I had a cool idea for an MMORTS.

I had a look at " Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube". The game was not that fun, but it had one element which really got me:

It was a "near real time" game (RT)

A single persistent map that everyone can play on simultaneously. (MMO)

But... No waiting rooms, no lost matches upon disconnect. You just turn the game on and play (Casual)

I thought about how I could go about applying these mechanics to a more serious, and more interesting game. A casual MMORTS game, that you could just turn on and play when you have 5 minutes.

Let's ignore the MMO-engeneering technical difficulties. (I have some cool cloud algorithms I'm aching to try)

Game Setting:

Imagine a setting similar to Dune. There is a single giant planet map. The planet holds a rare resource that everyone wants.

Lobby:

The lander is a giant vehicle, that serves as a base.

The landing crew are your units.

Once you are ready to land, you can view an overview map of the planet. On this map resources show up spontaneously every once in a while. (Meteor strikes/ Volcanic eruptions, etc...). The map is a giant zommable map of the entire world (sort of like google maps). You pick an area where there are some resources and you land. You can see other players who have landed, and you can chose a good spot: One that has lots of resources, or one that doesn't have many adversaries.

MMO Planet surface:

That's the basic idea. (I have some cool algorithms about distributed quadtrees, to dynamically host the planet's surface)

What do you guys think?

Also, I'd like to know if you know of anything similar which has been done before?

Cool idea. It makes me think of this Agar.io game i've been playing recently, where you're a circle that eats other circles that are smaller than you to get bigger. Of course, agar.io is very casual, and not so much of a strategy game, but I think there are some similar game scenarios you would have to consider.

For example, in agar.io, if you're successful in getting bigger without getting eaten, you may end up becoming so big and powerful that other players wouldn't be able to do anything to stop you without a mechanic in the game designed to defeat the more powerful players. So there are these spikey balls that break up the big circles, and don't really work against the small ones. I imagine you would need something similar in your MMORTS. It should be really fun to create a massive powerful army on the planet, to feel so much more powerful than the little landing crews around you, but to give other players a chance to experience this, there needs to be a way to punish the powerful army for being too big. Unless you're going for more of an Eve feel, where new players feel weak and it takes forever to get big and powerful? (I haven't played a ton of Eve, so sorry if there are any Eve fans that disagree with my simple assessment).

Another thing I like about this idea is that it makes me think of RTS campaigns where you drop your base into a map that already has some bases nearby, and have to grow yours to slowly defeat the enemy. It sounds fun to be on the side that chooses where the mission takes place, instead of just getting the base where ever the level designer decided to put it. I'm not sure how this could work if a player controlled the massive base that's next to you, since the bigger base could just crush you, but it's fun in RTS campaigns where an AI controls that base and you can slowly fight against it.

Maybe instead of getting stronger as you mine, you get weaker, having expended your energy/stamina/ammo? Your buildings spread, but become spread out making you weaker even though you're mining faster? And the goal is to just get as much resources as you can before packing up and recovering for the next mining mission?

I am currently working on a similar idea.

There is a mechanic known as Wait or pay, it has the amazing ability to make players feel like they are progressing by doing nothing. The mechanic has been mainly used in the past for profit, however it can be used for games like this without a focus on profit.

If the player can research new technology and train troops in the time of two minutes, attack in a battle to get more resources and repeat; eventually the play session will end. The amount of progress a player makes depends on how much the player plays, it also means that when a player isn't playing no progress is made.

Now if you had a wait or pay mechanic the player waits a day for his new technology, could still train troops in two minutes and still attack to gain resources; the players will now all advance at a predictable rate and feel like their advancing when not playing. To keep the player playing you can allow them to pay to shorten time with the in game resources, this will allow you to control the amount of time a player will have to play to gain a advantage.

The idea isn't even new, some older RTS games allowed players to spend a resource like population into speeding along research or advancement.

The best part of Wait or pay is that it works well with a key RTS mechanic, incremental growth mechanic; where you build a worker that harvest gold then spend the gold on a upgrade that allows you to train more workers...that harvest gold.

@SillyCow

I like the basic idea of curiosity also, insane amount of players that act simultaneously. your basic idea sounds like a good next step, I just wonder about some details :)

how would the balance work and what would be the strategies player could apply?

I assume the long term goal is to somehow Level up, that's the point of MMO, am I correct?

playing the game in my head, I see me dropping near a resource and if I see a stronger player (his level > my level), I'd immediately set back to orbit to not loose any resources. On the other side, if I see a resource with a weaker player, I'd attack the player, because I know he most likely will flee to orbit, because either way I will get his resources.

Usually MMORTS have that kind of balance problem. in MMORPG you can simply remove any reward in attacking weak players, but in an RTS it's usually not about the XP, it's the resource that is of interest and as far as I've seen, MMORTS try to somehow balance it by allocating bases of new players in some direction, to put skilled long term player far apart of new players that have just joined.

Or is the planed not a continuous place? just existing for 5min, newly generated for every 'round'? (then you could actually match players by skill, but that wouldn't be much of a typical MMORTS).

Maybe instead of getting stronger as you mine, you get weaker, having expended your energy/stamina/ammo? Your buildings spread, but become spread out making you weaker even though you're mining faster? And the goal is to just get as much resources as you can before packing up and recovering for the next mining mission?

