4Dimensions Forum
General Category => Suggestions & Ideas => Topic started by: Jaros on September 04, 2011, 06:29:51 am
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Imagine you have at the end of your prompt a little white 'o'. This represents your bio-augment.
Each time you take a hit it either turns red, green, or remains white. If it turns red, it means your augment is vulnerable to theirs. Green means it's strong, white means it's neutral. The strength/vulnerability then affects the damage you take. So if your augment is vulnerable, you take an extra 10% damage, if yours is strong it means theirs is vulnerable, so they take an extra 10%, be it melee or magic.
Now imagine you have three augments available to you to place in your augment slot: fire, water, and leaf. Fire is vulnerable to water, strong against leaf and neutral to itself. Pretty self-evident, I'm just using them because they're easy to follow, they could be anything. The key here is that you can swap them at any point. So based on what you have and whether it turns red, green or neutral, you can guess what your opponent has and swap your augment accordingly.
Now imagine there aren't just three possible augments, there are say 10, each with a strength and a vulnerability. Now when you take a hit and your bio-augment turns red or green you don't know immediately what theirs is - at best you can narrow it down and guess between two or three.
Now imagine you don't just have one 'o' at the end of your prompt, you have three. Maybe they correspond to speed, damage and accuracy; maybe you have five and their aggregate vulnerabilities determine the percentage change in your damage taken, whatever.
.. Maybe you have three 'o's affecting damage, speed, accuracy, and each one has a sub-realm that can hold five augments and instead of turning red or green you get a value from 1-100 to represent that subset, where 1 is total vulnerability and 100 is perfect strength. I don't know, the possibilities are endless ;)
The point is that regardless of how intense it is, the system is dynamic. So now if you just sit there spamming behead or fireball all your opponent has to do is work out your augment setup and adjust, and suddenly you're getting rolled unless you can also adapt.
I wouldn't like to see augments with actual stats attached to them (IE this one has +5 against water and that one only has +3 so this one's better), I prefer the idea of simple types with a strength and a vulnerability so there is no perfect set like there is with equipment. It should always be dynamic.
I also like the idea of letting builders create their own types and choose the strengths and vulnerabilities, so I could make a purple augment that is strong against fire and vulnerable to jacaranda, as long as it doesn't have more strengths or less vulnerabilities than anything else. Then you get trends in which random augments from far away make for unusual setups that are hard to pick, or are strong against popular types.
I think that's enough for now. Work in progress, help me out :)
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I know this is more like an elemental system than cybernetics but just go with it. Hopefully there will be lots of things our future lab can do for us ;)
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This is the best idea 4d has had in a long time. I see potential to eliminate wear location imbalances, race imbalances, elemental system flaws and best of all: deal with the absolute monotonous of the combat system.
I am excited by this suggestion.
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Thanks man :-*
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To everybody reading this thread but not commenting: You're all completely useless ;). If we have a culture which ignores ideas like this instead of jumping in and commenting we're going to develop a culture where nobody posts ideas. Get your asses in gear with commenting and making ideas posts. Who knows, you might actually see one of your ideas come live and get credit for it in the helpfile.
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Isn't this a bit similar to what we've been discussing about elements?
I like the concept, but I'd prefer to have 4, not 3 augments - (or elements or whatever you call them).
This is after all 4Dimensions. :P
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3 and 6 are important numbers for balance. Namely because you can do A beat B beats C beats A which is a good form of balance seen in a lot of games. 4 makes things more complicated to balance against eachother with pros and cons, although it's still doable.
Can you paste in the part from old discussions about Elements that you think is relevant to this discussion? That'll provide some context and fodder for more ideas.
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I see the cybernetics/augmentation as a being suited for only tied the future dimension. I mean a tribe in the old west might not accept an indian that has traded her feet and legs for a hovercraft with machine guns installed, or suddenly grown a tail. The fauns in prehistoric would make fun of one of them that had traded her tail for some non-faun body part. Showing up in medieval or prehistoric with a metal arm or hand could result in a stoning, or maybe being burned at the stake by the masses. Becoming part machine, is not the same as using a mechanism.
If this is implemented shouldn't there be an equality maintained for those that don't want to loose their... for lack of a more encompassing word, humanity, (no offense intended for the non-human players)?
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@Tor
Have you seen your equipment recently? ;)
I think you're more talking about the wear_loc swapping I was talking to you about a few days ago. That's kind of a side-branch to the cybernetics thing now, the core being more like a dynamic elemental system.
The actual mechanics of this are more important than theme and appearance. What we lack above all is engaging second-by-second gameplay, we can dress it up however we want.
@Molly
Yes this is a kind of elemental hybrid. Say it was implemented with three augment types, do you have any preference for what types they would be? Fire, leaf, water.. red, green, blue.. frox, gora, bello.. $, &, #..
Also if there were six types, what would the other three be?
I can do this myself but knowing what kind of a direction you'd be happy with would help :)
@ everyone
If you have ideas for how the elements/augments should look, now would be the time to throw them in here :)
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@Tor
Have you seen your equipment recently? ;)
@Jaros
Heh - good point about the equipment.
