villain of the story
Arcane
No, I don't know if there's a Syndicate MMO in the making or planned but this is a loose collection of ideas the latest Syndicate 4-Player Co-op video gave me and how a new (eg. spinoff, not a remake) Syndicate game could be made somewhat meaningful.
Syndicate. Meaningful. Browser MMO. WTF? LOL. Right?
Not really.
It's quite a very simple concept based on resource management and competitive gaming in short injections so hear me out:
Game will have two main parts.
The first part that's about action with mass appeal and instant gratification:
- This part of the game will be an actual 3D game component. What I have in mind is environments that are partially procedurally generated and played pretty much straight as an action/FPS game during a mission.
- Every player will start the game as a random nobody agent will be assigned to one of the many vanilla Operation Bases (OB) that the big-time vanilla Syndicates use to get at each other, or join a player-made OB or Syndicate after building up a little skill.
- An operation base (OB) is an off-the-record and off-the-grid unit that Syndicates use to conduct operations against each other.
- These operations, or missions, are basically those where the players (or AI) go into the 3D game world and do shit alone, together and/or against other players. Missions can be anything from shooting key people, some people or all of people in a location to kidnapping scientists or stealing trade or research secrets or what have you, ie. any reason to go in and out of places, seen and heavily armed or unseen and light.
- Perpetrator of any given operation will not immediately be known to everyone. It could even be that even the players won't know which Syndicate their OB belongs to.
- Vanilla Syndicates will create procedural missions based on global statistics to stay on top of their games to eliminate, to weaken or to implicate competition.
- Players will be able to see these missions posted on their OB board and accept the ones they like. Players in the same OB will be able to communicate with other players on the rooster and do these missions together. There will be a minimum waiting time for any mission to be actually carried out so that players willing to coordinate the effort can find the time to do so.
- If there is intelligence on the mission like maps, access points, patrol routes etc., players assigned to the mission will have access to details beforehand.
- Missions are on a first-come first-serve basis: some missions will allow fewer players so the first to accept will get it (shouldn't be a problem since missions by vanilla Syndicates will be procedurally generated based on global statistics. There shouldn't be a shortage of them for long at any given time). There will be space for extras, though, in case some players decline a mission later on or sit out or miss out the mission.
- Perhaps a mission should only be carried out when enough players are assigned to it because otherwise, player(s) would have to go with team AI and as we all know, that just never works unless you hand the players the control of the team mates, right? And what if there are two or more players and any number of AIs on the same team: who will get to control the AI? The highest ranking player? I don't know, very iffy matter. So maybe, if there aren't enough players assigned to a mission, that mission should be auto-resolved based on hidden statistics?
- Also, if missions without enough players get auto-resolved, then maybe the players who have accepted the mission (but didn't get to play it, obviously) could get a little credit bump based on how well the auto-resolve worked out.
- Players will have skills and stuff. Action RPG Lite mechanics with perks and whatnot. But non-combat skills as well, to be used for things other than missions.
- Players will be paid credits (why ever the fuck a dehumanising Syndicate would pay its brainwashed drone agents anything at all is beyond me but you need to introduce some sort of player-currency for expanding and branching their act, right? Maybe they are DOVAHKIIN or something) or penalised credits based on how well or bad they do on missions.
- Players will be able to spend these credits on equipment andaugmentations uh, yeah, augmentations or whatever, to bump up skills etc.
- When a player is killed in a mission, well, IRON FUCKING MAN, BITCHES! Ok ok, we want an MMO, not a LAN party with 20 people, so, substantial credit and skill penalty. Plus loss of equipment, obviously. I don't know how this could be handled without discouraging the players completely and also without breaking in-game consistency.
- Players who reach a certain level in actiony skills or stats (how many times you were shot or killed or disabled or spotted when you shouldn't be), will start getting mission offers from other OBs (but without knowing what Syndicate they belong to) or will be able to seek out missions from other OBs.
- Players who develop their non-action skills to certain levels will be able to exchange or buy or sell intelligence to other OBs (also without knowing what Syndicate they belong to).
- Players who save up enough credits and reach a certain level in some skills or stats will be able to start their own OBs with fellow players and eventually form their own Syndicates and start further OBs and remember: all OBs kind of exist in a vacuum ie. players don't know which Syndicate their OB belongs to until they move on to better and bigger things. (so you could say that an OB is an elite version of a clan).
- Player-made OBs and Syndicates will also get procedurally generated missions as advise to figureheads of OBs or Syndicates that they can take and pass down to the OBs they own.
And now the second part, running and managing OBs and Syndicates:
- This is the part of the game that you can play like a browser MMO.
- You start by picking a location to build your base from the global game map. Game doesn't have an actually persistent world all in 3D. Locations are procedurally generated with limited scope to suit the needs of missions. So you only pick regions and abstracted districts, eg. some urban ghetto, an industrial area, a business district etc. All with their own price, of course.
- Next, you start building a base, as you could in X-Com except with room for a little more complex layouts with passageways or similar kind of structures, instead of just lumping them next to each other as you did in X-Com and derivatives.
