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[Fault]

Me and some friends have been working on this a while, and I figure since a lot of other people use the creative project forum to talk about ideas for games, stories, or settings, I'd make a topic about this here. OKAY.

GAME NAME: WORLD WAR THREE

The basic gameplay is a MMOFPS (massively multiplayer online first person shooter) that is based around territory control (like RISK, or Chromehounds) the game's art style and subject matter are based around FPS cliches. To be basic, the game is supposed to be a glorious sendup to everything great and ridiculous about the FPS genre.

EDIT: I have long known that a project like this is far out of my reach as of now, and I'm starting to think that making a thread about a vague Idea me and my friends came up with at 1:00 in the morning may not have been the best idea. I mean, it might be practical to use this setting for a webocmic, or fiction, or something, but an MMO is obviously not the best way to go about this idea right now. I'm thinking of letting this thread just kinda stagnate and be forgotten, I might even lock it.

SETTING this is something I need help with (clearing out plot holes, and the like)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Planet earth, year 2068. Light-to Heavy science fiction slant, politics and strategies are meant to be unrealistic (see refuge in audacity or rule of cool). Earth was going through a period of relative peace, but several recent unfortunate events have thrown the entire world into global warfare. The uprising of hostile inhuman species in south america, northern europe, and japan, combined with an extraterrestrial crash in the irradiated ruins of china has plunged the remaining governments into cold-war era paranoia and WWI era hostility.  There are ten world superpowers, none of which are allied with any other ones.

ARMY LISTING

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

ARMIES BASED ON REAL WORLD POWERS:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
in this setting, the USA managed to solve the political crisis in the middle east (war on terror) a few years prior to 1968. However, they promptly sparked a new conflict over who got the rights to the oil. Their Rivals are the UNITED MIDDLE EAST army, and their soldiers are the most average and well-rounded in the game.

UNITED MIDDLE EAST
The UME is a democratic nation encompassing territories in most of the Middle East and northeast Africa. They angered the United States by refusing to share their massive quantitites of oil. Their Rivals are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA army, and their soldiers are the most mobile in the game, specializing in "run-and-gun" tactics.

DOMINION OF CANADA
In this setting, a mad president some decade ago managed to erect a massive wall across the canada/america border (more like an artificial mountain range, really. It was built by inducing volcanic eruptions along the border). This has caused drastic climate change in canada, as the southern winds no longer carry cold air into armerica. It just kinda sits over canada, casting the country into an eternal snowstorm. Their Rivals are the ALLIED ARCTIC FORCES, and their combat style specializes in long-range combat and environmental stealth.

ALLIED ARCTIC FORCES
A Communist Nation centered in Greenland, founded by Russian and Polish refugees who fled the advance of the NEO-SOCIALIST blitzkrieg. It seeks to conquer Canada and use its resources to fight back at the neo-socialists. Their rivals are THE DOMINION OF CANADA, and their combat style specializes in stealth and ambush tactics.

SCI-FI stuff here: some of the communist weapons use compressed liquid nitrogen in their ammunition, allowing their weapons to freeze enemy infantry and equipment.

UNITED KINGDOM
The United Kingdom entered the war shortly after the Neo-Socialist uprising in eastern Austria. Their forces have been strengthened by german and french troops fleeing the Neo-Socialists. Their Rivals are the NEO-SOCIALIST army, and their combat style specializes in strategy and pre-planning (destroying the enemy without putting one's self in harm's way).

NEO SOCIALIST PARTY
What started off as a radical hitler-worshipping cult has expanded into a ruthless world power. The Neo-Socialist army is meant to be played by gamers who want to be a villian. They are meant to be ridiculously evil, like cartoon-villian evil. Their Rivals are the UNITED KINGDOM army, and their combat style specializes in crippling kill-or-miss attacks (think extremely powerful rocket with extremely long reload time).

SCI-FI stuff here: This party has dedicated much of its amassed wealth to cloning famous strategists from WWII. They are rumoured to have several clones of hitler among their high command.

ARMIES BASED ON SCI-FI AND FANTASY:

ALIEN NATION
These strange beings are believed to be humans who achieved space travel thousands of years before the rest of mankind. Long ago they left for outer space, leaving no trace of their existence. Now they have returned, Crash-landing in the uninahabited ruins of China. It is believed that they encountered an intelligent Alien race in outer space, which convinced them to return to Earth with intentions of global conquest. Their Rivals are the IMPERIAL JAPANESE army, and their weapons utilize Damage-Over-Time and Area-Of-Effect attacks.

SCI-FI stuff here: everything, basically. Their equipment includes plasma weaponry, railguns, antigravity vehicles, and powered armour. Also, they have been genetically modified by their Alien masters to resemble them. They have dark blue skin and luminescent blue blood.

EMPIRE OF JAPAN
Japan has long been the greatest manufacturer of artificial intelligence. At some point, however, they created an artificial intelligence so great that it was granted civil liberties. because of this, Machines became a progressively larger part of Japanese society, and eventually human citizens became a minority. The machines managed to take over the country, and place a Robot Emperor as its ruler. They were the first earthlings encountered by the aliens, which sparked a conflict between the two. Their Rivals are the ALIEN NATION, and their weapons are design to cripple enemy progress and slow vehicles.

