Heroes of might and magic inspired pbbg

[Sinzygy]

This is a brainstorm topic I made just to gather ideas.
I recently played my old HoMM3 and I thought to myself "hey, this could actually make a decent pbbg basis".

So far I thought the following modifications were necessary:
* Battle system needs to be revamped (I have a pretty good idea what to do here)
* The player is the hero
* Only one hero per "kingdom"
* No map / simplified map
* The resource-system would need some reworking to fit in with the map (not so sure about this one)
* turns/ticks? <- this one is still very open

What would you like to see in such a game? What would you change? How would you see such a game to suit the pbbg-genre?

[Zeggy]

I've never played Heroes of Might and Magic

I don't get what you mean with one hero per "kingdom". So that means every player has their own 'kingdom', or at the end of the game the winner is declared the hero of the kingdom?

I'd like to see a more strategy-like RPG, one where your decision on how to advance your character will have an impact on the rest of your progress in the game, but maybe it doesn't fit with your theme of HoMM3. It's just a general feature I'd like to see in RPGs

[Dasein Fiasco]

...one where your decision on how to advance your character will have an impact on the rest of your progress in the game...

More generally, this is a fundamental aspect of games: that your decisions should have meaningful consequences. Anyway, mutually exclusive "Technology Trees" are an example of this often used in RTS games, and "Skill/Ability Trees" are how it's often done in RPGs. These are just configuration candy, though, and may not be what you meant by "advance your character".

[Sinzygy]

Zeggy: By that I meant that the player gets only one hero to play with, regardless of how many castles he owns or controls. "One hero is all you got"

About having your choice in character advancement have an impact on your progress: In HoMM there are 2 kinds of heroes, might and magic heroes. Might heroes focus on raw attack power for their units, but won't have many spells available. Magic heroes are the opposite of that. Many powerful spells, but the units are weaker in comparison.
Furthermore the player will have to make choices as to what abilities his hero should learn (there are always 2 choices to pick from. Whichever choice isn't taken, cannot be taken later on, or for a higher price.

[?∂??]
I don't know if you want to call the above example of advancement a skill/ability-tree, but it is again, just configuration candy.

btw, Zeggy: the quick-edit function doesn't work

[Sinzygy]

Haw! I continued to flesh out this idea and started to put it on a wiki.

I have to say it's really sweet to use a wiki for such things. Never knew how organized I could keep this

[RangerSheck]

Make it better than this cookie-cutter, click-and-watch, boring piece of junk (with an art budget) and you've got my vote: http://www.heroesmini.com/

I loved HoMM3, but one of the great things about it was being able to try out different scenarios with different army types (or tech-trees, or races, or whatever, in other games). As a persistent game, it seems like you'd expect people to pick one starting type and stick with it throughout. That seems like it could get boring. I don't really have a suggestion on how to approach it - I guess the options are either it's 100% persistent or there are periodic "resets" (like some BBGs have).

Have you played Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/)? It was semi-inspirational to my game, but it's more like part-way between what I've got and HoMM3 (i.e. less RPG, more strategy).

[Sinzygy]

Make it better than this cookie-cutter, click-and-watch, boring piece of junk (with an art budget) and you've got my vote: http://www.heroesmini.com/

Yep, I played it and took some inspiration from it. But the best word that comes to my mind describing heroesmini: "ugh..."

I loved HoMM3, but one of the great things about it was being able to try out different scenarios with different army types (or tech-trees, or races, or whatever, in other games). As a persistent game, it seems like you'd expect people to pick one starting type and stick with it throughout. That seems like it could get boring. I don't really have a suggestion on how to approach it - I guess the options are either it's 100% persistent or there are periodic "resets" (like some BBGs have).

I was thinking about using periodic resets/opening multiple games. Or allow the player to start over. Or maybe I'll include the support for several heroes. You see, it's a long long list of "maybes"

Have you played Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/)? It was semi-inspirational to my game, but it's more like part-way between what I've got and HoMM3 (i.e. less RPG, more strategy).

Yep, I've been involved in Wesnoth for a long, long time (I guess it's soon 2 years or so. maybe only 1.5 tho... version 0.8.1). I helped out with balancing the units to allow for better mp-gaming. And I made a couple maps. Are you still playing?

