Civ meets MOBA in a 12 hour long team game that costs ~$5 a session.
You get a character. The character is the a leader in a civilization. Everything unfolds in person in real time. So you build up this kingdom, expanding it, taking out enemy cities, researching new things, leveling up your character, building things for your cities, explore the world, and all the things you would do in civ, but all done through your character.
Huge battles with hundreds to thousands of troops.
Plow through the ranks of enemies as an demi-god to tip the balance.
Sieges that last hours.
Mechanics that demand you use real diplomacy with the other players.
Caves and dungeons scattered around for you to explore for XP and Loot.
Mounts, pets, and units to amass and upgrade.
The ever present threat of running into another player.
~20 minute respawn times.
As far as the technical part of how this is possible, I don’t want to say, but I will say it would work.
I just want to know, would you pay $5 a game for something like that?
Is there really a market composed of people willing to sit down at 8AM intending to play non-stop until 8PM?
(I’ve always assumed the “man dies in internet cafe after 72 hour MMO marathon” stories were the far-East version of basement-dwelling outliers.)
Almost nobody has the time to play 12 hours non -stop, and the people who can and want to do that would be very low.
To add to this, the amount would be very low, but lets imagine, i paid 5 dollars, after waiting a few hours we finally have a lobby full, then i just feel like i wasted my time and probably quit before we get a full lobby.
And if you say people can join while you are ingame, they got a huge disadvantage, because they have to start from the beggining, and you already are way fuhter with your research.
If you die wait 20 minutes? Nop, ima play a different game if i have to wait that long.
Diplomacy with other players? You will always have that 1 player…
Also, atleast personally, i won’t play 5 dollar for a playing session, i just want to pay a price, and play it for as long as i like.
I would pay 5$ for a 12 hour singleplayer game that I can play at my own pace. I would not pay per-session for a game, ever. Only exception could be games like Dayz if the model was “pay per life”, because that could actually intensify the thrill and investment into staying alive.
Props for thinking outside the box, but your idea has soooo many issues. Like what incentive is there to play once your side basically has lost? How do you keep interest up till the end? How do you handle players dropping out. And there probably is a big correlation between players having time for 12 hour game sessions and players that I don’t enjoy interacting with. No offense to dedicated gamers, I’ve had my 12 hour gaming days too, but some of the most hardcore gamers are just toxic as fvck.
And multiplayer makes everything orders of magnitude harder, I’d really stay away from MP if I were you.
OK, but to be fair, if you did a game like this there wouldn’t be any lobby… there would be a schedule. You would sign up (and put your money down) for a particular time slot, days or weeks in advance, just like scheduling an all-day gaming session in real life.
If it were my game, I wouldn’t even give out full refunds if you fail to show up for the game… maybe you can get some of your money back, but not all. It’s a commitment. (Unless of course the game doesn’t happen because not enough people sign up, or something goes wrong on the company side.)
So, you might be able to find people who could dedicate this kind of time. But I still think it’d be a pretty tiny niche.
To paraphrase something they said in the post mortem for the latest Master of Orion remake: The kind of players who grew up on the 4X games, who are a lot of the core audience, they’ve gotten older, have lives, and can’t play all weekend and then skip classes on Monday to catch up on sleep.
$5 a play session means lots of disposable income.
Lots of disposable income generally means far less disposable time.
First three words caught my attention but everything else sounds like a pipe dream. Battles with hundreds of thousands of troops? 12 hour play sessions?
You say you dont know the technical but if youre actually serious about this, you got to know at least some technical aspects.
I said it would work, but I don’t want to say how I would accomplish it.
Man, whole lot of people tearing it down without looking at what I even wrote. I hope @Spartiate0033 and @Murgilod learn to read in the future and stop trying tear other people down to feel superior.
Everyone else, thank you for the comments.
12 hours IS a big commitment, that’s one of the reasons I posted here. Clearly it would be an issue for a lot of players to commit a whole day to playing a round. I just don’t know how else I would go about doing something on the scale of a 4X game in one session.
Maybe asking on a game making forum how much time people have for one game isn’t the best sample considering everyone here is a workaholic.
As far as matchmaking goes though, I think it’s clear that games would be a scheduled event and not just a pick up game. I mean people play in clans and people play league sports. Hell, people still play Diplomacy and that’s ~10 hour board game.
