Big question: Do you need certain parts in order to make a specific robot (like you need all Kitten parts in order to make Robokitten), or can you mash together parts to make a robot? How mandatory is the trading?
At the moment, we plan to have robot(parts) being a member of various brands (Apple, Samsung and Sony's futuristic tongue-in-cheek equivalent).
A robot consists of a minimum of 5 parts:
* Core (Head)
* Torso
* Two arms (no problems with left/right arms)
* Legs
The core determines the brand of the robot, only parts that match the brand can fit on it. There are also "Open Source" parts that fit on all robots, so it's not THAT strict. At the moment I'm working on item lists, and there are more than 100 different parts in each brand already. What brand you play is relevant for damage types/resistances and the type of weapons you can fit on it. There are 9 types of weapons (eg. Sword, Axe, Rifle, Launcher), with 32 subtypes (eg. Fire Sword, Powerfist, Ion Cannon, Incendiary Grenade Launcher) . Each brand has access to 10 different subtypes of weapons, for example, the brand I currently labeled 'scientists' - the futuristic dudes in the game - has access to Swords, Lightsabers, Particle Whips, Arc Welders, Plasma Torches, Plasma Guns, Ion Cannons, Laser Cannons, Tesla Coils and EMP Launchers. This means their robots are usually equipped to deal thermal, corrosion and electromagnetic damage.
We want players to feel free to build their own robot, not force them into cookie-cutter sets that are hard to collect without trading.
1) Customizable Robots
2) Slick artstyle
3) Fallout meets Pokemon (!)
4) Single Player + Competitive Multiplayer
5) Actual progress on game already showable
This sounds like something I can potentially throw money at. I haven't read the whole KS writeup (have to run to work), so forgive me if this is answered in there, but two questions that could make or break it for me:
Will there be "sidegrades" of equally powerful but different equipment? Or will it have an effectively tiered equipment system like many MMOs, with a best set of equipment for each class?
Good news, all of it is designed to be sidegradable. Like I said, we want to give players total freedom to design their robots, not force them into cookie cutter builds.
While the game uses levels, you can use the crafting system to level up all the equipment if you like, and the abilities and stats tied to the equipment will increase according to a pre-defined formula. This means that you can theoretically take that shiny axe you find at level 5 and like so much all the way to the end-game if you like. There are tiers for rarity of items, but its relatively top-heavy with many different choices of high-end stuff, and not scaled extremely badly in favor of the rare items. As said in the text, a smart player with common robot parts should be more of a match for a bad player that has all the rare items. Sometimes, an uncommon item might actually fit better in your robot than a rare item because those parts synergize very well. A bit like Magic The Gathering, where you can actually play well with a deck without rare cards.
What will the payment model be? Flat fee, Monthly fee, or Free-to-Play w/ ingame store?
Free-to-play, but not pay-to-win, nor will we cripple any functionality and sell it back for money. The money we raise from kickstarter allows us to offer a FULL game experience available for everyone. We will sell stuff like expansions, decorative items and conveniences, but it won't give paying users a power-advantage over people that play the game normally. The revenue will be used to keep the servers running and to make more (free) content available in updates. We plan to add new content every 3 months or so.
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Topic: Panzer Pets Robot MMO on Kickstarter (Read 13161 times)