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Gameplay
'Theories'
Here are some 'theories'
we (Korin and Jalik) wrote about how some of the aspects of the game will
play out. We've tried to be as clear and concise as possible, but if you
don't
understand
some
aspects, you can shoot me an email at cardinal@rulingwars.net, or Korin
at redmage@rulingwars.net. Happy reading!
NPC Theory
The Questing System
Player Owned Property
Karma Theory
The Guild System
NPC Theory of Ruling Wars:
This article is continued from the Characters section of the site.
Previously discussed was the idea of player owned non-player-characters (NPCs).
The article briefly talked about how player owned NPCs in our game will be
different from other Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).
This article will go into detail about how owning NPCs will work.
Process of acquiring NPCs:
In our game, a player will need to have acquired the equivalent of around
level 10 in order to begin ‘purchasing’ NPCs. This will effectively
give them the equivalent of a Corporal rank, thus giving them authority
over lower ranked NPCs. The purpose of owning an NPC is to have lower ranked
soldiers for you to command in battle. Each NPC that a player acquires
will essentially work for money. I suppose that this could be considered
a sort of ‘rent-a-soldier’ process. However, each NPC that
you pay to fight for you will be considered an employee. In reality, a
player is able to own his or her own number of NPCs. The maximum number
allowed to be owned is only determined by a players ability to pay each
and every one of their soldiers.
Maintaining the NPC pool:
Since there is virtually no limit to how many NPCs a player can own (other
than money), it will become an incredible task to manage the entire pool.
What will most likely end up happening is a ‘chain of command’ system.
An example of this, let’s say, would be a player that owned 15 soldiers.
Say that 3 of these soldiers are at the equivalent of around level 20,
whereas the remaining 12 are beneath that. That player will have the ability
to assign each of the 3 more experienced soldiers the command of 4 of the
lower ranked soldiers. This results in the player having direct control
over 3 higher ranked NPCs, which in turn each command 4 lower ranked soldiers,
essentially giving the player indirect control over all 15 NPCs. This makes
for a far easier system of managing soldiers, and makes use of the chain
of command.
Paying each NPC’s wages:
No system of owning NPCs would be completely realistic if the idea of paying
each and every one under your command was not in place (short of the idea
of slavery which has been out of the question in this game since the beginning).
Of course, this brings up an interesting issue of money buying you an advantage.
Some would argue that players with piles of money would have a much easier
time in the combat oriented areas of the game. This is indeed quite a realistic
probability. Each NPC will have a ‘wage’ that you will have
to pay in order for it to remain loyal to you. You will of course still
own the NPC even if you do not pay it’s wages, but it will not follow
any of your orders and will most likely stand on the sidelines and slack-off
and/or make fun of you if you don’t pay him/her. The current plan
is to attempt to make the salaries of each soldier affordable to everyone.
So there also lies the argument of wealthy players being able to command
a greater number of NPCs. My counter-argument to this is as follows below.
Arguing ‘unfair’ advantages of the wealthy players:
While the more wealthy players would most likely hold the advantage in terms
of more NPCs under his or her control, the idea of the game is combat against
members of other Rules. That may seem a bit unclear, but what I’m
trying to get at is the idea of players unifying under each of their own
Rules and empires. Let’s say, for example, that a group of 10 players
from the Ikarian Empire each has their own group NPCs under their command.
Let’s say that 2 of these players are quite wealthy and have piles
of money to pay their NPCs. The remaining 8 players in the group are not
quite as wealthy and can only afford to have maybe 5 or 6 NPCs under their
command. Now let’s say that they are on their way to raid a Tyrann
Empire capital city. Let’s say they run across a group of 10 players
from the Tyrann Empire that each have a group of NPCs under their command.
Say that only one of the Tyrann players is wealthy enough to play for a
lot of NPCs, and the remaining 9 of the group own around 5 or 6 NPCs. If
the two groups decide to battle, assuming that the two groups all have
members of around the same rank, then the players from the Ikarian Empire
will most likely pull out ahead, because they have two players with enough
money to finance an entire squadron of NPC soldiers. To put it simply,
I would say that short of a player’s ego, the only time to squabble
about the system being unfair to the less wealthy players is when you want
to build up a massive army to raid the other empires.
Non-Player Owned NPCS:
We will, of course, have many NPCs that will be quest-givers and things that
won’t be available to be owned by players. You will be able to talk
to these NPCs and get quests from those who give them. Also, we have to
make enemy NPCs for players to kill, otherwise the game would have little
to no point and people would hate us. And since we like to be liked by
people, we’re going to do our best to make this a fun game, full
of slaughtering NPCs which is always fun. Also, for non-player owned NPCs,
and perhaps player owned ones as well, we’re throwing in an ‘easter-egg’ of
sorts, in which something a player says will trigger a command that makes
NPCs loose every bit of self esteem and run of a cliff, which should be
funny.
