Talk:Sub Games
Great ideas. Though... people can already do that. Like one of my first (in-game) parties in AO, there was a "Leet Race". All participants were morphed into leets (a small furry critter in that game, and the "adventurer" class has the ability to morph themselves or other into these), and then swam across a pond and back. Very funny.
Some of the things in the list are orthogonal. Trying to categories separate groups.
- Board games. Need board design (and way to securely share it). Need rules engine. (See my "bots" stuff, which I need to add a page on).
- Fighting competitions: The snowball is a "hit->point", just a non-bloody and very limited variant of the others.
- Betting: totally separate, and parallel, layer. Any of the competitions could be bet upon.
- Races
Hmm, I find you already did most of that. :)
By the way, the "Exploration" part is something I really like in City of Heroes. You get "badges" for various things. Like "healed NNN points of health" (three of those, top is I think 1mil points). And, well, exploration badges. Get to some point, get a badge. They also have "history" badges. You get those for reading specific plaques placed throughout the game world, or for specific groups of plaques.
--Jae 21:34, 6 March 2006 (CET)
Ah, the badges idea sounds cool. In Battlefield 2 you get various military badges too, like Armored combat badge, Healing badge, Killing badge, Parachute jumper badge and so on when you have used the vehicle / done the activity / played the class enough times and well enough. They don't have any effect on the game, but they are fun, because of the positive feedback. One could even think of some ways that having some badge might be beneficial in the game (e.g. having tournament wins / badges might get you easier accepted into the cavalry or give you a higher pay).
Battlefield 2 also has military ranks, which I think you get after some number of kills / experience points, that allows you to use more weapons, and give you higher priority when applying for the battle commander role in the game.
Regarding the types of games, your division looks nice, I'll still have to go through them myself and try to classify / decompose them.
EDIT: this is me, zzorn, btw. Need to log in..
--192.100.124.219 12:08, 10 March 2006 (CET)
I like the military rank ideas in WoW (as much as I've seen so far, that is, only have one char who's got a rank).
Only don't like the Battlegrounds (in general, and even if I'd like to have a Counterstrike in an MMORPG, I dislike the implementation).
--Jae 14:05, 10 March 2006 (CET)
The only problem with the miliraty ranks in WoW is that they are time based instead of skill based - to get to the top ranks, you have to play tens of hours a day - and to stay on top, you have to continuously invest this kind of time, because the ranks are reset once a week or something like that.
There is a rant about that here: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml
A ranking system more similar to chess (or go) rankings could be more useful - the more skilled opponents you win over, the more your rank rises and their rank lowers.
--zzorn 14:55, 10 March 2006 (CET)
The battle grounds kind of make a nice sub-game inside WoW. I enjoyed the capture the flag game in the lowest level battleground. While there could be more variety of maps, and perhaps more strategical elements, it was pretty fun.
Anything in particular that you dissliked about them?
Of course, the outcome has no effect on the game status - the night elf or the orcs will never be able to conquer that piece of land. In a more realistic game where the players can affect the world, the battle should have some kind of lasting effect. There's some interesting possibilities in this direction, I think.
--zzorn 15:18, 10 March 2006 (CET)
Read that rant on what WoW teaches. Even though I'm not sure "what does the game teach someone" is a important/proper frame of reference... it's still an interesting rant ;)
Mostly what I don't like of BG is the inaccessibility. Tried 2 or three times (haven't played that long yet, and discovered the BGs only quite recently) to just get in the queue... which is useless. You need Alliance and Horde teams ready... but due to non-comm between the sides, not even OOC, that's eurgh ;) Unlike Counterstrike et al (which I think is a fair comparison), where you always find players (okay, maybe the "EU/US" split has something to do with it... hate that, since my waking hours are/were not quite ordinary ;)
If they'd done it, well, like DoD, CS etc, where you can open a server, and join any server (= BG), with displays of which instance has how many players, that would be much more fun.
On the general "it has no effect on the world as such": I particularly dislike this. I'm really a RPer at heart, but BGs are such a jarring non-RP element... while the idea of ranks in the service of the Alliance/Horde military is, sort of, nice (sort of, because if you join the army, there are duties, all the time...)
If there were actual spots to take and keep, inside the game world, not removed from it, with standard PvP rules, that would be lots nicer.
Which implies, obviously, that I don't want sub-games be removed from the game world, but still be firmly embedded inside it.
EOR (End of Rant) ;)
--Jae 16:08, 10 March 2006 (CET)
True, they are not very accessible (you need to find and talk to some obscure NPC:s in the capitals). Number of players might depend on how populated the server is, when I tried a few times I usually got in relatively fast.
The reason they have their own virual game space (instance) is probably that it is easier to manage - you can make sure that the teams are balanced, for example. In an in-world war, you could not ensure this as easily, and some side could win with crushing manpower, but that is called strategy. Still, some mechanics could be designed to tune open air battles to be more fun.
NOTE: Extracted warfare comments this to an own page, Warfare.
--zzorn (re-added by jae ;)
