The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Game Idea: Avatarus
Fizzle
Player of GamesRegistered User regular
Player of GamesRegistered User regular
The time for idle gameplay is behind us, it's time to move on to idol gameplay. Avatarus (a Fizzle Co. vision) would create a bifurcated gaming experience where players develop two characters simultaneously: a God and an Avatar. Rule the Immortal Realm above and then rule the miserable Mortal Realm below. This game need not be an MMO, but given my addiction to MMO ideas, I'm going to present it as one. Let's get into the possibilities I find particularly intriguing...
Two Characters, Same Rules
The God
The character creation screen pops up. What type of GOD do you want to be?
A warrior god? Very well sir, rippling muscles and horns are at your disposal. Rampage through the battlefields of the heavenly abodes at will. Oh, a great intellect are we? A Divinity of Divination you shall be. Hurl spells from hands and scathing repartees from yammering maw.
In essence, your God is the equivalent of your character in a standard MMO. The only meaningful difference would be the world around you, which would instead focus on heavenly/hellish themes. You would progress through the game and you would level up your character as one normally does (quests/grinds/etc.)
The Avatar
This is where the story gets interesting. The God would, at some reasonably early point in his development, gain the ability to create an Avatar (I will avoid talking about the ins and outs of this, but suffice to say, the ways and means of this process create intriguing possibilities in and of themselves, which I will likely discuss tomorrow). This Avatar would populate an entirely separate realm, namely the Mortal Realm. Since your God cannot interact with this realm, he will rely on his Avatar to conduct his earthly business. In the Same Rules framework, this would merely add an additional layer to the Immortal Realm content, and the Avatar would develop and operate very similarly to the God.
This framework would be decidedly easier to implement than the following idea.
Two Characters, Different Rules
Here the roles of the two characters will operate under different objectives. The God would continue an objective similar to that described above: leveling up to become more powerful/prominent in heaven. The Avatar would be created for the purpose of attracting followers to the God who created him. These two roles may interact in a variety of ways, but I like the interplay engendered by a feedback loop. Let's work through it with an example.
After reaching level 10, Goodward Godly gains the power to create an avatar. He elects to spawn this avatar. The Avatar enters the mortal coil and begins to recruit followers. This may occur any number of ways, such as heroic feats (battles), bribery (paying off recruits/donating money to causes), interaction (going around convincing people to follow you through dialogue) and so forth. As the Avatar grows successful in these endeavors, the God gains certain bonuses, such as items, experience multipliers, or unlocking new areas/quests.
Upon receiving these benefits, the God is thereby more effective at gaining experience, which he may employ to enhance his own skills or use to supplement the Avatar's repetoire. The Avatar himself doesn't gain levels so much as it gains new bodies and attributes that will assist him in his recruitment in the Mortal Realm.
I should note that I hacked out huge swaths of information in the interests of keeping this puppy manageable.
[Cross Posted from Blog]
Two Characters, Same Rules
The God
The character creation screen pops up. What type of GOD do you want to be?
A warrior god? Very well sir, rippling muscles and horns are at your disposal. Rampage through the battlefields of the heavenly abodes at will. Oh, a great intellect are we? A Divinity of Divination you shall be. Hurl spells from hands and scathing repartees from yammering maw.
In essence, your God is the equivalent of your character in a standard MMO. The only meaningful difference would be the world around you, which would instead focus on heavenly/hellish themes. You would progress through the game and you would level up your character as one normally does (quests/grinds/etc.)
The Avatar
This is where the story gets interesting. The God would, at some reasonably early point in his development, gain the ability to create an Avatar (I will avoid talking about the ins and outs of this, but suffice to say, the ways and means of this process create intriguing possibilities in and of themselves, which I will likely discuss tomorrow). This Avatar would populate an entirely separate realm, namely the Mortal Realm. Since your God cannot interact with this realm, he will rely on his Avatar to conduct his earthly business. In the Same Rules framework, this would merely add an additional layer to the Immortal Realm content, and the Avatar would develop and operate very similarly to the God.
