Some consoles, particularly of the RPG variety, have included mini games for additional flavor.
How it could have meshed in the last game:
A bookie in the Rikti monkey Fight Club
A carnival style "don't let the ring touch to wire" game in the tech store.
A pinball machine for the sg base.
An old man to play chess against in the university.
The majority of the games here would work well ,and most are public domain. Pretty much any carnival game as well.
http://www.amazon.com/According-Hoyle-Official-Popular-Winning/dp/044991156X
Obviously this could be used to add a great deal of flavor and environmental interaction.
It would add something to kill some time while a team/trial builds, or while waiting for your mates to log on.
It would be a fairly low investment of time and resources to include.
It could tie in with the mobile app features like the character creator, allowing us to engage in at least a small part of the world when we are away from the main game.
It could also function to remove a portion of the excess ingame currency, if you allow some sort of gambling functionality.Slot machine to get those wicked awesome boots. Skill game to unlock that weapon skin etc.
While I doubt this would be even remotely a priority I think it could add some depth to the world.
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
A mission where you have to move just right through infrared sensors!
I would like a mini game where I have to come up with ever more difficult excuses for blowing off a date with an impossibly smart, fun, intelligent, driven, and smoking hot love interest, because I'm neck deep in thwarting Evil.
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
If there were mini games added, I would hope that they are completely optional. I don't really care for mini games.
If you like them, fine. I just don't want to have to play them in order to do something in the game.
Star Trek Online has mini games, though they have generally the same mechanics.
[list][*]When the player scans an anomaly (the source node for crafting materials), a window pops up showing two moving sine waves. One is fixed, the other player-adjustable in amplitude and frequency (mislabeled phase in the game). Up/down arrows change the amplitude and left/right arrows change the phase. If the player matches the two waveforms within the time limit (indicated by a noise pattern slowly moving left-to-right in the background, about five seconds) they get a bonus to the materials picked up. Alternatively, they can just hit F, skip the game, and get the default amount of materials.
[*]When the player drills for dilithium on the mining asteroid, The window displays two triangles, one player-controlled. Again, the player uses the arrow keys to align the triangles (rotation and size) in order to "drill". For each second the triangles are aligned, points are awarded, starting with 5 points for the first "pulses", then 10, 15, and so forth. The computer-controlled triangles change their parameters every few seconds. The goal is to get as many points as you can in 60 seconds. This mechanic is reused with square waves or the "radiation scan" mini-game, and reused intact for the "Tholian crystals" mini-game, but with the added factor that these are in the same room as a Tholian respawn point, and going into combat mode aborts the game outright.
[/list]
You're crazy. You should be recruiting her. She's probably even part of the arc. it works for James Bond...
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
That only works if we have secret identities.
I'm such a sucker for this kind of thing, even in BioShock I've blown all my money whenever there's a slot machine, even if it flat out tells you the rewards are awful. In fact that makes me even more determined to get a jackpot..
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
In addition to chess, I would like options for checkers and go. Go would have to be against another player however.
Beautiful
I had a library of macros for my "soldiers" mastermind characters-- every time I hit a particular key, another part of the converastion would appear (another key let me select through the different topics). Sometimes they'd argue over who should "pull" sometimes they'd flirt with / ogle at heroines that pass by, etc.
A few of them were about getting calls from SO's at the absolutely worst time, but I never took exactly this direction with them. Wish I had. It would've been fun.
If you recruit her, she's dies in the third act, Lin! She's my Hottie McHotterson.... I can't be letting her die.... she hasn't called me "Tiger" yet :P
but with or without SI's you could have a mini-game like this.... with your aunt Mae or your PO.... or whatever. :P
for the most part... isn't Crafting just a mini-game? It would be nice to see crafting show up as a power pool... so if you were Iron-man, you could be a blast-tank with the tinkerer power pool that enabled you to craft....stuff.
not exactly a mini-game, but it would be kind of interesting if crafting functioned similarly to combat (where your "lab" is the target, and have to use your "Crafting powers" to successfully complete the encounter)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
I would like to see secret identities actual take the form of mini games or side quests. Work at a news paper? J.J. whats photos of the latest crime lord on his desk by 5 o'clock. Cook at the Diner? play a quick game similar to one of the Papa's ______area games. I think that The Sims:The Urbs did some sort of mini game with there job system might look into that.
