Help me design my competitive multiplayer shooter

I'll pick through this thread and comment on everything later - but at present, my biggest concern with the design is that if you're aiming to produce a competitive shooter, your playing field will always need to be maintained to be level; everyone spawns the game in the same situation, every time. This means no class based systems, no perks, or anything else that will alter the way a player otherwise behaves in the game environment with respect to anything that isn't already within it.

It's player versus player, in as even a situation as possible.

I haven't spent more than 1 minute thinking about this, but I'll just leave this here.

You know Shadowrun? The crappy counterstrike-esque magic-meets-fps shooter for 360 and PC? (Actually, it was pretty decent, but the game was gimped by console development and crossplatform multiplayer).

As you would except from a counterstrike-like game, you buy weapons. But you could also buy abilities after every respawn. (It worked with rounds)
This included buying a healing AoE 'spell', revive, create spike traps, a sort of glider, increased speed with a katana, et cetera.
Every player started the match equipped with just their race's traits and either a pistol or smg, but by the fourth or fifth round, some people were using a dwarf sniper + healing/revive spell while others were going for the rambo approach with a troll minigunner + lock-on tech. Quite possibly, opponent's team would then react by going for elf katana + teleport.

Now, your shooter probably won't be rounds-based, but this got me thinking if you couldn't make it so that players get to pick certain 'build orders'.

Say, in a ten minute match:
- After 3 minutes, the first tier upgrades unlock. Players press a quick hotkey or w/e to select which upgrade they want, and these stay the rest of the match. These powers are pretty minimal in their gameplay effect.
- Three minutes after that, players pick another upgrade. These are a bit stronger, similar to Sine's idea. Again, these stay for the remainder of the match.
-Two minutes before the end of the match, third tier upgrades can be picked and these are quite powerful.

This would make it so that players don't pick a class before the match, they create a class during the match, based on their assessment of the opponent.
Both players can pick the same upgrades if they want, so no restrictions there.

The trick in making this work, however, is to make it so that one certain combination of upgrades is not always the best, not even on one particular map.
I'd imagine it would be fun if you could stack upgrades towards a certain goal, but each upgrade also came with a weakness. (e.g. 1st: higher damage on splash weapons, 2st: projectiles move a bit faster, 3rd: RL charges similar to UT's alt fire. Not the best example, but yeah...)
The weakness in this case would be reduced movement speed or something, which would make you more of a target for hitscan.

That would then be one 'maxed' build, but you could also opt to choose upgrades from several 'chains', to spread your chances of success.

I dunno, but I would appreciate something like that. Maybe not for 1v1, but for 3v3 or 2v2 TDM it could be lots of fun, given that your options are indeed open.

ambershee said:

I'll pick through this thread and comment on everything later - but at present, my biggest concern with the design is that if you're aiming to produce a competitive shooter, your playing field will always need to be maintained to be level; everyone spawns the game in the same situation, every time. This means no class based systems, no perks, or anything else that will alter the way a player otherwise behaves in the game environment with respect to anything that isn't already within it.

It's player versus player, in as even a situation as possible.

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Definitely.

Make sure the perks do not influence in any ways:
Aiming (no steady aim or stuff like that)
Health Points
Damage

And no automatic weaponry (turret, claymore, etc.). If there were such things, the player should at least have to control them or detonate them manually.

Class-based systems need not be a disaster for 'competitive' games, because the key-ingredient required is 'transparency'/predictability.

The reason perks/skills tend to suck in a competitive environment is not because their effects are too powerful/weak, but because you can not easily see what kind of threat your opponent poses at any given time.

It's 'easy' to look at his weapon-signature and change tactics accordingly.
It's 'easy' to see his glowing shield and thus be informed that you need a weapon that either does more damage to shields or somehow bypasses the shield-effect.
It is impossible to see if your opponent can jump higher or move faster or any other change in attribute, unless the character has an obvious 'jump-enhancer' (like a jetpack or wings) for example.
The same can be applied to sound as well.

Those issues are why class-based systems often use really obvious character-designs for the various classes (and why spy-like classes can only work in such a setting).

As such skills aren't a problem, provided you find a way to visualize those properties.
Of course finding a way to visualize that depends on how 'fast' your game is.

In an arcady fast-past game you'd probably would want something 'loud' & clean, whereas a 'realistic' slow game can use more complex and smaller changes in character-detail.

Just want to make a small correction. I didn't mean class as in the standard TF style like soldier, sniper, demo, etc... but more of adhering to a set of rules set forth for a particular playing style catagorized as a perk/class/role. Closer a condition based class system that rewards a player for playing within a role. This is essentially telling players how they should play the game, though not necessarily forcing them as under most circumstances it would be simpler to run+gun, but rewarding players that take a chance meeting certain requirements of their perk through ingame actions. This could be anything from shooting players that are in the air, playing with <50% health, gibbing bodies... just a general mixture of typical actions related to different plying styles, high risk maneuvers, and perhaps the bizarre.

I've always like the idea of two weapon classes in a competitive FPS. One class would be normal weapons that you could hold in one hand, the other class would be "movement" weapons that would be held in the other. The movement weapons would not damage yourself when used, and would allow for special movement abilities depending on what weapon you currently are holding.

For example there could be a translocator-type weapon, a grapple-type weapon, and most interesting I think, rocket-jumping style weapons with various trajectories. On would take a while to load up but would launch you at 45 degrees to maximize distance and air time. Another would have a faster rate of fire to allow you to hop along the floor or slingshot around rounded walls. Furthermore, since these are weapons and not just binds the effect is dependent on the direction you are looking, the floors/walls you are looking at, and your existing momentum in determining the ultimate movement.

