Ultimate assassin game idea.
Posted this in another topic but I feel this deserves its own topic, seeing as their is decent demand for the idea.
The concept is simple. You make a character and you play in a world with no loading time, no story arc, no real main objective. Every single move or action you do has the potential to leave a trace, and this will build up a long term wanted level against you. The more crimes you commit, the more evidence you leave behind allowing cops to build up a case against you. They will slowly start to track down your location, where you live, where you go etc etc. The game is made to be played long term, so you have to plan out where you live and all that.
Now if you die in this game, you have to start a new character. When you turn off your console, your character turns into an NPC and the game keeps going, so its all one huge seamless journey.
You could start off totally connected to the system, you have a clean record, you have a legitimate identity. To build up cash you could even do legal work, occasionally doing underground illegal work. However the more witnesses you leave behind and the higher your wanted level gets from contracts, the more your "legitimate" identity becomes compromised. They will know what car you drive, it will no longer be safe to live in your apartment. You will slowly find yourself stealing other identities and going into the underground world. Since this all plays out in real time, you would have to plan your journey carefully as you gotta sleep somewhere when you turn your PS3 off.
This could all be set online as well. Once you join a lobby, you are in it until you die. You can work together with other players, the phone system would work like GTAV, everyone has each others numbers but you can set people to ignore and manage privacy settings if you wanted.
There would be very little statistical information on your HUD. There is no real pause menu, you gotta go onto your computer to manage this kind of stuff. This is supposed to be like a simulation, and will most likely never see the light of day.
Going into online again, other players are off the map as well. The city is huge, you could walk past each other and not realize it unless they are sticking out. If you can track down another player and find out where he lives, you can kill him in his sleep when he logs off, take his identity and his cash etc. As you get more and more cash and fancier stuff, you can afford traps in your apartment, bodyguards, security, other gang members, mansions and all that. In a sense when you go to sleep and sign off, you become like a boss for that lobby if you are very rich.
You will stick out more and people will be inclined to kill you, but should they die they lose all their stuff which should take a while to get. It should be played as an MMORPG. So players can't just respawn and try and take you out with their fists, they will never get passed security.
Hell even getting hold of a handgun will be a challenge, if you buy one from the store your bullets can be traced back to you so you risk becoming notorious. Alternatively you could find a way to get hold of someone elses gun, another player could give it to you, all kinds of possibilities here.
Discuss.
I imagine that there's no HUD, unless you bought a GPS or smart phone that had a GPS, but you'd have to select it to actually see a mini map on screen.
Yup I would prefer no HUD as well. I like the smartphone idea, although I would prefer it if players didn't abuse the minimap. People will want to learn and get to know the area they are in.
I'd make sure that the phone's battery runs out the more you use it, or maybe your character would be forced to slow down to a brisk walk while looking at the phone (or is that too limiting)?
Sounds fine. Im not really that interested in specific gameplay mechanics, but rather the meta game, the scope of the game, the concept of the game. I think this is the kind of direction the game industry should be taking, at the moment its just gimmiks.
THIS IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING!
SOMEONE RECRUIT THIS GUY AND HIS AWESOME IDEAS.
I just checked out The Division, I think that will do for now.
Maybe we should just pre-develop this game and pitch it someday.
Jack, you'd be the director of it all. DAZ, you write a story to set it all up.
I'll design the basic city, hideout, and character concept art.
Story should be minimal, and shouldn't be tied to your character.
If I were to write a story for Jack's game, I would approach it from a very different angle than most game stories are written today.
It would be more Lore-based, rather than Character-based.
It would have to be a kind of story that is not totally "lost" upon the death of your character; because this is a game I expect to die easily in. It sounds like it would be very easy to die if a player is careless - which is great because the feeling of tension never goes away and it creates a very rewarding feedback loop for succeeding at Contracts (word I now use instead of Quests or Missions).
As you do missions, your character can unlock or find Case Files. Or Files, or Documents in general. Cutscenes play out by finding USB Drives, CDs or accessing certain TVs. More textual story is also revealed through USB Drives, as well as papers and documents. You could even "scan" your environment by looking at something with intent for more than a few seconds. Looking at a wall of graffiti could reveal a small amount of lore.
When your character dies (when, not if, this game is gohn' be brutal :3) another character you create can choose to track down their body or their legacy.
This would work in a VERY SIMILAR manner to ZombiU for WiiU. In fact, that's the first game I thought of when this post became known to me.
If you find the old character, you could restore pieces of Lore that you've lost, but not all of them.
And the toughest - but most important part of this game's writing - would need to be shown in such a way that doesn't feel like writing at all. I have to show story and Lore without words, to allow it to be emergent and organic. Animations, physics engines and Fluid AI will be more important than scripting and writing.
Jack. Let me know.
I was thinking something like writing about assassination target histories and motivations, why there are assassins in this particular city, etc. We learn these things, like you said, through the environment and hundreds (if not thousands) of unique collectibles.
I feel like you press Start, create your character, and you're dropped onto the middle of a street already walking. You start from there with no introduction (maybe an optional tutorial for new players). This could be a "learning" game, where the player community learns along the way, writes on forums about what they learned about gameplay mechanics, compiles lists about the lore of the world this takes place in. But when you start, you have no idea where you are or how to play. You experiment and make the game your own.
