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Feature Higher Level Mechanics (Ideas)

ProfeSsoRCHI-
ld

Avatar: Spider Illustration

Level 10 Emo Kid

“Gloomy Gus”

These are not “PLEASE IMPLEMENT THIS NOW” suggestions. More long term brainstorming for levels 20-69. Maybe even 30-69.

One of the worst things a game like this can do is become stale, and the best way for a game to become stale is for the high levels to be exactly the same as the low levels, just with bigger numbers. Low level play -needs- to be different than high level play. You can get around this problem with good enough writing… lord knows that Final Fantasy follows this formula… but why patch up shoddy gameplay with a good story when you can have both?

Right now, you can only pwn forums by basically ****ting it up. Heck, right now, as an emo, I go into these forums and start whining about my love life in a thread discussing, say, fishing limits in north carolina. Now, with forums that don’t really have tight knit communities, and with poor content moderation, I can see that working, as people start ganging up on you, and all the ****ing collapses the place in a big ole pile of psycho-drama. But what about when you find forums with moderators that… *gasp* ...care!?!

If being a simple bumhole could get you banned outright, tactics would need to be changed. At low levels, I think the gameplay should be about the same, but as things get more sophisticated, so should the techniques.

Here’s some ideas in that vein. They should be great timesulative.

Idea 1) “Lurking” to build strength in order to deliver a better killing blow.

This could be made a gameplay mechanic by forcing us to pwn threads with n attacks or less, forcing our attack strength to be high enough to pwn it quickly. Too many attacks, and you’re banned. Now, just keeping quiet is no fun, so instead, I’d say that you’d have to pretend to be a valid member of the forum for a little while… and because these forums are all so stupid, doing so would damage your OWN ego. But when you deliver your little bomb of psycho-drama, being a respected member of the community will make your attacks do more.

Basically, you’d have a new meter— forum respect. As you attack, or are attacked, it goes down. As you damage yourself with “blending in” posts, it goes up. Resource management at its finest. You’d of course have to balance this with your desire to require less consumable items though. Maybe more (and more effective) self healing abilities?

Idea 2) Initiating Forum Splits

Right now, we’re engaging in flame wars of us versus them. The clbumic flamewar psychodrama though, is where the entire population of the forum becomes polarized, everyone going at it left and right. The mods can’t ban EVERYONE, ‘cause then no one would be left! This would be a little tricky to set up, but I think it could be simulated in game.

Instead of a zero to whatever linear bar, we’d have a balance scale added, in order to show the balance of power between two “factions”. The desired result would be the two factions being evenly matched, for greatest camouflage. What you would be doing is feeding one side of the issue or another, getting a balancing act going on. Forums should start with one side having full power, so you have to work at feeding the other side… and there should also be threshold at which point one side is crushed, forcing you to get past that threshold to even start, requiring a strong attack to begin with… requiring “respect” (idea 1).

Once there’s enough flaming going on around you, you should be able to pwn threads without getting banned. Of course, once you’re allied with a side, pwning threads will shift the balance of power, requiring maintenance there. Using moves to adjust the balance of power wouldn’t pwn threads, but it would get you flamed by the other side.

Idea 3) Politics and Democracy, maybe a little hacking

With diligent enough moderators, even these sorts of things can be suppressed, banning topics of discussion entirely. If the moderators were to get into the fight itself, of course, that helps your cause. On lower level forums, they’d automatically get involved. On higher level forums, you need to manipulate things to your advantage.

Best way to do this? Sock puppetry. This may take multiple forum visits (give more forum visits at higher levels to compensate… of course, weaker forums would be worthless to attack at this point). Set up a polarized style attack, not on the forum’s topic of discussion (Star Wars vs Star Trek) but rather on the moderation practices of a mod. Get a mod replaced, preferably by your sock puppet. Resume as normal.

This would be almost a “stealth game” type thing, failure on having your sock puppets discovered.

Well, that’s what I can come up with. Any thoughts? Other ideas?

Cubear

Avatar: Cubear's Avatar
3

[Team AWESOME]

Level 10 Camwhore

Tubmail me a picture of your male reproductive organ, and I'll send you several pics of my naked body from every angle.

Great ideas. I don’t think that it is anything unlike what has already been brought up, but it is very well fleshed out. Seems you’ve put a lot of thought into this.

