Love this thread, it's got some great concepts: On-the-run, visibility-radiation, cash-as-health, safe/hot-zones, who's-the-mole.

What I think this game also requires is different paths. Not so much accrued skill points (though it might be good for replayability) but more something like the choices you made in every situation in the original Deus Ex: Do I sneak by here, go in blasting, try to get into that tower to snipe them all down or maybe even find some clever hack to distract them all. There should always be more than a couple different approaches to a problem.


Another thing is down-time. Just like wavinator said this would be a great place to put some strategical elements. Scout out the area you want to go (examine a map, place some calls to friends in the area, check if you're face's on tv yet). If done right it might not even feel like down-time and it could also increase the players' involvement because he has to do some 'work' to play the game well.


I also think now would be a good time to do a short summary of all the great ideas in this thread sofar. Right now, I'm gonna catch some sleep though.

Another idea spawned by the bounty hunter suggestion. It should be possible to tell the bounty hunter about your situation, and depending on which way he leans, he may become an ally.

To allow for this, NPCs chould have multiple characteristics that the player can discover and manipulate. Or perhaps several 'motivations'. NPCs that are primarily motivated by money could be bribed, those that are motivated by, say, morality, would be greatly offended by a bribe, but might be turned if you manage to show them you're a decent person. So you'd do your research, asking other characters, using your contacts. Or if surprised, asking the right questions or saying the right things might land you hints.

This could potentially break up the action if you're also able to go around doing favours in return for information, or a favour in return. At the same time, you'd have to be careful in what favours you choose to accept. Some actions might ruin your standing with others who don't quite agree with what you've done. This would allow you to go the criminal route as suggested by evolutional. Since they'd agree with your actions, you would gain their respect, at the cost of losing respect with the more good-natured.

It would also be interesting to have a few different endings, one could be eliminating those who know that you know what you know (what a mess :), another could be exposing the truth, still another could be getting the full plastic surgery/fake-id makeover, and taking off to another country. One requires killing, another requires social interaction, and the last, whatever is required to get the cash.

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Original post by Horizon Love this thread, it's got some great concepts: On-the-run, visibility-radiation, cash-as-health, safe/hot-zones, who's-the-mole.

Thanks for participating!

[qutoe]
What I think this game also requires is different paths. Not so much accrued skill points (though it might be good for replayability) but more something like the choices you made in every situation in the original Deus Ex: Do I sneak by here, go in blasting, try to get into that tower to snipe them all down or maybe even find some clever hack to distract them all. There should always be more than a couple different approaches to a problem.


I hate that I never got a chance to play the original Deus Ex. What I'm assuming is that it was like 2 in that you always had a choice of back-routes like alleys or ducts? Were a lot of the situations strongly hand-designed, or was there any randomness? (I haven't played DE2 past the first couple of levels)

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Another thing is down-time. Just like wavinator said this would be a great place to put some strategical elements. Scout out the area you want to go (examine a map, place some calls to friends in the area, check if you're face's on tv yet). If done right it might not even feel like down-time and it could also increase the players' involvement because he has to do some 'work' to play the game well.

I wonder if your HQ / hiding place could simply be the place where you dump all your maps and monitoring devices? I'm imagining being able to set up cameras or other sensors that can transmit back to your base (think more cyberpunk or nanopunk). When you get back to your hideout you can watch units move in and out of the monitored areas.

Might be overkill, but I'm thinking how you could make cooling it at your hideout more natural. I like checking the TV.



I also think now would be a good time to do a short summary of all the great ideas in this thread sofar. Right now, I'm gonna catch some sleep though.

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Original post by nuvem Another idea spawned by the bounty hunter suggestion. It should be possible to tell the bounty hunter about your situation, and depending on which way he leans, he may become an ally. To allow for this, NPCs chould have multiple characteristics that the player can discover and manipulate. Or perhaps several 'motivations'. NPCs that are primarily motivated by money could be bribed, those that are motivated by, say, morality, would be greatly offended by a bribe, but might be turned if you manage to show them you're a decent person. So you'd do your research, asking other characters, using your contacts. Or if surprised, asking the right questions or saying the right things might land you hints.

Just pray that you don't run into a dead-eyed professional like Sly Stallone played in Assassins. [grin] I don't mind this as a possibility for some, but I'm not sure that it makes sense for all. Wouldn't you expect bounty hunters to be more hardcore and less able to be swayed?

Or maybe the gameplay would be more fun than the realism?

