Hey guys, this is my first post here, for that reason i am really sorry to ask you guys for some advice already. Me and my brother who is doing his master in computer science right now want make a Flash MMOG based on the idea of Tower Defense. This will be part of his master exam. Now let me tell you how we want the game to be first: - Every player who joins the game gets an area similar to the original Tower Defense. He has his command center in this area and needs to defense his command center by building towers on the are and kill the enemies who tries to destroy his command center. - So far so good. besides he/she can buy Soldiers and vehicles and spread his area and take over other areas where he can find crystals. He can then build fabrics and make more soldiers, vehicles and ammo out of those crystals. If an area is already taken by another player, he can take over this by destroying all the Towers made by the other player on this area. - The problem right now is what to do if someone goes offline? The whole game area will look like a table and you start from cell one and spread your cells. Now let me show you an example to make my problem more clear. Every "K" stands for the base of a player and the cells which has the same color are the cells which belong to this player. Now for example if K5 goes offline, what to do? Well First I though of cutting this cells completely off and then put them back if the player comes on again. The problem is if you cut the cells off the whole game field changes and looks like this then: Like you see all the players are affected by the player who went offline and the whole area looks different. This is no option. The other possibility would be to make these fields not accessible to the other player while the player who ownes the cells if offline, but then i am not sure how this would affect the whole game mechanics and gameplay. Imagen you come online and all the fields are already taken by other users and they are all offline. Can you help me a little bit? Maybe you guys got some better ideas. Thanks in Advance

Option 1: Too bad. If the game is skewed towards defense, then a properly-constructed defense should be able to repel attacks.

Option 2: Artificially boost the defenses of offline players. So each turret would do an extra 25% damage, for example.

Option 3: If a player is offline, only one (or two, or a certain percentage) of their cells may be conquered. After that, the rest of their cells will be blocked off for 24 hours.

Eventually, inevitably, you'll run into the problem where a few players are powerful enough to easily destroy everyone else. You're probably familiar with OGame, and I'd expect you to use something like their system, with multiple worlds that get reset after some time.

I like option #1 the best, maybe combined with #3. If you make defense significantly more powerful and cheaper than offense, it will probably make for a more interesting game and slow down the emergence of super-powerful players.

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Original post by drakostar Option 1: Too bad. If the game is skewed towards defense, then a properly-constructed defense should be able to repel attacks. Option 2: Artificially boost the defenses of offline players. So each turret would do an extra 25% damage, for example. Option 3: If a player is offline, only one (or two, or a certain percentage) of their cells may be conquered. After that, the rest of their cells will be blocked off for 24 hours. Eventually, inevitably, you'll run into the problem where a few players are powerful enough to easily destroy everyone else. You're probably familiar with OGame, and I'd expect you to use something like their system, with multiple worlds that get reset after some time. I like option #1 the best, maybe combined with #3. If you make defense significantly more powerful and cheaper than offense, it will probably make for a more interesting game and slow down the emergence of super-powerful players.

Thank you for the comment. I really appreciate.

The first option has a good point but will probably not work because a good defense system can probably only be made by a good player. Since this game is targeted to casual as well as core gamers, we will probably have some poor defense system designs.

Option 2 is actually a really good idea and would make the game run all the time, even if the player is offline. I think it could really work with some great balancing. But what would happen if you got an area with some great crystal supply. You go offline and then, even with the higher damage, someone destroys all your towers and you lose. I think the player would be pretty pissed off. But you can maybe disable the damage while you are offline as well as get any points/credits for destroying enemies. That would probably work :)

Option 3: That was something i planed to do for players who go offline while they are in a fight. Imagen someone who has a good, powerful army is attacking you and you go offline to avoid the fight, you can still lose a percentage of your areas.

I am still experimenting with different possibilities. Something that could work is if someone goes offline you can't attack him anymore but you can still cross his area to reach different places. If he/she goes online while you are on his area, you cannot be attacked.

What do you think?

Tower defense can be consider a subset of the broader RTS genre of games. People have been building defenses realtime, against oppoenents rushers, using towers, moveable canons, walls etc.. in these games and the dynamics play about the same. Bascily it's a fine balance, with tech trees breaking the tie, with the advantage toward the attackers. The reason why is you don't want a game where both sides just sit for hours becuase they would get anilihated if they attacked. Also RTS throw in resoruce scarity and positioning in addition to the tech tree to mix up the gameplay even more so.

There have been attempts at persistent RTS, but they ususally suffer from the fact that without human overwatch, a base/city/etc would be destroyed by a sneak attack easily. Since people can only play maybe 1 hour a day, that leaves alot of times when the city/base/etc. can be destroyed, and since it took an investment of many hours or days of gameplay to build the base/city/etc.., people ususally stop playing after their base/city/etc is destroyed.

