I`m creating an RPG about a mercenary and in the game I have this interesting system, in my opinion, called the Mercenary System. Here, the main character, the mercenary, can talk to people and receive tasks from them. The trick: you must be known enough to be accepted. This is how it works: the mercenary starts out with 0 popularity points. In the game, only a certain amount of people will accept him. But after he completes their quest, he gains a certain amount of points. Every person who will accept his services require the character to have a certain amount of points in order to accept him(points are not known to player). In the tasks, the mercenary can gain bonus points, which are rewarded for doing certain actions that count towards the client`s liking. There is no way to deduct points in the game, which will have the player be unable to receive more larger tasks later in the game. Also, accepting a task will give the mercenary a certain amount of points beforehand, so the player can still do tasks that are mandatory for progress although they may fail most of the tasks. Now, in the game, the player will be required to do some mercenary jobs in order to get jobs that progresses the game. So, how is the system?

I think it''s a cool start for a system. I think it would be much more fun if different people responded to your mercenary rank differently. Such as someone looking for a cheap sell-sword wouldn''t want to deal with a person having a high mercenary rating. The high-end quests are obvious, but it would be even more cool if your mercenary rating could go down if you didn''t accomplish the quest. In this way, you don''t get people trying quests that they can only complete in dumb luck, ya know?

Just my SQRT(4) cents.

I see what you mean. Like it. Should I let the player be able to do over a mission even though they failed it?

I think that failing a mission should be factored into your reputation, so no, no do-overs. You could reload an earlier save and try again, but if you stay in the game, that failure should stay on your record.

As a corrollary, maybe failing a mission or two might not be all bad. Maybe it would be worth your while to pick a faction to support, and then take control of their enemies'' missions and run them into the ground. Join on a counter-raid, and then "lose" the map to the LZ, so the team can''t complete their objectives and a large number of them are caught or killed. Of course, you''d be in danger, too, but if you could set that sort of thing up with the other guys, you might be able to fake your death and dash to the other line to collect your paycheck.

If you''ve got a great record with one outfight and a lousy one with another, that should also be taken into account. Heck if you become hugely famous and have a massive impact on the balance of power, they might start putting missions together to assassinate you. If you were slick, and not many people knew what you looked like, you might even be able to take that mission, "lose" the rest of the assassination team, and then whack the guy that set it up at the debriefing.

This game could be really cool.

For a fun reputation system, take a look at Escape Velocity. If you get the right kind of fame, people will sidle up to you in the bar and offer you jobs. When you''re working really hard for the Confederacy, and have their trust, sometimes the Rebels will offer you huge amounts of cash to betray the government and steal technology that you''re supposed to be defending.

you could also work in some other levels, to describe the type of mercenary the player is. for example, they might be a "kill everyone that gets in the way" type, or a smooth sneaky type that gets the job done without undue attention, or even a guy that is viscious but always holds to his rule of "no women, no kids"...

that''d be another way to limit the availability of missions, and also add replay value.

Ooh, I like that very much. It would contribute immensely to character development. Your reputation could be more than just a factional alignment, you could have things like:

Efficiency (accuracy rate, speed, proportion of objectives completed)
Deadliness (kill/wound ratio)
Ruthlessness ("innocent" casualties)
Stealth (frequency of detection, use of stealth tactics to procure objects or neutralize resistance)
Meddlesomeness (tendency to explore irrelevant portions of mission zone, stealing unrelated goods/intel)
Reliability (success rate)
Mystery (whether you meet employers face-to-face, whether you''ve been spotted by cameras, how hard you are to contact)

I''m sure there are others, but this will suffice for now. I think that this would be a really fantastic feature. If you can sneak in and out without having to kill anyone and without triggering any alarms, you''d be good as gold as an infiltrator or thief. If you''re an unstoppable fury of whirling electric death, then you''d be just the ticket for more... direct actions. This could effect what jobs you''re offered and what-not.

I once worked on a game where factions are the determining factor. The player could accept missions, each with at least two possible solutions. Each solution had certain faction connectivities attached to it. So if you choose to kill beggar A in the mission, a number of factions were pleased and some others displeased with you.

So by choosing the missions (and their outcome) you basically set your status in the game world. This alone was a cool feature, but I gave up the game, because I did not have the time to finish it.

If each faction had some skill aligned to it like Iron Chef Carnage suggests, this would even get more interesting. Not only would you choose what are your frineds and what your enemies, you''d also develop your character this way... Sounds like a great concept to me!

