Pat's open thoughts on his project

[pat_mathis]

Hello, I hope this is alright if I post this thread on a project I'd like to work on in an open thought format. Basically I want to use this to log my ideas and let others comment on them.

So, what I was wanting to do is a Multiplayer FPS on XNA. I was thinking of doing a Team Fortress Esq game with heavy sword and magic role playing elements and setting. I want to make a game that is free for download initially, that allows the use of five core classes. With every achievement unlock you would get access to more classes and skills, but only after paying a micro (and I do mean micro) purchess for them. This is where my revenue would sprout from. I wish to distribute new maps for free on a regular bases, and have a massive range of game types, including co-operative and versus.

Naturally, I would keep balance reguardless of what the players pay for. And leveling up would only apply to co-operative games to avoid "rich get richer". I want the players to be able to interact with classes that they don't have as well to help advertise them and allow them to be playable on any server, pending the host's aproval.

The core/free download would have the fallowing middle ground, unpolorized classes:

Fighter
Mage
Cleric
Archer
Rouge

Then after reaching certain achievements you could unlock other skills or classes. Ie, get three kills in a row with a melee weapon, unlock the bezerker for download. I suppose I could make the free to download from the start, but I feel that limiting it would make it all the more enticing when unlocked.

Next post I will elaborate on the machanics I had in mind. In the mean time, feel free to comment on my core concept and/or make suggestions! Thank you.

[Nae'blis]

That's quite the ambitious project. I hope you have a team to work with.

Anyway, micro-transactions for things like new outfits and potentially for unlockable characters is okay. You could say it was paying for training from an in-game "master" avatar - you go to the school/dojo/academy that offers the new class, pay your fee to the master and then 24 hours later you are free to resume your game and check out the training your character went through while you were offline (giving the effect of a time lapse while they trained, but also allowing you time to clear their payment).

Charging for simply levelling up is likely to not go down too well - I personally wouldn't be happy playing under that system. It also might well have the effect of turning the first level or two of your character's progression into a try-before-you-buy scenario (which you might actually want to deliberately encourage), where players would check out your game until they hit the first "unfair" micro-transcaction and then stop playing (which you obviously would want to avoid).

I'd say to charge for new classes and new maps, plus customiseables, but don't charge simply in order to level-up because that's ultimately just charging to play the game (and at the worst possible moment to charge, too: Excellent, I've finally achieved the next level! Now I can get that cool new quest/item/spell... Oh, wait... You want my credit card?!).


:sneaky: Plus, how would the rouge class look? Would that be some guy in a dress with his cheeks shiny red and a frilly pantomime dame dress on?

I'm kidding of course - don't actually implement that!