Specs:

Engine: Unity Pro

Language: JavaScript

Modelling: Blender

Texturing: PS and Allegorithmic Indie Suite

Platform: PC and Mac (Windows 7/8/8.1 and OSX)

Team-

Art Assets and Concept by Jeff W. (About 2 years of modeling experience.)

Programming and Networking by Jack H. (About 1.5 years of programming experience.)

Special thanks to Brian H. (Lifetime of quality control experience.)

(A bit of an inexperienced team, but we learn fast.)

Main Concept:

The unnamed game is a class based multiplayer FPS and building game. Twelve or more players are split into two teams at the beginning of the game. Each team is in control of one ‘business.’ The businesses are represented by two buildings sitting on either sides of a playing field. The actual environment for the playing field has yet to be decided. The goal of the game is to bankrupt the enemy business. This is done by attacking the enemy business in a number of different ways. Businesses can commit acts of corporate espionage, assassinate enemy players, plant bombs in enemy business and a number of other options. At the same time, players can benefit their own businesses by building defenses on their own teams building. Buildings can include traps, protective walls, and other security measures on their own business. Every action that a business does (either by sabotaging the enemy business, or building on to their own) grants them money from investors. Investors will pay a business when it is doing well, but will stop investing in the company if their enemy’s are sabotaging them. For instance, in a player on team A assassinates a player on team B, investors for team A will award team A with money, while investors will hold on investing on team B. For another example, maybe a player on team B builds security cameras in the base of team B, investors will award the business money for making defenses. However, money awarded through defensive manners will not make investors on team A stop investing, since this does not directly hurt team A. However, offensive measures such as corporate espionage, bombings, and assassinations will award the offensive team money, while prompting investors on the attacked team to stop investing. The game ends when one team runs out of money, and is too dysfunctional to earn money from investors.

*I hope that I haven’t written this in a way that isn’t too confusing. I’m not the best at getting my ideas down on paper. Thanks for sticking with it*

Classes:

Players will choose classes at the beginning of the game. Some classes have a limit on them, and some do not. However, it is wise for a team to spread their players across multiple classes, because a single class heavy team won’t be able to function. The game relies heavily on teamwork and communication, so an in game voice communication as well as a text communication system will be implemented.

Class List-

Executive: There can only be one executive per team. The Executive is in charge of commanding his/her team. They are in charge of logistics and supplies. For example, the Executive is in charge of ordering weapon shipments for the offensive classes, or ordering building materials for the defensive classes. The Executive can also invest in the stock market. The stock market is a system in the game in which the Executive can invest money, and hopefully make a profit. The investment system will be fleshed out in a later iteration of this concept.

Offensive: The offensive class is basically a soldier/security guard. They are given weapons that range from sniper rifles to shotguns depending on what their executive orders for them. Their main task is to make sure that no corporate espionage acts/assassinations are committed inside the business, but to attack and try and damage the enemy business.

Defensive: This class is in charge of building onto their business. They can construct anything in their base from traps, to cannons for bombarding the enemy business. They must use building materials that are ordered in shipments by their executive. The defensive class is very important in preventing espionage within their own base.

Agent: This class is is the spy of the game. They can commit acts of espionage that range from sabotaging shipments to the enemy company, to wiring security cameras to reroute to their base, letting their Executive know what’s going on the enemy base.

I know this concept is unfinished, but I hope to finish the full version sometime soon. I just wanted to get this idea on paper, and see what everyone had to say about it. Thanks for reading if you finished it, I know it was a bit on the long side. Any comments/criticism are welcomed. (TF2 ripoff comments as well.) Thanks!

It's an interesting angle. To my mind it doesn't entirely make sense to pay someone for creating defenses. I think it makes more sense to be results based. For example if there were some sort of simple business activity, e.g. an automated process of goods creation and transportation which could be intercepted, sabotaged and defended. It could earn money in it's own right, and investment could be made based on past goods delivery and success in combat.

I'm a broken record in these threads.

Where is the actual design information? I see some fun ideas (I don't play TF2 so I don't know if this is a ripoff or not) but no actual design. I'd like to see how your economy is intended to work. How much money will these investors put into the player's reserve? How much will X, the thing that counters Y, cost in comparison to other expenses? How is espionage performed? Assassinations? Is there player-character health? How does it decrease? How does it increase?

While I think your idea sounds playable, I just don't see any game design in your entire post. Just vague ideas like:

The defensive class is very important in preventing espionage within their own base.