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There are only 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don''t.

Also, as krez said, the type of mercenary should also be taken into account. If, for some reason, some ''brave'' knights wanted to hire you, they wouldn''t want somebody who sneaks around without honor (even though they are more competent). IN a similar vein, some people don''t care for somebody who just walks up and tries to kill people, probably killing himself in the process.

Perhaps some of the misions don''t require stealth or combat. Maybe they need you to persuade a rich guy to fund a group, or get into a high position in a rival guild and try to dispose of plans that would harm your benefactors.

Maybe, if you get good enough, form a mercenary band. That may be interesting.

Just my thoughts...
~Dakar

Uncharted Waters and Uncharted Waters: New Horizon.

It has those features already. In UWNH, you have three kinds of fame:

Fame in Trading
Fame in Piracy
Fame in Adventure

If you do lots of investment, your fame in trading increases. If you do lots of piracy by becoming a pirate, attacking other fleets or defeating pirates, your fame in piracy increases. If you do lots of adventuring, finding cities, hidden treasures, exotic items, your fame in adventure increases.

If your reputation is high enough, you no longer need to find people, but people will try to find you and ask your help. So occasionally, while you are jobless and have nothing to do, some people will tell you "Person X in city Y is looking for you" or perhaps "King X of Y is looking for you." This is a random event.

Fame decreases if you fail a job that has been assigned to you. Play that game, it''s great.



However, I do have another idea. Instead of one rating system, you make two, one for successful rate, the other for failure rate. If you successfuly finished a job, successful rate increases. If you failed, failure rate increases. When people is going to hire you, he will look both of these points to decide whether to hire you or not.

The reason why I prefer two rating system is there are some problems with one rating system:
1. Players don''t like seeing their stats going down. It''s like seeing your strength points -15, even worse it''s permanent too. It''s unpleasant. I know they fail and they deserve that, but they have tried. They have spent their worthy 20 minutes playing your game and trying to accomplish that mission but you took some points from them just because they fail. If you want them to repeat that mission, some people don''t like repeating the same thing over and over again. They won''t like it.

2. If there is a strong connection between the story and player''s rating, when you decrease the fame, there will be some occasions where player will feel some sort of "going backward" with the story. Consider this: once your fame reach 50,000 you will be assigned a royal mission from a king, if you succeed, you will proceed to the final mission. Your fame is now exactly at 50,000 and you get this grand royal mission. The King said, "Hello there [player], I have dire news. Our bla bla bla is under attack and I need you to investigate this attack."

So you did the job, but you failed. The King said, "I couldn''t believe even the best man I have could fail. I think I have to find another."

Your fame goes back to 40,000. Then you talk back to the king, and (since your fame is at 40,000 you won''t be assigned any royal mission) he said "Hello there [player], a beautiful day isn''t it. What do you want to know about our country?" [a menu appear]

Huh? A beautiful day? I thought a second ago he was under attack.

I dunno, I don''t like the idea of ailing a world-saving mission and then just going back to work the next day. Remember Pilotwings for the SNES? You had to master hang gliding, and rocket pack flight, and skydiving, and flying a biplane, and then you would get your pilot wings, but when you got the gold pilot wings, a guy would come up to you and tell you that the blah blah blah is blah blah blah and they need you to fly an apache helicopter to blah and blast some blah and then rescue the blah blah. It was bizarre, and nothing in your training actually qualified you to fly a helicopter, but it was fun to finally get to shoot at something after literally jumping through hoops for the rest of the game.

But if you failed that mission, it was game over, and you could only restart. Other missions allowed for some small error, but that one had to be done right, or else you actually died and whatever calamity was going to befall the other characters was realized.

That''s what i''m thinking when it comes to really critical end-game scenarios. Either make it impossible to fail and survive, or else just go ahead and work that in, so that you''re the guy who didn''t quite stop World War III, and you''ve got to live with that. Sure, you''re still the best, but maybe you choked under all that strain. Major failures could lead to rumors about you.

Thinking about rumors, I think it would be neat if certain incredible events would earn you unique fame. For instance, if you complete a mission where more than a thousand bullets were fired at you, and nobody hit you, then you''ll start to hear your name in sentences that end with "bulletproof" or "invincible". If you go through a compound and kill absolutely everyone, without triggering an alarm, so that nobody even knows you were there until the Thursday supply run finds a facility full of corpses, you''ll get some fairly sinister nicknames, as well as a huge boost to your "ruthless" stat. Could be sweet.