- Since one of the prerequisites of starting an OB is a certain amount of credits, you can also think of it as a starter package where you get a number of default units that are absolutely vital.
- You will be able to expand the base with units for researching, stocking all kinds of stuff (kind of like granary/armory/stockpile/similar in strategy games) and other things like crew quarters, infirmary etc. ie. all kinds of units you have come to expect from games like X-Com.
- Any given OB will have a unit limit based on its district. So to really expand, you will eventually need to build more OBs.
- You will need to hire personnel, researchers, IT people, security crew, field agents,Pete Hines lookalikes PR people, politicians, CEOs etc. for your OB or OBs network. These people will of course be generated by the game and will be up for hiring for all players globally. All OBs in need will want to hire these people and there will be multiple offers on the better people so you will have competition starting there.
- Every now and then, the game will generate hotshot people in their fields that will make a bigger difference, eg. faster research, better defense AI etc. could be anything. Obviously, these people will be extra expensive.
- If another OB outbid you for a hotshot character and if you have access to intelligence, you can find out which OB hired him or her and you will be able to conduct missions against other OBs to abduct (or just murder) these people to work in your OB. Obviously this means setting up a mission to raid or infiltrate their OB and abduct or murder that person.
- Murdering hotshots should negatively affect the market. Especially for those who bid and lost a hotshot who later was killed.
- In turn, failing to protect hotshots that you have hired will have further a negative effect on your OB (no worries though, you can try to hire through another one of your OBs!).
- You will need to hand-place security systems, security personnel, equip your personnel and set-up patrol routes for the defense of your OB. These are the main things that will protect your OB when other players or AI will try to raid or infiltrate your OB on a mission. Yeah, player OBs will be a part of the global economy so that should happen frequently.
- If you have access to intelligence, you may learn about a mission to your OB, player or AI, and prepare for it.
- If you have access to intelligence, you can learn about the hot shot players (eg. players with good stats and skills) in other OBs and offer them missions.
- As an OB, you can try to have real players on your rooster infiltrate other OBs. So, for instance, if you learn that a particular OB has set a mission on your OB and you have a hotshot player, you can have your hotshot player ask to join on that mission (to recap from the "action part": - Players who reach a certain level in actiony skills or stats (how many times you were shot or killed or disabled or spotted when you shouldn't be), will start getting mission offers from other OBs (but without knowing what Syndicate they belong to) or will be able to seek out missions from other OBs.)
- Basically a Syndicate is a managerial base of business which as made it past a certain threshold of money, OBs, research and successful missions under its belt, with enough money to start a new OB with centralised stuff and declare itself a Syndicate which generates just enough income to sustain itself just by existing. I know something's amiss there in the mechanics for what being a Syndicate means and takes but that could be a good start.
I guess that's the gist of it. Thanks for reading.
Alternatively, take all^ of that stuff and replace the MMO aspect with just co-op for good old fun.
Syndicate. Meaningful. Browser MMO. WTF? LOL. Right?
Not really.
It's quite a very simple concept based on resource management and competitive gaming in short injections so hear me out:
Game will have two main parts.
The first part that's about action with mass appeal and instant gratification:
- This part of the game will be an actual 3D game component. What I have in mind is environments that are partially procedurally generated and played pretty much straight as an action/FPS game during a mission.
- Every player will start the game as a random nobody agent will be assigned to one of the many vanilla Operation Bases (OB) that the big-time vanilla Syndicates use to get at each other, or join a player-made OB or Syndicate after building up a little skill.
- An operation base (OB) is an off-the-record and off-the-grid unit that Syndicates use to conduct operations against each other.
- These operations, or missions, are basically those where the players (or AI) go into the 3D game world and do shit alone, together and/or against other players. Missions can be anything from shooting key people, some people or all of people in a location to kidnapping scientists or stealing trade or research secrets or what have you, ie. any reason to go in and out of places, seen and heavily armed or unseen and light.
- Perpetrator of any given operation will not immediately be known to everyone. It could even be that even the players won't know which Syndicate their OB belongs to.
- Vanilla Syndicates will create procedural missions based on global statistics to stay on top of their games to eliminate, to weaken or to implicate competition.
- Players will be able to see these missions posted on their OB board and accept the ones they like. Players in the same OB will be able to communicate with other players on the rooster and do these missions together. There will be a minimum waiting time for any mission to be actually carried out so that players willing to coordinate the effort can find the time to do so.
- If there is intelligence on the mission like maps, access points, patrol routes etc., players assigned to the mission will have access to details beforehand.
- Missions are on a first-come first-serve basis: some missions will allow fewer players so the first to accept will get it (shouldn't be a problem since missions by vanilla Syndicates will be procedurally generated based on global statistics. There shouldn't be a shortage of them for long at any given time). There will be space for extras, though, in case some players decline a mission later on or sit out or miss out the mission.
- Perhaps a mission should only be carried out when enough players are assigned to it because otherwise, player(s) would have to go with team AI and as we all know, that just never works unless you hand the players the control of the team mates, right? And what if there are two or more players and any number of AIs on the same team: who will get to control the AI? The highest ranking player? I don't know, very iffy matter. So maybe, if there aren't enough players assigned to a mission, that mission should be auto-resolved based on hidden statistics?