Ambitious, but possible with next gen.
I would greatly love writing a game like that.
Where the community has to explore, learn and compile info.
Imagine giving rise to a new sort of THB because of this game! How good would that feel!?
Because we over here, we understand the feeling of coming together, it's a pretty cool feeling. If we could help create that, that would be absolutely wicked.
I love the 'in motion' idea. You most often see this in racing games, but it'd be cool if it was something like this;
"I don't have a lot of time, so listen up."
Name: ____
"My name is [Custom Name]. It happened a few days ago."
Quick Character Customization: ____
"I was wearing a [Custom Clothes] and [Custom Clothes]. That's all I remember. Next thing I know these guys come out from behind me, telling me to get on my knees, that they won't hurt me. But I know better."
> [Free-Run/Chase/Parkour Tutorial] - Objective: Evade Pursuers
((This is the first bit of true gameplay because this game will emphasize evasion and playing safely rather than taking huge risks with combat.))
"I couldn't run in a straight line forever, I had to do something, and fast..."
[Time Slow]
[Vault Fences]
"The drop ahead didn't look too good, but better a few scrapes than what they were planning to do to me."
[Time Slow]
[Dive Roll - Costs Life, but better than getting caught/losing your character.]
"Eventually, I lost them. Got back home. Didn't think they'd find me over here. For a while, I was right. That was three days ago."
[Present Day - Safehouse Tutorial]
[True Game Start]
No more tutorials, no more slowdowns, no more anything after this. Just pure game. It taught you the basic mechanics you need to stay alive and be mobile, the rest is up to you. If you die, too bad. There are bound to be little manuals and other kind of things you can read or watch to learn how to play, within the game world itself.
To customize your character further, you just have to play the game and find or buy items that you want.
The initial pursuers that chase you aren't any kind of police or trained killers. They're just a group of thugs designed to teach you the concept of Evasion without starting the game with your legitimate identity compromised. You can live as a regular citizen for as long as you want, and you won't really need anything except what you learned. Hell, you can have an entire save doing only that if you really wanted to. The biggest threats you'll ever face are just muggers and thugs, that's it.
Now, you can choose to delve deeper...
Maybe you won't have to even be an assassin for long. Maybe make it so that something causes you to be unable to land a proper job, so assassin contracts are one of the only ways of making money. You can either steal or take a contract. After you've gotten plenty of money to buy your own place (like a private house), you can live in virtual bliss. However, you must always be aware of the other players in your world and what actions you've made in the past that could come back to haunt you through, say, the police obtaining warrants to raid your home.
Even when you're enjoying the sweet life, you may not live much longer. You might even become a target to other players if you draw too much attention to yourself.
How sick would it be if some players worked as vigilantes, or like brutal Batmen that killed?
How sick would it be if some players worked as vigilantes, or like brutal Batmen that killed?
If we can customize our own masks, weapon holsters and such, I'm definitely doing this.
I like the idea of the community not knowing the full picture of what the game can offer. In fact some players may only want to share some secret functions, hidden weapons and hidden mission contacts to themselves.
Remember I would like to keep this as an MMORPG. Keep in mind that the lobby you are in is fixed, you are playing with the same people. So after say a week you would get to know the players in some way. As for a story, the model in my head has no story at all except the one you make for yourself.
As for mission contracts, I would like the NPC's that give them out to be tied in with the other players in the game. That is, you can refer other players that you trust in the game to the NPCs. Getting along with a player in the lobby will help you out enormously as he can give you contacts to other NPCs, such as gun salesmen etc. Those who just do it solo and kill other players won't be accepted into the other groups. In short, gangs should form naturally in the game, remember that you share a lobby with the same people long term. You would get to know the people in your neighborhood etc. You could even create circles within circles and find ways to cut out other players. You could stalk a guy home after a mission and find out where he is, and over the course of 3 real days find out when he sleeps and kill him. Of course he could be on to you and could set traps in place etc.
The sociology of a one life game like this should be very interesting, especially if the lobbies are set out by region and such. The reason behind them being massive, like 1000 players massive, is that it still gives you individual freedom. If you are getting paranoid about the group you are hanging out with and doing missions with, you can always skip town and go all lone ranger and such. Also teaming up with friends can help you take out the cops and such, but then the cops come in full force and treat you as a gang.
EDIT:
Also, I wan't everything to have an actual location in the game world. This means although you might accept missions through a phone fro NPCs, the NPCs themselves actually exist somewhere in the game world. This means you can kill them if you want to cut off another players income supply. Alternatively you could set up a payment system via online banking, and can accept missions from players themselves. In a way its like GTA crime bosses, noob players end up working for the players who have been there the longest and who have influence among guns, other players, missions etc. The "mod" bosses would have to be on their toes all the time, being careful about who they choose as their middle men etc. If they use phones then they have to be careful that cops aren't tapping them etc. They might even go so far as to use the internet and gaming forums to do stuff, which will inevitably happen I suppose.
How would you take care of players being offline?
How would you take care of players being offline?
They turn into an NPC. If no one knows where they live then they should be fine. This is why you have to do long term planning, you want to make sure your characters life is properly set up because you don't want to die when you are offline. So when you do play, you are very cautious on what your actions do.