Grid Online — Game Mechanics
Please note that Grid Online is still a working title, even though we have some candidate names, we’re not quite ready to share them. All content is extremely conceptual and is obviously subject to change.
In this post I want to shed some light on the game mechanics of Grid Online, detailing some of the classes, trade skills, attribute system and general feel for the game.
Factions/Sides
The game will feature 3 sides to choose from. While the factions are still to be named, they’re made up of colonists one one side and our mega corporation’s citizens on the other. Those looking to avoid the conflict have the option to remain neutral. The colonists and Megacop are at constant battle, the colonists have broken free from the oppressive clutches of the Megacorp, having served under the regime of a slavery government where the basic human rights have long gone to shit for those who do no longer wished to stay in line.
Each side will have have one major city that contains everything you need to perform daily activities; ranging from trading weapons/ammunition and gearing up for your next adventure to socialising with your friends and planning missions.
The Colonists are an oppressed people. Their parents once brought here by the mega corporation OCC with the promise of a better life, only to be put to slavery in the mines to harvest the precious Byrilium. Broken free from their former masters they started out their own separatist party. Our Colonists that choose to live outside of the large city, continue to live in small, portable colonist homes with limited protection from wildlife. Their primary goal is to improve quality of life and make absolute sure that they won’t have endure the same faith that once awaited their ancestors.
As a Megacorp Citizen you live in a high-tech society. Build by those that were once given the opportunity to build a better world, but have long forsaken that path. The lower city’s streets are ruled by common colonists abiding by OCC law while getting by trading and living our their daily lives.
Classes
Classes in Grid Online are called Professions. Grid Online contains a profession based system in the classical sense that you get to create a new character with a fixed profession (e.g. Fixer, Doctor, Soldier, Trader, etc.). A profession represents your identity and your future purpose in life. Each profession will have an utility item that’s unique to their profession. It will allow you to execute and perform certain actions that are mostly unique to your profession. For example a Doctor is the only profession that has the ability to restore health and boost a character’s shields. A Medical Field Unit — the Doctor’s unique utility — allows you to execute a Health Recovery program on a selected target and restore a portion of their Health Over Time. A Fixer can hack in to the Grid with his Grid Access Converter and hack the government official trade channels, allowing it to buy up stock ammo at a reduced price. Each profession will have unique attacks and abilities that identify the characters profession and role in the universe. Each side will also feature a side-specific profession:
The Colonists will feature a Survivalist. With a lifetime of experience surviving in some of the harshest environments, the survivalists focuses on staying alive above all. With improved focus on shield tech, the survivalist is able to stay out of harm’s way while laying down, staying out of line of fire. Shield and armour is important while implants remain basic.
Megacorp Citizen: Unknown
Neutral will feature The Fixer. Marvelling at understanding The Grid and it’s quantum properties he’s able to hack in to the Grid’s untapped raw power. If you need something done or require certain goods, the Fixer is who you contact. The Fixer is a “Business man” of sorts that gets shit done. Though neutral, the Fixer’s ability “Identity Hack” allows him to change faction and identity temporarily, evading the authorities as needed.
Attributes
The Attribute Point System will allow you to fully customise your character’s attributes. Upon leveling your character you will receive a certain amount of Attribute Points that you can spend to further improve your attributes. Unlike most RPGs where you can put points in say something like strength, agility, intelligence, stamina. We want to take it a step further and give the player the freedom to spend how they play their character by offering the ability to spend points in a large range of different attributes. Ranging from expertise in handling SMGs with a burst ability, Gun Slinging and Shotguns to creating weapons using the Construction System. You determine how your character is played and how it’s attribute points are spent.
You’ll be able to spend point in several categories (these are just a few):
- “Base”, which includes attributes such as “Strength”, “Agility”, “Sense”, “Intelligence” and “Stamina”;
- “Ranged”, which includes attributes that allows you to handle and equip certain type of weapons such as “SMG” or an “Assault Rifle”;
- “Trade & Repair” allowing you to improve your trade skill abilities;
- “Speed” includes several defensive abilities and how quick you are able to run.
The Profession you’ve chosen will also determine how quickly you are able to upgrade certain attributes. For example the Fixer profession is proficient with SMGs and will be able to spend more points in SMG than it will be able to spend points in Shotgun per level. This will drive a natural course towards the weapons you’re most skilled with, however, we do not want to take away the ability for you to play a Fixer with pistols blazing.
Trade Skills
Each profession in the game will have a build-in trade skill that allows the player to make some credits on the side. Let’s take the Doctor profession, it can deploy a Medical Field Unit, which will be a physical item in the world; a small medical bay that can restore health. As said earlier the Doctor is the only profession in the game that can restore health. The MFU further emphasises this, once deployed the unit can be used by other players in the game to heal them self for a small fee (this can be set by the doctor). Thus the Player that uses the MFU will have to pay the Doctor to make use of the MFU. Naturally some profession trade skills will be more demanding than others; creating an economy around the professions and their trade skills. A Doctor will do wisely to deploy his MFU in an area where many players are playing, requiring assistance in healing.
Combat
The Combat system is different from most RPGs. Grid Online uses a sticky targeting system without auto-attack, attacking is done manually. There’s no melee combat, only ranged combat (don’t bring a knife to a gun fight). A target can be attacked using a single shot or the weapon’s special attack(s). Each weapon also has a set amount of bullets in the magazine before it needs to reload, this means you’ll need to make sure you’re stocked on ammunition. Ammunition can usually be bought in the General shops or from a Trader’s Remote Trade Terminal.