With BSP based CTF maps you could grab a flag, launch off the flag pad over a pit, time it again to launch off a wall all the while sniping your translocating pursuers. There could also be a movement weapon that defenders might use which if they hit you, it would slow down your momentum.

Everyone would spawn with all weapons and health would regenerate over time. Players should be able to fall quite a distance without dieing but they should take damage depending on the distance and they should be able to use a movement weapon at the right time to cushion a fall.

i would love to work on the weapon FX is you guys still need help. Any effects really. Explosions , smoke, water surface normals, whatever.

[SAS]Solid Snake;2390817 said:

Game types for the prototype will just be Deathmatch, although I plan to have many other game types seen in UT, UT2004, UT3 and other games. Are there any game mechanics you guys think would make the core game mechanics more interesting?

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Yes. Besides looking to UT* and generic fps, spend 1 day per each of other style of games. Ex: Wipeout XL (weapons, "vibe", speed, music), Sacrifice from Shiny Entertainment (interfacing, gameplay complexitiy, fantasy, different abilities) and Tomb Raider (movement, atmosphere).

Then come back to shooters and see if some concepts and ideas are worthwhile to assimilate

Ah, and don't be afraid to make it "fun". Competitive != serious. People become serious after mastering it

Do you really want people to use the dodge-button as a means of moving around ?
Do you really want people to endlessly press jump when near other players ?
Because those two things will happen if you reward players for doing such things.

You could think about rewarding in a way that does not create a positive feedback-loop by charging perks that are not related to the manner in which it is rewarded.

However this will be difficult as there's wouldn't be a reason for the player to select the perk if it only functioned whenever he has to do something he doesn't like (like forcing a sniper into close-combat or a melee-focussed player into long-range sniping).

a basic 3-class system would have :
- light/scout : usually sacrificing damage & defense for increased speed
- average/soldier : everything at default
- heavy/tank : usually sacrificing speed for damage & defense

Perks could allow classes to use some of the advantages of another class, but with similar cost.
ie : a 'tanker' could get a speed-boost, but it'd have to sacrifice some of its shielding or its damage-output.
That would allow you to tune the effects without changing the game as a tank with all perks would function as either a 'scout' or 'soldier' which are known classes with their own features and disadvantages.

I've always thought that what separates a shooter from other games is that it's purely about skill. If you're good, you win. Pickups detract from this because if you don't have a good weapon, you might not survive long enough to get one. This has little to do with skill and more to do with things like where you happened to spawn. Half-Life 2 was anything but boring and pickups were a non-issue.

I suppose the summary is that as complexity increases, it starts feeling less like a shooter and more like an RTS. I've never loaded a shooter with the intention of stopping to fool with gimmicks. If the game is good enough you won't need to cover over the blandness with cheap tricks.

Pickups aren't about who is better or worse. They're about getting people to move around the map. Without pickups people naturally tend to hang back and play defensively in an effort to avoid dying. See: UT2004 TAM. The worst, most backpedaling, vagina-esque gametype ever.

Pickups give players a reason to forego the defensive play and go on the offensive -- if you don't get them someone else will. It adds a very nice tactical element to the gameplay without penalizing sh*t players too much -- especially if there are multiple good pickups per map.

The more players in a map the less each pickup matters, of course, down to 1v1 in which pickups are extremely important as they have a 1:1 effect for or against you.

[SAS]Solid Snake;2393053 said:

So every 30 seconds (or so, we haven't decided the exact time) that you are alive for you will be rewarded perk charge for the actions that you have performed or were done during that 30 seconds. ... Perk charges are only awarded every 30 seconds, so if you die then it all gets lost.

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And you're right back to rewarding better players and hurting bad ones. Better players will stay alive for the most 30-second blocks and get the most perk charges; bad players will get killed more often and thus won't see as many charges.

T2A` said:

See: UT2004. The worst, most backpedaling, vagina-esque game ever.

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Fixed.

Seriously literally don't do anything UT2004 did.

FuLLBLeeD said:

Fixed.

Seriously literally don't do anything UT2004 did.

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Blasphemer.
I vote for a ban.

Modern Warfare (and Modern Warfare 2) have an interesting reward system. And I don't mean killstreak rewards or deathstreak rewards, but the challenges for using certain weapons and doing certain difficult tasks, like killing an enemy with their own claymore. There are no extra points boosting the player's (or team's) position in the match.

If you did something similar with these sorts of actions as the fuel for perk use, then you could encourage more diverse gameplay, perhaps.

I see no option of getting around the balance issue though.

I am not so sure how many games that are designed to be "competitive" actually end up that way. It basically seems like games that have competitive communities get them by being popular, not necessarily having some magic mix of design that makes them especially well balanced for competition.

Well, there's at least one -- Warsow. Not sure anyone really plays it though. I could never get into it because the movement system was too hard to get a hang of being a UT player.

Generally competition does rise from popular games... but the competitive part is always modded in later. So... I guess this skips the middleman? D:

You cannot skip the middleman. There has to be general interest in a game for it to be popular. Wow, could I be any more redundant?

Games whose gameplay lend themselves to competitive play tend to be the more successful comp games. A game does not need to cater solely to comp gamers off the shelf, as mods can help there. But to make a game that is a totally competitive game and not one designed for casual play? I would say it needs to have some casual elements to get interest up.