SCI-FI stuff here: the entire army is robots. As such, they are immune to certain biological attacks (poison gas, flesh-eating chemicals...) however, they are greatly harmed by EMP attacks, which are completely harmless to organics. Most of their weapons use Directed Electrical Discharge (think UNREAL's lightnig gun) which stalls vehicles and electrocutes humans.

THE ICELAND ENIGMA
This is a race of enhanced human-like beings centered in northern Europe. They tire less easily and are faster than regular humans, but are physically weaker. Though they have had conflicts with the nearby neo-socialists, their real enemy, the scavengers, are centered on the other side of the world. And they have made it their mission to reach south america and destroy the scavengers at their source, fighting through anyone who stands in their way. Their rivals are the SCAVENGER army, and their combat style specializes in speed and stealth to make up for their physical weakness.

FANTASY stuff here: Members of the the enigma race possess long, pointed ears. These serve the purpose of dissipating heat faster, giving Enigma soldiers more endurance than human soldiers.

THE SCAVENGERS
A race of brutish inhuman monsters, inspired by HALO brutes, GEARS OF WAR locust, and 40k orks. Their base is located in a twisting underground labyrinth in the south american jungle. They have no goals in this war besides having fun killing everything around them, though they do seem a bit more determined to wipe out the ICELAND ENIGMA.Their rivals are the ICELAND ENIGMA, and their combat style is based on "shock-and-awe" psychological warfare and melee combat.

FANTASY stuff here: They are stronger and slower than humans, and can take more damage on average. They have rough grey skin and bright yellow-orange blood (looks like molten metal).

GAMEPLAY DETAILS

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

STARTING THE GAME
when you create your soldier ("enlisting") you get to choose your army, customize your facial appearance, and recieve 50 military credits. Your character will spawn in your army's home base zone. here you can reserve an equipment room (100 rooms per base) to plan a mission, or join a mission that is already being planned. (for mission planning details, see equipment. haha.)

MISSION GAMEPLAY
Once your squad is dropped into the mission territory, their goal is to reach the control room and capture it. If the territory is abandoned, this is simply a matter of reaching the control room. If the territory is occupied, you will need to kill all enemy soldiers within the territory. A territory can only be captured if all soldiers present are aprt of the same army. If a squad member dies in a mission, a properly equipped player can "call for reinforcements" which will bring back all killed players in a helicopter. If all squad members die, the mission is a failure, and each squad member loses 20 credits (the fee for reviving you as a clone, or whatever)

 

WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 MORE INFO TO COME.

MAPS AND TERRITORIES

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 MORE INFO TO COME

PLAYER ECONOMY

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 MORE INFO TO COME.

[Hippoman]

The armies repeat.

[Fault]

yeah I had a problem with the URL postinng system. It caused some copy-and-paste issues. I'M WORKING ON FIXING IT....

[Hippoman]

Coding all of it by yourself or using a engine?

[Phantom]

You repeated a lot of stuff.

So, only 2 countries? What happened to NATO anyway?

[Akigagak]

Phantom, do even read the posts in topics, or just reply halfway through skim-reading the first one?

yeah I had a problem with the URL postinng system. It caused some copy-and-paste issues. I'M WORKING ON FIXING IT....

SETTING this is something I need help with (clearing out plot holes, and the like)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Planet earth, year 2068. Light-to Heavy science fiction slant, politics and strategies are meant to be unrealistic (see refuge in audacity or rule of cool). Earth was going through a period of relative peace, but several recent unfortunate events have thrown the entire world into global warfare. The uprising of hostile inhuman species in south america, norther europe, and japan, combined with an extraterrestrial crash in the irradiated ruins of china has plunged the remaining governments into cold-war era paranoia and WWI era hostility.  There are ten world superpowers, none of which are allied with any other ones.

[Phantom]

I'm not sure why the hell everyone would need to fight each other.
And why the hell is China irradiated in the first place?

[Fault]

Coding all of it by yourself or using a engine?

whoa. I am not coding this yet, that's like way far off. I specified that this was an IDEA.
I'm trying to get the intricate specifics of the setting and game mechanics down before I even try to start that. And I'd probably need to upgrade my machine if I was even to attempt a conversion mod of an existing engine.

So no. I'm not in the programming stage yet. I'm just in the barest essentials of ideas.
(mostly just really stupid ideas from my friends sitting around thinking "wouldn't it be cool if we had a game where you could do this"... and stuff like that)

[Fault]

I'm not sure why the hell everyone would need to fight each other.

Rule of fun, rule of cool, refuge in audacity, etc. Also, one of the reasons I made this thread was so I could find people to help me come up with a reasonable idea for global warfare in a video game!

And why the hell is China irradiated in the first place?

IT'S THE FUTURE. possibly the same reason the world is irradiated in the FALLOUT games, though I think the idea my friends came up with was that their was an experiment involving alternate energy sources that went horribly wrong and exploded all over the whole country. I know science doesn't work that way.

