Things to consider when developing NC:R

[CMaster]

Started writing this a few weeks ago when NC:R thread first showed up. Only just got around to semi-finishing it:

CMaster's big thoughts and recomendations for Neocron Reloaded post

There are my personal thoughts on things that would be a good idea with regards to Neocron Reloaded. It is based around the core idea of "taking the best from NC1 and NC2", with the slight provisio that I never played NC1, although have played pretty much every incarnation of NC2. It's also going to look at things that Neocron has never done right, and how they might be done better in the future. What this piece is also going to try and stay away from, is changing things from the "Neocron way" to "my way". Obviously that is not possible to entirely avoid, but the core concept is what NCR is trying to do is create a better Neocron, not necessiarly a better cyberpunk MMO. The rest of the thread is for people to agree, disagree, or spot the flaws in what I have suggested, because there will be some.

So some basic assumptions made:

1. Nukklear will not have the time or resources to really build a new game from the ground up.
2. Models, textures and sounds are importable from Neocron.
3. Code, world geometry are not
4. The idea is to stay true to Neocron without recreating the errors of the past
5. Systems are going to generally follow the route that they did before.
6. Nukklear will be happy with Neocron Reloaded existing as a niche product (IE no chasing afer WoW/ToR/Farmville user numbers, something like say, STO or BSG is more the idea), with it having a short and cheap development
7. Not withstanding the above, they would like NCR to be more accessible than NC, what with the original NC having a huge number of players who just "bounced off"

What's So Good About Neocron?
Given the idea is to take "what's best" from the many incarnations of Neocron, it's perhaps best to consider just what is so great about Neocron. Obviously everybody has a slightly different reason, but we can distill down some commonly agreed reasons.

• Atmosphere/Sense of Place - This is one of the things that comes up time and time again with Neocron. It's also one of those thigs that is of course very hard to define where it comes from. However, we can certainly go some way to examing the key points. Sound design is almost certainly a big part of it. Effective sound really draws you in to a world. The graphical style certainly helps. Neon Signs and shops everywhere. Business. The use of furniture, raised walkways etc all helps in the levl design, although I'm not sure that the core level layouts do much good. {url=http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/365716.html]Others have written[/url] about the sense of place and design in Neocron. Sadaly, while a key component of Neocron, it's hard to really nail down what needs to be preserved here. The fact that NC is a sci-fi setting also sets it apart here. There's still very little done in the MMO world with a successful science fiction world.
• Action driven gameplay. What brough me personally in to Neocron, and has certainly attracted plenty of others over the years is the nature of the gameplay. While most MMOs are tab-target driven and based off abilities on cooldowns, Neocron was sold to me as "a sort of multiplayer Deus Ex". Now it didn't live up to that claim in a whole bunch of ways, but the fact that Neocron's core gameplay was exciting, if rather flawed and lacking in depth really made it so much more worth playing than a lot of the competitors in the MMO space. There's a lot more to the game than just watching numbers go up, and that's a huge and important thing.
• The skill system. Neocron's customisability in terms of character appearance is pretty poor. There's not a huge amount that can be done there, and once your character has been made even less. However, the customisation in terms of statisitcs and capabilities is huge. This, combined with the lack of class requirements on the vast majority if items meant that you never quite new what any character was capable of. Certainly, the classes had their strengths and weakeness, but there was no way to know quite what any spy, PE or monk was up to until you fought them.

What should we do about all this?
So, given some idea of what Neocron: Reloaded will have to change and what it won't, some vauge feeling of what works and what didn't in the original Neocron, we come to the major point of this post: what should be done in the new game. This isn't going to be a full design doc, it won't fill in all the details of how things should work. Instead I'll try to describe the general outline of how things I think would be best implemented. I'll also be drawing on both mine and other's posts from this thread

