Cosmic Talents – Starfighter General

Many of you know Diablo 2’s influenced game Path of Exile and their Talent Tree:

Basically it is a big grid you move around as you level at your choosing to get powerups of your liking.

To make leveling more fun, I am being influenced by Path of Exile that was Influenced by Diablo 2 and making one for Starfighter General today and tomorrow… It will help me encapsulate the game’s powerup structure for other things like items and power gating boss battles.

I started laying out the directions people may travel almost randomly by adding in many roles a space farer could maybe enjoy:(please endure my humble sketch)

Then I remembered I have an elemental chart I want to run with from Battlemon:

So I’ll try and align each vocation along the axis of the elemental chart.

I have 400,000 ai art images and about 10,000 free art images, by which I can make the background look really cosmic and neet. I’ll do it like a puzzle by seeing what power ups I want, then surround the background faded cosmos and stars with images similar to that.

Though I have enough to finish already: Creativity is unlocking itself from many angles:

1) I can position the vocations based on their alignment, say totalitarian warlord might be corrupt,joker may be chaos, drifter wind, animal empath nature, etc.

2) I have a list of about 100 power ups, and I could maybe organize it with them or get some more vocations.

3) AI art is good for creativity too.

Long story short, I’m working on a Talent Tree like Path of Exile. I want it at least 3×3 full screens wide,but no limits. This is looking good to have a final design by tomorrow and partial implementation. Again. I chose to do this first to put a nice frame on the over all power ups and power levels ascribed to and plateauing (aka beat stronger monsters because of x/y/z power like any rpg), and for leveling to have a better sense of achievement… Leveling is designed 20 min,60min, 2 hr, then 4 hr intervals for a while, so it’s like a break time and feeling of accomplishment, it’s good to give a player a look up to see where to get ahead.

That said… I think the goal of any MMO is to make the player look like he can build toward something: A better base, save up for a capital ship, gain a bigger fleet, control a star system, have an alliance, etc… Always be looking for something better, and the player will feel what they are doing matters and they’ll want to keep playing.

Also I cannonized some of the space magic:

Mutant Powers: Magmenos-Potentia

Space Wizardry: Choro-Veneficus

High tech space tech likemagic: Prochori-Tech

Ancient Space Relic Arch: Leipsano-Chorology

Abysmal horror arch: Chaodo-Frikology

Time Space Archeceology: Chrono-Chorology

Dimensional Magic: Diasti-Magea

Insanity Projection Magic: Parestisi-Provoli

Miracles: Theology

Friends with animals: Empathia Animus

Gladiatorial Summoner: Servus Vocator

2) Networking that pushes the envelope where no networking has gone before. People laugh at this like it is impossible to innovate, but I marketed it to Midway in 2003, and they laughed too. Meanwhile it was working in house as a Tekken style(3d fighter) MMO with part of what today is known as rollback code. Midway’s manager was mocking what is today’s standard thinking rollback and such was impossible. Infinite action players same zone, limit only by video card and other hardware, networking ain’t a limiting thing anymore.

4) First MMO designed for late game. Everyone enjoys mmos until power capped and then get bored.
There is no power cap to begin with(just a log log logarithmic progression), but there are many many many other end game design elements to make it so want to keep playing end game! The grind is there, but better and more fun things are around too! You can build up a super big fleet and it get destroyed to pieces and you start over again. You have a power floor level that you can’t go below so you’re always building permanent power, but temporary spikes of power surges and galactic dominance for fleeting moments give a rush. The larger the fleet, the larger the fleeting moment.

8) PVP bounty system. Everyone can PVP at all times. Stakes are low if your ship explodes. If you get attacked without declaring aggressive mode or an opponent to duel, the aggressor gets a bounty on their head in accordance with the damage dealt to you. If this bounty gets high enough, and they get caught, they will be put in jail. When they log on for the next few hours or days, their character can play only in jail, and visitors come see him and such. Enjoy roleplaying being a prison inmate, or just use a different crew member on your account. Developing many crew members is a thing for when you fly capital ships.

10) Omnipotent roleplay: Earn your right into a a movie anime by great roleplay! Live game masters in about 6-12 months after the content updates roll through. We bias people with Founder’s RP tokens some and good manner role players who stay in character(we have chat logs and even game logs). This promotes good role play even when not live GMing. Who doesn’t want to bring their friends to a movie and surprise em with their own character in it? So stay in character for a better game! https://www.starfightergeneral.com/live-role-play/

Punky-Pulpy action, Levels, stats, skills, talents, items, fleet amassing, and great apocalyptic space plots, trippy Lewis Carrol level Mad Hatter humor along the way. It’s really weird to see how this synergizes from a game design standpoint. Players naturally want to level up and power up… That’s the twink min maxer in all of us. So when humor, plots, intrigue, or NPCs getting your blood boiling to action vs them happens, you get stoked, rewarded, happy and tossed off your axis. Then when resolved, you look back and get serious about powering up. The core of a RPG gamer is always powering up, it is something we can’t get rid of, but the core of a game designer is to get you out of a spreadsheet mindset temporarily… And then you appreciate both more. So tacky humor, along serious pulp action and serious leveling up game mechanics… It is like a symphony of fun.