This framework would be decidedly easier to implement than the following idea.
Two Characters, Different Rules
Here the roles of the two characters will operate under different objectives. The God would continue an objective similar to that described above: leveling up to become more powerful/prominent in heaven. The Avatar would be created for the purpose of attracting followers to the God who created him. These two roles may interact in a variety of ways, but I like the interplay engendered by a feedback loop. Let's work through it with an example.
After reaching level 10, Goodward Godly gains the power to create an avatar. He elects to spawn this avatar. The Avatar enters the mortal coil and begins to recruit followers. This may occur any number of ways, such as heroic feats (battles), bribery (paying off recruits/donating money to causes), interaction (going around convincing people to follow you through dialogue) and so forth. As the Avatar grows successful in these endeavors, the God gains certain bonuses, such as items, experience multipliers, or unlocking new areas/quests.
Upon receiving these benefits, the God is thereby more effective at gaining experience, which he may employ to enhance his own skills or use to supplement the Avatar's repetoire. The Avatar himself doesn't gain levels so much as it gains new bodies and attributes that will assist him in his recruitment in the Mortal Realm.
I should note that I hacked out huge swaths of information in the interests of keeping this puppy manageable.
[Cross Posted from Blog]
Fizzle on
0
Posts
For example, avatar goes out, gains level, completes his mortal quests and gains renown. In turn this renown allows the avatar's god to become stronger in some form, whether by bonuses or some other mean. If this was done there'd have to be some limit to what the Avatar can do so you don't have low level gods with amazing abilities. Perhaps avatar level can not exceed god level? Thus leading you to have to level both characters relatively evenly. Also perhaps add in some gimmicks somewhere to make each play a little differently, therefore adding variety and thus fun.
Basically it's two grinds for the price of one. You certainly don't make it seem exciting or interesting, just a lot of boring mechanical bonuses for a lot more mechanical bonuses.
There's no mention of any game concepts here that would make me want to play it.
It'd make a good Korean MMO, though. They like stuff like that.
Secondly, I think I understand where you're going with the God/Avatar thing.
Basically, you make a God character (for simplicity's sake, we'll name ours Jebus). Jesus runs around the Godly realm doing godly fedex quests until he hits level ten and then he can show himself to some dude on Earth (who would become a prophet of Jebus's) who would then start the Church of Jebus and preach Jebus's word to the rest of the planet.
It's interesting, but I think it could be better with a few changes.
Firsty, the "Avatar" character should be someone who is either a liar (Joseph Smith), a greedy author who has lost touch with reality (L. Ron Hubbbard), or a homophobic meth smoking jackass (Ted Haggard) that your god character reveals him/herself to.
Secondly, your avatar should spread your god's word to others taking advantage of ignorance, fear, and straight up bullying tactics. Your avatar's legion should look down on (and once your church becomes powerful enough, actively persecute) people who refuse to follow your god character's word.
The game ends when your avatar has spread the word and consumed the entire planet in the gospel of your god character, and has driven everyone back to the stone age. Your avatar is no longer under your control (and in fact has been ignoring your god character's commands for some time at this point), and the world is ruled by your avatar, who serves as judge, jury, and executioner of his perverse interpretation of you god character's wishes, with an iron fist.
The ending cutscene has your god character sitting on a rock up in godland looking down upon the earth that the avatar has created. One tear slowly slides down his cheek as he closes his eyes, destroying the world and everything on it in an instant, vowing to never, ever try again.
"You're Winner!" flashes on the screen.
Roll credits.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
@ Rainfall: I'll admit that it would be difficult to avoid a grind for at least half of the game (likely the God portion). I think there is a ton of potential on the Avatar side to create a lot of interesting non-grind elements. A slightly less edgy version of what Einhander wrote about could make for some interesting interactions.
Too late at night to go over it much more. I'll add more tomorrow if anyone remains interested.
Yea, there is a lot more to it that I haven't really discussed/thought about yet. It was really just the mechanic of a bifurcated game I wanted to toss out.
