If you could have any game you wanted, no questions asked, what would it be? Let's say a publisher of your choice came and said, "We saw your idea, and its awesome. Here's a big pile of cash to make it happen." What would come out of that? More than just technical details, I want to hear some passion here. Bring your A-game and tell us what would be your perfect game. I'll get the ball rolling... My dream game is a mashup of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Planetside 2. A massive, open game map, set on Cybertron during the early civil war, and making use of FoC's cyberpunk aesthetic design. Hundreds of players can zip around the map capturing objectives, transforming into vehicles for high speed or larger weapons, then turn back into robot mode for close in work. They could customize their robot using FoC's body part selection, pick a vehicle mode, and go to it. Actual vehicles could be large, armored transprts and seige engines that could be mini objectives all by themsleves. Players could mount 10 - 20 people on a large hovercraft and man weapons to attack a strategic point for the team. Attacking and destroying this transport could require a group of defenders to really work together and disable it piece by piece to stop their base from falling. Car transformers could zip around drawing fire while tank bots lay down heavy artillery, and flyers make strafing runs on the surface. In short, a diverse, customizable experiance that really shows what the transformers universe can be if you give it some freedom. Fall of Cybertron opened the door and showed us what was possible, and Planetside 2 (in the early days) gives us the open map warfare model to make it amazing. The business model is a free to play type, with purchases focusing on the people who prefer to shell out 5 - 10 dollars at a time. Maybe you could buy extra parts to cusotmize your bot, or get a little speedier access to equipment if you can't sink time into grinding. Above all, purchased equipment cannot provide anything that isn't free, and must be priced so that the average gamer can actually afford it. Expecting a player to shell out between 10 - 15 dollars a month would be fine.
Good to see other Cybertron games fans. Still best Transformers games around. Played MP in both and Planetside style version of it would definitely interest me.
Finally! Keep the ideas coming, I'll write all of them down in my notebook. There's no such thing as patenting game ideas For me, at the moment I'd enjoy the most a Battletech game with combined arms tactical combat and strategy map complete with jump ships and resource management. I think I can toss this idea freely because the IP is 'spoken for' at the moment and I don't see anyone ripping this idea since it's risky. The game would cost one time 50€ / 50$ payment and you'd get the whole package and there would be none of that "we severed a major feature so we can make it DLC". Buy the game, gather your friends and setup your own servers to run the world and play, simple as that. No unlocks, you can set up any scenario you want from the available units. What units couldn't be fit to the bill would be released as 15€ / 15$ addons and each addon would be big, with dozens of new vehicles. And don't give me any of that "it can't be made" bs. I know it can be made and I know roughly the cost of it and it's feasible and the BT fans wouldn't just easily break even but they'd bring in nice profits as well. From the game: your unit is tasked to take a strategic crossroads city but hell, it's an ambush and you lose most of your mechs. Load? No, you can't load in this game. You still have your operating base with infantry and some pilots etc. - the enemy are now pushing against you after their victory. You must now use infantry, vehicles and the few remaining mechs to cause attrition to the enemy until you are reinforced. You manage to cause attrition but your casualties are high, you're eventually moved to rear to rebuild your unit but you've now lost most of your veterans and equipment - you get fresh rookies and some crappy equipment and your unit is redesignated vanguard unit to reserve/garrison duties. Maybe you'll scout better the next time you're trying to take a city?
If Star Citizen delivers what it aims to, that'll embody my own dream game perfectly. I've always wanted an immersive and persistent universe space sim (that wasn't EvE). Basically, I'd like a space sim with an immersion level on par with something the likes of an Elder Scrolls game. I'd like a space sim where, while I'm making my way across the universe, I get distracted by things like derelict hulks in space and strange anamolies. I want to really feel that thrill of exploration, and the adrenaline rush of high stakes combat when the Sober resist the Distillation of their souls. I want a platform that will allow me to facilitate some badass group roleplay surrounding the Word. That'd be my dream game.
Easy. Chris Roberts doing Mech Citizen instead of Star Citizen. All the SC goodness within a living, breathing Inner Sphere. Start with the 4th Succession War. Have it move in real time. Players change course of events within reason. Afterwards, jump forward to Clan Invasion....REAL TIME. Oh, and since we are fantasizing here, have the ability to go back and play historical battles in the SIM ROOM anytime you want.