[RangerSheck]

Have you played Battle for Wesnoth (http://www.wesnoth.org/)? It was semi-inspirational to my game, but it's more like part-way between what I've got and HoMM3 (i.e. less RPG, more strategy).

Yep, I've been involved in Wesnoth for a long, long time (I guess it's soon 2 years or so. maybe only 1.5 tho... version 0.8.1). I helped out with balancing the units to allow for better mp-gaming. And I made a couple maps. Are you still playing?

Oh, cool. Wesnoth is one of the few great complete (and always getting updated) open source games out there. I never got around to trying out the MP because the thought of playing a turn-based game with another human sounds like playing chess in molasses :-)

I pick it up every so often and after a few minutes I feel guilty for not working on my own game, so to be honest, I haven't played it much in the last year or so.

[Sinzygy]

Even though I'll be taking the current conversation further off topic:

It isn't so bad to play it over the internet. You just have to be ok with spending 2 hrs for a complete game. Of course, such long games isn't for everybody, so it really is personal taste to like it or hate it. There have been a lot of mods lately which tried to convert Wesnoth into a more rpg-like game and with the new version coming the game goes even more in that direction (spells, inventory system... everything done by the users).

Btw: Dave (the original developer of Wesnoth) and some others have started working on an open source 3d-rpg called Silvertree. It's on google groups if you're interested.

[Chris]

The game is divided into scenarios. Each scenario is a separate game and run for 10-30 days. When scenario ends, everything is reset but player gets fame points depending on scenario ranking. Player can play up to 3 scenarios at the some time. There are total of 5 scenarios running at the same time, at least 1 scenario starts every 5 days. Player gets a small starting bonus on each scenario depending on fame.

By the short timeline we can assure that most players start at the some time. So,we can make a strong strategy since competition will be more or less equal. It allows a lot of testing as well, so singleplayer features (like NPC/mines/cities placement) can be finetuned.

[Sinzygy]

I like this idea of scenarios. Then the games can also have different objectives, like gather x resource, control x units, kill x heroes, control x castles. This is a very good idea!
thx Chris

[Chris]

Generally, scenario can even be a different game genre RPG/strategy/puzzle, as long as there is a clear way of determining the winner and consistent fame points distibution.

As for scenario objective, gather x resources would probably not work in multiplayer, rather gather the most resources. Because how we determine the winner? The game can not stop once you get your quota of resouces. Rather the one who gets the most resources at the end of scenario win. Anyway, the objective has to be more multiplayer. A kind of competition. The HoMM style would not work, it's more suitable for singleplayer. The whole problem with HoMM is that it is most appealing for singleplayer... Just a random though

[Sinzygy]

The way I'm doing it is that there are many different regions to control and each region yields different resources and different amounts of resources. Not like in typical HoMM where the resources just lay around to pick up (more mine-focused). So I guess there is some level of competition.

Here's another idea: run a couple of games at the same time, but each player has a different objective, much like risk (the board-game). And each hour (or some other interval) the game checks if any of these objectives has been completed. If the objectives has been completed, the game announces it and the players can continue for 1 or 2 days to keep on playing in a kind of armageddon-setting. Player will get points for completing the objective in this time as well, but not as much as the winner gets, etc.

[Chris]

Well, I was thinking about massive multiplayer with at least a few hundred of players, many to join/leave in the middle. Risk style separate regions for players or different objectives would not work here. Also, there is no single winner, al least top 100 players get fame points.

The problem is with some kind of map/regions/land concept...

[Sinzygy]

About the MM aspect: maybe create a few player controlled guilds (around 10 or so) and give guild-specific quests/objectives. All the members of the winning guild would get rewarded.
Guilds can be formed at the begin of a new round/game and the players can only chose to change guilds once. This would a) enhance the multiplayer aspect of such a game and b) allow for nice competition.

Yeah, the map is problematic... I have an idea, but it's not at a stage where I'm happy with it...

[edit]
Another idea, based on the guild-idea:
Each faction/race (humans, elves, demons, etc.) have one castle each. At the beginning of a new game, each castles gets an objective like Capture the human castle. Again, like risk, but on a much larger scale to which all players of the faction have to contribute to to succeed.
But here's the problem of polarization, meaning many players in one faction, only few players in another one. That would probably need to have something like "X open slots for demon-faction" or something like that.

[Chris]

I think you are going in the wrong direction. I would go for simplicity not complexity. The guild stuff is just too complex and unclear, in addition it produces new problems instead of solving the old ones.

