Gridstream

Quick Note, this was written very stream of counciousness so I apologize if I'm rambling. My mind is afire with ideas for this thing so I may rant alot but that's just the enthusiasim spilling out.

Gridstream: Friend or Foe

The operating title has been updated to make the game showcase its key new feature which I’ll tell you about in a minute. This is a quick batch of notes because it’s a bit of insomnia based writing, but chances are I’ll have a bit more insomnia and get around to typing out everything on my notepad.

First key note: Cyberpunk.

The game consists of two key parts. The first part is the Grid. For those of you who’ve read snowcrash, think of The Grid as a new name from that books “The Street.” Those of you who haven’t read snowcrash should think of the Grid as something like The Matrix, only you’re aware it’s there. You exist there as an avatar, and it’s a virtual world. While in The Grid gameplay mode your character has an extremely customizable costume and a wide range of emotes but no combat takes place. This is where all of the social parts of the game take place. I’m thinking of giving each player a small personal area, and potentially adding customizable guildhalls etc. Costume changes, furnishing your personal area/guildhall will cost the in game currency which is currently just called money.

From The Grid players can access The List. The list is in story terms a list of available missions/contracts put out by various organizations. I’ll get into factions later. In game mechanics terms the list is where players get into the quests which are all instanced. If you’ve ever played DDO you know that it works, but DDO is only a partial metaphor to what I’m doing.

The key thing and the one truly original thing I’m doing with this is how missions work. You select a mission, it puts you in the queue, and once the queue has enough people to start it, lets say it’s 14 in this case, the mission goes to the intro screen. At the intro screen the overarching goal of the mission, which will always be in multiple parts, side goals, and a quick overview of the setting are given. If the recourses are available I’d love to do this via video, but more realistically it’ll be an overview map, a few noted features on the map, and a list of goals/side goal and descriptions. At this screen there will also be a chat window and a list of the players who are entering that mission and two columns running alongside that list of names. The columns are Friend and Foe. The briefing screen will stay up for load time + 60 seconds so that players have time to work out alliances. If player A marks player B as friend and player B marks player A as friend they’ll start the mission from the same spawn point and be on a team. Team size is not restricted so potentially the entire group could work together, but by teaming up you reduce the reward you get. It’s never quite as bad as ½ reward from having 2 people, but it’s along the lines of 2/3 the reward from having two people.

The friend/foe system has perks to both sides. If you team you have tactics and numbers to work with, but if you have enemies then you aren’t sharing the experience. Additionally a kill of another player gives XP. I’m certain that some will stay heavily foe simply to have more targets. Lastly there’s a cutthroat bonus if you complete any of the objectives while working solo.

There’s also going to be diminishing returns on player kill XP. The first time is 200% the amount you’d get from killing a monster of their level. Then 180%, the 160, 140, etc. This means that after killing the same person 10 times you no longer gain any XP from them. Another factor that keeps the game objective based and stops it from rolling over into one big death match.

Kill XP, both for killing NPC enemies and for killing other PCs will always pale in comparison to objective completion XP. Bonuses in if your team completes every sub-objective of the main objective, or every side objective, and a large bonus for completing everything on your own.

The mission ends and XP is handed out when all of the main objective are complete. One key note is that you don’t get any XP until the end of it, even kill based XP. This means that if you either abort mission or otherwise leave the game before it’s done you get nothing.

Some missions will require the whole group be one giant team, and at least one will require everyone be foes. Middle ground possible in some.

Actual game play will be very FPS like, but will have RPG elements at its core. Skill tree system, 4 base trees with a 3-2 split, although I may drop the entire melee tree. At the moment I have

-Ranged
-----Light Arms
----------Pistollero
----------Enforcer
----- Soldier
---------- Tac-Ops
---------- Artillery
----- Specialist
---------- Covert Ops
---------- Spec-Ops

-Psionics
-----Savant
----------Introvert
----------Extrovert
-----Cerebral
----------Cognition
----------Obfuscation
-----Subliminal
----------Inspiration
----------Delusion

-Tech Specialist
-----Engineer
----------Demolition
----------Gadgetry? Idea pending
-----Biotech
----------Medicine
----------Idea Pending
-----Cybernetics
----------Interfacing
----------Armor, Name Pending.

