounding environment before jumping in to action (which IS what the players will want to do ASAP), you could not only keep protected long enough to build up reserve defenses, but also search for opportunistic challenges (nothing like accidentaly wandering onto enemy territory and finding you''re cannon fodder to their defenses).
Now, for the progression part, it should allow a player to progress enough to have at least a decent chance to be successful in combat especially if their forced into combat with a stronger or more experienced player.
Of course, like in my ideas, a player will have the option to build and play with their forces before commiting to PVP play, though they are not limited, just suggested. The thing is, when you start out, your ''colony'' is only so big and must expand before it''s even allowed to head outside it''s world as per the setting (you must advance your technology enough to allow for satisfactory defenses, and then also for interstellar flight). What will keep the player in the game while all this advancing is happening? How about learning their turf.. as well as claiming it from the domestic civilization(s) which (may) have been there even before your colony arrived! This allows you not only to get your feet wet, but also to test your technology to the fullest and work on advancing in a prefered route of technology (which, as stated, will be very broad).

- Chris -