• Don't be afraid to throw out what is complelety broken - especially when/if it is being developed from scratch anyway. We'll come on to some key examples of this later: Outposts, Missions and Hacknet.
• Give NCR true FPS combat - guns fire either hitscan or projectiles, that do damage on impacting targets. The weird hybrid system of NC might have been all that was practical in its time, but now there should be no reason not to do things properly. So many of the problems NC faced with PvP (many of which were blamed generically on "clipping" would never have occured with such a system, defensive strucutres would be more useful, and it would drastically improve PvE, both ending (or at least severly limiting) safespotting while making player positiong vs mobs much more important. I realise some classic players love the current system of Neocron. But it's a strange system, something that immediatley alienates and confuses new players, and it's a system that doesn't really make any kind of sense. When I pull the trigger of my gun, I expect something harmful to come out the end. At the moment, all you get is pretty effects - the harm only comes if you were targetting something already (with a few exceptions).
• Minimise instancing. This all comes back to the strong sense of world and place. Instancing really strongly undermines that. I don't say no instancing at all, as appartments after all are just permenant instances. I also see the chance for procedural mission generation that uses instancing. However, if you want to recreate the feel and best parts of NC, then the real, continuous world is an important part of that. Being able to meet up with friends, ambush enemies, or just encounter new acquaintences anywhere in the world is what made it work. I know that the drive in MMOs in general has been to an almmost entirely instanced world, with the "presistent world" element almost vanishing. There's a lot of people out there that want to see games standing in opposition to that however, and to follow the path of vaugely connected instanced spaces hurts the idea of Neocron as a living world worth fighting over.
• No click zones - or at least, as few as possble. Make it so that maps can easily have new walk across zonelines added - even better make the world continuous and zoneline free, however that would likley be difficult. Click zones are an obvious bodge, have a bunch of weird behaviours tied up in them, and attack one of Neocron's strongest aspects - it's sense of place.
• Focus on Neocron City - I'm guessing there's no easy way to import World Geometry over to Unity. Even if there is, fixing it up for the new engine will still be a big pile of work. What I'd suggest then is that rather than trying to recreate the entire world for first launch, is to just initally focus on the Neocron city. It's the most interesting part of the game, and huge chunks of it (most infamously Mainsewers, but also most of the Outzone and Via Rosso as well as things like the clubs in Pepper Park) went mostly unused. Make the city the real focus of the game. Make Mainsewers relevant and perhaps the link into higher level environments. Worried about the lack of OPs? Create player contenstible facitilites in an expanded Industrial Area. The wastelands can still be developed and implemented, that'd be great - but for starters, just the city would be enough. I'd say there's a lot of space for Neocron City to be pretty drastically redesigned. Keep the core idea - Outzone/PP/Plaza/VR. Keep some landmarks like P1 medicare. But the level layouts could be cleaned a little and the links between them improved dramatically. Places like the Outzone and Mainsewers need to be give a much stronger reason to exist. Make Neocron have something to offer all playrs at all levels, not just a trade hub, a PvP hub, and a couple of "maximum efficency" levelling spots, joined by whole swathes of ghost towns.
• Make skills, differentiating character builds really matter. The skill system in Neocron is frighteningly complex. Five independtly levelled statisitics, each with a whole clutch of subskills within them that can be player adjusted. Despite the fact that a lotof this frequently went over player's heads, I'd encourage this system to be left as it is. However, that isn't to say there aren't some very important changes to be made. First off, I'd like to see the tech levels (and hence mainskill requirements) stretched dramatically. In NC2.3, a spy can acheive a dex stat of well over 120, I think pushing 130 at the upper limits. Doing so comes with a whole load of costs in terms of losing out on important subskills and defensive stats. However, right now, there is no reason to make the strech. I'd love to see it so that there could be multiple ways of building pure combat characters, rather than the fairly static environment we have now. The core things I would look to see possible are A: defensive builds, these would focus on gaining defence while using a low end (~80-100) mainskill weapon. Defence could be gained through improving psi, str, or con stats; B: subskill specailists, these characters would use a mid level (95-110) mainskill weapon, witha focus on boosting stats like weaponskill, agility and weapon lore (or new equivilants), they'd get good damage, fast aming and lots of ability to aim on the move with this sort of build; C: Mainskill pushers. Using the top end of weapons with high mainskill requirements (110-130) these characters would be able to use the fanciest, most powerful of weapons - but their defenses and their skills in using said weapons would be diminished. This only covers the combat side of things, but I hope where I am going is clear - there should be reasons to really push the envelope, opportunities in that space - but it shouldn't be necessary to be focussed on one particular stat to make a character viable.
• Make the skill system transparent There has to be some element of caution here, or it can make it too easy to work out the mathematically "best" character. However there needs to be at least some more clarity in the way skills work, for so many players never really understood, and many crazy myths went around. The first and simplest aspect is that players should be able to see what skills they will gain experience in when using an item. Weapons should explain that they will train, say str and dex and int. Construction tools dex and int. Etc. Beyond that, players should be able to see in game what skills are contributing. The full mathematics needn't be included, but it would be great to see that your rifle damage was "70% RC 30%WEP" for example. Giving players a huge possibility space with their skills really isn't much use if they can't see what their skills do. While we're at it, let's not have any more of the stupid "sweet spots" like we see currently with hacking, where any more than 110-120 hack actually makes hacking harder again.
• Remove implant (and armour) maluses. Now testing could prove me wrong with this one, but my feeling is this: by and large, the negative elements on implant's aren't really helpful. Merely using one implant over another represents a massive opportunity cost - that should be enough. Especially as most of these negative effects just succeed in being a nusiance - a slight speed reduction in exchange for badly needed mainstats is typical. It may be that the need to fight ridiculous hybrids forces negatives in to the equation, but I'd like to try without. (as an aside, it would be interesting to see items like the old Kami chips suuposedly were - huge, realy penalties in exchange for milder, but unusal benefits)
• Missions. Missions in Neocron at the moment are broken. The horrible interface that is used to find them. The trivial rewards. The fact that a "very hard" mission involves killing a mob that is less than half the maximum enemy level. So I'd suggest ditching all of it as it is. Even the much loved "quickjobs" just encourage farming of the few specific mobs on the list (eg rats, aggressor captains) rather than brancing out into other zones. Instead, I think what has been acheived with Black Prophecy points towards something more desirable for this. Taking on a mission from a faction picks for a list of tasks (Raid rival warehouse/defend faction assetts/assainate rival individual/deliver key componet/etc/etc). The specifics of the mission are randomly generated, the player sent to an appartment style-lift to go to the mission zone. You could even introduce the risk of other players from the target rival faction being sent (who would of course know the relevant code to gain access) to intercept the player carrying out the mission. Elements outside the key combat aspects of the mission (and even some of those) should take place in non-instanced areas as well, to keep the important world link discussed above. If all this is too much to do, then make the mission system very, very simple. Three drop down boxes. Faction/Task(kill/const/res/rep/rec)/Target(mob name/item to be built/res/etc).