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This could potentially break up the action if you're also able to go around doing favours in return for information, or a favour in return. At the same time, you'd have to be careful in what favours you choose to accept. Some actions might ruin your standing with others who don't quite agree with what you've done. This would allow you to go the criminal route as suggested by evolutional. Since they'd agree with your actions, you would gain their respect, at the cost of losing respect with the more good-natured.

Like an urban Privateer. Sounds really fun. You get a lot of strategy and risk trying to curry favor with different groups. This then could control where you can move in the city and what equipment and people you have access to.

What's interesting about this, too, is that you'd have situations where you'd have to risk contacting different factions AND deal with the police. So maybe moving through the center of the city is fine if you want to avoid a gang, but horrible if you wanted to avoid the police.

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It would also be interesting to have a few different endings, one could be eliminating those who know that you know what you know (what a mess :), another could be exposing the truth, still another could be getting the full plastic surgery/fake-id makeover, and taking off to another country. One requires killing, another requires social interaction, and the last, whatever is required to get the cash.

Right, the different endings would lead you to pursue those different strategies, which in theory would make the game replayable. (That's always a good goal to shot for!)

Deus Ex was completely hand-designed. However you had to pick from 2 skills or implants every now and then and then you sometimes had different roads to choose from according to the skills you picked.
For example hacking allowed you to get money from atms and sometimes you could open doors that were otherwise closed. Sneaking allowed you to pass by some battles and jumping and strength allowed you to reach places otherwise unreachable. Then some of the special places were reachable by not one, but a couple different skills. And sometimes certain skills only made it easier to do something, while it was still possible without them.

If you tried DE2 (which I didn't play except for the first few minutes because I didn't like it) you should certainly try DE, because it was really good in it's day.

"I think what's missing here is that for you to even be able to outwit a smart opponent you need rules to make up the hide and seek part. By just saying AI we miss out on the nitty-gritty details of what that AI has to process. That's what I was hoping to get a few hints on here: By what rules would the AI run? How does it get your location? How do you know who to trust, etc"

I think it would be nice to actually play some of the world, some of the game, as the Hero previous to the set-up, and fall. During this time, you run open-ended missions. The game then tracks who you have talked to, which missions you took, who you did the most missions for. As the player you know who you talked to, who seemed shady, who tried TOO hard to be your friend.

After the point of no return, the AI will search you out through these contacts (they are mostly contacts you've obtained through the government, or through working for the government) It would all be documented. A factor would be in which order the AI determined which contacts to go after first. You drive to a contacts house, and stop a block away, because you see a black van parked across the street. You leave many perception up to the player to figure out. Fewer, but more unique pedestrians. "Wait, wasn't that guy sitting out front of the other house yesterday?" You call a contact through a public phone, and the contact treats you suddenly nice, and you recall he was always a hard-ass, somethings up.

Back to the set-up, you can ask questions via conversation that might seem very harmless, inconsequential at the time, but may end up being vital hints later. Another movie reference would be Art of War (Wesley Snipes).

Just some thoughts

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Original post by Horizon Deus Ex was completely hand-designed. However you had to pick from 2 skills or implants every now and then and then you sometimes had different roads to choose from according to the skills you picked. For example hacking allowed you to get money from atms and sometimes you could open doors that were otherwise closed. Sneaking allowed you to pass by some battles and jumping and strength allowed you to reach places otherwise unreachable. Then some of the special places were reachable by not one, but a couple different skills. And sometimes certain skills only made it easier to do something, while it was still possible without them.

Thanks Horizon! I wonder if it would instead have been more interesting to just design the challenges and have no controls on the player skills. This would only work if you could level up and take on the challenge of your choice.

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Original post by dggamer I think it would be nice to actually play some of the world, some of the game, as the Hero previous to the set-up, and fall. During this time, you run open-ended missions. The game then tracks who you have talked to, which missions you took, who you did the most missions for. As the player you know who you talked to, who seemed shady, who tried TOO hard to be your friend.

You could use this scenario if you were something like a detective or secret agent working on some sort of conspiracy. This sets up prior relationships.

I think it also works if you have a much more open-ended role and then cross the wrong person, or are a criminal who really ticks off the law.

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After the point of no return, the AI will search you out through these contacts (they are mostly contacts you've obtained through the government, or through working for the government) It would all be documented. A factor would be in which order the AI determined which contacts to go after first. You drive to a contacts house, and stop a block away, because you see a black van parked across the street. You leave many perception up to the player to figure out. Fewer, but more unique pedestrians. "Wait, wasn't that guy sitting out front of the other house yesterday?" You call a contact through a public phone, and the contact treats you suddenly nice, and you recall he was always a hard-ass, somethings up.