The 20 minute spawn time idea was to give people a chance to take a break once in a while. Maybe I could find a new method, like they have to recharge in the “Ether” which removes the player from the game temporarily.
As far a griefers go, maybe making it one person per kingdom would be better, but then allow alliances that would allow people to team up against a player.
Quitters I imagine would be low due to the fact that it’s a $5 buy in.
I would indeed need to make mechanics that would allow the game to remain fun after the tide has turned against you, while at the same time making sure that getting ahead isn’t pointless.
Finally, the $5 buy in is kind of hard to avoid considering what I have in mind to run the game. It may be reasonable to have it lower, but I have my doubts.
To be clear, the game would be a world with a persistent state of hundreds of thousands (up to millions) of creatures and units all moving around doing there own thing, with hundreds of caves and dungeons to explore, and large scale battles with thousands of troops on screen. All without loading times or transitions.
I know this sounds like I don’t understand how online games work, but you’ll just need to go with it. Trust me, it would work.
I can not see this working with matchmaking (i.e. people that do not know each other).
I could see something like a coop multiplayer civ game where a team sets out on a epic challenge but they are able to save progress and continue whenever they want. They would play against an AI enemy like in civ. But I think an additional feature could be real player drop in for specific battles / situations (short game play session). Elements:
coop teams with say 12+ hours gameplay (building up something + conquering the world)
AI enemies with the same target
drop in PVP for specific elements (i.e. barbarians raiding the country, aliens arriving, spy’s, etc.) — those PVP ad hoc teams could also run in another session as a coop team and they would get some benefits if they succeed in a PVP session
This way you could play the game with your friend at scheduled times but earn something for the coop group individually when you set out on a PVP challenge…
Yeah, that’s definitely it. Have you noticed how nobody is actually on board with your idea? Maybe take a hint from the fact that half the posts in this thread are talking about how this concept is untenable at best. You make excuses like “oh, everyone here is a workaholic” as to why it’s not being received well instead of the fact that it’s a half-baked idea at best.
Look, I thought your initial idea of Civ meets MOBA was interesting but everything else that follows simply is way to unrealistic. And getting mad and insulting those that offer our advice is no way to be. Refine your ideas. Try to fit it within a 15-60 minute game and ask again cause id love to read it again.
hmmmm…the 12 hour thing is something that bothers me a bit, but not the same way as others described it here tbh. The game that you describe, those kind of games exist in a similar way already, but they are usually either half automated and with timers, that slows down progress of all players equally and then there is no time limit at all ( think strategic browser game mmo, with tiled map and hero characters as leaders) or they are disconnected from time and other players as single player games (look into games like Folktale as example, townbuilding with hero character you control directly)
and i think the reasons for that is, that with 12 hours, as active player, you have a vast variety of players that spend different amount of time each day on a game and it’s usually only a few who stay up the whole 12 hours while the rest are average players with playtimes between 2-4 hours a day.
those numbers are only an estimate of what I have seen, statistic wise and playing myself alot.
Soooo…it would mean you have a few players who would probably win almost 100% of the time because they have the time to spend full 12 hours into one gaming session.
The “mmo” browser game kind of way, would have the advantage that players that don’t have so much time would have a chance to make up their lesser time, by just being a regular player and the long hours players being restricted in how much time they can spend on the game (or the effects of spending longer hours would only slightly benefit and not outbalance the whole game completely)
in singleplayer this wouldn’t be a question at all
sooo…why did you decide to go for 12 hours?
what are you intending on what players should be able to accomplish in this 12 hours?
does it need to be 12 hours, or could it be done with less or more?
in which way is this amount of time benefiting your game idea?
Also, does it need to be multiplayer?
do you want your game to be competitive?
do you want to build in any AI “factions” that weaker players could as example interact with?
Is the focus more on the CiV part or the moba part?
can you win with both parts equally?
do you need to play both parts to win?
what is the winning or loosing condition?
do you loose when your “hero” dies?
do you respawn?
how about your city?
or can you make several cities?
do you have a main city that would decide about the games outcome?
where should player spend most of their time looking at?
the moba character? the townbuilding screen?
or are those integrated into each other seamlessly?