I've for long contemplated about building a modern armored suit and battling bears with modern melee weapons. I know, the armor thing makes it unfair but I'm not as tough as you are and Steel could crush my skull in a split second if I simply attacked him with a halberd, sword and couple of knives. So I needed to be OP in the way that I can't be seriously injured. Then again I couldn't do that in real life. I think bears and humans should maintain the "Ugdug Non-Iintercourse Treaty of 12.504 BCE", despite the countless violations on both sides including the genocide put forth by human hunters and the respective retaliations by extremist bear supremacists against human campers. (then again no one likes campers, they ruin the Elan of FPS games)
I couldn't "Like" this hard enough, so I quoted it too. A Battletech game (note, not just MechWarrior, but Battletech) built by someone like CIG with the vision and passion and ambition that SC is being built with. Dropships, Aerospace, Mechs, Tanks, infantry - the works. Real economics controlling rampant Heavy/Assault min-maxing and boating, real combined arms demanding electronics packages on the battlefield being carried by light mechs, economic scales demanding the use of cheap, middle of the road and more accessible Mediums Mechs for lengthy campaigns. Oh, and actual, real, lengthy campaigns. From the infantry side it would be future fantasy ArmA-style combat. And for good measure (and to be more realistic) - lavish use of Procedural Generation - No Man's Sky, ED and SpaceEngine, Anteworld... this is how you'll create 3500 worlds, and a voxel-builder is how you will get your players to make those world more interesting. But, yeah - I've had to wake up and drink my coffee. I grim reminder that what I've described above wont happen for at least a decade to come.
I did request a Battletech MMO of that nature, of Smith & Tinker, unfortunately while they replied to my request, it was not promising
Personally, mostly the same but I would personally make infantry of lesser role in the gameplay sense, meaning that you would command at least a squad and a la Rainbow Six you could switch between squad members freely. Possibly even just make the infantry a platoon while at it and the infantry player could issue squad level commands. If there were more infantry players involved the highest rank would command all of infantry etc. and lower ranks would assume control of individual squads. I don't like as much the idea of controlling just one soldier because, shit - look at what they're up against Typical infantry commander situation could be to set up an ambush in a city, placing a heavy weapons squad on a skyscraper etc. and waiting for the right moment to open fire since it sorta reveals their position - and the mechs have plenty of mobility and firepower. Among other main uses for infantry would be to check and clear buildings of enemy infantry etc. Stuff like infantry artillery spotter teams, lights directing indirect fire like you said and all that - just awesome. And obviously dicking around with your precious dropships and even losing them in combat.
if it was in my hands I'd make it some kind of resource system, your character can 'command' X amount of resources in a given conflict, this could be a lance of mechs or a dozen squads of guerrilla infantry or any combination and variation in between, and as the commander you have the prerogative to take whatever role you desire among your troops, even changing from one role to another as the situation demands. Something kinda like titanfall except more battletechie. I imagine infantry would be the least likely place to find your commander, but not impossible, much like the real world
I on the other hand would focus around the player having his personal unit with the whole lithany "FRR / SoR / 1/1/3 or so. Start with one squad/lance or so and as you grind you can get up in the ranks up to three lances without affiliation. If you belong to a group like SoR, then inside the group the highest ranking commander present has his personal unit which is like 1/1/1 or so but he/she also has command over the rest of his group present so orders can be given to individual commanders. Part of grind would be about unlocking commander ranks and available units and part would be about building up/beefing your unit. You'd essentially 'buy' assets from your faction, infantry squads, mechs, vehicles.. but also pilots. Infantry squads would have experience and there would be minor RPG element to mechwarriors, vehicle crews and aerospace pilots. So, you'd fight battles, get resources to replenish losses and buy new things and battle experience would make your human assets, pilots, 'warriors, crews, squads,.. better over time. You'd have a reserve where you could keep the assets you don't take into a battle but what you take into battle you can lose. Steiner way - recon with four Atlaii with elite 'warriors in them. Well, surprise, you poke a hornet's nest and they get ripped apart. Now you don't have those assets and it probably takes a lot of fighting to replace those losses!
I love fantasy-crafting! Well, especially seeing as it's not that far away... Anteworld has created a 1:1 scale Earth, down to the last blade of grass, using procedural tech - and it uses voxels to deform the terrain. A whole planet crunched into 600MB of simple assets in layers and a few procedural algorithms. The technologies being developed right now by CIG and Frontier could pave the way for this kind of grand-scale game - SC's seperated physics that allows free-roaming on a vessel in a physically correct system, ED's massive scaled universe in true 1:1 size and form, WarHorse's ingenious physical layering of character gear (down to the point where what you wear determines what and how much you can carry - weight included). So many big strides being made in gaming nowadays - these flights of fancy in which we wax about our "Dream Games"... they're not all that far off.