This is an interesting idea. The people in your list would need to provide some continuous use, otherwise you wouldn't care that a black van was parked.

I like the idea of seeing the same character in the same place. I'm not sure you can get that kind of resolution, but maybe this could be some kind of game notification? It kind of spoils the fun by telling you, "Hey, that's that same old geezer who was playing chess near the murder scene..." BUT what could work is if this was a semi-faulty sixth sense. So when you get the message sometimes the guy is guilty, sometimes innocent.

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Back to the set-up, you can ask questions via conversation that might seem very harmless, inconsequential at the time, but may end up being vital hints later. Another movie reference would be Art of War (Wesley Snipes).

Gotta watch that one again, it's been awhile. There should definitely be some way to unmask someone through questions. You should be able to ask questions that get you shot at, or have an agent run from you.

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Original post by Wavinator Love the idea, but here's what's needed: How do you as the player know the difference between the next move a bounty hunter is going to make and what the police are restricted to? Zones is one nice way of doing it, perhaps. For any highly dangerous zone, such as a high-crime area, warzone or abandoned badlands: Police presence starts dropping off. Not so for bounty hunters.

Yeah. I think there should be perhaps a balance in Police control and how many bounty hunters there are. In a total police-controlled state, there won't really be opportunity for bounty hunters to play around - perhaps as one of your game 'laws' you could make being a bounty hunter illegal.

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Original post by Wavinator So how do bounty hunters track you? I'm seeing this as either more random or you record the player's moves and concentrate bounty hunters around the most frequented locations. Or, maybe the bounty hunters abstractly break the city up and relentlessly investigate it section by section? Or a mix of both?

Well, going off your previous crime posts, I assumed you were going to implement an 'evidence trail' system which could then be used by the police to track a person; this would also be used by bounty hunters to track a player. You could have different styles of bounty hunters, ones that track people like this and others that go around blowing holes in everything that moves =)

If the player is a creature of habit, it makes sense to have the game focus bounty hunter (and indeed police) attention around the player's most frequented places. IRL, if you're hiding from someone, you're going to have to break your habits to avoid detection, why should the game be any different? I think having random 'chance' elements are good too - I mean, a bounty hunter could be drinking in a bar when you walk in by chance, that sort of stuff.

Thinking about this more, a player could also opt to become a bounty hunter themselves, buying tools and skills that allow them to follow this 'invisible' evidence trail.

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Original post by Wavinator How about not just bribe them as a possibility or KO/kill them off to buy some time, but what about misdirecting? Let's say there are places you need to go to get stuff (like more ammo or a new ID); for extra bucks (based on the size of your bounty) you could add a bonus to have the facility owner either keep quiet or misdirect the bounty hunters to a section you KNOW you won't be in.

Yes, this would also serve to counter the evidence trail system you were talking about. It'd allow you to plant false evidence, either by leaving misleading items/information to be found or paying people to misdirect others. Of course, with everything like this people may break and give away your location if questioned too hard - this would make the NPC's personality elements quite important. For example, a random barmaid may not be able to conseal her misdirection whereas a hardened gangster will, even under torture.

This could make a network of trusted associates a viable option - you scratch my back, I scratch yours. If you work regularly for a merchant, they'll have more of an interest in seeing you alive than say the guy you bought a pack of cigarettes from 10 minutes ago.

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Original post by Wavinator You're in control of your destiny based on how you manage your cash and play the stealth / gunning / bribing aspects.

Cash is important, but I think the ideas above (loyalty, affinity) should also play a part. Think of army commanders of old how the soldiers had respect for someone's leadership, that wasn't bought with cash - that was forged out of trust and honour.

But... that said, in a game having such an emotive response is hard to quantify so perhaps having money as the strongest factor would work.

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Original post by Wavinator I think this sort of tension with the money would be a challenge to balance, BUT balance may not be all that important if you can hide out. Now if hiding is real-time it's bad if it draws out too long (or is it, as that just gives you freedom to plan your next move?)

I like this, meaning you can hide out as long as you're paying for it - but some time that cash is going to run out... meaning that you're likely to turn towards harder crimes to stay holed up and out of view. The player will have to decide whether it's worth giving up, or indeed, if they CAN give up.