Hey, so i was looking at this forum and noticed that all the talk seems to be more or less focused on the 3D aspect of this game or the movie's story. So i thought it would be a good idea to create a thread for what everyone would like to see in this game.

Personnally i dont really know yet, as i just found out about this movie/ game late last week when my bro told me about it while waiting to see district 9.

But so far i think it would be good to see the 3D aspect of this game being made available for everyone (not just people with HDMI consoles) as many casual gamers dont have HDMI capable TVs so they dont bother getting the cables or their systems may not be capable of playing it (early 360s - which i know someone else talked about in another thread)

Also if its not a FPS but rather an adventure/action game, i guess i would like to see it being in a OTS(Over the Shoulders)/ 3rd person kind of game, as those work really well for action/adventure games (Uncharted, Zelda,etc.)

But ya what are your guys ideas?

EDIT: Why isnt my Banner showing up here? or my DP?? It works on the other forums...

I guess things aren't showing up because they want to reduce the loading time of the pages - probably expect heavy traffic and big pictures to be abundant once the release date is nearer.

As for wishes for the game I quite like what I saw in the trailer when it comes to graphics, so a good and well written story is my main wish although that already will be implemented by now if it is going to be there. In dept cultures like those of The Elder Scrolls, plausible characters and a believable and catching story. No need to be afraid of writing short stories and journals. Those who don't want to read them don't while those who want to can and just might jump from being players to fans. Decent controls and, when it comes to the PC, a minimal use of the mouse would also be quite nice.

I wish....

There will be a portal to enter a zone where humans and navi's will battle it out in group vs group war. So the casual players can go into that zone and fight, without worrying about being shunned due to their not so great equipment and weapons compared to those hardcore full time players.

I wish there will be at least 3 of those zones of different gameplay. one will have no mounts, one will have land only and one will have both. at least.....

thats my wish.

as someone else commented elsewhere, this seems to have at least some of its inspiration from the old dos game Albion, and I'd say, before that, the older? dos game Alien Logic (which latter was derived from a published (analog, D&D style) role-playing game startede by two boys in Britain, I believe.[Google "Jorune"]
( the floating bits of landscape are definately Alien Logic (Jorune). This is not a criticism. I have both games, but never finished them, so it would be really good to see something along those lines with modern graphics. Some unofficial plot ideas may be found following those suggestions above (if this isnt totally old news anyway).

Wishlist: (1) a really good, well thought out plot for the main storyline, with some (a few) believable twists midway through game, or even earlier. Think say the Tom Clancy, but with orig Deus Ex twists. But with a freely explorable word where one knows something of the plot but is free to do or not do, without being limited by having to do the only available next mission. Maybe like Oblivion but with more clues as to what's going on plotwise. Any of you people play D&D (with dice, pencil & paper, & imagination only). That _can_ be a really good generator of plot ideas, esp if someone found the old Jorune/Alien Logic rules (or your variation/s) to give basic info to any newbies...

(2) Mantling. The protagonist can climb rocks, trees, maybe vines, buildings, ATATs ,whatever, with hands not just used for shooting or swimming. Anywhere, not just in specially designed spots. Speaking of ATATs, mantling might include ability to throw a line and climb/rappel. And no just hands/arms - think Splinter Cell climbing manoeuvres too.

(3)please please please quality control. no invisible walls left all over the place. tho i guess this is a fn of time/ budget/ deadlines/ what is actually doable in given time....

(4a)consistency. if green trees burn, then logpiles, wooden boxes, wooden buildings etc should burn too.

(4b) If trees etc are destructable, the chopped-away bits should really not be there, not just be invisible, but still run-into-able.

(4c) running water - moving water has a current, which should be consistent with direction of stream/river, and ideally, movement penalties/bonuses if swimming against/with.

(5)Boxes & other *apparently* moveable objects should *be* moveable, kickable-out-of-the-way, **pick-up-able** (as appropriate) and carefully-placeable OR(and) throwable. one shouldn't be able to wreck a jeep by running into a couple of knee-high piled boxes.

(6) tools/guns/etc. maybe protagonist should be able to improvise effective tools/weapons from found objects, ropes from vines, etc. I guess this may be a real ask, but its a thought in the right direction, i believe.

