Hello forum community, and hello BeamNG! You have a perfect basis to create a wide variety of games. Your bus routes being tenfold more fun and immersive than all the dedicated bus simulators in existence only proves my statement. I had an idea for a MMORPG, that for myself, is addicting to such an extent that I caught myself only fantasizing about this, and as a result, playing the "raw" BeamNG.drive for hours. Your car physics, game mechanics and graphics simply compliment the hypothetical idea to perfection. I have impulsively written this article and am completely aware this is impossible. But I would still like to see if people would like this type of games, I guess that would show the probability of anything like this existing in the future. So, the game: it is an online first person only game, kind of a mash of ideas between Rust (haven't played it, but I guess it has similarities based on what I saw), My Summer Car (personally one of most immersive games) and BeamNG. For start, you are spawned as a lone person with not much in posession. A worn dirty shirt, some pants, a bit of gold (or silver) coins and a rusty knife. You have bars for hunger and thirst which are 50% full. Since everybody starts alone, it would be best to play with your friends, which might accelerate your advancing in game. The world is placed in a map that is a mashup between Jungle Rock Island, Utah and those more open and "natural" environments. One of key features is the abillity to build, although it is not too easy to acquire materials and eventually "plans" that show how to do it. Time should be around the 1990s, with no GPS, satellites, smartphones and unfair high-tech weapons, but only the raw experience. Players have a map which shows "you are here" with a pin, but need to discover areas first. Bear with me further. Clans, that can be formed manually by players, manifest through many player-determined things, like clothing that can, and should be personalized by players. Having a shirt design option should be mandatory, somewhat like vinyl design in those Need for Speed games- choosing, moving and placing shapes, which with creativity form a design. The design can be printed for a price and sold, or given out to clan members. Basically, an outfit can mark you. To continue with the clans. They have the abillity to share wealth and resources, have control of certain areas and build handmade looking villages. Clans, or players alone, choose their own location on the interactive world to start building, kind of similar to placing walls in Fortnite. They can't build on roads of course, but should roam around and find a good place, preferably hidden and with good defense topography to start their village. The buildings you make, for one reason or another, can be damaged or demolished. The map is really big, so the players will need some transport. After getting ahold of money, one can buy his own, personal car (which he can crash!! Look out not to wreck your car!) and use it for driving and transporting needs. There is an ownership system, which means you receive a set of keys when you purchase a vehicle. If you don't have them, you can't enter or turn the car on. If you posess the car and some player asks to drive it, you can lend your keys to them... If you trust them enough. Also, if you leave your keys inside and leave it unlocked... If somebody finds that out, goodbye car! But still, the car can be stolen back. You have a variety of cars to choose from. Some cheaper, some more expensive. Existing selection is already great. You can buy a truck, too, and use it for either simple stuff hauling, or defending your fort. If you get mad at other player for doing something, eg. damaging your car, you can just sit in your truck, find his, and simply maul it. On the other hand, if a player does not have a car yet, he can wait for a bus that is also controlled by other players. Not everyone can drive a bus, and people with permits also have ranks and badges showing how good of a driver they are. If they damage the bus, they have to pay for the damages, which is a great initiative to not wreck it (same goes with private vehicles). Also, they can injure the player passengers inside, which will not leave them happy. The better the driver, the more money he makes during the drive. Players need to pay a small fee to ride, and if they feel the driver is exceptionally good, can tip him as well. The most important part. Everyone steers with their mouse, no exceptions. That delives a completely different level of immersion than playing on plain keys because of analog simulation, and "no exception" part is for complete equality. Having no other alternatives forces players to practice driving on the mouse. Right click is used for looking around (and it does not pull the wheels back to zero position like in BeamNG.drive). The only time a player can look in third person is while being a passenger, so he can see the scenery and the driving style of their friend. While a passenger you can also shoot out of cars and do drive bys, which I will talk about in a bit. There are a few racetracks on the map, scattered, that host races. Cars are divided by classes and players can race eachother with their personal cars using the mouse, for wagers. You can either win big, you can lose or you can crash and die. Your driving skills will determine. Cars also need fuel to run which costs money, or can be stolen... The next aspect are weapons. Aside from having beasts from nature attack you from time to time (which you can hunt to acquire goods), your clan can also be attacked by a rival one. You start with a rusty knife, and since the world is not exactly postapocalyptic, but more like a scenario where civilization and country system has failed and you are in the wild, getting ahold of firearms can be tricky. Maybe make a system of skills, as to what a player can