I do think that the gameplay would need to be significantly different between the two characters, though the general purpose behind both of them may be similar.
I'm also intrigued by the idea of enabling PvP realms to involve tag-team operations where Avatars and Gods are included in the same room.
If I'm a GOD, then I don't NEED to "level up".
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
How about you're a lesser demi-god? Still no dice? Perhaps a Demon aspiring to be a Demi-God, and you need to grind Angels to achieve demi-god status? Then move on to Sepharim until you hit Godlike status?
Press A to sacrifice vestal virgin, you know, that sort of thing?
Or maybe there is a Gatekeeper and a Keymaster. Then you could have co-op.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
Well played good sir. I agree with this statement, actually, perhaps instead of "leveling up" it has some sort of renown type system in place? Like say said avatar levels and also gains experience for his god through said renown. But as the god itself goes, I mean seriously, why the hell would they submit themselves to grinding? Another system might be in order.
It's tough.
Come on people, don't you even remember what a good single player game was? I could dig this if it was set out with some time period, and you'd play through them more as the god, but every "age" or so you'd have an avatar made to try and fix all the things you F'ed up in the godly realm that is now causing woes for your believers down below.
Whats that, you lost a bet against the four horsemen in a poker game and now one of your cities is plagued? Time to send in the Avatar. Your sister is upset that you forgot her birthday in the heavens, now all the women down below lose their sex drive and your country is facing a lack of new warriors/farmers, Send in the Avatar....OF LOVE!
Seriously, single player, then you could actaully EFFECT the world, unlike in MMO's where the world is constant and never changing no matter how many times you kill that damn dragon in that damn cave.
He's got a new one now. I won't spoil anything.
Cymoro, don't forget the summer camp where you entice kiddies to be real ultra gods for a couple of weeks.
I have dreams every night of his ideas getting stolen by EA.
I wake up happy and refreshed.
We could just form our own studio and release a a really good game or two, and then once that happens EA will buy us so that they can force us to churn out yearly sequels and then we'll be able to talk to them really easy.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
How about polo?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
It's sort of like, Jade Cocoon meets Actraiser meets Cooking Mama or something.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
I don't know how well it would work in practice; but it's not a bad idea. The God Realm could be a strict PvP environment, and the mortal real your standard fare WOW-based environment. It is the interaction between the two that would have to make it not seem like such a "grind" to level up one character, and then swap to another. Perhaps certain items in the God Realm would make leveling up in the Mortal Realm easier, and vice versa. Your Guild can easily be Cults - Avatars who band together in the Mortal Realm to create a larger pantheon in the God Realm.
To address the "two grind" nonsense - I would simply have a percentage of one trickle over to the other, or perhaps have a "rested bonus" type system where the XP of one affects the other. The trick would be to elevate the gameplay dynamic beyond a gimmick:
Have three to five preset "Pantheons" - you are one of the few remaining gods after some sort of great war of the gods: your goal is to rebuild in "heaven" (or where ever) as well as on earth. Individual groups within the presets can form, but they are all on the same side depending on which group they join with.
Probably lots of ideas that could be done with it - but might be a hard sell for the crowd that just wants to hack/slash their way to "lootz!".
I will say, the name does kinda suck.
Saving that for DLC.
You have an interesting concept, and rather than run with that concept you''ve decided to cram it into pre-existing game ideas. It's your idea - think outside the box.
For example, your idea for a Warrior god is he fights stuff (with fists), but for an intelligent god he just fights in a different way (with magic). That's not actually different. Thats dull - whilst your concept isn't.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Firstly the best games work when they take a game mechanic that everyone just accepts, and explores what it actually means, and then build a game around it in order for their new idea to make sense.
For example, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time clearly came from the idea that platform games rock, but when you miss a jump they suck. So they thought how they could improve that mechanic, and then based every aspect of that game around making their new idea work. And it did. Gloriously.
So lets do that. What shall we look at?
Dying?
