Space Pirate game in Development

[LdyCharmne]

Hey everyone, I'm a content writer with a small game company and I came to Titan today because I've always come here to read up on City news and use the wiki and Mids, and all that.  I've played City since beta and I was exceedingly embarrassed this morning to find out I didn't have a login for TitanNetwork.  *facepalm*  So, shiny new login in hand I came here: to the people I trust the most as a community.

So I'm working with a team to build a F2P MMO designed around swashbuckling buccaneers and corsairs with Sci-Fi motifs. Our game setting is a sandbox universe where you and your friends are let loose into the galaxy to commit crimes of piracy, smuggling, and other dastardly deeds. It's a very ambitious project, currently in preproduction.

Before we even get one line of code in the game though, we'd like to get feedback on our core designs to help bring a better product to the gaming community that will be most pleasing to the most people.  If you are interested in helping please continue reading and answer the questions below. Thank you for all your help in advance.  (Feedback form link at the end of this post.)

•   Players can customize characters and ships. 
•   Players will be free to explore the universe, become a pirate, a privateer, a smuggler, or even a bounty hunter.  They can choose from many missions for various factions or anyone with coin.
•   Players can form crews, either on their ship or someone else's (PC and NPC Captain's) and enter space to do what all pirate crews have done in history, look for pillage and plunder. 

We want to add in several other factors like a reputation/notoriety system, PVE centered dungeons & adventures, a dynamic quest system and more, but we do not have the resources to fully flesh them out yet. For now we are concentrating on building the core mechanics version of our game.

So down to the core mechanics:

In terms of melee combat, the play will be based around an active offense and defense combat system that requires players to use the mouse position to determine where they attack and defend against targets.  We are designing abilities and effects to be based on where attacks or defenses occur compared to you or your opponent's mouse position and motion. What we are trying to do here is to design an easy to learn but hard to master combat system that supports the swashbuckling feel of high adventure.

In space combat players work together in order to target, disable, and board ships.  While on the ship, players will have several roles to fill as part of the crew.  Players can man the helm, fire the turrets, call out targets and manage power systems. We are gearing space combat to accommodate both single players and large group crews.  We want this to be simple and straightforward--again easy to learn, hard to master. 

A central feature of our core mechanics is boarding actions.  When a target ship is disabled, it is boarded, and the raiding crew fights the defenders to capture the cargo in the holds and drag it back to their ship.  The combat is primarily melee combat; nothing unbuckles your swash faster than rapid fire weapons! There are multiple avenues to victory in boarding.  The encounter ends when either the cargo is all unloaded, all the ship's power conduits are destroyed and the repelling crew is dead OR the boarding party is all dead and their respawner is destroyed.  It is up to boarding crews to fight the defending crew and to either unload the cargo or to find all the power conduits used to power the respawners on the target ship. Defenders do have the opportunity to counter-board, and capture the attacking ship which can be very important in PVP play.

Players will be able to build legendary reputations even if they are not crewing with other players.  We are creating missions requiring only a personal ship and possibly NPC crewmates that can fill positions for larger ships. These can include bounty hunting, cargo hauling, smuggling, and special missions from reputable and disreputable factions. For the players who want to crew with their friends, we will have ships that require 5, 10, 15 or even up to 30 members.  Aside for the obvious pillaging and plunder NPC and PC ships, will you also have the opportunity to act as a spy, fight monstrous space creatures and even find/engage ghost ships and lost cities--and of course, hunt for buried treasure.

Here's our feedback form...I trust the people on Titan, because the community has been so awesome since that dark day last year.
https://docs.google.com/a/foreverinteractive.com/forms/d/1XHAf6Iqo-nXoJE5bYCQQE57k5PH6E0ChmHH3vhVV3fk/viewform

[LdyCharmne]

For the folks who don't want to use an external link but still want to help:

The questions I'd like to ask are as follows; please use a scale of 1-5 with 5 as the best for the first few and comments if you like, the last few ask for your opinions on what you know of this game.