CJLJ

Avatar: Ron Paul

Level 10 Troll

“Pain in the ASCII”

What about more original abilities? Instead of all your abilities just being attacks and self buffs, you could have more unique abilities to your clbum. For example, a camwhore could get a power that gets her a white knight to defend her for a few turns (basically a pet). Maybe this would cause posters to attack the white knight instead of the camwhore because they find him more annoying. I haven’t thought about it for the other clbumes but just more variety than 20 damage or +3 offense.

Evil Trout

MODERATOR
Avatar: 35 2023-04-24 23:24:10 +0000

[Crotch Zombie]

Level 21 Hacker

this site is deader than the toddlers in my basement

These are pretty cool ideas, I really enjoyed your post.

I would very much like to integrate ideas like these into episode 2. It’s really important that we can switch up the gameplay a lot, both through interesting side quests but also new gameplay mechanics.

It’s good to have a list so we can look at it and be like, you know, we could do something like that, only by changing x and y, etc.

ProfeSsoRCHI-
ld

Avatar: Spider Illustration

Level 10 Emo Kid

“Gloomy Gus”

More ideas, building off of other’s suggestions that have come before.

Posting Speed

——————-

This isn’t my idea. I just want to put it down here for reference, because I think it’s a great idea and leads into some other concepts. Basically, certain types of attacks take longer to type up than others, and allow forums to attack you more or less often. Forums likewise have “forum size” wherin larger forums have more members to flame you, simulating faster posting speed.

“Pets”

———

CJLJ’s pet idea is darn good, but I don’t think it goes far enough. Yeah, give Camwhores (and derivatives) a White Knight to take hits… maybe even give trolls sockpuppets for a similar role. But these would be abilities that give you free pets, not the only means of getting a pet. More generally, anyone should be able to manipulate others into behavior likely to cause a forum to fail, creating a pet out of the forum population. Put a limit on the number of pets… maybe make it tied to charisma, or part of an ability. An entire clbum might be based around them, much like a necromancer in Diablo II.

For resource management, in particular, to ensure that flezz is still constantly draining from players, you could manipulate them by sending gifts through the mail, much like you recieve gifts yourself…

Pet -management- should then be key, which is where speed comes into play. There would be abilities to shift blame, to draw attention to a person or idea, abilities to sacrifice one pet in exhange for another. Each pet should have a different skill set, making it important to utilize them wisely. One kind of poster might be very kind, and be able to buff your ego (or the ego of another pet). Another might be charismatic, pulling in respect. Another might just be able to post really fast (but weakly, like a Re-Re), useful because you can wait for the perfect moment, pull him up, sacrifice him to the croud, and swap in your own attacks on his coattails for a good combo (although risky, because it’d bumociate you with the idiot).

Each pet, other than clbum ability pets like a White Knight, which would be special, should be pretty weak… probably falling after only two attacks, or even one attack in certain situations… in order to keep you on your toes. The puppet master should still be vulnerable at times.

Speed and pets combined make for interesting strategy, because you can plan ahead and make certain that others always take the blame, or help absorb “area of effect” attacks a forum might make on your whole posse.

eponymous_en-
nui

Avatar: Piercing Jewelry

[the abyss]

Level 10 Emo Kid

“Gloomy Gus”

ProfeSsoRCHIld Posted:

Speed & Pets

I’m not too keen on the speed idea, personally, but the switching pet idea (I’ll be damned if I can find the thread where the White Knight idea was originally cooked up as a skill) sounds interesting. Perhaps make it cost an action to switch in pets, with a refresh time of 5 before you can switch it again.

As an elaboration on the pet system, make it a minigame to ‘maintain’ your pet. Let’s use the troll’s sockpuppet as an example because I really rather like that idea. Now, in order for the troll to maintain his sockpuppet, he’ll have to make constant posts with it: depending on the choices you give your sockpuppet, it could evolve through various stages, each stage giving it different powers. A sockpuppet could even potentially become a forum moderator, for instance, given real-life time and the right post combination.

The simplest way this pet evolution system could take place is, of course, through a dialogue tree that pops up after you have your pet for a certain time; say, 10 days for the first level, 20 for the second, 20 for the third, 25 for the fourth etc. At certain branches, the player may also be required to run a fetch quest for the sockpuppet or it wouldn’t be able to proceed on.