(7) problem of realism vs backpack space vs the delight in having 20 different guns instantly available. or maybe take a Mirror's Edge approach & use-&-lose in-the-moment (maybe in addition to standard bow&arrows or whatever). This might fit well if one could improvise with found objects ...

(8) viewpoint: how about 1st person un/zoomable to 3rd person, a la Outcast (set own (variable) viewing distance for 3rd pers)

(9) Also from Outcast (& Alien Logic & Albion) - require the protagonist to talk with NPCs, (lots of them not just protagonist's operator) to get 'situational intelligence', &or plot clues, not just blow everything & everyone away. Think how much harder Far Cry2 might have been, if the villages etc were full of people going about their business, & protagonist either required not to harm noncombatants, or maybe can but with significant fallout if she/he does.
eg: Star Wars Dark Forces 2 - a (light side) hero does not get some upgrades if he kills citizens... or maybe you dont get necessary clues if citizens too afraid/hostile to talk...And if you can talk, maybe you can "show appreciation of someones role" to interest them in seeing things your way...enough to be cooperative for now at least...(baci?)

10) just btw from the pics - a jeep with spikes in front Warhammer style looks fierce but is totally impractical - bodies run into stay in front of you & block view, compromise manoeuvreability, change vehicle handling,etc. its roccoco, which is ok, (even GREAT, done right - we're too purely-functional these days) but need to be practical about that too.

(11) it doesn't look like nanotech or cyberpunk are significantly involved here, but if you want to add "magic" to the techies, that could be a way to go. "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson gives a positive, non-weaponised spin to nano, if you're interested, which could possibly be adapted... and somewhere down the track, someone 'cracking' your avatar might have possibilities, but inner outer-space (ie cyberpunk) does look off-topic here (sigh).

OK there's some baccy for your pipe. maybe more to come. i've tried to give relevent examples.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sca1pe1,

Quite a nice wishlist sca1pe1!

It's only 9 I have some additions to. Being as all Na'vi and all of Pandora's fauna are supposed to be enemies of the humans you won't find them amongst each other and therefore you generally can just nuke away without consequences. This could be made more complicated by humans and Na'vi having to interrogate each other before the killing is supposed to take place, some humans joining the Na'vi (the other way around is very unlikely), Avatars mixing with Na'vis (who is good, who is bad), Na'vis hiding in or under a newly placed human settlement and stuff like that. Civilians are not likely to exist in this battle. The humans have brought an invasion and mining force, ordered to destroy everything, while all of Pandora is fighting for its survival.

Justice - a Duke Nukem / Serious Sam / UT 'lawnmower' style game can be fun, but i doubt JC (!) has waited this long to make a game like that. Certainly the disabled guy in the flick can't be taking a Duke style 'let God sort 'em out' attitude since he's shown 'fraternizing with a native'... and a game with moral ambiguities is much more susceptible to interesting plot twists, thinking too of another JC (Denton).

Plot ideas (hope not too off-topic) - more questions, really -

1.Background: What are the Powers That Be in the local galaxy ? how is the local area of the galaxy organised ? are there any rules or is it a frontier situation ? what about policing / sheriffs? (and what's their brief?) First Contact protocols ? Dispute resolution frameworks?

2.How did the situation arise ? How come the mining co is free to just barge in ? Is there are policy of 'terra nullius' for the whole non-Earth universe ? How did the mining co discover the valuable whatever ore and appraise the extent of deposits (room for a prequel there?) enough to engage the massive expense of what they are now doing ? (Don't tell me 'scans' - an asteroid is one thing, but a whole (giant) planet totally another). What are the background economics - is the mining co the end-to-end miner-processor-producer of whatever the valuable end product is ? If not, what other companies are involved ? Does ANYONE have any ethics or is money the be-all-and-end-all for all Powers That Be ? What about 'ethics' as front for economic plots/interference etc of other companies ?

3. Why do the Naavi see the situation as being so threatening? is it really that bad ? Besides fighting, is there any other Power they could appeal to (if only they knew ?) either for direct help, or for policing or even economic interference in mining co.... (Hmm, Do the Naavi have SEALS ? (joke)).

