A MMORTS game in theory

Rodia · 2010-05-02T14:48:24

A MMORTS game in theory Lately I'e been looking for a massively multiplayer online real time strategy game (MMORTS) to play that is not a browser game, and I see there is a lack of them in the market, and those that exist don't seem that interesting to me :(. What would you include/exclude in a MMORTS game if you had the money and the means to make ones? I think my perfect MMORTS game would be set in a persistent ancient times/medieval world that was not directly based on real countries of this world. The game play would be much slower than a normal RTS, making a game round taking around 1-2 years to finish. General game play: Each player would start with a nobleman and some villagers. You begin with exploring your surroundings and deciding where you are going to establish your first village. After the village is built you have to make the population grow and save up money to train an army. It should be impossible to conquer the whole continent by yourself though, thus giving every player the options to establish a realm or join an existing realm (realm/kingdom/tribe, the name doesn't matter that much but you get the idea). The objective of the game is simple, carry out the the plans and strategies of your realm with your teammates and conquer the continent with them, or die trying (well the third option would be to betray your realm and join the enemies :p). Some players will always be selfish, but the heart and focus of the game would be the realm and not on single players. Each realm would have an in-game chat and forum to make planing, organization and bonding within the realm easier. Everyone would want to win, naturally, but ideally players would make friends in their realm and have fun playing with them even if their team eventually loses. 1) The game would have tactical aspects, because battles would be fought. You're only in direct control of your nobleman, your other units will follow your orders but you can't micromanage them. You can only lead the battles your nobleman takes part of, the rest of the battles your generals (AI) will lead for you and you'll get a report of the result of these battles. 2) The game would have economical aspects, you'll have to feed your people and armies and make weapons for your recruits, and you'll need resources to do that. It would be interesting if some resources only exist in the north, some only in the south etc, so each realm will have to trade with other realms to get access to every resource they need, which would also make it possible to effectively boycott your enemies in war, or kill their caravans in attempt to destroy their economy. 3) The game would have political aspects, leaders have to be charismatic to attract members to their realms and to retain them. It would be up to each realm how they would want to organize themselves, some would be democratic, some would have a dictator. The leader won't be able to "force" anyone to carry out his orders, but he can kick out anyone who doesn't. Organization and bonding within the realms would be vital for the realm's survival, and power struggles and fights within the realm would weaken it. Realms would also be able to make diplomatic contacts to with realms and make allies with them, and propaganda would become a natural part of the game. 4) Building the infrastructure (bridges and roads to facilitate transportation within the realm), founding new villages, establishing safe trade routes would also be important. New players would get some beginners protection, where they can't be attacked the first days. If a newbie joins a realm he'll probably get some protection from them too. The soldiers of big players attacking much smaller newbies wouldn't fight with full capacity because of bad moral (if a smaller player attacks a bigger player though the bigger player won't get any penalties). Major problems:1) What will protect a player when he logs out? I don't like the idea of having your empire disappear while you're logged off, and reappear only when you're online, or that enemies can only attack you when you're online. If you have built a big empire the game play should be slow enough to make it impossible to conquer all your land over just a night or something like that, but slow game play isn't enough I think, so these additions are the only things I can think of: A) AI takes control of your empire while you're not online. Perhaps you can give your "right hand" (computer AI which takes over when you're not online) basic orders of how you want him take care of things while you're gone (in various situations). B) The realm could have some built-in system where the whole realm will be notified when enemy armies are approaching the borders of the realm, and of the basic movements of enemies within the territories of the realm. This way other players of your realm may help and stop the invasion of your villages even if you aren't online to see this yourself. C) The realm should be able to build fortifications and walls that are properties of the realm and not of a specific player, buildings that are there to protect the realm as a whole. D) There may also be some built-in system where you can agree to letting the realm/teammate temporary give orders to your armies while you're offline, if they find it necessary (there would have to be some rules, restrictions and limitations about that though so the method doesn't get abused). 2) How do you make casual players stand a chance against nolifers? I think it's a pretty given that a casual player won't be the best realm leaders of a MMORTS game like this, as more activity would be required of them, but I would like if a casual player could still make a meaningful contribution to his realm, as long he's not totally inactive. A) I think having some sort of a cap of how much you can do each week could make the advantage of nolifers smaller. Perhaps the citizens of your towns are only up to building perhaps 10 buildings a week in every town. Armies will take time to move around and will also need to rest once in awhile, so there is only so much they can move around and fight, and the nolifer can only directly control the battles his nobleman personally takes part of. B) The player should be able to give the computer some basic orders to carry out while he's not there, so being online to set your workers to build things won't be as vital (there must be some good balance though so being "offline" won't get more effective than being online :p). You should also be able to rank different priorities to your different armies, and give them situational orders so the generals will know how to react to different situations even if you're not online to tell them, like setting an army to fleeing mode if it's outnumbered, or letting them hunt down nearby enemies, protect a castle, follow another army etc. A problem for players with less time are that they would be more likely to miss out their chances to directly control the battles their nobleman participates in as they don't have the time to "wait" until the army has reached it's target. I don't know any good solution for this. Perhaps they can ask the computer to time the attacks to reach the target at a specific time (if nothing unexpected happens), a time they know they can be online. Or if they don't know when specifically they'll be online they can point out a place close to the target where they want their army to set a camp, and when they get online again their army will hopefully already be at place for the attack. Another problem is that a slow game play will leave more active players not much to do after they have set their building orders and their armies to march. It'll leave them with plenty of time to make up strategies and talk and discuss plans with their teammates though, but there should probably be some mini-games to play with friends or alone if you get really bored. ___ Questions: What would your ideas be to protect offline players? And how would you do to help casual players to stand a chance in a MMORTS game? Other thoughts? Thanks everyone who took their time to read my wall of text :p :) And sorry for any grammatical or spelling mistakes I may have made, English not being my native language. [Edited by - Rodia on April 22, 2010 1:36:06 AM]

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Rodia April 21, 2010 04:35 PM

12 comments, last by eiforall 14 years, 9 months ago

Rodia

Author

104

April 23, 2010 05:35 PM

Quote:
Stretching out a game of certain strategic depth from a weekend to a year doesn't make the game any deeper when the weekend was already enough to think through a tough match.

