Game Design Philosophy: TimeOut Mode

I've started a new section for rants, mostly involving game design ideas that are going around in my head. I'm not going to keep them to myself, because I feel that by sharing or throwing around the ideas, it might get some traction or people can expand on the ideas.

Unless, some company is paying me to keep my mouth shut, and that hasn't happened yet.

My method is mainly applied to PvE raids in MMOs. I would like to start a discussion on PvP and large scale battles in online games. What would be a fair way to handle disconnections? Also, I would like some input from the Xbox community. I don't play/have Xbox Live and I would like to know how they handle disconnections in their community.

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Handling Disconnections:

I've been playing MMOs and online games for a while, and most games seem to have a terrible way of handling disconnections.

In Wii/Nintendo Wi-Fi connection games, most communication with other players are highly restricted due to the overall younger nature of the players that are playing their games. Most people (as in Mario Kart Wii or Super Smash Bros. Brawl) tend to rage-quit if they are on the losing side to avoid having score penalties or losses on their record. There's not much punishment or recourse for this because you can't really tell (no one can really tell) if it's a legitimate disconnection or someone is actually butt-hurt and doesn't want to play anymore. Pokemon Black and White is starting to give harsh penalties for disconnecting in their Wi-Fi tournaments, and I believe forcing disconnections is marked on your trainer card, but I don't remember exactly.

Age of Empires and Age of Mythology have a timeout/wait period where the players can vote on whether to keep or drop the player. However, this could be abused, given that the opponents could try and unanimously vote to drop the player in order to get a competitive edge. This is the closest form to the method I am proposing, but unfortunately this is only used for disconnections and does not reflect the vision for strategy that I want to use.



Most MMOs just have the disconnected player drop the party and they will return once they log back in. This too can cause problems because if an integral member of the party drops out, it can spell certain death for the remaining party members, especially if it were a healer or tank.

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TimeOut Method:

This came up while I was angry about my disconnection last night. The whole party delved into chaos in the two or so minutes I was not online.

I was thinking about this method/feature called TimeOut. I got inspiration for the name because sports games usually have a set amount of Time Outs for each team, and they tend to start calling them like crazy at the very end of the game to do last minute strategy changes to try and win against the opposing team.


I also took into account that players take time to plan strategies for an upcoming battle, and TimeOut can be used for that as well.

How it works:

The party leader/guildmaster/person in charge would be given free use of TimeOut.

When TimeOut is initiated, all gameplay is frozen, the area is zoomed out and shown an overhead view with all of the people/enemies in place. The chat box is enabled and markers can be placed on the map in order to set a strategy for the party. This would be a good place to explain where people should stand, where they run to, and how the battle works. If there are multiple stages in the fight, TimeOut could be repeatedly used in order to adjust for dynamic strategy changes.

To handle disconnections in the group, the server should recognize the amount of people in the group when they enter the instance and when the group falls below this amount of people, TimeOut is automatically initiated. The party can then discuss whether or not they should wait for the dropped player to come back to resume gameplay or continue with the member dropped. 

To avoid abuse by players or making the content too potentially easy, there should be a limit on either the number of times TimeOut can be initiated OR a cumulative timer that counts down everytime TimeOut is used.


It's a simple method, and I know there's probably flaws in this design, but if you guys have suggestions or comments on it, it would be greatly appreciated. 

I would also like to work on a method for how TimeOut would work in other situations or games. Player vs Player or other situations.



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The Last Story

Happy September! 

I've been playing a lot of "The Last Story" lately. I'm a huge fan of Hironobu Sakaguchi and the game series he's been involved with developing, and ever since this game was announced I had my eye on it. I pre-ordered the game on Amazon and got all this nice stuff.

Soundtrack, a book that contains concept art, and the game itself!




Gameplay:

I really enjoy the original take on the battle system and game-play. It feels like it has the cut-scenes and storyline quality reminiscent of older Final Fantasy games, yet has an entirely original battle system. It's real-time, yet has turn-based elements of old RPGs, so it feels like a mix of an old-school RPG with standard commands and an action-RPG that's always free flowing.

Here's some footage of the battle system:


What I like about it (and apparently can be changed to how you feel) is that you can hit the control stick in the direction of the enemy, and it attacks that enemy.

There is  no targeting involved except for the use of spells, and even then it freezes the real-time gameplay in order for you to cast the spell and where it will land. It seems hack and slash, but there is some influence on where you attack the mob and what spell you use. It's not like Kingdom Hearts where one would simply spam the attack button, there is a good amount of strategy involved to still differentiate it from that kind of RPG.


