Been playing the Fallout series again (making up for no Beta to test yey ).

And I have been thinking about something with the characters.
It could be possible to play V13 and just keep finding books to read, kill things and get more perks and attempt to stat/skill out.

What if instead there were two factors that effected your stats.

Time (or aging) takes place. As you get older, your stats start changing (down) a little at a time.
OF Course this opens up many other issues; like how fast is game time to real world time, do you age if you are not online, since some races live longer does their stats change at a different rate, etc.

Injury
SO, instead I was thinking about the fact that no matter what type of protection you wear in the game you do get hurt some time during combat.
What if the game engine kept track of:
How many times you died
How many times you were knocked out/unconcious
How many times you were crippled
And that some of the crippling effects left scars or a permament injury.
And how long before that crippling effect was fixed/cure.

Say you have a crippled right leg, and while you it is crippled you cant run or move at full speed.
Cured and nothing more, right?
Well not everyone recovers well from broken bones.
So, it is important to have a skilled doctor fix your crippled leg or some type of permament effect might still be present. Maybe not the full effect of the crippled injury but some minor one.

Or that you wait for 1 day (or more) to get that leg fixed because you are wanting the best doctor you can get.
Of course your body has started healing already and will heal around that crippling effect. Possibly making it difficult for the doctor to fix your leg now.

The point behind this is as time goes on and you get more injuries it becomes harder to effectively make a living cause you don't move as fast, shoot as well, or remember things as easily as you use to.

And then you have an incentive to create a new character (with the same account).

I have some more thoughts on this but I will wait to see what others think first.

Dave Chase

Dave,

Having a character that basically emulates life does not sound fun.

I really dont want to build up a character and have him fall apart over time.

Maybe if the effects were temporary. Anyway.. not knocking your idea.. just stating my opinion.

No insult taken.

In a odd way, its a way to deal with the over the top players who max everything, run around naked and still kick you butt (sorry bad memories from OU game).

Dave Chase

Dave does bring on a good point. Aging is a part of life. Hell even in DnD aging does have its tole on your pen and paper characters. Some stats go down and some go up. Life is a wonderious thing the longer you live the more you can learn. Hence why older characters in DnD get bonus' to inteligence and wisdon while taking hits to strength and consitituion. lol

The key for such systems is balance. As a player I wouldnt want to see my character just fall over dead because he cant keep up any more. But as a person who enjoys some realism I like knowing hell if my character got fvcked up badly and I didnt take care of it correctly it should come back an haunt me a bit. Just not totaly stop me.

Sorry, if my post seemed to indicate that your charater would just kell over from to many injuries or cripplings over time. Not at all intended.

I was thinking more along the lines of player story.

Some examples
The old bar keep, waggon/caravan master, junk dealer (player character who is playing a merchant now) who just can't run any more (broke his legs to many times) but he is still a hell of shot and fast to when it comes to drawing first.

Mama one eye. Raising kids now, but back in the day she was quiet the sneak (theif). Hell today even the neiborhood kids know to not mess with Mama one eye. She always seems to be watching you, and if you cross her, it always seems as if your prize possesion is on on display at her pawn shop. (High sneak, high barter, etc)

Of course, these would only play out well if the players truly wanted to play such, OR make new characters and go at it again.

Dave Chase

i kinda like the idea of aging and getting better at some stats and worse at others but of course this would have to be a game option that the player could agree to or not.

as an incentive lets say for example that you agree to it and your character gets old and can get a 10% bonus to a stat where a normal player would have maxed out .. so 100% vs 110%.

could be interesting..

While its "interesting" like permadeath concept - it is not MMO-viable. Devs want to retain their cleintbase - and players dont wish to spend years grinding up only to lose everything later on. The only "lure" MMOs use to retain subs is that your characters will always be there regardless when you return (they dont deleted inactive accounts anymore). This is not good business sense (unless its coded in such a brilliantly unique method and rewards which make people "happy" somehow.)
Wastelander since C=64!

Awaiting Alpha/Beta testing!

Never said the game should perma-kill characters.

What I was looking for was a way to control the grind attacker, who (if in Fallout tradition) can and will be hurt too via criticals, crippling, etc, even if they do end up killing your character.

Sure the game (any MMO) needs to retain player base and numbers or it will not be around long.

