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[NRDL]

I was rewatching Mandalore's videos on F.E.A.R. and was reintroduced to his notion of how the series could have been about the First Encounter Assault Recon team's experiences with various spooky happenings, like necromancers! Vampires! Cults! Skeleton war!

The idea of modern military units, especially special forces type units, up against supernatural threats is a goldmine, regardless of game genre. X-Com but having to deal with magical beasts, undead horrors, fantasy races, etc would be so cool.

[LordBaal]

Of anyone saw The Strain, in the first episodes of the third and last season there is a special team helping cleaning up the sewers of NY of vampires while looking for the big bad lair too. Their scenes are neat and they are pretty efficient until plot demands they are not anymore.

[Mathel]

Something I was thinking about when I saw Last of Us.
But it applies to anything where the enemy has 0 birthrate and only reproduces through infection.
Since most games with such "zombies" make it ridiculously easy to kill single zombies, it made me think that in such situations the hordes of zombies are not that much of a threat. So long as anyone infected kills at least 2 zombies before they turn (or 1 and then commit suicide) the threat would end eventualy. Especialy since the zombies in such stories tend to focus on killing rather than turning, so in order for someone to be infected, at least one zombie must be killed.

Premise:
Most of the population has been turned into "zombies" (vampires, the Borg,...). They can last indefinitely without support (don't age, do not need to eat), but the only way to increase their number is to turn more humans into themselves, which they love to do.

You play as (one of) the last surviving settlements. Your job is to survive and reclaim the Earth.

Gameplay: You manage first one, later multiple cities. But you also have to do research and build and manage armies.
Population and time play an important role. Every soldier you send out is a member of your population. While they fight and if they die, they can't do any other job. And while the enemies do not reproduce normaly, if an attack at them fails, they add the fallen soldiers to their own (though they of course lose population for any that were killed in the attack). If they overrun a city, all civilian poulation joins them.
And aside the easiest scenario (the Walking dead), the enemy is also organised and will try to fight you.

[Naturegirl1999]

Something I was thinking about when I saw Last of Us.
But it applies to anything where the enemy has 0 birthrate and only reproduces through infection.
Since most games with such "zombies" make it ridiculously easy to kill single zombies, it made me think that in such situations the hordes of zombies are not that much of a threat. So long as anyone infected kills at least 2 zombies before they turn (or 1 and then commit suicide) the threat would end eventualy. Especialy since the zombies in such stories tend to focus on killing rather than turning, so in order for someone to be infected, at least one zombie must be killed.

Premise:
Most of the population has been turned into "zombies" (vampires, the Borg,...). They can last indefinitely without support (don't age, do not need to eat), but the only way to increase their number is to turn more humans into themselves, which they love to do.

You play as (one of) the last surviving settlements. Your job is to survive and reclaim the Earth.

Gameplay: You manage first one, later multiple cities. But you also have to do research and build and manage armies.
Population and time play an important role. Every soldier you send out is a member of your population. While they fight and if they die, they can't do any other job. And while the enemies do not reproduce normaly, if an attack at them fails, they add the fallen soldiers to their own (though they of course lose population for any that were killed in the attack). If they overrun a city, all civilian poulation joins them.
And aside the easiest scenario (the Walking dead), the enemy is also organised and will try to fight you.

Sounds interesting

[Aoi]

That last bit about the enemy being organized and trying to fight back, which would be unusual with 'traditional' zombies, inspired a different line of thought: How about a strategy (either realtime or turnbased) with distinctly different command structures?

Due to the mcguffin of planetary electrical storms, conventional wireless communications are impossible. This means that immediate feedback is delayed, whether it be encountering hostiles or FOW coverage... and so are commands.

Baseline humans: They dispatch messengers to convey their orders to squads units, which means there's going to be a decent delay and they could get ambushed, 'resetting' the time required to send/receive an update. More messengers mean faster updates, but a greater drain on resources. You can also build wired relay depots to get messengers posted closer to the front lines, but you lose comms if the connection is disrupted. Each messenger carries their own info, but all info they encounter will be shared with friendlies. Without explicit orders, they'll bunker in place for a while and do a fighting retreat when adequately damaged.

The requisite bestial faction: Produces inexpensive squads with no upkeep but take time to produce, but about all the command you can do with them is tell them to head to a specific area where they'll wander around a bit on their own before meandering back (or not; maybe they'll just find a sunny spot and nap). Horrible update rate, but they're cheap and will function autonomously once they reach their target destination. I picture it ending up kind of like the braindead heroes in Majesty, except... slightly less braindead.

A high-tech orbital faction: You can see the entire map with live updates... as long as that patch of the map isn't affected by the electrical storm. Electrical equipment means debuffs when fighting in the storm. Also, orbital insertion. They start with a finite amount of units and the only resource they get is political influence that can be exchanged for additional forces. The problem is... sometimes winning too much means you're oversupplied so you lose influence, and sometimes you get extra because Glorious Army reasons. Since they don't have an escape route, they either bunker or move towards the nearest open sky when out of commands.

