MMOFPS ideas

The following document was made as a loose collection of ideas which were never properly fleshed out or actualized

A tactical combined arms FPS game where hundreds of players fight in a persistent war. The aim is to make it feel strategic and tactical with very little friction. Combat engagements should be thrilling and impactful but also frequent. Cooperation should be optional and voluntary, the mechanics should be designed to make the player feel like they're doing things of their own volition.

If a vehicle or weapon is available to you, you can just use it without bothering anyone. Nobody is put in charge of you and you aren't forced to do anything you don't want to do.

Overview

Theme

Abstract and video gamey but channeling the aesthetics of a modern civil war or insurgency where soldiers are equipped with ecclectic combinations of gear with different styles and silhouettes.

vibe ref

Map

Large island (likely 16km/sqr), mostly based on Penida Island near Bali but with more abstract/fantastical design. Aiming for a lot of variation and visual interest; volcanoes, natural bridges, waterfalls, caves, mountains, open areas, urban centers, cliffs, underground tunnel networks and bunkers. The main point is to make it as cool as possible or not boring at the very least.

Map Inspo

Terrain should be varied and visually interesting while also designed to enhance the gameplay.

It would be cool to play a game in an enviroment that looks a romantic landscape painting.

Map Design

Structured around a logical hierarchy of strategic points and connections. Something like the following illustration where there is a symmetrical distribution of strategic points and logistical routes such as highways and railway lines. The number of points, connections, and the grid-like structure pictured are just to give a rough idea of some of the logic behind the map design and actual placement and connections would be predecated on terrain features, but the idea to have enough asymmetry to be interesting but while maintaining balance.

• Verticality
• Abstract

Major Strongholds

Smaller Bases

Outposts

Building

Proximity based mechanics for building things like spawn points, fortifications, emplacements etc. As long as all of the conditions and constraints are satisfied you can build stuff without needing anyone's approval or cooperation. Constraints may be you need a special tool, be within a certain radius of a certain structure, have enough resources available or just have enough team mates nearby.

Capturing objectives

An objective is considered captured when 80% or more of the players in the objective zone are on the same team. Objectives can be towns, industrial hubs, airstrips, ports, forts, etc. Each objective has different advantages, such as spawning different types of vehicles or having different types of weapons or resources.

Logistics

Logistics are automatically handled by bots and only require that a secure route exists from a logistics hub to the objective. This means that objectives can be encircled, cut off from supply lines and be put under siege. It also means that supply convoys can be ambushed, looted or otherwise targeted and destroyed. Supply trucks may turn back if the objective is too contested.

Force Projection

Players can spawn on any captured uncontested objective that has active supply lines and available reinforcement capacity. Players can also build spawn points anywhere on the map if they have 3 other friendly players within a 10m radius, but spawn points are an item you have to first obtain and then carried.

Kits

Kits work a bit like in project reality but with some important differences. There is a selection available depending on where you spawn and then there are special crates you can find which have kits you can choose. Kits only define your load-out and serve the purpose of limiting how much of certain weapon types are in play at any given time. Unsure at this stage whether kits should function as specialist classes also or if special items should be something you can pick up independently of your kit, favoring the latter option for now.

Vehicles

Vehicles spawn on timers and different types of vehicles spawn in different areas. If you capture a town near water with a jetty, it might spawn boats or if you capture an airfield it will spawn helicopters and planes.

Mood board

The Map

Mostly based on Penida island near Bali and some of its surroundings.

On the importance of individual player freedom

Game mechanics designed around the idea that the player should be free to do what they want to do, and that players should be insulated from the decisions of others (when it makes sense). This is primarily to solve problems observed in other popular online tactical shooter type games where the mechanics are designed with team participation in mind.

Problems with team based gameplay illustrated with Squad

If you take the game Squad for example: in order to win the game it is necessary to build spawn points and maintain supply lines over long distances while also coordinating attacks and communicating with the other players in your team. These mechanics sound interesting in theory but in practice lead to some pretty serious problems.

Firstly, the players spawn on either side of a huge map and have to travel long distances to get to their objectives. They also have to set up infrastructure such as spawn points, ammo, defenses etc and then do logistics to keep everything supplied. This is to encourage more tactical gameplay and add weight to the player's decisions as they are more consequential than in a more casual game. What inevitably happens however is somebody has to manually go back and fourth driving supply trucks from the base to where they're needed, and this is a really boring chore that nobody wants to do. If nobody does it, it affects everyone else's enjoyment of the game.

