new game idea- battlefield game

[Jonathan]

Here's an idea for a game which could be implemented as a mod: a battlefield game in the spirit of a football game. To wit: there are two opposing sides, player vs. computer or player vs. player. Each side is composed of a team of many, many characters. Most characters are AI-controlled, but the player can possess one and play as that character until he chooses to switch to another character closer to the action. The player can call plays, or give orders, that roughly define what the team is going to do, but it is up to each AI to decide how to do that. Play proceeds until one team is eliminated or a certain victory condition is met.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Anyway, this has a couple of nice features. It allows for large (200+) battles with a small squad number of players or in singleplayer. It allows for big set pieces like Call of Duty, but expands death from a save-reload mechanic to something more meaningful and permanent. It also slots into a neat niche between RTS combat and FPS combat without the headaches of hybrid gameplay.

Here's a example adapted from Call of Duty. Set up the Battle of Stalingrad with the player as Russia and the computer as Germany. Give the Russians 1000 men with 500 infantry rifles and the Germans 300 men with machine guns. The German objective is to kill all the Russians and the Russian objective is to plant their flag in the city.

The player possesses one Russian and charges the German position. He dies from machine gun fire and finds himself in the body of a completely different Russian trapped behind a car, pinned by German fire. The player yells for help. Several AI Russians run over to his position. While the Germans shoot his comrades, the player takes advantage of the distraction to flank the German machine gun bunkers. The player is able to clear out half the Germans in the bunkers before he is surprised by a Nazi with a knife in a back room and dies. The player finds himself possessing a solider fresh off the boat, so he switches characters until he finds another guy on the front lines. The Russians have taken advantage of the relative lack of machine gun fire to advance up the hill and the player helps clear out the rest of the bunkers.

Naturally, objective-based gameplay like I just described would be somewhat complicated. However, I think this is plenty do-able as a team deathmatch scenario.

[Jason]

Isn't this like Rainbow Six with AI backup?

[Jonathan]

Maybe. I was under the impression Rainbow Six was small squad combat only. I guess the distinguishing factor here would be scale, then.

[Jason]

Yeah, pretty much. I didn't play the later Rainbows, but the original was very much like your gameplay premise.

Your general idea is a good one though and I'm sure if there was more money in MMOGs right now you could get it made.

I think before something really good comes out though, you're going to need better communications strategies and technologies. There needs to be more structure, but not too much structure. One example: Only being able to say a few phrases using key commands is too limiting, but using plain voice is too unstructured and you get people talking crap.

Also, you're going to need to segment and have multiple compelling games within one game (e.g. puzzle pirates).

[Jonathan]

Interesting.

I think it needn't be done as a MMOG, though I can see where having a persistent world would be attractive. I envision it as a dozen-mission campaign with support for cooperative play up to a handful of players. You can even decouple the maps to make ten or twelve battles that just need to be fought with no unifying campaign thread.

I think there's a spectrum from rich player commands <--> smart AI. You need a certain amount of intelligence and initiative which must either come from the player or from the computer. My hope would be that by using the best of both currently available that you could meet the requirements.