The steamwork mechaniods: Because why not. Programmable logic that has to be set before they're deployed, or they're pretty much dead in the water. No updating of the AI on deployed units! But for the sake of sanity you can set basic fallback options like 'return to base' or 'bunker'. Map info is updated via smokesteamsignal which is fast but also gives away your position.

And so forth. Each side also consumes different resources-- humans basically require all materials, the mechanoids need a lot of wood for upkeep, but only metal for production, etc. Can also work interconnectedness into it: Humans and Beasts can hunt in the forests for meat, but they can be chopped down for lumber by Humans and Mechanoids. On the other hand, Mechanoids are made of metal, and Humans are made of meat...

[JoshuaFH]

While I only played a few games of Apex at a friend's request, and I didn't like it, a recent podcast got me thinking about it again and I thought of an mechanic idea for a Battle Royale style game that'd be cool:

Typically, BR-style games are divided into singles, duos, and 3 person team game modes, each one separate and distinct from the others. The idea is to combine all those options into one big game mode, so you can queue up by yourself, with a friend, or with two friends; and the way to make it balanced is that you'd have a list of perks and abilities, and before every game a solo player could choose 6 of them, a 2-player team could pick 3 each, and a 3-person team could select 2 each.

I'm thinking that the perks and such would synergize with eachother very well, so a solo player with 6 perks is comparable in survivability to a three-man team who have 2 each.

That's the idea that I got, I don't play BR games at all so I might be out of my depth on the matter, but it sounds cool in my head.

[Reelya]

That doesn't tend to self-balance very well. Look at that Amazon game they launched, it had three game modes at the start, so all were compromised and broken as a result. They sort of tried to get "overall balance" but that just ended up making all the game modes broken by default. There was also one RTS which tried to balance mass-unit players vs hero-players but that didn't work out being very satisfying either despite being a good idea.

So, no, it's incredibly hard to balance any sort of asymmetry in a game like that. It's been tried many times, it's never paid off so far, to the point that most people can't name any really successful game that uses asymmetry, so they assume that all games do the symmetry thing because no developer has "thought outside the box". In fact many have thought outside the box but it always fucks up big time, so they learned the hard way to start with something completely symmetrical, then break the symmetry in only small contained ways.

I doubt you'd be able to balance a 3-3 game to 3-2 and 3-1 very easily, just by giving the single player 6 perks instead of 2.

[JoshuaFH]

The idea is borrowed from Skullgirls, where you can have 1, 2, or 3 character teams, but the amount of health they have at the start is increased for a solo character, and decreased for multiple character teams. Now, that's a totally different genre, but the fundamental concept doesn't seem impossible to implement in another genre like BR. Again, probably talking out of my ass.

[Aoi]

That makes sense because each character is ostensibly balanced relative to each other to some degree (okay, there are matchups that objectively favor one side over the other in pretty much all fighting games, but...) and just multiplying their health is akin to tag-teaming the same character in and out. Stacking perks would be more like having the best attributes of three different fighters, whether it be their damage, smaller hitbox size, longer reach, and mobility.

...Which, having said that, would make for a pretty interesting twist-- as each fighter gets defeated, the remaining ones get stronger, so the order in which you get defeated makes a big difference. But as a general mechanic, not a way to balance things.

[JimboM12]

thinking of battle royales, i had a good one:

the concept is its in a zombie apocalypse, one similar to Dying Light. So you not only have other players to deal with, but ambient zombies. you have the slow roamers and the faster infected. they dont have to be smart but the fast infected ones can do basic following and roam around high loot areas. this has the added effect of stopping sniper camper looters that plague pubg because if you sit still or try to skirt the outsides of the map to loot in safety, youre in for a surprise and if you deal with the zombos you make a lot of noise, alerting nearby players youre trying to camp the tower/building/whatever.

this leads into the second wrinkle:

instead of a closing ring of gas there are set "safe zones", because every so often it turns night and releases "hunters", just like in dying light, who move fast, can climb and are super strong. the safe zone only activates at night to ward these hunters off and at the beginning of the match many safe zones are open but as the nights progress more and more safe zones deactivate, forcing players into fewer areas of the map. this makes the game pace much faster without wannabe camper snipers holding up in a set spot, because even if it becomes day the safe zone will deactivate and normal zombies can get in.

here's the 3rd wrinkle:

zombies, infected and hunters drop nothing. they are solely ment to stop overly gamey tactics and provide a constant resource drain; so while you can gear up, you cant sit on a metric fuckton of supplies to win the endgame by endurance like ive seen in apex or fortnite.

in this br, its entirely possible for noone to win and honestly thats kind of awesome to me.

