» Mon May 14, 2012 1:18 pm As a Blade Runner, you would be given assignments to hunt down and kill replicants, whereas if your a replicant, you would be constantly fighting, running, hiding, or searching desperately to find a cure for your illness (Nexus 6 replicants were given memories, so they would act more human and develop emotional responses faster, but Tyrell Corporation installed a failsafe in them incase they would try to blend in with other humans on earth, and that failsafe is a 4 year lifespan. ).
So yes, this mmo would be mainly pvp focused, but it would still have some pve aspects, such as raids where you have to say, destroy dangerous mutants (It's a post nuclear apocalypse mmo, dont tell me that there arent any mutants.). Or for faction specific pve, as say a replicant you trash a shop and kill it's owner, or every now and then you would be chased by npc blade runners and you have to either run and hide, or fight. As for faction specific pve for blade runners, you would spend your time digging up clues to find out if someone is a replicant, then you give them the VK test (but they will resist sometimes). If they fail, you obviously kill them, but if you say, kill a human, you get a stat penalty that lasts for a couple of hours (I know that in the movies and other games, if you kill a human you are automatically fired and can never be an officer of the law again, but we kinda cant do that in this game for obvious reasons).
Now as for pvp, how about there are things similar to those flashpoints in swtor, only instead of npcs, you fight players of the opposing faction, like say if a group of replicants hijack a moonbus and have hostages, the objective of the blade runners is to kill the replicants and save the hostages. Now these would be either large (10-40 people on each side) or small (5 people) flashpoints, depending on the objective and size of the playing field.
Now as for classes, I would say for blade runners there would be classes such as a Marksman (Rifles), a Demolitionist (Explosives), a Gunslinger (Pistols), and Paramedics (Obvious). For replicants there would be basically the same classes, but they have different mechanics. Now for classes that either faction can be, there would be stuff like Gunsmiths, Genetic experts (The guys who designed the genes of the replicants, who can basically create liquids that can temporarily augment your abilities), and Cybernetic dealers (People who can create cybernetic limbs that permanently augment your abilities as long as you have them equipped, however, to prevent people from making themselves OP by equipping massive amounts of these things, there should be a humanity meter for both side ((Since Nexus 6's have their own memories and emotions, they are human in every way but their biology)) , and when you equip a cybernetic, you lose a certain amount of humanity, depending on how powerful the cybernetic part is, and what kind of cybernetic part (( Ears, eyes, arms, legs, etc. )), and yes I know, im ripping off shadow run with this idea, but hey, it was a great idea for that game, so it could possibly work for this one).
Now for anyone wondering about the environments, it would take place in a choice of , say, 4-5 cities (dont want to spread the player population too thin ) with wastelands outside the cities that you can explore at your own risk. The cities would be sprawling metropolises that would be similar to the city of LA depicted in blade runner, but they all have their own distinctions. The wastelands would be similar to the ones in fallout 3, radioactive deserts crawling with mutants and things like traveling merchants.
As for transportation, you would start off with police spinners as a blade runner, and basic spinners as a replicant (both can fly or be driven along the ground). Once you've made enough money, you can soup up the cars with better parts and/or paintjobs and decals.
Pets would be optional, and they would be either real animals (which, like in the canon, are very rare and very expensive) or Tyrell fakes (very similar to real animals, but you can still tell that they are fakes). They would be purely for cosmetic purposes, but they can be warranting of prestige depending on rarity and genuity. It would range from stuff like plain house pets to baby mutant animals and stuff like that.
Now, as for gear appearances, there would be a wide variety of gear and looks to choose from, but there would have to be some restraint, while this is a post apocalyptic future, I dont want to see stuff like space samurais or the kind of raiding gear you see in wow. You can wear any clothes you want, and customize them to a degree, and hell, if you dont like the look of your high end gear, there should be cosmetic slots for each item slot.
This is sort of an elabaration on the environments, specifically cities. There should be bars and stuff where people can just hang out, laugh, and have a drink. Of course there will still be the occasional killing of a blade runner or replicant, but it just says that while you can have fun in public, you still need to watch your ass.
Now there may be a number of questions you ask, like "What if a bunch of blade runners/ replicants try griefing by killing the other faction". The answer is, put in a toggle pvp option, where if you have pvp off, you can rp or chill without worrying, and if you have pvp on, people of the opposite faction can kill you.