Alternatively, have the pet grow by the player feeding it useless junk. Depending on the type of junk you feed it, it grows into different pets with time. I can imagine this would be a coding nightmare, though, since you’ll have to give each item a certain “element” (i.e. Internet Toughguy, GB2BYOB, Pothead/Alcoholic) and value to that element (i.e. +3 to GB2BYOB, +1 to Internet Toughguy). All the same, for the sake of archiving I’m throwing it up here anyway.

Think of it as a parody of Digimon or Pokemon if it makes you happier. Log in to see images!

 

EDIT: White Knight here.

eponymous_ennui edited this message on 12/03/2007 10:22PM

Evilb00n

Avatar: Middle Finger Keyboard
4

Level 32 Troll

“Permafail”

I’m not sure if this is the correct place to post this, or whether this has been posted before, but I think it might be a good idea:

You know those guidebooks you get in your deliveries or buy in the Ppwn Shoppe? Like “The Art of Flame War”, ““No, I ****ed Your Dad!” The Greatest Comebacks in History”, etc.?

Well, would it be possible to have some clbumes equip these as a special item that boosts their special attack stat (Douchebaggery etc.)?

To add to that, how about you make those clbum-specific guides usable as an attack item for other clbumes?

For example, if I had a book that was meant for the emo kid, I could use one emo kid attack. It could be a randomly chosen one, or it could be a specific one that’s predefined.

How does this idea sound? Is it a stupid idea, a great idea? Or would it be too hard to implement?

Cammy McCamw-
hore

Avatar: Corset 1

[the abyss]

Level 10 Camwhore

“Leave it to Cleavage”

Evilb00n Posted:

I’m not sure if this is the correct place to post this, or whether this has been posted before, but I think it might be a good idea:

You know those guidebooks you get in your deliveries or buy in the Ppwn Shoppe? Like “The Art of Flame War”, ““No, I ****ed Your Dad!” The Greatest Comebacks in History”, etc.?

Well, would it be possible to have some clbumes equip these as a special item that boosts their special attack stat (Douchebaggery etc.)?

To add to that, how about you make those clbum-specific guides usable as an attack item for other clbumes?

For example, if I had a book that was meant for the emo kid, I could use one emo kid attack. It could be a randomly chosen one, or it could be a specific one that’s predefined.

How does this idea sound? Is it a stupid idea, a great idea? Or would it be too hard to implement?

I think it’s a great idea, but instead of boosting stats (all other items do that already) have them grant you a specific skill when equipped: and not an existing skill already, mind, but a completely new skill. To save creative writing time the attack can keep using the same output over and over again (i.e. “no YOUR father!” ) instead of the attack range most skills now have.

Cammy McCamwhore edited this message on 12/04/2007 4:31AM

Evilb00n

Avatar: Middle Finger Keyboard
4

Level 32 Troll

“Permafail”

Cammy McCamwhore Posted:

I think it’s a great idea, but instead of boosting stats (all other items do that already) have them grant you a specific skill when equipped: and not an existing skill already, mind, but a completely new skill. To save creative writing time the attack can keep using the same output over and over again (i.e. “no YOUR father!” ) instead of the attack range most skills now have.

That sounds like an even better idea. I like it. But maybe there could either be some minor output variants to the additional attack, or the attack would get weaker each time you use it in the same thread.

Evilb00n edited this message on 12/04/2007 6:22AM

ProfeSsoRCHI-
ld

Avatar: Spider Illustration

Level 10 Emo Kid

“Gloomy Gus”

To make it more interesting, why not have various combos, in that a specific order of attacks will have some extra special effect… maybe extra damage, maybe buffing your defense/weakening their attack, manipulating your respect or the current balance of power… a really good one might be increasing your charisma for the forum, so that you get better rewards. Extra “flare” for the internet, so to speak.

The best combos would be cross clbum, making them difficult to get. All the combos would have risk/rewards… a combo might make use of one of the large refresh moves, for example, and you’d want to save it for the right moment. Another combo might hurt you but carry the damage over multiple threads… etc etc etc.

Vagitarian

Avatar: Vagitarian's Avatar

[The Flamers of Loa-
thing
]

Level 10 Troll

Im a stupid ****wad

The Pet-having clbum MUST be called the Puppet Master. I racked my admittedly feeble brain, but couldn’t come up with something better.

Just playin’ with the stringsLog in to see images!

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