Do you interact with a civ like interface to control your citiy(cities) or do you interact with your character with your city? (walking to mayor of a town to manage it as example)
where would the action be mostly?
how far away can your character travel from your base(s)?
are there any restrictions?
how do you meet other players?
do you meet their characters or just their cities? or units?
how are player s interacting with each other in more detail?
Can you imagine playing a match for twelve hours, all while being on the losing end? People won’t even stay put for a fifteen minute match if they suck badly enough.
For one, do you know of any games that actually have a “you are a hero and a civilization” design? Even if you removed the multiplayer aspect, will it make any more sense? You’re going to have base building and dungeon diving for what reason? It just sounds like a bunch of cool ideas mashed together.
Wouldn’t this also reduce the number of people interested in playing? Even monthly payment mmo’s have declined drastically over the years due to competitive pricing.
I have never been into and do not play mmos so take my comments with a large grain of salt
Honestly - this concept really sounds like a mode of a 4x type mmo (kinda like eve online) but with the weekend option to participate in scheduled events - for $5.
Because 12 hours is how long a 4X game normally takes to play.
Because 12 hours seems like the perfect amount of time to fall in love with a world to explore without padding it with grinding and before you get sick of it, like every MMO before it.
Because it has never been done before and 12 hours seems like something you could do on a day off.
I could see lowering it to 6 hours though, but I like the idea of an epic 12 hour campaign. Maybe there could options for different map sizes and build/research time for shorter sessions.
Build up a city, capture and build more cities, and eventually either take out all opponent cities or reach an end game achievement like the Master spell in MoM or the shuttle in Civ.
Again, I suppose the map size could vary and research/build times scaled back.
It’s never been done before. It would be like an epic unfolding. It would give the player just enough time to explore a massive world.
Yes, I would want to do something that has never been done before.
Of course there would be play testing done outside of multiplayer, and I could see doing an offline version for people that has a scaled down version to learn with, but it’s unlikely that this could be done on an average computer.
No, hence the dungeon crawling, city building, and if I went crazy maybe even quests (but that’s outside the MVP).
Yes! I would want weaker cities to be conquered. Like barbarians in Civ and MoM.
Depends on what you’re doing. If you’re taking a city or attacking an enemy player then obviously it would be more moba, but if you’re building the city it would be more Civ, and if you were dungeon crawling to build up your character it would be doing hack and slash PvE.
No, but I would have incentives to do as well as you can. Also, alliances would occur naturally. One player starts to do the end game spell and everyone teams up on them. That sort of thing.
No. You could do the end game spell or wipe out all player controlled cities.
Conquer all the player controlled cities or do the end game spell.
No. You respawn.
I was thinking that I would have a down time mechanic that the player could use to take breaks as well as be where they go when they die.
Yes.
No. When you lose your city it is gone until you can take it back, rebuild it, or create a new city.
Yes.
Yes, you would have a capital that would act as your spawn point. If you don’t have it you would randomly spawn somewhere on the map.
The interface would be from the perspective of their character, but there would be menus to make things manageable. Like when building I would most likely have a city center where you could get a bird’s eye view to plan the city.
Town building would allow for planning way ahead so you don’t need to constantly go back to it.
However, I would prototype different ideas before committing to one specific idea.
I may decide that the down time area may be where city planing is done.
There would multiple things to do and each would be like its own variation of action. There would be city sieges, dungeon crawls, monster fights (both with armies and with dungeon crawls), you could harass player units to slow production, or you could even attempt to gank players and units.
The map would wrap around, like in Civ, and possibly even be a globe.
I assume you mean for the map. Nope, it would be a seamless open world.
Since players are able to talk IRL, I would have all diplomacy tools available at the very start.
It would be a huge persistent world with everything running at the same time everywhere. If a player is in a field with you, you see them right in front of you.
I would most likely have you player able to attack freely, but start off all players in a neutral status so they won’t accidentally hit one another. Whenever they want they can switch to hostile and the other player with also be able to attack back.
In the diplomacy screen they can return to neutral if it is agreed on with offerings (resources, cities, units, spells, technology) allowed as a bargaining chip. Also, you could agree to change relations with other players such as agree to be friendly or hostile towards another player. And I would allow up to all the players involved to have an agreement so long as everyone agrees.
I would make sure there’s lots to do if a player has their cities taken, such as dungeon crawls or being hired by another player, to keep the game fun. No matter what the player could PvE and run ganks.