Unlike a MMORPG where death is a mere anonyance, in a MMORTS, defeat is total destruction, so it's hard to retain players. You can tilt the game toward defense but then people would never attack becuase the chances are too low.

Check out the popular RTS to get an idea of what you'll need.

Good Luck!

-ddn

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Original post by ddn3 Tower defense can be consider a subset of the broader RTS genre of games. People have been building defenses realtime, against oppoenents rushers, using towers, moveable canons, walls etc.. in these games and the dynamics play about the same. Bascily it's a fine balance, with tech trees breaking the tie, with the advantage toward the attackers. The reason why is you don't want a game where both sides just sit for hours becuase they would get anilihated if they attacked. Also RTS throw in resoruce scarity and positioning in addition to the tech tree to mix up the gameplay even more so. There have been attempts at persistent RTS, but they ususally suffer from the fact that without human overwatch, a base/city/etc would be destroyed by a sneak attack easily. Since people can only play maybe 1 hour a day, that leaves alot of times when the city/base/etc. can be destroyed, and since it took an investment of many hours or days of gameplay to build the base/city/etc.., people ususally stop playing after their base/city/etc is destroyed. Unlike a MMORPG where death is a mere anonyance, in a MMORTS, defeat is total destruction, so it's hard to retain players. You can tilt the game toward defense but then people would never attack becuase the chances are too low. Check out the popular RTS to get an idea of what you'll need. Good Luck! -ddn

Thanx for your comment ddn3. I have been playing a lot of warcraft and starcraft lately. They do solve alot of problems and they inspired me in some important gameplay details for my game. But the main problem of this conception actually is the fact, that game do not want to be round based.

It means the game works PvP and "only" as long as both players are online. If "player 1" leaves the game, the game does not work anymore. What i want to do is exactly get rid of this dependance and make it playable independent of the players state.

My Solution works like this yet:

Every player has a 24 hours protection after he/she goes offline. His area is still accessible for all the players but just not attackable. After 24 hours he loses his protection and can get a maximum of 15% damage throw the next 24 hours(This 15% can be wrong and needs to be balanced later).

He/she can increase his protection if he has enough credits. It will be also possible to hide his area for one week. But if this is chosen, he/she cannot change the state before the week is over.

I have no idea yet how this will affect on the gameplay. What do you guys, who have more experience with game design, think about my idea? Could this idea work or would this destroy the whole gameplay???

I like it. I'd only activate protection maybe 30 minutes after the player has logged out, to prevent abuse if a player knows he's about to be attacked. After that timeout, give protection for 24 hours.

That alone is probably a sufficient solution, at least for serious players who will be online every day.

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Original post by drakostar I like it. I'd only activate protection maybe 30 minutes after the player has logged out, to prevent abuse if a player knows he's about to be attacked. After that timeout, give protection for 24 hours. That alone is probably a sufficient solution, at least for serious players who will be online every day.

Thank you. I never played Ultima Online (shame on me :) ) but do you have more then your avatar in the game? I mean is it possible to have a house are something similar which does not disappear if you go offline? If yes i would like to see how they solve the problem :)

I really like the Idea of making the player attackable for the next 30 minutes after he/she goes offline. But i think it should only happen if the player is in a fight. Other wise the player should be able to set that 24 hours protection before he/she goes offline.

[Edited by - carlosp on August 6, 2008 10:09:22 AM]

Now how about a different spin on the idea?

Make matches one on one. One attacker, one defender. The attacker's goal is to make her troops reach the defender's castle and plunder it -- every soldier can carry a certain amount. The defender's goal is to keep the attacker's troops away, killing as many as possible -- he wins half the resources spent on each soldier he kills.

All players are ranked, and automatically matched with players at roughly the same level. They also have the option to play "friendly" battles, that have no permanent effect on troops, structures, and resources.

Now how about a different spin on the idea?

Make matches one on one. One attacker, one defender. The attacker's goal is to make her troops reach the defender's castle and plunder it -- every soldier can carry a certain amount. The defender's goal is to keep the attacker's troops away, killing as many as possible -- he wins half the resources spent on each soldier he kills.

All players are ranked, and automatically matched with players at roughly the same level. They also have the option to play "friendly" battles, that have no permanent effect on troops, structures, and resources.

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Original post by ruby-lang Now how about a different spin on the idea? Make matches one on one. One attacker, one defender. The attacker's goal is to make her troops reach the defender's castle and plunder it -- every soldier can carry a certain amount. The defender's goal is to keep the attacker's troops away, killing as many as possible -- he wins half the resources spent on each soldier he kills. All players are ranked, and automatically matched with players at roughly the same level. They also have the option to play "friendly" battles, that have no permanent effect on troops, structures, and resources.

yeah that is actually a good idea but it is something that have been done before in very different ways :) My goal was the MMOG aspekt and this would make it 1:1 again.