Conclusion:
I’m sure that I have left out some important things, and I’m
sure that there are still questions. But, for now, I think this is a pretty
extensive article on our NPC theory for the game. As always, if you want
to add something, or have comments of any kind about this article (or anything
really), go ahead and let us know, either by email or on the forums. Basically,
our NPC system is going to be quite a bit different from all the other ones
out there right now. Anyway, I’m going to go ahead and wrap up. Take
it easy.
-Jalik
^top^
The Ruling Wars Questing System Theory
When people think of MMORPGs, or just RPGs in general for
that matter, what is one of the first things they think of? Quests. Now,
the next question is:
Do quests a) define the game, b) the character, or c) do they just help
someone level? Some RPGs go with A, a few go with B, but the vast majority
of RPGs
go with C. With our game we hope to encompass all of these to have an awesome
questing system. We hope to have our quests be a core part of the game
that follows a storyline. However, we also do not want the main focus of
the game
to be quests. We want to leave room for exploring and for massive PvP and
PvC battles. We want characters to be defined (to a point) by quests. Quests
will
help the player along in his/her mission to become a great leader in his/her
respective Rule. Quests will also be designed to help players get experience
toward mastering professions. In our game, we will not have the traditional ‘leveling’ system.
Characters will instead master professions and be promoted in rank. Quests
will be designed with these professions in mind, and will reward players
with items, bonuses and experience specific to each respective profession.
Another thing about quests that will be (mostly) unique to our game will
be team quests, or what we call ‘Community Questing’ (CQ). These quests
will be designed for multiple players (probably around 5-10 for most common
CQs) to each have his/her own task within the quest. For example, a community
quest may be a 7 player ‘recon quest.’ Each of the 7 players is
assigned a position to scout and report in at. Once each position is secured,
there may be a ‘sub-quest’ where there is an item to collect, (a)
monster(s) to kill, a person to talk to, or an item to deliver. Once each of
these tasks is complete, each player must return to the questgiver to be marked
as complete. Once each player has checked in ‘complete’ with
the questgiver, the quest will end and reward each member with experience,
bonuses,
and/or items to help the players advance.
We are developing this system (CQs) because we believe in the value of team
play. Interaction with lots of other players is something we encourage, and
with these quests, team cooperation and interaction are essential. For the
most part, CQs will not be mandatory, however in order to master most professions
and be promoted, these quests will be required.
We will have 5 different types of quests apart from CQs:
- Delivery – A player receives an item from a questgiver
that must be delivered to another NPC (non player character).
- Kill/Kill and Gather – A player must kill a certain
number of ‘monsters’ of
(a) certain mob(s). Sometimes this type of quest will also require looting
an item from a dead corpse.
- Converse – The quest will be given by one NPC and will require talking
to another NPC.
- Gather – A player will be required to locate and gather
a certain item that will need to be returned to the questgiver.
- Scout/Recon – A player will be required to travel to a certain area
and either report in or scout a particular area and report back to the questgiver.
-Jalik
^top^
The Ruling
Wars Player Owned Property Theory
One of the things that we feel very strongly about for our game is the idea
that players should be able to own property. That is one thing that I feel
was done excellently by Sony Online for Star Wars Galaxies, and something which
World of Warcraft seems to be lacking. To be fair, though, with WoW it makes
sense that players would not be able to own property. Their world is designed
very intricately, leaving very little room for variation. If players were to
be able to own housing, it would cause major space issues within the world.
Yes, there are a lot of open spaces in WoW that could be used for houses, but
if everyone decided that they wanted to build something in those open spaces,
it would get way crowded, way fast.
SWG, on the other hand, may have had TOO much open space. Sure, that leaves
room for growth, and I realize that they had to create maps that supposedly
would encompass an entire planet. Still, it seems that it placed even that
much more emphasis on the urban capitals, such as Theed on Naboo or Coronet
on Corellia. That’s where you’d find the vast majority of the players,
in capital cities. So at which point you would venture out into the ‘wilderness’,
you would be hard-pressed to find many other players, save player cities, which
were done very well in my opinion. However, dealing with the issue of space
is something we’ll be facing in our game. Do we limit space and limit
player owned housing? Do we make massive maps so that anyone can have a house
(or 2)? Do we compromise for somewhere in between where we have large spaces
available for building, but once that runs out we say ‘tough luck’?
To be honest, we haven’t worked out all the kinks of the property system.
But I believe it’s safe to say that we will make enough space for players
to build houses and cities.
We are also considering implementing renting and buying ‘real estate’ inside
major cities. Think about the fact that in major cities, you usually have more
than 60 percent of buildings being nothing but ‘filler’. They don’t
serve any purpose but to give the appearance of a large city. There can be
multiple sky scrapers, but unless they’re all built with interiors
and serve some sort of purpose, for the most part they are just big boxes
that are textured to look like a building. We are going to attempt to design each
building so that it is enterable and functioning, at least in some manner.
If it functions as an empty building waiting to be purchased or rented, so
be it, but that will, hopefully, help solve the problem of space limitations.
If we can have players that own, or rent certain floors or parts, of buildings,
we may not have to create such massive maps to enable most everyone to own
housing/real estate. To our knowledge, this is something relatively untouched
in the MMO world.