produce, and an auction house for material and resources, or finished product trading. The clans have their clan vaults that can be stocked with various weapons. Posession of explosives can help you blast through target clan's walls and pillage. The clan can of course defend itself, or not... Depends on strength, resources and manpower available. Depending on the size of the clan, the attacks may vary. It can be a dude in his Ibishu Pigeon coming and shooting his small peashooter pistol (which will rarely happen because it's probably a bad idea), or it can be five black V8 Gavril Roamers and players storming out with AK-47s, wreaking total havoc and killing everything in sight. Death in the game needs to be frustrating. Not too much to deter players, but just enough for them to think twice before doing something stupid. It should be done without leaving the space for the trolls to ruin the experience to other committed players. The ingame char name cannot be changed, because if you become a traitor and start killing your own clanmates, they need to know in the future it's you. If you do something like that, chances are your relations with that clan aren't going to be that good and you will get shot at at sight... The communication is done by conventional chat or by mic. For conventional chatting I'd add some funny gibberish speak and animations based on the length and inertropunctions of the sentence. Eventually, I guess this is overdoing, clans can get ahold of really rare, old tanks (like a T-34) which will first require fixing and won't be very reliable, as to limit the usage of them. This is just a completely concise capture of an idea. Me and all my friends figure we would immensely enjoy something like this, so I figured to write it down and share it with you. Can't hurt to try, can it? I am aware this game would be a gargantuan project and if even started with, would take a really long time to develop. It would be power hungry but as years pass computers are constantly faster and cheaper. I firmly believe that you are the only company that can pull this off and not screw it up. Forget the billionaire studios, they work solely for money, you work for ideas too. I do not expect anything, I just feel much better with dishing out this idea and sharing it with you guys. Something like this does not exist and I know for myself that if it existed, I would probably spend my life and money on it... And I wouldn't be the only one for sure. Oh and yes, pay to win strategy would completely destroy everything. Just sayin'. This is all I wanted to tell you. Respect, I wish you all a great day.
Although I could nitpick all day on how BeamNG is not a post-apocalyptic first person RPG, the main issue is the concept of a MMORPG and BeamNG. The devs say that even multiplayer with a few people is borderline impossible, so the chance of a MMO is absolutely nil. You have creative ideas, but you need to think within what is physically doable and point towards what BeamNG actually is, a personless modern-day driving simulator, not a first person, post-apocalyptic MMORPG. --- Post updated --- If you would like, I can go into detail as to how pretty much every part of that is not going to happen, but I decided not to because you are a newer member who might not understand what is going on in regards to long term plans, limitations, and such.
BEAMNG IS NOT A MMORPG OR TAKE PLACE IN MIDEVAL TIMES. <--- get this planted in your brain. and also, this game is mainly focused on CARS.. nothing else.
Uh... I mean, I admire your ambition. But you must remember that due to technical limitations, BeamNG doesn't even support splitscreen multiplayer, let alone 80+ vehicles with 80+ clients on one server at once. I'd also bear in mind that in BeamNG, cars aren't a convenience. They're not just transportation, they're the soul and pretty well only means of gameplay we have. While I wouldn't object to being able to leave the car, adding such elements as weapons, human-oriented survival needs, and shirt skins would make the game too broad and cause it to stray too far from what makes it special: vehicles. In summary, I think you hit the nail on the head with 'radical.'
Ah. Well, I must admit I already know this is utterly impossible. What I'd like to see is how many people would actually play this game. On the other side, 10 years ago, BeamNG.drive itself and soft body mechanics would be impossible just as much due to hardware limitations... I am happy that you read this. Who knows what future brings. Probably more powerful computers lol. It's just I had too much fun imagining this while playing, and I wanted to share the thought. I might have presented it wrong... But forgive me, I haven't "play imagined" things for years.
Well, it's a good thing that your idea doesn't include the EA/Bungie-Activision BS. Most people are sick of that, including me. Your idea is pretty unique and ambitious, though like Carbohydration and Fera said, this is impossible to implement as of now.
It's nice to see community members with ambition, if you focus it towards what BeamNG is striving to do, you could go a long way.
You say limit it to mouse steering for no tangible reason? I say, Also, auto-centering is a function and feature of cars that actually exist, so removing it actually limits immersion further.
My point was not to remove auto centering. My point was if you tried to look around, the wheel would not suddenly go back to point zero. For example, Euro Truck Simulator 2 knows what I mean. When you press right click, the steering wheel remains in last position, so if you try to look right while steering right you won't smash into a wall. As of limiting to mouse only, the important part is not having analog gas/brakes since it would give you unfair advantage. The game was not supposed to be based solely on cars after all so I thought that would be acceptable.