One way to do this would be to put a price(wait time?) on takeoff/landing. That would encourage you to use your landing crew for as long as possible. Eventually making strong crews decay. Your strong (expensive) units lose energy, and you start to need to be careful about them so that they're not destroyed,

playing the game in my head, I see me dropping near a resource and if I see a stronger player (his level > my level), I'd immediately set back to orbit to not loose any resources. On the other side, if I see a resource with a weaker player, I'd attack the player, because I know he most likely will flee to orbit, because either way I will get his resources.

One solution for this would be to promote players to team up against the stronger player.

Another solution which I'm not sure how I feel about is:

Limit all landing crews to have the same power.

If the game is to be truly "casual", do not allow players to amasse power at all.

A lander will have a maximum weight-payload of 5000kg, and you can choose which army to put there.

But everyone has the same 5000kg.

The only thing that will differentiate the good players from the weak ones is their skill.

On the one hand, it makes the game less "deep", and shortens the duration where the game is interesting.

On the other hand it removes the whole "unfair for beginners" problem, thus making it more casual.

The motivation to keep playing might come from leaderboards and achievements:

( leaderboard- most resources harvested today/this month/2015, or achievements: harvest 1000 resources in 30 minutes, etc... )

Another potential option is having the cost factor scale with leveling up. To advance to the higher levels, the smaller/beginner resources piles won't be of much use to an advanced player (quantity required versus time spent), or their harvesters cannot harvest the lower class resources.

I like your idea, but there are some issues you should think about. Nevertheless, the basic idea is really great, but your game idea is build around entering and leaving a large running RTS game session, there's not much about the actual game mechanism.

I'm missing a goal, a motivation to play your game. In common (multiplayer) RTS games the goal is defeat the enemy, not to collect a lot of resources. So, if you want to add an other motivation, eg. the common MMORPG motivation, that is progress and improve, then you will have a strong balancing issue. The weaker, noob players, who don't know your game, will be cherry picked by more experienced players and according equippment.

To fight this, I would sugguest to introduce factions or corps. So weaker player can line up with stronger players, thought this could introduce other issues (subdivision of all resources, each faction is harvesting a blob of resources).

So, the major goal should be to enforce conflict, or a front line where two factions fight each other for domination over some resources. So a second resource, eg military rank, which could be only collected by taking part in battles, would be useful. So, for major weapon systems upgrades you would need money (sold resources) and the according military rank.

Take a look at MMO games like Planetsiege 2 (free) and check the game dynamic, how do player look for action, why do they seek conflict, how do the dynamic balancing work etc.

Cool idea. It makes me think of this Agar.io game i've been playing recently, where you're a circle that eats other circles that are smaller than you to get bigger. Of course, agar.io is very casual, and not so much of a strategy game, but I think there are some similar game scenarios you would have to consider

Wow! That's a cool game.

They have the "Casual realtime" part down. And very nice balancing as well..

This has already been done. There was an Israeli developer who made a persistant MMORTS like this called "Ballerium". Was pretty fun in it's closed beta state, but it closed down because it became boring after building your army (and some buildings) for the 50th time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorem

Krypt0n, on 02 Jun 2015 - 05:32 AM, said:

playing the game in my head, I see me dropping near a resource and if I see a stronger player (his level > my level), I'd immediately set back to orbit to not loose any resources. On the other side, if I see a resource with a weaker player, I'd attack the player, because I know he most likely will flee to orbit, because either way I will get his resources.

It's at this point where a Wait or pay mechanic is useful.

If you allowed the player to deploy quickly and to retreat quickly, then make them wait or pay to redeploy again, the player would be discouraged from abusing it.

This has already been done. There was an Israeli developer who made a persistant MMORTS like this called "Ballerium". Was pretty fun in it's closed beta state, but it closed down because it became boring after building your army (and some buildings) for the 50th time.

Games like Clash of clans solve this by auto-repairing buildings, you could allow buildings to return to the ship for repairs.

I am pitching a few ideas, see if you like any.

First your game has two zones, space and planets, you could allow for space battles and planet mining. Space battles is how the player advances the game and the planets is how you fuel the war. Maybe allow a resource that players can only earn from fighting or harvesting when in space as a incentive to attack.

If players mining a planet is always at risk and feel a need to harvest fast, say there is this meteor heading to the planet, the player could employ the help of weaker player to help them harvest.

The way this could be done is that all players under the contract gets resources every time a miner returns, based on the amount they would have received, as if it was there own miner. The higher level players can focus on defending and the lower units on mining.

Another idea is to allow players in space to send raiding parties to steal resources from planet miners, this would mean that a strong player will have to defend his mined resources and focus less on attacking others.

It also forces a important choice on the player: To keep harvesting under harassment or to call it and return to the ship to use what ever they have.

Last if players deploy buildings to the planet and can do so at any time, you could use it as a side quest generator.

When a player loses a building then attempts to redeploy it a message appears in the corner of all the planetary players screen, "Player C is deploying a turret, do you want to add a bounty?" This way all planetary fighter can add a value to show how important it's destruction is, player in space who don't care about the battles on the planet can now intercept the bounty for reward.

You could even further extend this by allowing ground players to offer bounty on ground targets for reward, this could be balanced by saying there is some kind of governing body who adds funds to the bounty of weaker players.

Some thing like this would be very hard to do and would, in my opinion, make it a awesome space game.