A normal shot is done using the hotkey (let’s say Q) and does your weapon’s damage + it’s chance to critically strike. Damage is calculated by using the weapon’s min and max damage and picks a random number between those values.
A weapon’s special attack is determined by the required skill on the weapon. Let’s take an SMG for example: SMG: 80, Burst: 55. This means that the special attack you’ll be able to use is “Burst”, a quick burst of fire that has a higher chance to miss but doubles the critical strike damage. Miss chance is calculated by the opponents chance to dodge. Once you’ve used the special attack it goes on cooldown and you’ll have to wait a few seconds before you can attack again.
Profession abilities can also be used to give extra pow to it, giving a single shot — or a couple of shots — extra damage or hindering the target’s movement (by disabling implants motor functions). An example skill could be: “High Density Shot: Charges the next three shots with high velocity particles providing extra damage”. This means you have a choice to make, either fire 3 single shots with normal chance to miss and damage or use the burst ability with a higher chance to miss but extra critical damage, further utilising the damage boost that Charged Shot provides. Choosing an attack is fully situational.
We do not wish to limit the players rate of attack by having attacks on a global cooldown. Instead each weapon has a “time to recover”. What this means is that once the weapon is fired it will take a certain amount of time to recover to a normal chance to miss. Firing your weapon triggers a recovery time where firing again before the optimal window will result in an insanely high miss chance. The miss chance will reduce back to normal based on the weapon’s optimal fire rate. Firing too fast might result in higher damage output at the risk of missing shots. The idea behind this is that the recoil of a weapon determines how quickly you can recover the weapon and aim again, but it does not limit it’s rate of fire. Depending on the situation you are in, you either fire quickly hoping a quick shot will land or wait patiently until you can aim your weapon properly.
Vital Systems
Vitality is a crucial part of the game, once your health reaches 0, you’re dead (yes, really). Every character has a maximum health of exactly 100, some abilities may temporarily raise this limit, but the idea is that everyone has exactly the same amount of health. Your defensive abilities are determined by the Dodge chance, the character’s Shield and Armour. A shield can be boosted and some professions have a higher shield than others. For example a Soldier’s utility is a Shield Capacitator, allowing it to boost your shield and even deflect some of it’s damage back to the attacker. A shield can also be depleted. Once a shield is depleted the damage system will determine the amount of health lost by checking how much armour the wearer has. So you better be sure to keep your shields up or find someone that can restore your shields during combat.
Implants
There will also be an implant system that allows you to boost your character’s abilities and attributes. The system hasn’t been fully designed so we won’t be able to share more details at this point.
Missions
In order for your character to progress you’ll be able to take on missions. Missions can come in various forms and the idea is to give you a wide variety of activities. Grid Online will come with a story based mission system and randomly generated missions. The story mission will help you progress through the game, introduce new NPCs and areas that award you with the basic necessary items to continue, however these aren’t enough to level all the way. Story Missions can only take you so far that you need other activities to fill in the gaps. Enter Random Generated Missions. Through out the world there will be Mission Terminals, which will allow you to generate several random missions that requires you to perform a certain action in order to complete it (e.g. assination, item retrieval, rescue mission). Once accepted the mission details will be uploaded to you and you can track the entrance to the mission area. Usually mission are in an indoor instanced area with a randomly generated layout and randomly generated amount of enemies of various form and sizes. Sometimes, however, they can be found outside in a public area where you’ll have to kill a certain amount of enemies. While it may look a bit grindy at first, we’re going to give certain meaning to it. For example you might have to collect certain items, build something out of it and bring it to another NPC that will buy it off you or trade it for another item (that you’ll have to bring to another NPC, again, maybe). Once you’ve completed the contract you can complete the mission and the rewards will be transferred to your inventory via The Grid.
Transportation
Transportation is important in any game, traveling large distance on foot is both cumbersome and annoying. Grid Online will have 4 different kind of transportation systems:
- On foot; obviously the cheapest way to travel.
- A Portal system (we haven’t got a name for this yet, but similar to Anarchy Online’s Whompah system); brings you simply from portal to portal.
- The Grid; is a vast network of computer systems that allows the user to digitalise them self and transfers them to the network. Within the Grid the user can move freely between entries and exits.
- Subway; cheap and fast(er) way to move from city to city or from within city area to city area.
Environmental Systems
We believe that weather & environmental systems are an important integral systems of a game, including real day and night cycles. Daytime in most games look kind of okay, however nighttime is usually too bright and overexposed. Grid Online will feature a true night time where the environment is lit using environmental lights rather than unrealistic bright ambient lighting. Hiding in the shadows should be possible regardless of whether it’s a game mechanic or not. Proper lighting gives us the opportunity to emphasise certain characteristics of an area or environment or a mood we want to portray. A dark and seemingly dangerous alley should be actually dark and give you the feeling a lurker in the shadow may attack you at any given time (and perhaps it will..), your next enemy may be just around the corner, or hiding behind the trashes.
I hope this post gives an impression as to what type of game we’re developing. Our ambition is high but we are fairly certain we have the capacities to see this through. Currently we’re a two-man team, but fortunately for us we’ve got the resources to expand the team in the near future (~1 year). I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, and hope you’ll stay tuned for more!
— GG —
