A new "shooter"

Tl; dr- Skip to bottom

With the plethora of FPS games coming out lately, wanting a new one is an odd sentiment, but bear with me. I have been envisioning a Fantasy first person shooter. We have Sci - Fi and military shooters galore, but I have never seen a fantasy shooter. Obviously these two ideas wouldn't seem to go well together, but I think they could.

To begin with, this would focus on magic, there would be no sword and boarding or anything of the like. Primary attacks would be dependent on the type of wand/staff/whatever you use and be variations of simple elemental spell slinging.

The bread and butter would come in the form of active and passive skill trees. The passive abilities would be tiered so that tier 2 might unlock at 10 points but tier one would have 15 skills that you can put multiple points in therefore making most builds unique. Balancing so that people don't use one specific build would be difficult, but some people will only follow build guides anyways.

The active skills would be separated into offensive, tactical, and support abilities.

Support abilities would utilize earth, water, and summonings. You could create temporary defensive walls and domes with earth, increase healing rate with water, and summon creatures to cover you or others, ect.

Tactical would revolve around air, space and gravity and utilize movement abilities and traps. You could increase and hinder movement, leave gravity traps that sling opponents different directions, and eventually be capable of short range teleports.

Offensive abilities would focus on large, hard hitting abilities using fire, lightning and ice. Bring down giant lightning bolts, throw exploding fireballs, bring ice spikes from the ground, ect.

Ability points could be allowed in any category so that you could have a jack - of - all - trades master-of-none. You could go full support and just stick enough points in offensive for a surprise flame attack.

Obviously this all needs a system to keep it in check. I propose a single resource pool. Everything from simple primary attacks to massive abilities would require this resource. Normally, this would be a constantly regenerating resource, but the regeneration would stop in combat. When damaged, resource regeneration would stop in favor of health regeneration. This would make "shootouts" slightly more tactical. Do you blow everything for one grandiose ability or use less expensive abilities and regular attacks so that you can better respond? Traps would take a permanent portion of your resource until they are activated.

Obviously, I have no clue if any of this is feasible from a technical standpoint or balancing standpoint. I would just like to hear others thoughts.

Tl; dr- I want to hear people's thoughts on a fantasy fps using magic.

So,another Skyrim?

So you want Bioshock but with Magic ?

Or Deux Ex... But with Magic.

Or Crysis... But with Magic.

Why is the lore of a game so important to gamers ?

@MonsieurX: Not really, the magic in Skyrim is kinda subpar. Plus, I'm not wanting an open world adventure game either.

@Lulu_Lulu: I was leaning more towards a competitive online multiplayer game.

As to your second question, disregarding economics, there should only be one game per genre then. One shooter because regardless of magic or bullets it's still just a shooter. One platformer, because it's all just jumping/running/climbing, ect. Ironically, two of the games you mentioned are famous for their lore. Bioshock mostly because of lore and Dues Ex just slightly less so.

@Trev9421: Maybe you'll like Lichdom Battlemage...?

Edit: Oh wait, I don't know if that's actually going to have competitive online mp.

@loafofgame: Thanks for the legitimate suggestion. I'll check it out. I've never heard of it.

@ Trev9421

Bioshock 2 has multiplayer... Anyway, lore and setting is just one of those prerequisites that most people need.... Why ? I just don't know.

@Lulu_Lulu: I'm not sure I really understand. I'm not trying to be difficult, but what would you rather games be like?

@ Trev9421

Me ? Interactivity is my only Prerequisite...... Anything they add on top of that flys right over my head, to special abilities are just special abilities, be they genetic, magic or sci-fi.

Its not like the lore is gona change how they work, kinda like Zombies, from Mass Effect's Husks to TLOU Infected, its all the same to me because they are all brain dead.

I am interested in what other people think about them though... Why it matters so much to them ?

@Trev9421: could use a materia basis like FF7 so that the magic is channeled to the weapon. That way certain tiers of sidearms, stock, experimental, long range and vehicle mount weapons can get additional classification.

And theres the challenge of what type of rounds work on what enemies or creatures, or pro-stat health effects of being shot...interesting eh?

But yeah, for some reason in the West Most fantasy stays Tolkien-esque (middle ages). Only JRPGs and Star Wars really took those concepts into cyberpunk and space opera territory and significantly blended them. In the west we either called the future sci-fi or delved into urban fantasy (I.E. vamp fiction) didn't really cross boundaries to see what kinds of different gameplay would come out as a consequence. At least not as often with popular titles.

The plasmids and vigors in the Bioshock games are as close as I want to get with "magic" weapons in an FPS game. No closer.

@jun_aka_pekto

This game seriously needs a New Game + Mode because they kept all the good plasmids at the end... Imagine how good they would be if you had them in the Beginning ! So many awesome things I could try. So much open ended gameplay ! Speaking of which... The AI is good but it can be alil better.

@platinumking320: I like your thought process. It would be cool to have magic Develope after normal technology, not only would that run counterintuitive to most all fantasy worlds, but it would allow for great combinations. Utilizing emergent magic would also neatly sidestep "scientific explanations" that occasionally bog down far future series. If one went the route of any significantly advanced technology would seem like magic to those without the ability to understand it, you would still be constrained by certain absolutes. Magic, on the otherhand, can have more completely fabricated conceptions.

That would make the game too easy though. In the first Bioshock, you can go back to earlier levels and test out the later plasmids on the splicers and Big Daddies. I was making short work of them.

@jun_aka_pekto

No it Wouldn't ! unlike other RPG-Hybrids the Purpose of the plasmids is varition, not progression. Each one was designed to be different from the other without being better or worse. It allowed you to specialize with out unbalancing the gameplay and, also the Big Daddies and certain Splicers are just Damage Sponges with Bloated HP and other Stats anyway. However have you considered that maybe its not the plasmids or weapons thats killing them faster as much as its just the Upgrades you place on them, the stupid upgrades like Damage, even some of the Tonics just Specialise in unbalancing the game because their purpose is progression focused... Like wrench specialist. Thats why I never liked the Genetic Research Camera, it spat out a few interesting effects but its primary function was just to keep the game balanced since the game ran out of ways to vary Splices and instead just bloated their stats to give the impression that they were getting better, forcing you to use the camera to balance things out again. Bioshock Infinte was no different, except now you could just by the upgrades directly instead of using a clunky Camera, both games wouldve been better off without this feature.

@jun_aka_pekto

In Batman Arkham City... New Game plus mode was good because they too designed the majority of Batman's Upgrades around variation, however it wasn't completely fair so they compensated for that by introducing the tougher enemies much much earlier in the game and turned off the counter notifications... Infact NG+ was much more challenging having all the gadgets in the beginning than having all the gadgets at the end of the normal campaign. If Bioshock could just fix its god awful inventory system then it wouldve been much much better in NG+.

Hexen and Heretic games sounds like what you're looking for but they're quite old. Still a lot of fun if you're into old school FPSs.

Radical Entertainment may have gone through a serious financial Crysis but Activision can Rebuild them. They also got what it takes to do Spidey justice !

And what about RavenSoft ? They were pretty freaking good. I think they made X-men Origins Wolverine. They also got what it takes

Fantasy shooter? Like Heretic?

wolfenstein looks fresh

meh chana skyrim all over again

Dark Messiah Might & Magic had FPS magic elements.

They sure did make that X-men Origins Wolverine game. But they don't make games independently anymore. Whatever is leave of the company assists in creating the Call of Duty games.