[Aoi]

thinking of battle royales, i had a good one:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the concept is its in a zombie apocalypse, one similar to Dying Light. So you not only have other players to deal with, but ambient zombies. you have the slow roamers and the faster infected. they dont have to be smart but the fast infected ones can do basic following and roam around high loot areas. this has the added effect of stopping sniper camper looters that plague pubg because if you sit still or try to skirt the outsides of the map to loot in safety, youre in for a surprise and if you deal with the zombos you make a lot of noise, alerting nearby players youre trying to camp the tower/building/whatever.

this leads into the second wrinkle:

instead of a closing ring of gas there are set "safe zones", because every so often it turns night and releases "hunters", just like in dying light, who move fast, can climb and are super strong. the safe zone only activates at night to ward these hunters off and at the beginning of the match many safe zones are open but as the nights progress more and more safe zones deactivate, forcing players into fewer areas of the map. this makes the game pace much faster without wannabe camper snipers holding up in a set spot, because even if it becomes day the safe zone will deactivate and normal zombies can get in.

here's the 3rd wrinkle:

zombies, infected and hunters drop nothing. they are solely ment to stop overly gamey tactics and provide a constant resource drain; so while you can gear up, you cant sit on a metric fuckton of supplies to win the endgame by endurance like ive seen in apex or fortnite.

in this br, its entirely possible for noone to win and honestly thats kind of awesome to me.

I'm assuming that 'none to win' is everybody dead (last player killed by zombies), which would make the standard win condition... what? Surviving past a certain amount of time?

That brings to mind something else: How many BRs have win conditions that aren't 'kill everybody else' to begin with? Like Black Survival has a potentially non-combat option that's an instant-win if you manage to pull it off (technically, you're still killing everybody, but that's a narrative thing). In the context of a zombie-themed one, it could be something like completing and deploying a cure or self-destructing the map in a pyrrhic victory to hold back the horde.

[JimboM12]

yes but it'll be rather unlikely, as the match doesn't end until the last player can make it through the last night without dying, so if for some reason, they are caught outside the final safe zone on the final night theres a good chance they'll probably die and leave the match without a winner. due to the fact there isn't a ring of death, you can risk leaving to get stuff or try an ambush on players trying to make it to the final few safe zones but one noise (like a zombie noticing you cuz they dont despawn at night) will attract the hunters.

maybe to up the difficulty the safe zone uv lights or w/e dosen't work on the infected as the match goes on, so only zombies and hunters are averted

[NRDL]

I want a game that takes advantage of a huge, huge, almost exactly like real life Earth map, while also capturing the feeling of being hunted by an unstoppable being/group.


Basically, you'd have a Google Earth type environment, and your job is to not die. You'll be chased by some sort of unkillable monster, and the only way to defeat them is to find a very specific spot on the map, which could randomly picked to be on the other side of the world. You start the game given a clue to reach a certain town/village/building, and then you have to search inside the area to find the clue to the next location. Effectively Amazing Race-ing yourself across the world. The entire world map would be filled with items you can use, but no other people.


Meanwhile, the monster is chasing you. On one end of the scale, you can have a completely unkillable, unstoppable, will kill you in one touch thing like the monster from It Follows, but its EXTREMELY slow. Rapid movement and rapid searching for the next clue are your only options against it. Survival game mechanics like having to find food, sleep, etc. are what's gonna do you in cause this type of monster will NEVER stop moving.



Along the middle end of the scale, you can have supernatural monsters ( with potential Dead by Daylight-esque killer archetypes and guest monsters ). These middle range monsters move as fast as you, potentially even faster, but can actually be temporarily killed, by enough weapon damage or trapping them somewhere. But they will get back up eventually, and their AI is absolutely gonna be smarter than the first monster. They're bigger than you, stronger than you, have unique weapons and abilities, but they're not completely invincible.



Finally, and this one's probably for a LAN multiplayer type mode, you can be chased by an evil cult of absolutely normal people, each one with the exact stats as your character. They do as much damage as you, they all die permanently, but they never stop spawning. This can lead to a variety of on the run chase events, siege situations, fun stuff.

Unlike the above two types of monsters, the cultists won't know your exact location all the time. You can encounter a few of them at any given point, but only once you find a clue, do you alert the entire mob, and they start gunning for your location en masse.



The only vehicles that really exist/work are boats to take you across islands and continents. Everything is either on foot, or bicycle.

[Fire and Glory]

Not a specific game as much as a concept that shows up in games, but I dug out our old copy of Aliens Infestation and played it for a while. One of its most distinctive features is how if you die, that marine is dead forever and you carry on as one of the other 3 marines in your squad. You can find a few isolated marines around the area to replenish your losses and every marine also has a unique portrait and personalized dialogue snippets in reaction to present events.
This idea of other people taking your dude's place if he dies has been done a few times, Zombi and that Disgaea game with the red scarfed exploding penguins come to mind and more recently Watch Dogs Legion as well. I think it's a cool concept and look forward to seeing more of it in the future, though.

[xaritscin]

an ASCII based Space Simulator based on the DF system. that is, generate a procedural galaxy with its own story of ancient civilizations, external invasions, evil/good regions (guess it would be like the Warp/Shroud manisfeting on real space), and procedurally generated alien races (with some typical ones).

player can read the history of the galaxy, play as a lone space captain (to partake in mercenary work, piracy, trading, exploration, etc...) with its own small craft or up to a larger vessels with actual crews, and/or play as a group of colonists setting up on a newly discovered planet or solar system.

i guess it would require reducing a lot of the usual things that we are used from DF like simulating everything down to specific organs and bodyparts, among other stuff.