A massively multiplayer game set in the breakdown of US and global civilization. As the US falls apart into warring nation states, your player takes part in experiencing this harrowing test of man. Sort of like Post-apocalyptic, but without the nukes. Although as the storyline unfolds, that could happen. You'll scavenge, salvage, trade for, and steal your items. Ranging from weaponry to vehicles to clothing and information, you'll cobble together your own homebrew army. You could serve in large premade factions equipped with heavy armor and modern gear, (and have little choice in where you have to go and fight unless you want your character executed, unless you make a difficult escape) or go the survivalist route. Things could happen like plagues of flesh eating zombies (I worked out how the virus that caused it would work- read 'the cobra event' at the library) invasions from china or nuclear accidents- basically all of the bad things that can happen to the US collapsing, will happen, and you're there in the middle of it in this combat focused game. You'll have to practice with your weapons to build skill with them in order to have the blooming crosshair tighten up and reset fast (even a novice firearms user will be able to score hits at close range), maintain your vehicles to keep the rusted hunks of junk you salvaged going, and band together with friends to keep your chances of success high. You can hole up in a city and make your base out of an abandoned building, or go exploring ghost towns. The ideas for this are endless.
Fallout would be a major inspiration, too.
As for look and feel of the game, I would probably copy liberally from Soldner, down to the combat, balance, and scale. If it looked exactly like it, just better, that would be fine. Some changes such as HUD and controls would be needed, of course.
http://soldner.jowood.com Official site
I really love Soldner and I'll be getting the full version soon when Soldner Gold is available. If you've read the reviews, Soldner has matured far past the original days of crappy framerate, choppy controls, and low detail. In third person it is a pure delight to play. In first person, sometimes it feel a little 'clunky'. This is the effect of experiencing the tactical freedom that third person gives, and that the weapon models are designed to work in both first and third person view. I prefer third. A neat thing is that buildings are totally destructible, and the terrain reacts to explosions and vehicles. Trees topple, craters fill with water, etc.
Soldner takes place on a 200 square mile map. Literally. That's why it loads for 2 minutes when you start the game and then no load times for any games you start or join online. If you knew the exact way to go, you could fly from the 'Cold Winter' base to the 'Deep Forest' area, but no one would be there and no spawns would be active.
It isn't for singleplayer. It is for multiplayer goodness. You like CS? You'll find something to like about Soldner. You like Ghost Recon? You'll find something to like about soldner. You like BF1942? You'll find.. you get the picture. And I'd say you'd like period, but there's no accounting for taste. You can seriously customize the look of your player, it rules. I went from being a cowboy to a stormtrooper to a SWAT agent to a farmer to an assless chaps wearing gasmask man. You used to be able to download a multiplayer demo, now it doesn't connect, but there's a new one in the works.
Vehicles, aircraft, people- it's all balanced out pretty well. The only changes I would make are nitpicky realism issues such as fire rates, adding some new weapons, etc. I've played Joint Operations and it doesn't really compare. Soldner could really use the seating display and change system from JO and DF:E, though, along with the ability to have first person view in any vehicle and to move around inside larger vehicles and transports. Ok, I'd make the crosshair display system tighter like in ghost recon for the PC. Almost exactly like the first ghost recon. It's very similar already, just looks a little loose. Also, having maps where vehicles spawned repeatedly in certain areas would be a neat addition, along with setting some vehicles to repeatedly travel a certain path (possibly indestructible) like in DFBHD. That wouldn't be used all the time, but it could be a useful tool for mapmakers.
Now, soldner has decent vehicle phsyics, but for absolute goodness I would license the system from 1NSANE.
1NSANE had great physics, a far step ahead of existing sims when it comes to deformation, the whole chassis and suspension is flexible and can be bent in various ways. Driving offroad trucks was awesome, locking differentials and climbing hard hills or riding the limit of a cliff and watching the suspension work was awesome.
http://www.codemasters.com/insane/eng Official site
http://www1.gamespot.com/pc/driving/1nsane/ Link to a full review is on that page, demo, movies etc. If you check out the demo, you'll be impressed at how well it stands up to current offroading games still. I had some great screenshots of the realistic deformation and damage that you can have, if I find them I'll post.
www.insaneheat.com and
www.insanegarage.com are two third party sites that keep insane going. Check out the fan-made vehicles.
Ok, yeah, so basically so far what I've described is Massively Multiplayer Persistent World Soldner with tweaks and improvements and a better vehicle system and skills to learn and an actual plot. That would still rule.