Literally, Grand Theft Auto. Nobody is stopping you from switching between mkb when shooting up civilians and not mkb when driving if you want to. I am fundamentally opposed to limiting input options in any game.
I understand why, but this brings balance problems in online games. Not everybody has all the gaming equipment. For a racing game to require you to buy a wheel or lose, that is fine, but to experience drawbacks in a game that isn't even supposed to be all about racing, I guess that would not be so good.
One word: keyboard. When you turn the camera, most games keep the current steering wheel angle, on mice, keyboards, controllers and steering wheels. Realistically driving in a realism-centered game is unfair? It's a realistic vehicle simulator. It's a vehicle-based game. Also, my experience with mouse/accelerometer driving can be summed in 4 words: KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!
It's sounds....... Cool. But it doesn't seem quite..... Realistic enough. Gold and silver coins? It's the 1990s! Is it so hard to use actual dollars and pounds and euros? And the "mouse steering only"...... I can't steer with a mouse. It just doesn't seem right.
I don't know how you'd get money (that aren't pennies, dimes, or nickels) that easy from a cornucopia of more natural environments, especially when there's not as much operating residential/commercial areas in those maps. Also, if it's supposed to take place in a 90s-era BeamNG, why would gold still be currency when gold was already replaced with the existence of dollars? Also, if this is supposed to be around a era of a civilization collapse, how would bus systems still be operating (and the fact that you still have to buy vehicles, even though a collapse of a country/civilization would hurt economics badly, which would make currency nearly-useless unless the dealer is that greedy)? Also, why would there be tanks around a natural environment when the army would've had their vehicles abandoned in their bases during the collapse of the country? Lastly, how would the country collapse in the first place? If it's taking place during the 90s, it would've been before later economic crisis events like the 2008 economic crisis and 9/11, but past older economic crisis times like the Great Depression and the 1973 Oil Crisis. (sorry for the kind-of-long rant/criticism)
Ah, I see: this was more of a thought experiment. Nothing wrong with that, especially since as the game gets closer to completion, there will be fewer chances for legitimate suggestions and speculation about future content. And, well, we gotta use this forum for something In direct answer to your question, though, no. I probably wouldn't play this game. I don't mind survival elements in a single-player game (so long as they're not what I'm doing 90% of the time), but in an MMO I'm at the mercy of dozens of other players, and that just doesn't suit me. BeamNG physics would be cool to see in a Rust contemporary, but without some serious balance adjustment, it would go about the same way Rust did. Lots of griefing, lots of striving for small accomplishments, lots of permadeath, but with more interesting car crashes. I'd watch some let's plays on it, but outside that, no. I do the same thing. Y'know, crafting my own games in my own head, trying my hand at a little game design theory. It's fun, and it can be good practice if you're thinking about becoming a modder or developer at some point. In fact: Counterproposal-BeamNG 'light' MMO The game plays out like a cross between EVE Online (community-generated economy) and ETS/ATS (delivery-centric driving gameplay). The player starts with a standard base-level vehicle that they can use to perform simple deliveries, or rideshare for a fee. As they earn money from contracts, they can buy new vehicles, build their own company, or join/invest in existing companies. The game is still single-player, but the amount and condition of delivered goods and passengers goes toward a total server-calculated GDP, and money earned goes toward individuals and companies alike. Players can therefore compete indirectly with one another to dominate the transport/transit market, or cooperate to create larger and more profitable outfits. Players will need to pay for fuel and repairs on personal vehicles, or otherwise maintain work vehicles. Naturally, it'll be possible to play dirty. Players can take on 'illicit cargo' deliveries, attack AI 'filler' vehicles (non-player vehicles meant to pad the ranks of larger companies), and use the shareholder system to overthrow corporations from the inside.
Hey. I have an old dream about cars in BeamNG. Make it so that machines can be torn in real time, as if cutting with a cutter. For example, I cut off the roof of the car and the body lost a lot in rigidity. And it also lacks dynamic objects on maps (not JBEAM), namely Tourqe3d objects. And I also would like to have a 100% working clover manipulator, which works on recycling machines.
I would prefer something more of a driving/repairing/building cars only MMORPG. With fluid changes/loss and having to pay to replenish fuel and all that. Ability to have a job as a delivery driver or whatever lol. Just against ghost cars for racing... If that was even possible.