In one of the GURPS Supers editions I have, they had "gadgeteer" as a pseudo powerset that worked as follows:
Spend X points, get one "utility belt item." Anytime during a game's session, you can take that item and make it whatever the situation requires. For more points, you got more instances of gadgets to use, until you had a whole utility belt.
.
"This acid will burn through the bars in no time..."
"Just a moment and the batpick will make short work of this lock..."
"Not to worry, I applied a tracking device to him as he was making his escape..."
---
In theory, the equivalent of a pool power on a long recharge that, when used, gave you a limited-use temp power (or inspiration) of your choice would be a fitting equivalent, but its hard to match the fun ways this could be improvised (and parodied) in a pen-n-paper game.
I recall a time when you could scan anomalies and get the crafting stuff without being bothered by the mini game. I actually enjoyed that time. My crafting supplies dwindled a lot after the change because I don't like the mini game interfering with my supply gathering. If it was completely optional, I'd be a happy gatherer. Since it's not optional, I'm not a happy gatherer.
Um ... if you don't want to play the minigame, you can just hit F (or ESC) and skip the game in order to be awarded the default of materials ... so it is completely optional ...
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The game still pops up every time I go to collect materials. Every time. Whether I escape out of it, let the timer run out, or attempt to match the waves, I still have to deal with the mini game. I would like the option where the game doesn't even pop up for me.
For what it is worth, I never intended to suggest it would be anything other than completely optional.
And I always considered Wentworths/Black Market+crafting a mini in its own right.
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
But was it an [i]awesome[/i] death scene? Seriously, you're denying her that?
Gawd, I'm teaming with Greenpeace. >_< :P
Uh, kinda, except it's really spread out? The resource extraction (as mentioned) could obviously be a mini-game, but I'm not sure how the final crafting steps could be made into one without people complaining they can't get the good crafting gear since they suck at the mini-game...
Hmm... maybe if the game sped up the time cost... or you could go to the "cabinet"/"junk bin" and play a mini-game to get that one blasted component you're short?
Cold Iron has me thinking of ripping off the market game from M.U.L.E. for the auction house interface...
Would be nice to have a switch to turn those off for good, yes. And to have the "auto-loot" switch mean "don't bother me with the loot window, just grab it" instead of "the default button in the loot window is 'take all' instead of 'take one'."
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
not necessarily a true mini-game... but does anyone remember the reload "game" in Gears of war?
basically, you hit the reload button, the animation for reloading begins and you have the option to hit another key at just the right moment, and it reloads quciker (I'm probably not explaining that just right)
in any case... I kinda liked that sort of mini game/mechanic.
basically, your options are "do nothing, get the normal result" or "succeed an increase the speed of the action" or "fail and have the action take longer than normal (in GoW, if you miss-timed the quick reload, you'd jam the gun)
Similar timing games were implemented in the Shadow Hearts RPGs (loved the first one....)
a similar mechanic could be used for crafting, perhaps.... or the overall concept could relate to other systems in the game, or how a mini-game might play out in general
I donno, this convo reminded me of it.... seemed fitting
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
I had a Bots/Dark MM whose background was that he was an old Soviet research program into developing a robotic director for combat robots that became sentient; I'd built a sequence of macros for his bots that started with the Assault Bot doing the 'taunt' emote and saying "Ваша мать носит обувь солдата!" ('Your mother wears the footgear of a soldier!'), then the other bots riff off of that in Russian -- "What?" "That's what the phrasebook says..." "That's supposed to be an _insult_?" "I will _never_ understand humans."
Just out of curiosity (this is just musing and has nothing to do with actual plans):
Would you spend a power pick on a long recharge (lets just say once per hour) power that could target either crafting stations or an item you had built and buff it? Perhaps improving the quality of the next item crafted permanently (or make it cost less resources, etc), or making a crafted item temporarily better (better proc chance, higher bonuses, etc)?