Executive can invest money, and hopefully make a profit.

The game ends when one team runs out of money, and is too dysfunctional to earn money from investors.

^^^Not design. Just ideas in sentence form.^^^

Try using Machinations to model some of these economic influences between investing, building, and spending. Search "Machinations" and you'll get there (I'm not going to link to it since I doubt the link will be clicked).

And, as a side note, too few developers use Allegorithmic's substances. They are fantastic. Good on you! And the fact the your programmer is using Unityscript is not a promising sign. I don't care what anyone might say to the contrary: Unityscript sucks. C# is worth it for linked lists alone.

I was going to forego the the wall of text but jefferytitan's post made me stop and assess this properly.

First and foremost, this game would make a lot more sense if you were running a Spy agency. A lot of the business decisions would be the same (save for stock market) but it would be more on-theme to field such offensive and defensive arsenal (and well, spies).

Your classes could also make sense as being the Ops Manager, Commando, Engineers and Spies.

And the 'playfield' between the two 'buildings' could very well just be a city, but more interestingly, the buildings themselves. It is relatively easy to transit to said building without being detected because, well, people commute, but the 'fun' would start during the assault, etc.

But enough with my 'big ideas'.

More importantly to this thread: what would the game flow be? How long would a 'match last'. Would it be a quick-paced skirmish type of game (5-20 minutes) or an invested online experience (several hours). If the latter, how would you handle people leaving/joining? Would there be persistence? Would the game stop when a side is fully absent?

What would be the end-result of winning/losing a match (commonly referred as the 'metagame')?

Without this kind of information, it is very hard to go from 'this is an interesting premice' to 'this would be a good game'.

(+1 for C# GoCatGo!)

Going from idea to design is challenging. You aren't yet at the stage where you need everything cut and dried down to the numbers, but just to get a more solid feel for what the game is or could be I think it's important to zoom in a bit. Currently your level of detail is like that of a player generally telling a friend about a game: "Wow, it's cool, it has features X, Y and Z". Now zoom in. Imagine that you're telling a friend who's already played the game about a specific match that you just played: "They took objective sigma, but what they didn't know was we'd rigged the whole thing to blow!". Zoom in a bit more. Imagine some hugely popular Youtuber has posted a video that shows 5 minutes of your game which is pretty representative of the gameplay. What's happening in that video? What actual actions are they performing? Is the environment reacting? What are they achieving? Why is it fun? What is their opponent doing? Is that how real people would realistically play your game together? Is there anything not fun which they would have to do before this video starts, or after it finishes?

Going from idea to design is challenging. You aren't yet at the stage where you need everything cut and dried down to the numbers, but just to get a more solid feel for what the game is or could be I think it's important to zoom in a bit. Currently your level of detail is like that of a player generally telling a friend about a game: "Wow, it's cool, it has features X, Y and Z". Now zoom in. Imagine that you're telling a friend who's already played the game about a specific match that you just played: "They took objective sigma, but what they didn't know was we'd rigged the whole thing to blow!". Zoom in a bit more. Imagine some hugely popular Youtuber has posted a video that shows 5 minutes of your game which is pretty representative of the gameplay. What's happening in that video? What actual actions are they performing? Is the environment reacting? What are they achieving? Why is it fun? What is their opponent doing? Is that how real people would realistically play your game together? Is there anything not fun which they would have to do before this video starts, or after it finishes?

Thanks, that's really great advice. I'm working on that right now.

The businesses are represented by two buildings sitting on either sides of a playing field.

This would result in some kind of capture-the-flag game, and although these games can be successfull, i don't think that is realy where you want to take this design.

I think two city-blocks seperated by maybe a road between them, and give both teams a whole bunch of options on their own city-block(invest in this local business, place cameras, pay an NPC to guard an area for X time)

It could be interesting if investors were "players", too. That is, they're spectating matches and buying and selling shares based on what they're seeing, competing with each other to have the highest-value portfolio.

This could make a more interesting game curve than the simple positive feedback loop of "investors reward success". For example, it'd be in the interest of a shareholder to do things like sell shares from a recently successful team to buy more shares from a recently unsuccessful team, if they believe the stock prices of the former are irrationally high and the latter irrationally low. (In other words, "if they believe that recent price history doesn't reflect the longer-term "fundamentals" of the teams" or "if they expect the recently unsuccessful team is likely to have a comeback".)

Is it a current/future option that once a player's business goes bankrupt, they can just have a government buy out and continue to be in business no matter how much money they lose?