[CMaster]

• Outposts. Player owned territory is fantastic. It's a big part of high level Neocron and absolutley should remain. The current outpost system however shouldn't make a comeback in any way. The first thing that needs to be considered in the new design is that player owned territory needs to be defensible, and the players owning it need to be able to get there and defend before the defenses are bypassed. So this means walls, gates, shields, whatever that keep hostiles out. It means that these obstructions need to delay the attackers for long enough for defenders to mobilize. The rewards for owning territory need to be real as well. The obvious route is some kind of clan income - this has it's risks, but is worth investigating. Other options that can be added in to the mix are things like access to unique resources (or rare but otherwise obtainable might be better), improved efficency for processes (maybe researching in a high tech lab produces 2 BPs per run rather than one for example; maybe vehicles can only be built in a garage(or are much faster)). The existing idea of skill bonuses can be added in to the mix as well, however it isn't really enough on it's own and many of the exisiting bonuses are not useful (mine, uplink, fortress). It would be great to see the general idea of player contestible territory made a more core part of the game. So parts of the city in outzone or Ind A could be ownable (especialyl if going with my earlier suggestion of making the inital gain NC city only). So all the different outposts in the world as well as provding different benefits operated differently.
• Hacknet. Ditch it until/unless you have the time and the inclination to make it really work. What does really work mean? See the "semi dreaming" section.
• Ganking, factions, soulight. There's no easy answer to all this, but I'd say a few things: Yes, Neocron needs to be violent. But there's no denying that the constant being killed by anyone, including supposed friendlies led to a lot of people not putting up with the game. I'd in general like to see ganking discouraged more strongly, and "blue on blue" incidents strongly punished. My preferred way of doing this would probably be related to ditching soulight outright. There'd need to be a way of tracking the agressor in engagements (did beyond %threshold damage would be the obvious path). Attacking somebody within sight of a copbot or "secure zones" should see a bounty placed on that players head for some period of time. Faction sympathy should be hard to earn, with attacking friendlies dealing huge punishments. Equally, whatever punishment factor is used on players for friendly killing, there must not be any straightfoward way to earn it back. We've seen in the past that if there is a grindy way of resetting punishments, then the trolls set themselves up to do it much more efficently and quickly than players genuinely caught out. Systematically, this might mean some kind of exponential effect - for every offense commited, either the punishment increases, or the "probation" time in which they cannot earn back symp increases. No system is ungameable, but it's possible to create one so painful that few will bother (and after all, we want a world in which sometimes settling a personal grudge with a supposed "ally" is worth the cost). Equally, I'd like to still see something like warzones (and perhaps not just restricted to player owned territory) where the factions turn a blind eye to what goes on there, with a possible exception of intra-faction combat.
• New Player experience - Newbie MC5 was a disaster. Mr Jones was a step in the right direction. An improved tutorial, integrated into a Mr-Jones style quest and explanation chain within the city is the way forward. Esepcially when combined with the "greater transparency" elements discussed above. Neocron City's atmosphere is a big part of the game's draw. So show newbies that. Clarity is what they need - make sure they know where they are going and what they are doing. Make sure the damn nav-ray works. Don't be afraid to explain a few systems along the way.
• Find a space for APUs - I talked through one option here. I'm sure there are other things that could be done as well. I dare say few would cry tears if they were gone entirley. However one thing is for sure - if APUs represent best offence with worst defence, and if PPUs increae all characters defence by a fixed amount, then APU/PPU teams will always trounce anything else. So either APUs find another space other than pure damage dealers, or PPUs act as a defensive multiplier, rather than defense addition.
• Minimal chrome on the UI - Says it all.

