An interesting MMO concept (Zombie Apocalypse)

[Dr paradox]

So, I was just reading about the World of Warcraft Currupted bloodplague incident of 2005, and the later zombie plague event, and it gave me an idea for an MMO setup. basically, it's a zombie apocalypse, simulated in a particular fashion.

basically, you start off as a human. the setting isn't particularly important, but it should be fairly sizable, and land based. anyway, basically, your goal is to survive, at all costs. the place you start out in isn't really secure, so you have to act quickly in order to stay alive. this is where the sizeable world comes in... you can go most anywhere, but there are roving packs of zombies everywhere. certain locations have better fortifications and npc survivors, in addition to vendors, but they also have a higher concentration of zombies. other places, out in the sticks and the like, aren't safe, but the amount of zombie activity is lower. adding a further wrinkle, you need food and water to survive for extended periods.

keeping all this in mind, dying is more or less inevitable. if the zombies don't get you, then natural pitfalls or starvation will. HOWEVER, after you die, you then rise as part of the pack of "Smart" zombies. you get a boost to speed, strength, hearing, et cetera, but you can't use weapons. your goal is to take out Player and NPC survivors, and it falls to you and other zombie players to hunt down any safe havens where human players might be hiding. after you satisfy some condition, such as killing enough humans, you get the option of respawning, be this described as your immune system fighting zombieism off, a miracle cure, or just handwaved, you can click the "Respawn" button and wake up in a random, but generally no immediately perilous, location, with the gear and such you had before you died.

Now, two additional factors: there are no levels. rather, there's a more amorphous "Skill" system, where over time while alive, you can earn skill points to gain slight boosts to particular skills or broader ability scores, like the classic Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Etc. in addition, the skill points are rather difficult to get, and once you get a certain amount, you've hit the cap. it isn't enough to be good at everything, so the game tends to award specialization and teamwork. you could be a strong, well armored, healthy guy, focusing on getting up close and personal, the classic tank, or you could be more intelligent, tending towards making devices, weapons, and hotwiring cars in a modern setting. alternatively, you could be smart and focusing in another field, such as first aid, or be good at spotting things, running fast, and moving silently, acting as a scout. it should have a lot of flexibility.

Finally, the world would definitely have to be open, and fairly amorphous. ladders should be climbable, crates should be moveable for barricades, cars should be able to blow up, and most importantly, in the well fortified locations of npc activity, they need to be raidable, but as soon as they are, another one pops up. It needs to be a shifting, real feeling battlefield for survival.

that sort of thing is what made me thing the blood plague in WoW was such a cool idea: the fact that in a plague environment, people tended to act the same way.

feedback? thoughts? offers of funding? :smallbiggrin:

(EDIT: Final question, what sorts of settings could this work best in? Modern? Western? Fantasy? some sort of Space Colony? and how big a location would it need to work? I don't really have enough experience with game dynamics to make an educated guess...)))

[Ricky S]

I predict you would just have a few groups of extremely high level survivors killing zombies mercilessly and low level survivors being killed as soon as they enter the game. Maybe have the players choose which they want to play.

The problem with just respawning is that people would get tired very quickly and get annoyed at the fact that they cant build up their equipment and such.

As to the size of the world it could just start out as a few city blocks until more people get interested in the game. A modern of futuristic setting would probably be the most fun to play in and draw the most interest.

Its an interesting idea but it would be hard to pull off well.

[Dr paradox]

but part of it, as described, is that there aren't levels: the skills I described don't make you universally more powerful or having more hitpoints, they just represent a measure of specialization in certain in-game tasks. the gap between a starting character and a longtime survivor is noticeable, but not cavernous: a smart starter character still has a chance of taking down a longtime zombie. it just requires more planning and resources. the trick of the game is making skill and reasoning a larger focus than number crunching.

Also, choosing at the outset whether to be a zombie or a human kind of nullifies the concept of the game, which is to set forth a world where the goal is to avoid becoming infected. besides, what I've proposed would already allow people to choose, through the natural course of gameplay: earning the OPTION to respawn, not being REQUIRED to respawn.

two additional notes, when you respawn, you have all of your old skills, and all of the gear you were wearing is just fairly damaged. ALSO, smart zombies have the ability to moan, which attracts all npc zombies in earshot, making them a more dangerous proposition even alone.

you're probably right about the initial size...

and finally, I tend to agree, at least on the modern setting. for the futuristic idea, what sort of location would you have in mind? just a futuristic earth city? a colony on some planet, or the moon?

[Ashtar]

Look up the online game Urban dead (http://www.urbandead.com/) "A Massively Multi-Player Web-Based Zombie Apocalypse" which is pretty much what you describe, but with more depth on the zombie side.

Read up on Historical events (http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Category:Historical_Events), like the Battle of Blackmore (http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Battle_of_Blackmore) or the first siege of Caiger Mall (http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/First_Siege_of_Caiger_Mall). Or follow some survivor diaries (http://www.graham-russell.co.uk/ud/index.php)

[LostEnder]

There is a somewhat similar roguelike called Cataclysm that's still in alpha, but does simulate the survivor experience similar to what you describe. It's pretty amusing.

I'd say the major obstacle to this type of game would be making the environment interactive enough to let the players really show some creativity and not feel like they're so much playing the game as really inhabiting that world. An opposition based MMO would require (at least) twice as much work.

A skill system sounds about right, but what I'd find really interesting would be base building/destruction, traps, and innovating for survival. Think something along the lines of minecraft but with good graphics, and realistic combat.

[Dr paradox]

the environment being highly interactable (Probably not a word) is definitely what I was going for. I mentioned intelligent characters making things, and those would definitely include things like bear traps, although I suppose some basic "Piles full of noisy cans" should work too. IT probably wouldn't need to be to the degree of minecraft, but yeah, building a base would likely come into it. the problem that I can foresee there is griefers deliberately destroying bases while the owners are logged off. in an ideal world, they'd just use the abandoned base to survive, and then move on. but, unfortunately, the internet is not ideal.

what would also be interesting would be the ability to set up a base that would attract NPC humans, vendors, et cetera, but also Zombies. that would probably be done by monitoring some sort of "Safety rating," and if it stays zombie proof for long enough, npc's move in and start setting up their own utilities, as well as keeping the base in repair. that last part would probably have to be a generalization, making the barricades and such regenerate damage taken to them, but it would be nice if the AI could be strong enough for that...

[Trekkin]

Highly interactable environments are a great idea, but probably not terribly achievable without a few caveats for both technical and psychological reasons. They take a lot more computing power, especially for something like this that uses physics, and they exponentially complicate balance--you have to balance all the skills for all the possible environments people could create. Quite apart from that, you'll have people basically doing structure griefing and building brick walls around the spawns.

If you wanted to do that, I'd do it in this way: let us say, for a setting, that you choose a space colony, and that said colony is set up as a system of domes with tunnels (loading screens) in between. That way, quite apart from the bulk of the game world (which may well have persistent decay or something server-controlled), groups of players can buy the rights to build in self-contained little spaces and further pay to link them to whatever hubs might be in the game world, or perhaps for a temporary link to other player-controlled domes. Just as a thought, segregating all that away from the main world keeps the impact, if not the complexity, of the balance issues down.

Incidentally, persuant to your leveling system: what if most skills were either human or zombie-specific, but could synergize with skills for the other faction(s), so that a given character's abilities were a function of its history in the world? Obviously this would have to be paired with a relatively easy way of changing class, but it'd open up the possibility of playing hardcore, if you will, and just letting what happens happen and taking the skills gained thereby, which might let you define the niche a little more.