Story:


The story itself so far is a little cliche...

Revolves around a group of mercenaries headed by a man named Dagran and the player is in control of one of the mercenaries, named Zael. They get caught up with the princess of Lazulis Castle named Calista, and the story revolves around their adventures with the conflicts in and about Lazulis including the internal affairs of the Lazulis family and the external affairs against the Gurak Empire.

However, I think it's told very well. There are a lot of freedom of choices and the quirky humor and voices are well done. Since the game was localized in Britain, some of the spelling threw me off a little. But it's a well done game and definitely worth playing.

Music:

Also, the music is done by Nobuo Uematsu, that in itself...

Doesn't the song on the top remind you of Final Fantasy IX's Hunter's Chance? I surely got that feeling.

 

   

Drinking

I have a problem with alcohol. No, I don't have a problem with people who drink alcohol, I just have a problem with it.

And it angers me most of all when someone tries to put it in my drink without my consent. I don't like it when people try to fool me saying there's something that's in there when it's not.

I don't like parties. Or people.

I don't drink for a reason. And it has nothing with me being a goody-two-shoes or anything like that. Personal family reasons I'd rather not discuss here.

Selatria - Development Blog Post 8/21

Download Chapter 1 Demo Here
Selatria Development Team Credits
Open Positions for Selatria Development Team

Chapter 1 development is being polished, and we're doing the groundwork for Chapter 2. I'm hoping to be finished with that in the end of November.

Chapter 2 Gameplay Screenies:
A lot of this is very early in development, likely to change.

Music:

Christopher Nuño, one of our team composers, came up with a new theme for cutscenes. I've uploaded a sample, check it out.

 

Team Recruitment:

Remember the post about open spots in the Selatria Development Team? We posted  a thread for recruitment for Selatria team members on the Voice Acting Alliance. From what I understand, we aren't getting much luck there outside from voice talent, so I'm going to try something new and see if we can get talent from IndieDB.

One of the main talent that we're missing from the team is a good environmental artist to change the look of the grass, the sand, the trees, the water, in order to have an original look for Selatria.

Though, on the other hand, there was a recent post that really inspired me. Reynard Frost, a game developer who worked on the game "Ruins of Rydos" was interviewed by RPG Maker Web, and this question was asked:

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Q: What one thing do you think is important for all RPG Maker developers to keep in mind?

A: The one piece of advice I’d share with everyone is to “Work with what you have”. A lot of folks kind of sit on their laurels waiting for everything to be perfect or to have this ideal amount of people helping them or ideal amount of resources. You’ll never finish your game with a mindset like that. You need to use what you have, and make the best you can with it. If you get some extra help, fine. But work on what you can and make the best of it. It’s better to have a finished product that’s rough than an unfinished mess that’s only partially perfect.

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Work with what you have. I have to take some of that advice.




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Selatria v1.2 Improvements

Download v1.2 of Selatria here.

Changes/Modifications:

-The version of the game is now displayed in the lower-left corner of the title screen.
-Difficulty on Chapter 1-4 has been adjusted.
-Difficulty on Chapter 1-5 has been adjusted.
-Animations for some enemies have been changed.
-New "Head" accessories are now available for Melanie and Number 016.
-New quests have been added.
-New treasure chests have been added.
-New key item has been added that allows voices to be toggled at any time.
-"Wanted Species" and "Rare Monsters" have been renamed to a unified "Uncommon Enemy".
-Properties of certain weapons have been changed.

Fixed Bugs:

-An issue where the guard would reset to her original position after changing areas from Melanie's Cell has been fixed.

-An issue where Number 015 had no status weaknesses has been fixed.

-An issue where "Shade" and "Divine" did too much damage has been addressed.

Selatria Chapter 1 Portraits

Mellow

Ever get the feeling where you're just too tired to do anything?

I think I've reached that point. The past couple of days I wanted nothing to do but sleep. I'm hoping I can spend most of today getting a promotional package for Selatria going. I need to get a good collection of gameplay pictures, music samples, and gameplay videos to entice people to join the team.

Just need a few more artists. Hell, we always need artists.

I also went to a funeral for a distant cousin of mine. You know, being angry and holding grudges against people becomes meaningless when we're all going to end up at the same place in 100 years. Sometimes it's better to just not be angry and accept people for who they are within reason.

If everyone could just do that, the world would be a better place.