Semi-dreaming
This section is for things that I'd love to see in the game, and still fit into the existing Neocron model, but may be stretching it a bit, taking things beyond the scope of the "Reloaded" project. The above Hacknet, Outpost and maybe even Mission sections have already touched on this. However, these elements shouldn't require reams of new content, or making some radically different game:

• Improve utility. One thing I would love to see is non-combat skills having more application. As said, the idea of an "MMO Deus Ex" brought me to the game, and non-combat use of skills is a big part of that. As it is, the only utility skill really is hacking, with hacking of OPs being necessary, and a couple of quests/levelling areas needing a door hacked open. I'de like to see construction and research skills also opening doors, repairing necessary equipment in levelling areas etc. Really I'd like to see combat engineering being a thing - with a combination of weapon and contruction skills, combat engies could thrown up turrets, traps etc. Researchers could maybe gather intel on enemy stats and weaknesses. Implant could become a more general medical ability, with the ability to provide some kind of medium term buff. You see the general idea.
• Make a worthwhile Hacknet What is needed for Hacknet to be worthwhile? For it to be it's own space with it's own rules, not just a cut down version of "real world" movement and combat. For Hacknet to actually effect things that matter - what wpuld be great to see is every object of sufficent importance to have a hacknet equivilant, that a hacker could manipulate. For high level missions/quests, having a hacknet hacker as part of the team could be necessary to open paths and control systems. For other missions/environments/quests it could just represent an alternative way of doing things. However all this becomes close to making another game. Expansion material perhaps, but likley not a good plan for inital release.
• Allow investment in territory ownership - It would be nice for clans to have a way to really establish themselves a base, with approriate costs of course. Turrets were a good start on this pattern. Let clans put in furniture, vendingmachinets etc. Maybe a vehicle spawner/garage for wastes outposts. Buffed defenses in other ways etc.
• Make quests/missions/levelling zones more sophisticated - To be filled in
• Ditch psi - To be filled in, may be inapporpriate
• GMs, events and player generated content - to be filled in

If anybody wants more details on how I'd do these things, perhaps some possible formlaes for the math elements, UI mock ups, possibly even game element mock ups/simulations, then shout up and I may deliver given the time.

[Drachenpaladin]

I can barely agree on any of your points...

Ganking, factions, soulight i agree that it needs some work but what you suggest: no.

Also the mission-suggestion sounds pretty much like instancing you want to minimize

And where have you read that world geometry cant be imported into Unity?

[Biglines]

wasteland geometry is probably the easiest to import into unity. If they still have the height maps it's about 30min-1hour or so to completely make a wasteland zone (most of the time spent re-texturing the roads in, and placing the models again).

[Powerpunsh]

KK really should focus their time on things, that can be solved by changing some values instead of making things complete different. Before we are talking about stuff like this, kk should ask us what part of NC1 NC2-2.2 should they stick together.

I can agree to most of your ideas beside true FPS combat and the current skill system. True fps Combat in a RPG game is not good in my opinion. The current skill system is not complexe or something. It is pretty easy to understand and by far one of the best ive seen in a game.

I would add a rework of the City Term to your list. That would fix the mission system and could give some outpost settings improvements.

[daughterolilith]

[ edited - Leave the moderating, to the moderators. Thanks. ]

[tarasm]

I also have to agree with drachen, i dont agree with most of your points and the changes you are suggesting would change this game way tooo much from what we love

[MadMeleeFreak]

I'd say safe the major changes for possible NC 3. NC:R should concentrate on fixing the major bugs in NC 2.2 and bringing back some things from NC 1 (like Turrets that are actually useful to have in an outpost).