- Also, if missions without enough players get auto-resolved, then maybe the players who have accepted the mission (but didn't get to play it, obviously) could get a little credit bump based on how well the auto-resolve worked out.
- Players will have skills and stuff. Action RPG Lite mechanics with perks and whatnot. But non-combat skills as well, to be used for things other than missions.
- Players will be paid credits (why ever the fuck a dehumanising Syndicate would pay its brainwashed drone agents anything at all is beyond me but you need to introduce some sort of player-currency for expanding and branching their act, right? Maybe they are DOVAHKIIN or something) or penalised credits based on how well or bad they do on missions.
- Players will be able to spend these credits on equipment and
- When a player is killed in a mission, well, IRON FUCKING MAN, BITCHES! Ok ok, we want an MMO, not a LAN party with 20 people, so, substantial credit and skill penalty. Plus loss of equipment, obviously. I don't know how this could be handled without discouraging the players completely and also without breaking in-game consistency.
- Players who reach a certain level in actiony skills or stats (how many times you were shot or killed or disabled or spotted when you shouldn't be), will start getting mission offers from other OBs (but without knowing what Syndicate they belong to) or will be able to seek out missions from other OBs.
- Players who develop their non-action skills to certain levels will be able to exchange or buy or sell intelligence to other OBs (also without knowing what Syndicate they belong to).
- Players who save up enough credits and reach a certain level in some skills or stats will be able to start their own OBs with fellow players and eventually form their own Syndicates and start further OBs and remember: all OBs kind of exist in a vacuum ie. players don't know which Syndicate their OB belongs to until they move on to better and bigger things. (so you could say that an OB is an elite version of a clan).
- Player-made OBs and Syndicates will also get procedurally generated missions as advise to figureheads of OBs or Syndicates that they can take and pass down to the OBs they own.
And now the second part, running and managing OBs and Syndicates:
- This is the part of the game that you can play like a browser MMO.
- You start by picking a location to build your base from the global game map. Game doesn't have an actually persistent world all in 3D. Locations are procedurally generated with limited scope to suit the needs of missions. So you only pick regions and abstracted districts, eg. some urban ghetto, an industrial area, a business district etc. All with their own price, of course.
- Next, you start building a base, as you could in X-Com except with room for a little more complex layouts with passageways or similar kind of structures, instead of just lumping them next to each other as you did in X-Com and derivatives.
- Since one of the prerequisites of starting an OB is a certain amount of credits, you can also think of it as a starter package where you get a number of default units that are absolutely vital.
- You will be able to expand the base with units for researching, stocking all kinds of stuff (kind of like granary/armory/stockpile/similar in strategy games) and other things like crew quarters, infirmary etc. ie. all kinds of units you have come to expect from games like X-Com.
- Any given OB will have a unit limit based on its district. So to really expand, you will eventually need to build more OBs.
- You will need to hire personnel, researchers, IT people, security crew, field agents,
- Every now and then, the game will generate hotshot people in their fields that will make a bigger difference, eg. faster research, better defense AI etc. could be anything. Obviously, these people will be extra expensive.
- If another OB outbid you for a hotshot character and if you have access to intelligence, you can find out which OB hired him or her and you will be able to conduct missions against other OBs to abduct (or just murder) these people to work in your OB. Obviously this means setting up a mission to raid or infiltrate their OB and abduct or murder that person.
- Murdering hotshots should negatively affect the market. Especially for those who bid and lost a hotshot who later was killed.
- In turn, failing to protect hotshots that you have hired will have further a negative effect on your OB (no worries though, you can try to hire through another one of your OBs!).
- You will need to hand-place security systems, security personnel, equip your personnel and set-up patrol routes for the defense of your OB. These are the main things that will protect your OB when other players or AI will try to raid or infiltrate your OB on a mission. Yeah, player OBs will be a part of the global economy so that should happen frequently.
- If you have access to intelligence, you may learn about a mission to your OB, player or AI, and prepare for it.
- If you have access to intelligence, you can learn about the hot shot players (eg. players with good stats and skills) in other OBs and offer them missions.
- As an OB, you can try to have real players on your rooster infiltrate other OBs. So, for instance, if you learn that a particular OB has set a mission on your OB and you have a hotshot player, you can have your hotshot player ask to join on that mission (to recap from the "action part": - Players who reach a certain level in actiony skills or stats (how many times you were shot or killed or disabled or spotted when you shouldn't be), will start getting mission offers from other OBs (but without knowing what Syndicate they belong to) or will be able to seek out missions from other OBs.)
- Basically a Syndicate is a managerial base of business which as made it past a certain threshold of money, OBs, research and successful missions under its belt, with enough money to start a new OB with centralised stuff and declare itself a Syndicate which generates just enough income to sustain itself just by existing. I know something's amiss there in the mechanics for what being a Syndicate means and takes but that could be a good start.
I guess that's the gist of it. Thanks for reading.
Alternatively, take all^ of that stuff and replace the MMO aspect with just co-op for good old fun.