So, the simpliest solution would be risk type. Turn based local game for 4-8 players, all start the same time, traditional map. Then you could do almost anything (the simpliest approach from strategy-game-making point of view). But the disadvantages are huge as well...

First you need to decide if you go for massive multiplayer, or "mini" multiplayer type. This determines everything else.

[Sinzygy]

As I see it I would welcome a player-base of around 300 players. I don't know why, but I always liked when I had about this number of players. Now, is this massive, mini or just regular multiplayer?

Maybe I'll drop the risk-like scenario conditions and just use a time limit (30 days, 1 month, whatever) and determine the winner(s) at the end of this time period.
Here is what comes to my mind for determining the winners:
- Most units killed
- Most resources gathered
- Controlled regions at the end of the game
- Level/Experience of hero
- Number of castles controlled
- etc.

[Chris]

To my standards it is definitely massive
Anyway, in this scenario we need to deal with players leaving/joining in the middle. Also, one big map (300 players * lets say 10 regions = 3000 regions) sounds huge. I do not know if we can use classic map here...

Winner is determined by score = Controlled regions at the end of the game * Level of hero (something similar works fine in my game)

So, the map.The biggest problem. Or maybe without a map?

[Sinzygy]

Okay, the following post will be very confusing, but I'll try my best to explain what I had in mind. Just bear with me. I tried to write this more than once and it never sounded any better.
Anyways.

Here's how I pictured the map. It is absolutely unrealistic, but it works fine for gameplay reasons, or so I hope.
The map is divided into continents, countries and regions. Each continent holds 101 countries and each country hold 8-20 regions. So for 3 continents this would be somewhere between 2400 and 6000 regions (more than enough for 300 players. But we want some space as well).
3 countries build a natural unit, meaning that after every 3rd country, there is a wall/chasm/mountains that cannot be passed by heroes or armies. But in between these natural units the heroes and armies can navigate freely (left, right, up, down). The regions in a country are in one line, meaning that to get from region 1 to region 5, the hero has to pass through the regions 2-4 first. Traveling through 1 regions takes up 1 movement point (heroes get 5 each turn with a max of 12 or something alike). If a region is fortified (enemy troops are present) then the heroes cannot move through these regions.

I'll try to whip up a graphic example:

Code: [Select]

Continent: 1

||   Country | 1 | 2 | 3 || 4 | 5 | 6 ||
||   Region | || ||
|| | The Great Street The Great Street ||
|| __________________________________________________________________________________________________
|| 1 | | | || | | ||
|| 2 | | |     Haven || | | ||
|| 3 | | | || | | ||
|| 4 | | | || Barrier I | Barrier II | Barrier II ||
|| 5 | | | || | | ||
|| 6 | | | || | Capitol | ||
|| 7 |  Hammerfest |  Stormfest | || | | ||
|| 8 | | | || | | ||
|| 9 | | |---------------|| |---------------| ||
|| 10 | | | || | | ||
|| 11 | | | || | | ||
|| 12 | | | ||--------------| | ||
|| 13 | | | || | ||
||--------------------------------------------------------------||------------------------------|---------------||

Okay, this is probably confusing, but anyways.
So let's say our hero is in the region called Capitol(1:5:6) and we decide to attack the region Stormfest(1:2:7). Our hero needs to travel now from 1:5:6 to 1:5 on the Great Street (we control the 3 Barriers). From 1:5 we need to travel to 1:2 and from 1:2 to 1:2:7. This makes a total of 16 moves (1:5:6 to 1:5 -> 6 moves, 1:5 to 1:2 -> 3 moves 1:2 to 1:2:7 -> 7 moves). If we didn't own the region called Barrier II we'd have to fight our way through. But since we do own the Barrier-regions, our capitol is safe from direct attacks of other heroes (since they'd have to fight their way through)

Am I making any sense?

[Chris]

OK, now explain this above to players

How about this:
A list of countries (drop down list). Each coutry is a typical risk type map of regions. There are 3-5 entry points on each country. You can transfer units via entry point to any entry point anywhere in the game world (for an additional cost, more expensive than usual move between regions). In addition to land entries there can be water type entries as well (you need ship to use it), or airborne (gryffins, dragons only). In addition a hero can move through each city that has tavern (accompanied with a very small army)