If you want true FPS combat keep a close look on Planetside 2. That one looks like it's gonna be an easy to access funtime.

[William Antrim]

I like the outpost change ideas, and the FPS ideas personally. I am not gonna shoot you down in flames like some of my predecessors as I can see alot of thought went into the original ideas.

I think hackable gates is a good fix to the OP idea. Start off on the outside of the gate and hack 3 terminals to get "into" the console to own the op. Hacknet can be removed but it still gives the defending team a chance to stack up their troops inside the hackable room to defend. It is a simple solution to a complex problem.

[Kamuix99]

A major thing that I dislike about NC PVP are these cookie cutter builds and the 3rd person perspective hopping jumping furball battle vids. I like the FPS aspect of the game, but when pvp battles only end in chars running around in hilarious speed, spraying with rares, I pass on that.

[gamefreak]

I like most of it as well. I'll comment more later, but first: I don't understand your hate for the hacknet.


I think it's better to have hacknet how it is, than to have it be just another mini game. Of course there's too little content in hacknet atm, but there s tons of cool stuff you could add to hacknet. KK should really add the hack minigame to hacknet f.e. so you can hack

doors or terminals which give you buffs or something inside hacknet. They could also introduce different demage types or some kind of stealth/change of your character appearance to hacknet etc etc. I think there are lots of possibilities to be creative with hacknet.

And although the level design in hacknet is a bit monotonous atm, that could also easily be changed.

[CMaster]

The level geometry thing is my guess, not necessarily accurate. It was listed under "assumptions" for a reason. It depends on how much source files they still have of all of this. It's possible that there might be a way to import the original .map files, but trying to convert the .bsps would create a mess, better to just recreate. Again, if they have the original height maps for the wastes, like Biglines says they could easily be reused. All the objects in the outer world are .bsps in certain locations - they'll need to be replaced, again assuming there is some useful source for them.

Missions/instancing. Yeah, I hesitated. They are intended to be mostly a side thing, not something that people spend most of their time doing. Maybe even limit it to once a day. Other players should be able to get in to them if they know the code, and perhaps under certain circumstances other players could be given the code. However I am still in two minds about the whole thing, and I do actually think it's too much to aim for in NC:R on reflection.

Power - all I say about the skill system is to just give some ingame info on what your points actually do, and try to make more setup variety possible. I don't want to change anything core about the system - it works, despite (even because) of being much more complex than most other MMOs. What I think you need to realise is that KK can't just "change some values". They are going to have to rewrite almost all the game code. Mostly, the focus would be on recreating what was there already, however why recreate something that doesn't work at the moment?

About the OP changes - changing the bonuses would be easy, and they certainly need to be more useful. A quick-fix for op fights would be this: All Ops gain a shield that covers all the buildings. Only people who would not be attacked by turrets are allowed through this shield. Some generic building is dropped on the outside as a "shield generator". This can either be hacked like current op terms, or blown up maybe. 3 minutes (adjustable) after being deactivated, the shield goes down. There we go, the end of UG camping, and the chance to fire from the walls on the attackers, rather than having the attackers STARTING inside the walls.

Regaring FS/SL/Ganking: I didn't really propose any concrete solutions. The bounty idea I'll drop, as I've realised this weekend it's massively exploitable. I've had some clearer ideas on what to do about it now. The core point is though - some system is needed to punish ally-killing, which can't just be fixed with 20-30 minutes of grind.

Anyway, keep the criticisms coming. In some cases I clearly wasn't clear enough. In others, I'll agree that I got carried away and went to far.

[nabbl]

I think hackable gates is a good fix to the OP idea. Start off on the outside of the gate and hack 3 terminals to get "into" the console to own the op. Hacknet can be removed but it still gives the defending team a chance to stack up their troops inside the hackable room to defend. It is a simple solution to a complex problem.

Why not making some of the walls destroyable? So the defending Clan gets an information when someone attacks the Outpost walls. The enemy then has to fight the walls first and you have the time to gather behind.
After the fight is over you have to repair the walls again.

[Model192]

Don't be afraid to throw out NC2 art/models and go back to NC1 player models.

Seriously.

NC1 models are more in-theme. NC2 models are just TRASHY.

[Biglines]

well he already said they were gonna use the best of nc 1 and 2, so my guess is they are gonna use the models