-Melee
-----Akimbo
----------Dervish
----------Berserker
-----Guardian
----------Aegis
----------Vindicator
-----Blade
----------Kensai
----------Infiltrator (alternate name, Ninja)

Some may question who melee will work in an FPS setting, but if you played either Jedi Knight II, or JKIII you’ll know that it works great.

For the ranged classes one of the key abilities you’ll unlock when you go into each tree is simply access to that trees gun. While you won’t get many special abilities in the sense of special attacks, you’ll unlock various maneuvers, side skills, and combat forms. For example when you go into ranged/solider you get access to an assault rifle. More specialized trees bet more specific guns. Ranged/soldier/covert ops gets a sniper rifle, while ranged/light arms/pistollero gets dual pistols at the beginning of its tree, and dual SMGs at the end of it. The same is true of melee. Kensai gets a katana; Aegis and vindicator both fight with a sword and shield, but their shields very. Also Aegis is focused on defensive use of the shield, while vindicator gets more offensive abilities, such as a shield charge and a disarming bash. I’ll go into specific descriptions of each one later.

Advancement through the skill trees is what XP gives you. You can also retrain yourself at any time, switching which abilities you have prepared. If you’ve played The Matrix Online you know what I’m talking about. The level of readied abilities you can have is really the limiting factor. It essentially is your level, and it’s also the way that missions are level restricted. For this mission you can only have X through X+3 abilities prepared. I like this in particular because it means if you have a friend whose lower level then you and you want to play with them you can just ready only as many abilities as they can, then join them in a mission.

Since XP is both the currency you use to unlock new skills and the means by which raise your maximum readied skills you’ll have to backtrack and stop advancing in maximum potential if you want to go learn some other ability. I may make the in game currency the means by which you unlock new skills just to keep the two things separate.

I’m thinking that there also won’t be a level cap. If you played way the hell too much you could eventually unlock and equip every ability. However the cost of raising your maximum readied skills will go up along an exponential curve. The reward size will increase to mitigate this as missions get harder, but the hardest, crazy endgame mission will only allow you to have enough readied abilities to have 3 full tiers worth of abilities.

Some abilities also won’t be combat focused. Ranged/soldier/spec ops will get things like lock picking and a torch for opening sealed doors. If you have Psionics/savant you can spend time and mana slowly moving huge objects through telekinesis. Things like this will be placed in missions, meaning that you can get through everything just by shooting stuff. Combat will still be a large part of the game, but you’re going to need someone with these problem solving skills to get past various things. All of these challenges will have multiple possible solutions though.

Let’s say you have a guarded gate. The guard is in a control room with visual on the gate which is a giant metal thing. If you had ranged/soldier/spec ops you can sneak around, torch the door to the control room, take out the guard and use the control panel to open the door. Someone with Tech/engineer/demolitions could, after neutralizing the guard; plant satchel charges and blow open the gate. Psionics/Savant/Extrovert could exert enough raw telekinetic force to manually open a giant gate. Psionics/Cerebral could mind control the guard into opening the gate for you. Melee/Blade/Infiltrator would also have the necessary tools to break into the guard compound. Psionics/Savant/Introvert could use their psionic abilities to distort gravity and just walk up and over the gate, or jump over it in one massive telekinetically assisted leap.

Another situation, enemies are arming a bomb, one of your objectives is to stop them. You could kill them then use infiltration/demolition/spec ops skills to manually disarm it. An obfuscationist could cause them to be unable to see the bomb preventing them from arming it, a savant could shove the bomb away from them interrupting them, a delusionist could cause them all to enter a state of abject terror or dementia crippling their explosives skills, etc. All kinds of good options me and the theoretical level designers will work on here.

More to come.