Would that be great because now you can sometimes improve your crafting? Or would it suck because now you feel like you have to wait for the power to be available before crafting? Or both?
Should it be a really big bonus to make it worth a power pick? Or not so big, so it isn't 'necessary' for crafting?
You can apply these sorts of questions to developing just about any ability in a game.
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IANAL, IMHO, WYSIWYG, YMMV, IIRC, AFAIK, ETC
[color=#ff0000]Composition Assistant Director, Composition Team[/color]
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To be honest I would spend a power POOL on it.
1.app store (Remote auction house interface)
2.Frequent shopper club card (discount on all vendor purchases)
3.Portable workshop (crafting table as a summon)
4.master craftsman(superior design or build quality=x% boost to enh built)
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
As a poweruser, I'd LOVE a one-time permabuff for myself, but I can see this as incredibly damaging to a long-term game. I'd be much more in favor of a temporary buff-based power. I'd see it (for tech-themed) as a "tinker" buff- by spending time on one of your powersuit's enhancements, you've been able to boost its performance by X for the next few hours. Similar things for magic (imbuement), etc.
Very nice.
Would've been fun to run with them with Russian Blue, my psi dom feral catgirl- a throwaway by-product of Dmitri Krylov's metahuman research division. I researched a few of Russian curses and creative phrases for her. As a PSI, she had extremely mixed feelings about bots. On one hand, she couldn't read them, so she couldn't predict them and therefore found it impossible to trust them. On the other hand, since she couldn't read them, she didn't have to endure the nearly constant barrage of perverted surface thoughts of those surrounding her....
I'd prefer crafting to just be crafting. Simple and not involve buying gems to improve an item or wards to guarantee your item doesn't fail. If you have what you need, you make what you wanted.
Reverse engineering however, I'd definitely like to see a way to improve that via an extra set of optional skills, which I guess a pool pick could provide.
Outside of crafting, if you were boosting or adding a secondary effect to a power, say a minor debuff for an hour to all ranged attacks.. that could definitely be a clickie power pool pick.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
Not as a Level Up power pick. Anything I can't use every 5 minutes or less is a wasted power slot. Case in point, I never particularly cared for the [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_Slot]Lore Incarnate Powers[/url] due to their long recharge times.
Ehhh ... not recommended. I see what you're going for, but I'm leery of the kinds of edge cases and power creep that this kind of thing could potentially induce, particularly for excessively "delicate" balancing acts such as PvP. Costing less resources is the closest I'd want to get to this sort of functionality, and even then I'd recommend limiting it to a rebate on currency costs rather than on commodities consumption.
If the system in effect creates Items [i]Of Quality[/i] then you instantly generate a system of HAVES versus HAVE NOTS which can potentially create "ripples" of instability in the game's fabric of how things get balanced (because it has to be accounted for, if nothing else). So in answer to the question I believe the proper response is [b]BOTH[/b] and that the downsides marginally outweigh the upsides in a variety of ways.
The implications of this question stray dangerously close to the Not Inherent Stamina precedent. The danger here is the HAVES versus HAVE NOTS aspect of this, and the precedents it would set in terms of manufacturing of "Best Gear" ... which as we all know the Min/Max Crowd will latch onto like a rabid hyena, even if the bonus is only temporary. The best answer I can give you to this question is that it ought to be okay to improve the CONVENIENCE of any sort of crafting activity in this fashion, but use of such functionalities ought not influence the "power level" of the results in any way, I'm thinking.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
As others have said, a requirement to use a 'real' power slot for such a thing could be quite damaging to a character's game play viability (unless that character is only intended for the likes of crafting/banking).
Such a "power up" will be viewed by a lot of people who do crafting as a must-have. As anyone who has looked into character optimization knows, people can and have created spreadsheets and more to squeeze that last 0.1% advantage out of their character/gear.
Questions that this raises in my mind include:
Is there any advantage to making it a power pick as opposed to a purchasable temporary power or resource?[color=red]*[/color]
If everyone has access to this advantage, and since the bonus (either as a direct buff to the boost or a resource saving feature, especially for rare/expensive resources) would almost certainly be non-negligible, why not bake it directly into the crafting system?