[Phantom]

So china is like Chernobyl?

And the United Kingdom is, what,  Socialist Freedom Fighters?

[Bricks]

Here's my feedback.  MMO games struggle with balance, so giving certain groups there own special weapons or physical bonuses is just begging for issues, and really, why couldn't a soldier from group X pick up a weapon from group Y?  Is nation-identity going to be a big thing?  I imagine you'd want it to be so players don't just switch over to the other side, but there's really no impetus to not switch, since there don't seem to be any RPG elements in your game.

How would maps work?  Are there little waystations that you fight for control of, and then head to the next one once one side wins?  That's kind of weak, as it just turns it into another FPS.  If it's some sort of giant world to FPS in, say, WoW size, that does add something unique to your idea.  It does add the additional issue that without large civilized areas and millions of players, capturing a base is more a matter of coming from a direction no one happens to be watching at that moment.  The opportunity for tactical action would be fascinating, but I don't know how you get players to listen to their CO when he's just a 13yo with a headset.  It would basically be rush, rush, rush until the other side loses enough players for you to take over the base.

To be honest, I think an RTS/FPS hybrid would be a more interesting and realistic pursuit.

[Phantom]

I was hoping for more of an Operation Flashpoint type of game with a little Fallout mixed in.

[Fault]

you bring up a good point, bricks. A lot of the problems I've had in the this "developement process" (if I can use that word to describe a vague idea...) are figuring out a gampeplay style that works around the setting. I have a pretty good plan in my head involving the BASIC GAME (dropping player-character soldiers into territory to achieve some objective) and the META GAME (slowly conquering the world map through the player's efforts, and gaining more resources from new territories).

I imagine you'd want it to be so players don't just switch over to the other side, but there's really no impetus to not switch.

We're gonna go with the system CHROMEHOUNDS used for army switching. You can start playing for another army every three weeks (this is considered the required ammount of service time before your character can "retire" or something.)

How would maps work? 

The territories will be instanced zones, with boundaries that the players cannot cross (big walls, mine fields, cliffs, and the like), and must be entered via vehicle (air drops from helicopters, usually). Each map contains a "control room", which is basically a capture point: whichever army's flag stands in the control room is considered the owner of the territory. We want to give the players a kind of freedom with the maps, how they reach the control room depends entirely on what the squad brings with them. They could form a large group and storm the control room with massed infantry. They could bring along an armoured vehicle to smash through enemy defense. They could snipe the enemy from afar, or sneak around past enemy lines and kill them from behind.
We want a large variety of maps, each of which should be able to be captured using a combination of these methods.

why couldn't a soldier from group X pick up a weapon from group Y? 

oh, he can, as long as he's killed that group Y soldier. It's just that he wouldn't really be able to aquire more ammo for it, and wouldn't be able to spawn with it upon entering a territory.

[inteuniso]

First off, I like the idea of an MMOFPS. Would be totally awesome.

However, your MMO is TOO Cliche. It's really big, and the easiest thing would be to shrink it. How, you may ask?

Western Europe-2182

Devastated by multiple terrorist bombings, seperatist revolts, and water riots, the EU collapses. Requesting help from other nations, they quickly move in to assist the beleaguered continent. Russia, allied with Ukraine and the eastern nations, moves in around Poland, rebuilding. The Balkan nations, along with Greece, Turkey, and the North African nations, move into Italy. The US and Canada naturally moves in to help their long-standing ally, the UK, using Ireland as it's base of operations. The south american countries move in a reversal of colonialism, taking over the Iberian peninsula. China, realizing the time being ripe for conquest, utilizes mobile airbases and takes Hungary. The other nations don't take much notice, as the damage is horrendous.

Western Europe-2202

It has been 20 years since the Tragedy occured, yet the assisting nations have yet to leave their areas. Europe, united under a new banner of neo-national socialism, hold the most territories, including the Benelux, France, Germany, and the Bohemian region. Tired of the occupation their territory has suffered, it has declared war on all nations not willing to withdraw. However, previous alliances somehow force everyone to declare war on everyone else, except for China. China, with it's annexed property of Hungary, is somehow immune to all the warfare. Considering the fact that the Dragon is one of the most aggressive nations, this perplexes most political and military strategists.

Furthermore, the Middle East has banded together under an organization known as INCHALLAH (Literally "God willing"), and rally a powerful Jihad that all Arabs must heed.

The stage is set. This is now WAR!

And there's your backstory, minimized region, and still-cliched nations.

[Fault]

I realize now that I may have not been specific in my description of "world conquest". I do not intend for the game world to be as big as you imply.
I 'm not trying to simulate the entire earth in a persistent world. Such a thing would require DWARF FORTRESS levels of micromanagement.
Capturing territory is not about gaining land mass, but gaining resources to further the war effort. I don't intend for the armies to have to capture every inch of world terrain by themselves, just the important parts (munitions factories, mines, etc). using this system, I can simulate warfare over a global scale while keeping the gameplay down to a more local level. I want it to seem big, but not be so big as to be taxing on servers.

Your ideas about armies are good, though.