Ok so in an RPG or whatever, when your on a MASSIVE QUEST and you die you just reappear and carry on your quest. The reason you win is because no one else in the game can do this. This doesn't make sense - but we roll with it out of habit.
So lets mix that up.
Erm.
I know. You start as per cliché in a house. You have an island with a massive perilous quest to be undertaken. Free roaming, you can go anywhere. Action orientated. No meaningless your number increase whilst enemies also increase nonsense. You have a wife, and a child. You live in a house in a village.
You've no idea how to achieve your quest so you explore. You start to solve the problem. You die.
Cuts to a generation later your son/daughter is standing at your grave behind your little house and takes up your quest. They know the short cuts you discovered. Their children will do better because of the steps they make.
So overall you have a a series of ancestors fighting this quest over many, many, years as time passes the village changes based on what you've done. Given a lot of money to the town hall? Better facilities. Protected it? Your families importance increases? Infiltrated the government of the village? You get a cut of the taxes? Or become a land owner. Help the scientists? Push the advancement of the city. Now we have muskets etc.
All whilst the tombstones grow in your back yard.
tl; dr - Games ignore what death means -> so make a game where death is real -> end up with a hopefully novel concept.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
Hey.
That guy back in town NEEDS those Divine Tusks, man. Don't let him down.
Just kidding. I think there's room for a game in here somewhere, but it needs some real work - that's pretty standard, though, no one just comes up with an idea and it's perfect.
Edit: Also, the title sucks. You added a fake suffix to an existing word, and it doesn't really jump out. This isn't a deal breaker if you have good marketing, though - lots of good games with crap titles.
I like where this is going. When you have enough tombstones you can make a giant pyramid to heaven and slay god. If you get several family members slain in a single mission thats a "kin multiplier" and you get bonus tombstones.
"Here lies Brad"
"Here lies C-C-C-Combo Brad!"
Hahah. So well played.
I'll admit to being intellectually lazy on this idea regarding the grind aspect. In honesty, I wrote the topic late at night and didn't feel like putting in much beyond the basic mechanic, which is a two-tiered character system. Perhaps I'll write a longer post discussing the system I actually have in mind later.
Someone earlier said this might be a better platform game. The more I think about it, the greater possibilities I see with this. As stated in OP, I can't help but wax poetic about MMOs (it's a personal shortcoming).
As for the name, it's actually from a short story I wrote and is short for Avatars 'r Us. A lesser demi-god purchases a goat avatar from Avatars 'R Us and hilarity ensues.
the game is a mix between an MMO and warcraft3's: DOTA
The MMO part of the game would be all Gods where you fight, adventure, loot, AND build/tweak your ARMY
The DOTA part of the game would be all about taking your armies into PvP battles. You could build your army of either 1 skilled avatar or multiple dumb mobs, all dependant on what types of minions you've unlocked, found, or bought. Your god's level determines your avatar's level/skills or the quantity of mobs you control.
p.s. for some reason i think blizzard should make it:P
!!!!▓▓▓▓▓Gravy?▓▓▓▓▓!!!!!!
!!!!!!▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓!!!!!!!!!
of doom
I help those who help themselves!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
oh man that was so awesome
you and Sky should get together some time
Some Ideas, if I may throw them out:
Snowball of ideas flying in!:
How about both characters play split screen at the same time? As well, you can only controll 1 for a level, or 1 at a time. when leveling/upgrading/whatever you get to choose to upgrade one or the other, or some sort of balance so if you get really good stuff for one char, you can only add a little to the other. While you dont play one character, its AI controlled. In order for both sides to prosper, there must be a balance of saving/vengence/purging.
If you get REALLY clever, you can make the one world effect the other as your playing. your "god" could do something to slow an epidemic in the real world by destroying plauge the devourer, and the avatar could aid the "god" character by saving people, creating warriors for the other world.
You could also enhance the balance by making it so that when you do something in one world, its an adverse effect in the other, kill too many bad people with avatar, the evil overworld then gets more soldiers and a harder gameplay element.