As for the Voight kampff test, The blade runner can ask a question from a set of questions, and the replicant can answer in a variety of different ways, this is purely for either pve or rp'ing however, because there can be only so many questions, and no doubt someone will write down how each answer affects the test results for the VK. While taking the VK is mandatory, after taking the test the replicant should have a several hour buff that will grant him the
option to decline taking the test if he passed the VK he just took, because we cant have the blade runners constantly harassing replicants by having them take th VK again as soon as they finish one, now can we?
Voice acting is optional, I personally am inclined to say no, because voice acting is expensive, and that means less money to work on the actual gameplay aspect. No offense intended to anyone who likes voice acting in games, but it seems a good chunk of games that have full voice acting do a poor job at it with some characters, which in my opinion, takes away from the experience. The last problem I have with voice acting is that I want to imagine that I'm the one talking, not some other dude, that I'm the character I am controlling.
Guild cities are optional, and do it in the way of age of conan, where you have to actually gather resources to build it, not just spawn a building out of a datapad like in swg. If you do include cities, include the option to go to war with guild's of the opposing faction, but only if they agree. This will make the city of the guild that you are at war with seizeable by members of your guild, but only if the GM of the guild your at war with allows you to seize/ destroy their city, but if they attack yours and they dont have the option checked which allows them to seize your city, then their city is automatically flagged as seizeable/ destroyable to members of your guild. This will allow for alot of fun, and prevent random griefers from destroying your city. As for how to seize an opposing guild's city, it should be something like capture the flag or territory control.
For destroying the cities, how about For the first part, you ram vehicles into your enemy's walls, causing the vehicle to blow up and the walls to weaken and eventually be destroyed, not just any vehicles however, only vehicles created by your city that can be used only for ramming an opposing cities walls, and these vehicles can be shot down by wall mounted player controlled AA cannons. If this idea doesnt work, just have something along the lines of the halo gametype "assault" where you plant a bomb at the wall, and the bomb resets after some time passes where the enemy team has control of your bomb, if the bomb blows up at the wall, the wall's integrity weakens, and after a few bomb explosions, the wall is blown up. The second part, you bring in tanks or vehicles mounted with machine guns, and just shoot the hell out of the buildings, eventually blowing them all up. The seizing of a city is similar to this, in that you blow up the walls, but instead of destroying all of the buildings, you just grab the enemie's flag or whatever and take it back to your base.
For those who just want to quest and do dungeons and raids, not pvp, as I said, there will be pve instances and raids. As for quests, it should be a variety of things. For a blade runner , it should be things like talk to an undercover police informant who has information about a group of replicants (the replicants in these quests are not players unless it has a [pvp] tag next to it), or voight kampff a suspicious person and find out if they are a replicant, or do stuff like blow up a replicant hide out. Stuff along those lines. For replicants, it should be stuff like you try to maintain your cover as a human, while at the same time being an informant for other replicants. When police come by, you try your best to maintain your cover, doing what your job requires, and if you start screwing up, the police (npc's) get suspicious and VK you, if you fail and your covers blown, you have to run and hide. After you escape, you have to try getting into police records, and delete the files on you. Along with that, you also sometimes kill npc blade runners. There should also be mini games, like in mass effect 2, such as a hacking minigame, but not only that, stuff that helps you maintain your cover, like if your cover is a chef, you do stuff like clean the kitchen, serve up food, and stuff like that.
There should also be a moral choice system, for example, you can be a crooked blade runner who takes bribes, steals, or extorts others, or you can be a law abiding blade runner who refuses bribes, never lets criminals go, and always follows police code. Both paths add additional quests, for example, if your a crooked blade runner, you do quests like extort people for money, take bribes from criminals, and run drugs. However, there should also be middle ground, for example, if a man was wrongfully accused of killing someone but was still charged as guilty, a good-good person would turn him in, where as say neutral-good you would let him go. Heck, you could even put in the old alignment system from D&D, the whole Chaotic/ Neutral/ Lawful and Good/ Neutral/ Evil system in, but you would have to work hard to implement it properly. As a replicant, the additional quests you get with your path choices would be stuff like, if you were good, you would be an informant for replicants who gives information about blade runners and their targets, along with the clues the blade runner has. As an evil replicant you would do stuff like raid stores, murder people, mug people, and do stuff like kill a policeman's good friend. As a neutral rep you would try not to get involved in the replicant and blade runner conflict, but you would still get pulled into it sometimes.
Just so you know, I'm aware this game will probably never be made, and if it is, that my ideas are too ambitious, but hey, you never know.