Is there any other wrinkle such a feature could add to crafting, beyond how good/powerful it makes a character, that makes its use a matter of taste rather than a question of mathematics?[color=red]**[/color]
[color=red]*[/color] Provided it is a concern, the primary danger of adding any kind of "optional" cost to crafting is that it will create a greater divide between those who are able to dedicate more time to it, or the game in general, and those whose time is limited.
[color=red]**[/color] For my part, I can't think of only one since anything that affects the character is either handled through the AB or becomes a question of numbers. That one option is to introduce long crafting times that are reduced by the application of this feature.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
9tails ... I'm going to throw a boomerang here on this question you've posed. You ready?
Instead of looking at any kind of "crafting bump" as being a Power Pick you select during Level Up at a Trainer ... what if instead it was a Temporary Power that needed to be "rebought" every time it gets used? That would, in effect, turn this particular function into being something of a sink that would drain resources (currency, commodities, inventory, blah) out of the in-game economy. Any in-game economy that is not going to be subject to runaway inflation needs to have both creation and destruction, creating "churn" in the market overall, so the creation of sinks for resources is definitely something to look at.
Now consider that such a Temporary Power could be set up in a "staged" sort of way, where how long it lasts (either charges to consume or a time duration) depends on how much the Player "sacrifices" (which is the sink portion) in order to achieve the benefit in a "burn more to get more" kind of increasing returns system. That way, it would be possible to accommodate occasional "one off" crafters as well as "bulk order" crafters.
Simply for the purposes of getting the mental gears turning ... let's assume that the sink for the Temporary Power was defined as ... Common Enhancements (ie. the City of Titans equivalent to Single Origins). The "cost" of being able to access this Temporary Power could then be set up as "sacrifice {X} number of Enhancements, ALL DIFFERENT" in order to get the Temp Power. So you could set up something like ... spend 1 Enhancement to get a Temp Power to craft 2 items ... spend 2 Enhancements to get a Temp Power to craft 5 items ... spend 3 Enhancements to get a Temp Power to craft 9 items ... and so on. Set the time limit as being 5 minutes per Enhancement sacrificed and you're good to go. The requirement that none of the Enhancements being sacrificed can be the same would then create Inventory Pressure on how high you could go with this Temp Power in terms of earning charges, and would provide a sink for Common Enhancements (that will be dropping everywhere from everything) aside from using them as Vendor Bait.
Indeed ... if the "sacrifice" called for to get the Temporary Power to craft with is [i]sufficiently easy to obtain[/i] then it would even be "fair" to set up the crafting system such that in order to craft ANYTHING the Temporary Power is necessary as a pre-requisite and "gateway" into the crafting system on a temporary basis that can be renewed fairly easily. Using a common Loot Drop as the basis for the "permission slip" to craft then ensures that so long as there are things to be crafted that the in-game economy will encourage not only the gathering of those common Loot Drops (I suggest Enhancements) but also the consumption of those same Loot Drops ... and because of the fact that there will be supply and demand pressures, you'll have a commodity that Players may want to auction to each other rather than dump on an NPC Vendor for currency ... creating a Player driven market commodity.
Now ... the boomerang aspect to this is that I still like the idea of imposing a Death Penalty of some sort in City of Titans. My preferred method would be that upon Player Defeat, a [b]randomly chosen Enhancement[/b] the character has slotted is destroyed ... which creates yet another sink for Loot Drops so that no matter how long a character has played (and especially if they are at the Level Cap) there will always be situations in which they'll need to "restock" their Enhancements in order to remain at Full Power. With a system of "common" Enhancements, the costs of this maintenance are very low ... but if you introduce a system of crafted Enhancements, you throw in an element where being able to recover after a defeat essentially involves the potential for needing "lab time" in order to re-craft what got lost in the defeat thanks to the Death Penalty. The amount of "churn" in the supply and demand (and pressures on personal Inventory space) that result from such a Death Penalty would be intended to be modest, provided a Player is not a dedicated faceplanter, but would still be enough to affect and influence the market demand and supply for common Loot Drops of Enhancements ... either in their common form, or in their secondary crafted form (particularly if crafted Enhancements require "combining" specific combinations of common Enhancements following set formulas to produce known and intended results of multi-aspect Enhancements).