How much are you attracted to ship to ship combat? (Scale)


How important are non-ship adventures to you (i.e. planet-side or on a station)? (Scale)


How much do you like the idea of hand to hand boarding actions? (Scale)


How important is it for you to have adventures that you can play on your own (i.e. solo missions)? (Scale)


How important is it for you to be able to play with commodities and markets (i.e. player economy)? (Scale)


Would you play this game based on the dynamics described here and why? (Text)




What kind of things would you like to see from a game like this? (Text)




What kind of things would you not like to see from a game like this? (Text)




Do you have any suggestions for any improvements we could make? (Text)




What kind of things would you think could make or break the game for you? (Text)




What aspects of the Free-to-Play model do you expect to see? (Text)

[Aggelakis]

... requires players to use the mouse position to determine where they attack and defend against targets.  We are designing abilities and effects to be based on where attacks or defenses occur compared to you or your opponent's mouse position and motion. ...

As much as I use the mouse button, this is a 100% turn-off. :(

[LdyCharmne]

As much as I use the mouse button, this is a 100% turn-off. :(

Thanks for the feedback!

I usually use the mouse to move instead of wasd so mouse targeting is... well I feel the pain!  But this is the type of feedback I'm looking for to take back to our lead programmers.  If I might ask for a little additional info, what sort of targeting system would you prefer, and why? 

[Aggelakis]

Tab target (like City) or "fuzzy target" (like Neverwinter, where I can point the mouse and hit control to keep target of something). I just don't like FPS style targeting where you attack at your mouse pointer.

[LdyCharmne]

Thanks again!

[Dollhouse]

Tab target (like City) or "fuzzy target" (like Neverwinter, where I can point the mouse and hit control to keep target of something). I just don't like FPS style targeting where you attack at your mouse pointer.

I'm in the exact opposite camp: a game that has tab-to-target combat pretty much has to knock my socks off in some other aspect in order to overcome my resistance to that sort of targeting. I vastly prefer reticule-based targeting.  Mind you, unless you're planning on making the game a "real-time collision detection" game (like most shooters and one or two MMOs), you can probably have both. Champions Online allows you to set up the interface with a reticule that targets the nearest (targetable) object to the center of the screen, and it works pretty well as an imitation of "real" targeting. You could probably use something like that for targeting specific body areas of an enemy for melee combat (and in fact, I don't see how you could make tab-to-target work smoothly with selected target area combat...).

Melee-only makes sense in this setting, too. It's easy to justify NOT using projectile and beam weapons in an environment in which it's a Very Bad Idea to damage airtight bulkheads or critical environmental systems!

I personally find player economies to be utterly dull and something I do in games only because I have to (ditto for crafting, with the exception of Fallen Earth's hugely entertaining crafting system). That said, I don't know how you could NOT have something like that in a pirate game. I mean...stealing and selling stuff is kinda the whole point! Not a dealbreaker for me...

If it's done well, ship-to-ship combat will be a huge draw. I especially like the asymmetry involved: a pirate can't just blast away at a ship they're trying to plunder...not if they want to make any money. The potential victim, on the other hand, is under no such restriction.

The hand-to-hand boarding actions sound fun, too. That said, I very seldom find melee combat to be satisfying in video games of ANY kind, to say nothing of MMOs. Perhaps it's because I'm a Western Martial Artist (that is, swordfighting geek, er...enthusiast) IRL. The animations are almost always laughable. But if you can get it right, it'll be a HUGE plus for me.

Something that would appeal to me is the insertion of a bit of steampunk-style look and feel into the worldview. Slick, glossy "Star Trek" style SF has little appeal to me, and I think the space pirate theme mixes with steampunk visuals nicely. I wouldn't suggest overdoing it - that is, making it a full-on steampunk game - but inserting some of those elements could make for a very compelling world.

I can probably think of more, when I have time (busy day at work, and lunch is almost over), and sorry for no 1-5 scale responses...I know that's not helpful to your database!

Best of luck with this...it sounds promising!

[LdyCharmne]

Thanks for responding! 

Even without the scaled questions, your responses will go in the database!  Every bit of feedback we get is gathered and will be reviewed.  Feel free to post more if you think of it later, we don't mind reading mini-novels!