I've often thought that Roleplayers should get some kind of bonus, if they dress up in equipment from one Dimension solely. We even started out with the choices of becoming a 'citizen' or a 'Traveller' to support that.
Of course it's never going to happen, players will always use the best equipment they can find, no matter how ridiculous it makes them look...
@ Once
The convo about the elements was with Virisin, so maybe you should just talk to him... If he's forgotten, I possibly have a log somewhere that I could mail you.
I'll bow to the argument about uneven numbers, as much as I am obsessed with the number 4 myself.
So; six elements? Let's see:
Air, water, earth, fire, ice, dark
These are reasonably logical and would also correspond nicely with some already existing spells.
Oops, - I missed electricity and spirit... but maybe electricity could sort under fire and spirit under air?
The hardest thing would probably be to balance the skills and spells to the different elements.
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Aye, my equipment is a rather shoddy conglomeration, all *donations of well statted equipment and tokens to have them perzed to better suit will be graciously accepted and appreciated. Items depicting the old west would best suit a gringo, I guess... Or perhaps medieval would go with the name better.
*(Donations are not tax deductible and will hold no sway on my behavior or choices.)
It's not my fault, the women in my life like to dress me funny. ;D
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Round 2, here we go:
You have three elements in your cybo-chamber, chosen from a total of six. Each one has two strengths, two vulnerabilities and two neutrals. You may augment one of these at a time to channel your attacks through.
You start out with fire, ice and earth in your chamber and fire augmented. Your opponent also has fire augmented, but you don't know this. You start a fight with zero knowledge of what's in your opponent's chamber. However, all three elements in your chamber are sensitive to incoming attacks, so what you do know is that each time you get hit your ice element jiggles to indicate that it's vulnerable to something. Ice is vulnerable to fire and air, so you know your opponent has one of those two augmented. Air also targets earth though, and your earth element isn't doing anything so you can deduce that their augment is fire.
You now know 1/3 elements in their chamber. Because you have no idea whether your fire augment is actually hitting something, you now swap it out and augment earth instead because you know that will do some damage.
Now it gets interesting. Each element has a certain durability (HP) so as you target it, it gets weaker, perhaps channeling your opponents attacks less efficiently but more importantly: ultimately it will die. When an element dies it can no longer be augmented and any incoming attack that would normally target it now gets a massive damage bonus (or perhaps the damage resistance inherent in using elements is now gone from that one).
This gives incentives to swap your augments around to weaken whatever is attacking you and prevent any of yours breaking too soon, but on the other hand you may have an interest in keeping your elements hidden so your opponent doesn't know what you've got up your sleeve.
Still a work in progress but it's coming, so do hit up the ideas / ask me to clarify anything.
Also this can be layered over / tied into any combat system, skill/spell tree, whatever.
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you are all nuts
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I prefer the term insanely brilliant, but thank you.
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This has a real potential to make fighting immensely more dynamic.
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Also if we get rid of attributes players can all start from the same point and invest in attributes later in the form of cybernetics upgrades. That way they only specialize as they get a better idea of how they like to play.
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Can you explain about the getting rid of attributes part... are you saying no-one would have any str, int, cha, etc stat to start with or that they'd all start the same, like say at 9 and then through cybernetics they get to upgrade them?
I kind of like the idea of letting players choose their own wear locations (everyone gets x number and you choose what you want). Though that may be a problem as builder(s) try to figure out what's needed in various locations.
As for the cybernetics thing, you are saying that not only are you trying to figure out how to adjust yours, but the mob is as well? So, you may figure out that the mob has their fire augment working and adjust accordingly, but the mob may adjust theirs as well so that information is no longer viable and you have to re-adjust?
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Sorry when I say attributes I mean the unique attributes of each race. Like Dwarves get -10% melee damage, +10 attack and +40 defence. Spacewolves get +15% melee damage, -20% magic damage and -10 attack. They're all pretty much arbitrary and achieve nothing except telling someone how to play and which race is best, whether they like it or not.
Normal stats like strength, intelligence, constitution, etc would stay as they are.
The wear_loc swapping is a cool idea and would be good for correcting imbalances between classes but issues like what the fuck is an elf with horns and a second pair of legs still need to be worked out.
Probably introducing a coded way of just changing race (like a laboratory in the Future space-port say) would be a good pathway to wear_loc swapping later on.
As for the augments, yes pretty much, but:
1) I think adding it solely to PK to begin with would be a good way of introducing it.
2) It could be added only to certain mobs that are meant to be more difficult to kill.
3) It could be that even the mobs it is added to just have one augment set in stone that they do not change that. So you work out what that is and adjust, and then you're fine for the rest of the fight to use your skills/spells as normal.
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Although there's no reason we shouldn't also be able to alter our base stats (str, int, wis, dex..) in-game as well, IE take 2pnts off your strength to add to your con. That could be another option in our shiny new lab :D
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There are several things about the cybernetics idea that I like:
A. We honour the 4D history by keeping the old races, (which even have graphics on the website).
B. A Cybernetics lab is very consistent with our Timetravel theme.
C. New players get a minimum of simple choices, which makes it easy to get started. they don't need to make important decisions before knowing the game.