If the spawn points are built in the wrong place; maybe too close to the enemy or objective, too visible, not defensible enough etc, then they will be taken out and there will be nowhere near the action to spawn. Then you need people to either transport you in some kind of vehicle of which there is a limited number or you have to spend ages walking to where you need to go. So much of this game and others like it is spent walking around, often by yourself, and then maybe you get killed when you get there or even before which sucks.

The game requires a hierarchy consisting of a commander to coordinate the entire team, squad leaders to coordinate squads and then the rest of the players at the bottom of the hierarchy who are required to join a squad and are expected to follow directions and selflessly play as a team. This almost never actually ends up playing out as it is intended to. Being a commander or squad lead is a surprisingly demanding role which requires a lot of experience and skill to do well, and it's quite rare that a team will have enough people playing these roles that are actually good at it.

This puts a lot of pressure on squad leads as they are expected to coordinate teams of players who have their own will with no real authority, the chain of command is abstract and only works when everyone voluntarily participates. Teams often end up scattered around doing whatever with no real plan or coordination as the squad leader can't really make anyone do anything. They also have to communicate with the commander and every other squad lead on top of their own team which can be very chaotic and overwhelming.

This also creates a social problem where a certain archetype of online persona will gain some kind of admin or mod privileges and use it to gate-keep, make up rules and police other player's behavior, which also sucks and isn't fun.

Cooperation between multiple people is required to do certain things like drive tanks or fly helicopters and these are also gate-kept by the server admins. These things also require you to choose a certain restrictive role. You can't just pick whatever role you want either, squad leads have to use a squad lead kit, somebody has to be the medic and help other players instead of fighting, cool stuff like machine guns/sniper rifles/rockets are limited and oftentimes gate-kept or discouraged.

Overall, Squad is a pretty great game and is extremely popular for a reason, but these critiques are valid.

What Arma Reforger does right

Arma Reforger, probably by accident, provides a similar tactical military FPS experience without a lot of the problems mentioned earlier with Squad. It puts you somewhere on a big map, gives you some toys to play with, some basic rules and objectives and then leaves you to figure out the rest. One of its biggest problems is the community and the fact that it's part of the Arma series. Most servers require dozens of gigabytes of mods that almost always make the game much worse in just about every measurable way. In the old Arma games this was necessary as the entire game was intended to be a very realistic military simulation sandbox, but Arma Reforger's greatest strength is not only that it's an actual game, but a casual one that can just be played by pretty much anyone.

Lessons learned and solutions

In order to apply these lessons, we have to rethink everything from a new perspective. It's not enough to take things we like from other games and try to put them together in a way that's slightly different or improved. The market is increasingly over-saturated and the novelty just won't cut it. Everyone has seen it, it's been done before and it's boring. It's good to learn from or take inspiration from other things, but it's necessary to zoom out and look at things from the right perspective in order rebuild from first principles.

We want interdependence and cooperation without imposing arbitrary rules or unnecessary burdens on the player. The game is on a grand scale, so we want the game to feel strategic without being overwhelming. We want the player to feel like their participation in the battle counts and that their actions have meaningful consequences. We want logistics and reasonable constraints on movement without friction or obligation. The player should always have a goal which they are compelled to strive for and any means to achieving that goal should be reasonably available to them.

Technical Goals

Lots of concurrent players

Foxhole comfortably handles 240 players per segment according to AI summary. This at the very least should be possible with the right optimisation strategy (and hardware of course).

Localization

As correct as possible automatic localization into many languages. This could be achieved using something like gnu gettext, translations could be auto-generated ahead of time with AI or some other form of translation tool. May have to hire someone when I have the means to do so to make sure this is done properly.

High Performance on low end hardware

The engine already does a good job of structuring data for high throughput on all supported hardware. The biggest limitation being the hardware needs to have a back-end supported by SDL_GPU. We want extremely fast loading times, effortless performance, efficient power usage, very high throughput server infrastructure, etc.

UNSORTED IDEAS TO REVISIT

Project Reality:
Project reality engagements are mostly fun when within 200m or so. Moving from cover over open ground or crossing a street is thrilling because of the danger involved. It would be nice to have that experience without the painfully slow pace and clunky feeling of moving around in that game. I feel like suppression, quick time to kill, realistic weapons handling and the stabilization mechanic are the main contributing factors to making that work. Having slightly faster movement with more fluidity and infinite stamina might not affect it too much, will require testing.