Basically, we want to have players own their own property and have a more
realistic way of filling our cities with functional buildings. As always,
if you have questions or comments, we love feedback, so either email us at admin@rulingwars.net
or me personally at cardinal@rulingwars.net. You can also post your feedback
on the fourms. Thanks..
-Jalik
^top^
The Ruling Wars Karma Theory
As characters perform “good deeds” in relation to all players,
as
opposed to individual Rules, their karma rating will increase, and when
they do things that are typically considered “evil” or “bad”,
they
receive negative karma.
In this definition, “good things” will not be faction specific.
In other
words, helping someone in another Rule, or doing a quest for another
Rule may give you good karma, and is not dependent on how your
particular Rule's faction will be altered. Because of this, you could
potentially do something that decreases your faction rating with your
own Rule, but increases your karma score. Things that will give you good
karma include include helping new players (would have to be given
manually by moderators to avoid cheating), and particularly “good” quests (“Please Mr. Soldier, save my kitten/baby!”).
Bad karma will be much easier to get, and will be given out for playing
killing (outside of duels/battlegrounds, especially for killing members
of your own Rule, and in even greater quantities if you are not caught),
and quests which will follow a criminal/evil theme. And example of this
kind of quest would be an assassination/combat quest in which your
target is innocent (especially if the player is made aware of this).
As a player's karma rating increases, they will be given bonuses to
charisma-style stats, priests will receive bonuses in non-combat related
abilities, neutral and good faction points will be given out faster,
enemy territories will be easier to access, and quests requiring a “good
reputation” will become available.
As a player's karma rating decreases, they will lose “good reputation” quest
opportunities and it will be harder for them to enter enemy territories (and
possibly some areas in their own Rule's control). They
will also gain faction standing with “good” factions much slower,
but they will gain faction standing will criminal factions faster, and will
be able to move safely in “evil” areas. They will also be able
to
receive missions from evil factions in much the same way that good
characters can receive missions that are “good reputation” specific.
Evil priests will also have bonuses to damage related abilities.
The purpose of this system is twofold. Firstly, it helps non-PVP
characters to easily distinguish safe characters from unsafe characters,
and secondly, it expands the role-playing opportunities of players who
wish to play evil characters by requiring them to actually do “evil”
things. This system will also be useful, as the Rules are not clearly
defined as good and evil.
-Korin
^top^
The Ruling Wars Guild System Theory
All online games have one thing in common: players. The question is: how do
we unite players and create the sense of community? The answer to that question
is a guild system. Most (if not all) MMO games have some sort of guild system
so players can come together and form a permanent group. Ruling Wars will be
no different, other than the fact that we hope to have a more expansive and
somewhat dynamic guild system. In most MMOs, you have one type of guild. Players
can join and create (usually for a fee) guilds and form a small community.
For Ruling Wars, we are envisioning a system where players can create a guild
from a list of numerous categories, for NO fee. For example, this list of categories
would include standard guild, business, corporation, clan, alliance (upgrade
from a previous type), the list goes on. Each category would then have sub-categories,
such as military, trade, social, or a mix of all 3 of them.
We are developing this system for a number of reasons. In trying to make our
game more realistic, we want to have a variety of ways for players to create
their own types of communities. If someone wants to run their guild more like
a business or corporation, so be it. If they want to have more of a loose organization,
they would most likely be looking at a standard guild or clan. If guilds want
to ally to share resources, intel, or just have a bigger community, they could
form alliances. Secondly, we’re all gamers here, and we’ve played
a variety of online games. We know what works for us and we know what we want
to do differently. We basically want to expand upon current systems that work
ad then in turn create something new that’s never been done.
We really only have one goal: fun. As much as we love trying to be innovative,
we think that the idea of multiple guild types will be fun. We hope it will
bring relief from the boring, one dimensional systems of other games (no offense
to those other games ?).
Another part of the multiple guild types system will be player bonuses. Basically
players that are part of specific types of guilds will get special in-game
bonuses. Let’s say, for example, that a player is part of a trade guild.
That player will get items at a discount from NPC vendors and will have a slightly
better reputation with NPC trade guilds/companies. A player in a combat related
guild would receive bonuses to his/her combat related stats.
Now let’s talk about residual stats. All this really means is that stat
bonuses you receive while part of a guild may stick with you for a little while,
should you decide to leave a guild. Because let’s try to be realistic.
If you’re in a combat related guild, if you decide you’re going
to leave, you won’t just ‘forget’ your combat skills. So
we won’t penalize you by taking your stat bonuses away – at first.
But, the longer you are not part of a combat related guild, you’re eventually
going to lose all of your bonus stats. If you’re part of a trade guild,
however, and you leave your guild, you will lose your NPC vendor discount and
some trade guild reputation instantly. If you rejoin another trade guild, you
will receive discounts back at half of what you previously had. Your discount
rate will eventually return to what it once was, but it will not be immediate.
Again this system is being designed because we hope it will be fun. Yes it’s
innovative, and yes it’ll be different, but we think it will be fun,
otherwise we wouldn’t implement it.
-Jalik
^top^
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