D. When you have learnt the ropes a bit and decided about what playstyle you like, the options are available for you.
E. Calling the addition cybernetics automatically gives an explanation to things like 'what the fuck is an elf with horns and a second pair of legs?'
There are probably other advantages too, but these are what came to mind first. :)
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I like the idea of cybernetics and augments, the idea definitely has merit and definitely would need some extensive testing. I really like the race lab idea. To be able to create your own race is phenomenal. I just wonder how that can work with quests. When a quest talks to you by your race, will it just say your base race before the cybernetics? Will this change how your race appears in who? finger command? or will it just simply be a way of altering the way your current race looks and you call it whatever you want? Also some body slots read different per original race, like worn on hooves, and worn feet, etc, will those be changeable? If all of this stuff is editable within the race lab, I'm very much in favor for it, even limited it still has merit.
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Prices could be set up so that the cheapest path to the setup you want is to change to the closest race to it and then swap a wear_loc or two. That would make defining them a lot easier. Otherwise any cybo-altered folk could just be referred to in the game as borgs or something.
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I think the best way would be to refer to them as Cyborg in the WHO list, but keep the original race code somewhere in the bottom, for the quest scripts to refer to.
With an old mud as big as 4D, one should always be cautious about changes that leads to extensive OLC work as a consequence, because there is usually not anyone willing to take on that task - Including me, (I've had my fill of extensive changes brought on by new code in my time).
Coding is relatively quick compared to building, try to remember that before getting too creative.
And that goes for all coding ideas - not just cyborgs... :P
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I think the first item that Cybernetics/biolab should be able to affect would be the Loyalty Bonuses we all got back after the first pwipe.
Not a lot of current day players even have these available and some of the old players who did get the loyalty bonuses have expressed interest in getting a different one. This would allow us to get the biolab function itself working and playtestable within the next few days, while also not unbalancing the game since plenty of people already have loyalty bonuses.
Loyalty bonuses in their current form have already more than outlived their purpose. Everyone that was going to quit over the pwipe quit ages ago, and currently it just adds another disparity between oldbies and newer players.
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Is the loyalty bonus the +25% damage, +25% speed, +25 attack, +25 defense thing we chose at the start? If so, I think they might already be gone, but I could easily be wrong.
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how would the new cyborg race, and new races affect all of the !race equipment out there? I think if it were possible to rename the way your race is on finger, who, score, etc, for cosmetic rp purposes it'd be good, but not sure about gameplay because honestly if someone wants max damroll, but the item is unusable by fauns, like the boxing trunks, but they like having horns, they go faun, change to cyborg and can now where the trunks. Maybe there are ways around this loophole?
Also yes loyalty bonuses do exist.. BonusSpeed [100%]
They fall under subskills currently.
Certainly a good way to start off is with loyalty bonuses. Levels the playing field between oldbies with the bonus and newbies without for certain, as long as the cost is reasonable and all parties can afford it of course.
I think a good high end upgrade for cybernetics could be something that increases a select max stat point. Because each of them would have their perks the cost to change it could be adverse, like a lot of gold or maybe decrease the stat you increased base stat by one, if you choose to allocate it elsewhere. The stat can be raised by a max of three, perhaps by upgrade surgeries, have to get +1 stat first to get +2 and the chance of success of +2 working is a lot less than +1, and finally +3 which could get your max stat to 25, of course permitting you have equipment to fill that void. This could make people focus on dex, to increase their speed and attack, or int to increase magic damage, charisma, to increase magic damage/hp gains as caster, con for hp gains for everyone, etc. will add diversity, and each of course have their set benefits. I pick 25 because that is currently the max stat in the code, (what imms have). So it should very well be doable. Any thoughts?
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If the player kept the race as part of his makeup like Molly was suggesting, the all the race-specific items/gear/ect would be applied to *that* race. The player has the chance to pay and switch races if s/he wants to. I know nothing about the loyalty bonus so I can't comment on that.
Also, instead of changing their race on the who board, why not just add another category, like PK|RP|CB (or some such letters) to indicate Cyborg? that way it shows that the person is essentially an elf with all the race restrictions/bonuses that elves might get, but has been genetically altered to have different body parts.
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The CB as an extra flag would work, still though, if you can pick and choose wear locations... People might be lopping off their ears for other slots just so they can get more damroll, and get rid of slots that just doesnt have good equipment for that class/race combo. Now if it's you can only pick and choose from the extra slots. Hips, Scruff, Tail, Antenna, Horn, Back legs, Back hooves, and ankles. It could still be taken advantage of, just not to the degree of getting rid of other standard eq slots on players. I am much in favor of class attributes however. Being able to pick whether you get +melee percent damage or negative in another to get positive in one. I just think if you change this, the cost to change it again, should increase, to discourage changing often. So people dont just change because it's cheap each time they change from melee to caster, and vice versa.