Social Side of Games
Posted by Parthon on September 27th, 2007
As you probably know, two of the biggest things on the web right now are Multiplayer Games and Social Networking Sites. As you might not know, Facebook released F8, their developer library for the Facebook Platform as they call it. This allows anyone with knowledge in how to make a dynamic website using php or similar to create an application on their site which interfaces with Facebook. Of course as soon as I heard out about it, I knew I had to make a game for it, and not just any game, but the viral game to end all games. Well not really.
Anyone who has been on Facebook will probably have noticed the number of viral games going around that are rather lame, even the best of them is rather shallow in terms of what you can do, it’s all about clicking to increase numbers, or worse yet, annoying friends to earn numbers. I have another idea, which I’ve had for a while but which Facebook gives me the opportunity to create without having to worry about getting people to play it, I’m hoping the viral aspect of Facebook will do it for me.
The idea is this: A deep, easy to play, passive, cooperative, social RPG.
What a mouthful. The actually design however is very different. Creating a character just like many other games, race and class. The difference is the 3 tier design.
First tier is your Class. The player of course can pick from a number of classes and you can change your class at any time outside of a dungeon/quest chain. Base classes anyone can go at any time, but the higher classes, which I don’t have a name for yet, have particular prerequisites. Even rarer are Hero Classes which have some obscure prerequisites, but also unique abilities. Classes can’t be leveled up, which is where the next two tiers come into it.
Second tier is Abilities. Abilities are raised by gaining Ability Points (AP) from adventuring. Each class has two abilities, one major and one minor, and each ability has a lesser ability associated with it, except for base abilities. Eg: Fire magic will branch from Elemental magic which will branch from Attack magic, or similar. There will be many base abilities, I hope to create about 8-10, which will lead on to 20-30 second level abilities which in turn will have 100 or more third level and hero abilities associated with them. What makes the system unique, and perhaps a little tricky, is that you never level up a class, you only level up it’s associated abilities. The Hero Classes will have Hero Abilities, but this will come much later. Someone will have to be playing for at least 50 days before they see one of these. Probably longer.
Teir 3 is Skills. Skills come from classes and have ability prerequisites. Skills are raised using Skill Points(SP) gained from adventuring. The skills you can choose to learn come directly from the class you currently are. The mundane skills will have straightforward prerequisites, but some of the more obscure skills come from even stranger prerequisites and from non-class abilities. Skills are the primary way to increase power. You choose a number of skills to go adventuring with, and this is what is calculated to work out your power. The skills you equip directly determine your current power level for adventuring, which also determines the size of the challenge you can face and how much reward you get from such challenges.
How skills factor into playing the game I don’t know yet. I do know that a variety of skills will be needed to overcome the greater challenges, and they directly play a specific part in any of the adventures that occur. Adventures should be applicable to the characters current skills, and the types of skills along with their power determine their reward. As all of the challenges occur automatically, activated skills aren’t an option.
The hardest parts for me right now are working out all the maths behind the entire game, and figuring out how to stop really powerful players from getting even more powerful faster. They should be rewarded for playing so long, but not become untouchable.
As the game progresses it will be open for playing on Facebook, and until then I’ll be posting game idea and game design tips on here. Also, if anyone has a name for the game, I’d be grateful. Right now it’s using my psuedo RPG name: Anonius. Which it will probably be when it’s released.