In my minds eye, the way I have kind of layout the ground work, you will want/need to keep an individual with the high medic/doctor skills just to keep you kicking strong.

Get a crippling effect and wait to long (say a day or more) to get it fixed then you might retain some of the crippling effect.

Got the, thats going to leave a scar, hit 50+times, your character's charisma will probably be a bit lower but your rep growes.

The idea is to not crash the Player's character after one attack, but accumlative (lots of) attacks, damage.
If you want to keep playing that character, nothing is stopping you. You just might be a bit slower on the draw, or you might not be able to run like you use to.

Once again, it just an idea.
Oh, and I am keeping the posting alive, not out of spite or flaming those that reply.
More like, keeping a dicussion going.

Dave Chase

I was referring to the idea of AGING. That is something that is not sellable - no one wants their hard work depreciated over time. That is not a reward - but a penalty - and for what? Being a subscriber? Playing longer/harder and investing time into their characters? Not a good concept.

As for crippling - it wont be fallout without crippled limbs - however waiting "days" is to get fixed is not a good gaming concept - as it is a prolonged penalty. And how often can we get crippled? If we're getting crippled at each critical hit then it would be an unacceptable concept.
Wastelander since C=64!

Awaiting Alpha/Beta testing!

Good point about the aging. I don't remember the age of my character changing in any of the Fallout games, and I did play several times just running around for ever to see what was out there in the waste land.



I don't remember each critical hit being a crippling attack, but then I never played on the hardest level of the game(s ).

Some of the critical hits cause me to get knocked down/back, knocked out, stunned and such but not cripplied all the time. That would svck to have every critical attack equal a crippling.

Dave Chase

Interesting idea. I think that the character should change over time. In other MMO characters are static and lifeless. I wish that we could cripple and grow old with time. I apologize for my bad English. I hope in the development of Project V13 participate smart people who understand that the video game industry must move forward and not use old and uninteresting ideas.

Oh please do NOT make a "me-too" MMO. That is a grave mistake. Do NOT try to be WoW!! NO! NO! NO! Dont even think about it - borrow NOTHING from WoW!

Come over to MMORPG.com and see how many people HATE such games (and growing). See the Game Development section - start some discussions there to check the waters. NO ONE LIKES WoW (except the next-gen MMO-newbies (svcker born every minute)).

Copycat "me too" MMOs fail miserably. SWG tried to emulate WoW and failed - and will sail into the sunset (already discussed by SOE). Conan tried to copy it with a touch of Guild Wars instancing = 90% subs drop after 1st "free" month - I didnt even play the month - terrible "me too" cheesy game. Warhammer is dead as well. Allods is a mindless clone of WoW - again only newbie fodder. Do not clone other MMOs.

That said, I believe our original gamesas devs are smarter to have published countless titles over the decades since the Commodore era. Sure their money-management svcks , and that needs to be addressed as well (no more Bahama vacations, boys! ). And I hope they are actively monitoring the pulse of what kind of gaming people want these days (ORIGINAL IDEAS). Dont want to be like Tabula Rasa, now do we?
Wastelander since C=64!

Awaiting Alpha/Beta testing!

oh GOD! dont make it a wow/conan/GW/allothermmosthatareexactlythesameinitsessence.

The only mmo I would want to borrow from would be eve, the open space world (not in space ofc, but a very big map that will spread out players) player driven market, somehow I'm a bit annoyed at the: All shops have infinite weapons but only shit weapons with no upgrades that no one buys and the infinite number of potions in a shop set for X price and will never change. Player driven market would also call for crafters to be active.

The ability to loose stuff -.-' pvp aint fun anywhere if you don't loose anything (YES WOW IM TALKING ABOUT YOU!) oh no i died, now i must run around as a ghost for a while then I will rez but I havn't lost anything becouse... well there is no valid explination, I just don't loose anything becouse if I would all the players would start crying and run to their moms.

And ofcourse fun pvp (again bad wow! bad wow!!) If V13 got fallout 1/2/tactics elements then fun will be no problem I just dont want the: Stand infront of eachother, click on an enemie, start to shoot and wait for either you or him to die.

eeh.. im sure there are other things to add..

Give me a full loot. Give me a sandbox. Give me a hard Fallout!!! Style of the first Fallout, that's what it should be. If it is, I'll be happy.