So taking the holistic view on your idea, 9tails, I'd need to know from an economic standpoint how a "Power" intended to buff (or in my formulation here, simple "enable") crafting would increase "churn" in the in-game economy by creating a sink of consumption that is greater than its potential for generation of production.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
So I'm seeing crafting as a minigame, and conversation with npc (which reminds me of some of the old PC adventure games).
What about something like a low rez city map, where you try to pilot yourself along a patrol route against the clock?
Or pet trainer doohicky where you could play a simplified version of pokemon, digimon, or even the bomberman generation's pet battles?
Diner Dash esqe game for InFront Steakhouse?
Any other ideas for what ya'll would like to play? Or where a particular game might fit well into the city?
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
I'd previously suggested different "travel" mini-games that could enhance the travel powers.
Flight- you have the option to "ride the wind", which leads to a game where you see cues for crosswinds (that will blow you off course and "hotspots" that will accelerate you, much like the flight/race games other flying obstacles can slow/interrupt you. (Duck! literally!). You can either choose the safe/traditional effortless flight to your destination or opt for something that can get you there faster.
Teleport: assuming teleport mechanics like CoH, use the "double targeting reticle" system used in many games-- one under your control and one that "drifts".. If you align your reticle up with the drifting one effectively enough, you teleport further/faster/for less energy.
Super Speed- can be much like flight.
Super Jump- I imagine "target" overlays that, if hit, represent you landing particularly well with particularly good footing, letting you launch off again.
Acrobatic/parkour type travel- hitting certain targets within certain timeframes provides a momentum boost that gives you better speed/jump height, etc
I have a novel idea: A ski slope!
:P
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
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Redlynne: interesting boomerang
I think a lot of players would find an 'item damage' type death penalty to be onerous (feel free to correct me), even if it could be mitigated by crafting. However, I have considered (remember I a not a tech) the concept of that sort of thing as a voluntary part of PvP: being able to 'wager' some kind of acquisition on matches.
I do like your point about targeting convenience rather than raw power.
On the subject of haves versus have nots: almost any power in the game is almost by definition going to create a situation of haves versus have nots, since not everyone is going to have a given power. I think a better term for what your concern is here might be one of 'recursive advancement'? Where the more you have of something, the more of that something you can get?
Speaking of which,
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!
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IANAL, IMHO, WYSIWYG, YMMV, IIRC, AFAIK, ETC
[color=#ff0000]Composition Assistant Director, Composition Team[/color]
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Having thought of Chronicles of Riddick a mini-game for villains could be...
"Who's the better killer"
Timed scenario. Villains go around killing civilians! Who racks up the biggest count wins! Could even make it an open world PvP event! They go about killing and if a hero happens to see the game in progress (no warning that it's going on) they can jump in and defeat (or be defeated by) the villain! :)
Item damage is for the birds. Please, for the sake of all that's enjoyable, NO.
And Merry Christmas (belated though this may be) to you as well :)
A "mini"-game idea:
Play a Villain/Hero
The purpose of the game is to allow players to play as a member of a particular villain/hero faction. Ever wonder what it's really like to be an aether pirate? An Apokalyptykult groupie? A freshly minted made man with Black Rose? A newly inducted member of the Arcane Sentinel? Now you can find out!
Additional possibilities / expansions include being able to rise up through the ranks (i.e. becoming a LT, boss, and perhaps even EB). Perhaps you could even have missions in which your own hero/villain character comes through to punch your mini-game character in the face.[color=red]*[/color] Maybe a friend could take you on, to discover how tough IFRIT really are, when 'done right'. Perhaps even the likes of aerial battles against other pirates, heroes, or villains (or whatever makes sense for other factions) may be in the cards.
"Mini"-game, indeed.
[br]
[color=red]*[/color] Honestly, who hasn't wondered how badly an AI could screw up our favorite character? Yeah, you, in the back there, I see you and you can go ahead and raise your hand as well.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!