It's true it doesn't make it deeper if the weekend is enough to reach the desired goal, a lengthy game for no purpose is meaningless. I've played RTS-games over a weekend, you have a huge map and play with your friends, and between breaks you discuss the strategy with your ally friend. I would want that but in a much larger scale. I think making it slower, lengthier and with more people involved could do that. I've always wanted to play a strategy games with politics as a strong feature, I think organizing a realm/kingdom with real players as members and working together with them over a long period of time would be very interesting. You don't normally get the time to do that in-game in a RTS (well, I'm not very good at typing/thinking when I'm stressed, some are better at that). A sprint and a marathon are both about running, but they have different priorities for speed and stamina, some prefer one over the other. There are many fast paced RTS games out on the market, it would be fun if those who like to play very slow, lenghty RTS-games also had many games to choose between. Now they have Travian, Evony, Tribal Wars... but they are all browser based, no animations, not many functions. I think MMORTS is a genre that should get more love.

What I would like to see in a RTS-game is this: when the enemies are approaching the borders the member of the realm get time to discuss the situation (discussing back and forth is very fun, well to me it is :)) and come up with different strategies to save the day. If they are good and organized they'll come in agreement of how their general strategy should be, and they'll do their best to execute it. But many times this won't be the case, the less tight and organized realms might panic of the mere thought of enemies approaching, they might disagree on what strategy to use as everyone wants to do it in their way, and if they can't work together they lose. The game would be about working together with your realm, as well as being a good player on your own. A good teammate but a mediocre player might be more useful than a superb one with contempt for other players. The realm with the best players might not be the best team.

Quote:
What I meant by the question was how would you set up the mechanics so the game's actual strategy isn't shallow as a puddle.

Are you asking about what strategic elements I would want to incorporate to the gameplay (beside the obvious political/diplomatic elements)?

The basic gameplay would be simple: Build your base, keep your people happy, get a growth in population, trade with other players to get essential resources you don't have access to, tax your people to save up money, and with the money and resources you train soldiers to defeat other armies and conquer land.

Some examples of strategies/tactics I think could be interesting to have in the game:

1) The scorched earth policy as tactic might be an interesting option for players to use. If armies need to be feed each day, and there is no food to steal from the surroundings they'll starve, the player should be able to supply them with food from his own villages too somehow, but it'll be more costly and messier than sacking enemy villages for food.

2) Customizing the soldiers armor and weapons could be interesting. Heavy armor would make them walk slower, and cost more. There could also be options how how long training time you want them to have, a longer training time would make them stronger, but it'll take time, and time is gold.

3) Making population growth very important could be interesting. You can't make soldiers if you don't have the people to make soldiers of. Keeping your people happy will make the population grow.

4) It would be fun if some players could become expert traders, they might not be good at fighting battles, but be very good at making money. If the map is made so it'll be improbable for a player/realm to have access of every resource the need of trading will be vital. Some players may take advantage of the market to get rich.

Quote:
The order to move a unit could be its own little mini game, where you take direct command of your army and move it across the map, battling random AI enemies as you move towards your objective, and perhaps discover some resources. Or, if you don't have a lot of time that day, you could just have this actual move be automated, allowing you to log back in the next day to see the results. Real-time battles between two players might need to be scheduled. "I will await your army on the battlefield at sunrise." Vassalage could come into play here, in that you could hand control of your army over to a trusted friend if he is available to play at "sunrise" but you are not.

That could work. It would be cool if some of the more important battles could involve more than just two players. There could be 3 players on each side, they divide the army in three parts and take command of one each, and try to flank attack the enemies.

dontstopdreaming

108

April 26, 2010 10:51 AM

To me an RTS in itself is mostly fun because of how you can build your base, and think of strategies to expand it.

I like to optimize the defence systems and expansion strategies, and micro-management is just a grind.
So I think that the AI could actually be in control of the game most of the time.

But then the AI must be a planning AI, which takes a lot of different things into consideration. And you may set it up so that it values some things more than others.
And you may set up formal strategies for the AI to build with; like what kind of distance certain buildings should have to each other, and set up the geometry an expansion should have (what angles and distances buildings have between them).

But this is just theoretical, and mind-games.
Have to go!

I'm back, and continuing:
So the game would be a lot about how you design the strategies of the AI.
How you design the strategy for building an expansion for instance.
A spying AI might have discovered a resource, like a mine, and nearby there is a stream running by. So how do the AI start an expansion in this case? Running water is an essential resource for farming for instance, so if there is water you might have set up a strategy where you start up some farms nearby.
And the strategy set up for creating a mining "station", with housing for the workers, might interfere.
So there must be an architect that takes everything into consideration (places all the information into a virtual mind space), and then find the optimal set-up.

Well, there is a lot to think about! At least if you are thinking about creating a full-scale game, and not just some smaller demo of features at first.

[Edited by - dontstopdreaming on April 26, 2010 12:51:36 PM]

Awoken

1,555

April 27, 2010 06:02 PM

Ah, the Classic MMORTS discussions. Or better yet MMORTSRPG discussions. I think you've got good foundation ideas, just work them through and you'll find their weaknesses and strengths.