4.Previous history of First Contacts ? and consequences ? for humanity? for space-faring commercial entities ?

"Fire in the Sky" by Jo Clayton (DAW Books, 1995) is an SF novel in which mining co(s) operate on other worlds despite native opposition... I'd suggest a read, some interesting plot ideas there.

I've never played "nuke away games" and never will, so I'm in no way defending that possibility - rather I play RPG, strategy and table D&D, even DMing now and then.

But from what we know for one thing "the crippled man", Jake Sully, is not one you can play in the game. Secondly the Na'vi and all of Pandora's fauna attack humans on sight. Thirdly the humans have gotten the one assignment of destroying the entire ecosystem of the planet and the Na'vi know that. Therefore it is impossible for them to mix knowingly and only Avatars, captured Na'vis, captured humans and those within the humans who wish peace and those within the Na'vi who might want to negotiate can see each other without attacking - if those exist. Of course that would make for a fine Deus Ex style setting, discovering those you work with are evil, deciding to cooperate with the others, finding some bad apples there too, going your own way... Whatever it be. But there won't be any civilians at all if you play Na'vi, very few, if any, as humans and there won't be any mixed villages unless you count prisoners as mixed. So penalized for killing innocents, normal people performing normal stuff in villages and the like is impossible in this game.

The moral dilemmas and interesting storylines will have to come from within. Discovering dark secrets, power struggles, disagreement over what to do, spying, love, friendship, trust, betrayal...

And I guess the miners are following all human laws. The Na'vis are seen as primitive, Jake being a crippled veteran suggests the US army supports the assignment and in the past humans have gladly pushed other civilisations away in order to further their own goals. Hiding a war of this kind seems pretty close to impossible.

More wishlist:

bearing in mind, setting up the paradigm is not just for this game but also for what may follow...

1. AI - if you make enemies by killing someone, you should be able to approach & discuss remedies, maybe only in some circumstances, NOT once-an-enemy-always-an-enemy.

2. A non-lethal path through the game. Maybe like DX knockout darts, & EMP vs machines.

3. One should be able to take ALL gear from a dead *or unconscious* opponent, guns, ammo, medpacks? netbooks? maybe including the battlesuit ? if cant do battlesuit, maybe an informed protagonist can steal & use its memory chip/s, ?com circuitry (maybe to fool controller), other situationally useful knick-knacks...

4...and ammo, on dead/unconsc bodies or in boxes etc, should be in reasonable amounts. Maybe a dead soldier was down to his last few rounds (but he wasn't running away, was he?!) but breaking open a supply crate to get just one box of shells/etc is ridiculous...

5. Knives, machetes, swords etc, should be able to really cut, ie, all ropes, straps, all reasonable veggies, as well as people (& shave with ?!!joke) but not steel cable or ?high-tensile nanomonofilament...

6. Boxes, crates etc, are containers, and most/all should (a) be breakable, and (b)contain something, in quantity appropriate for size of container. In real world, how often does one see piles of boxes with nothing in them? usually boxes destroyed/redeployed when emptied, right ? (Unbreakable nanosteel interstellar shipping crates (Star Wars) excepted...)

7. Scopes on rifles etc should be de/re-mountable and swappable. Crysis did good there.

8.Using hands for more than shooting/swimming #2: (Poss plot element too):
How about a Myst-like ability to fiddle with wheels & levers & see what happens (again, NOT just special ones). Wheels etc near "STOP! Certified Operators Only!" signs (FEAR) should give especially interesting/maliciously-delightful results... Also, ability to release park-brake on vehicles & give them a shove...

9. STANCE: Arboreal*/Standing/Crouching/Sitting/Prone(face down & face up). *Arboreal- hanging from hands etc, Splinter Cell stuff. Also useful on *flying foxes*, ropes, *in* trees, and climbing rocks, in 'chimneys', cliffs etc.
***ALSO an intermediate stance when climbing through windows etc (to avoid the jump-crouch routine or being unable to get thru smaller windows) - grasp edge with hands/arms, pull feet up
*(not to mention possible Matrix(eg) chase style crashing through windows/holes and doing that roll that stops you breaking all those bones...

10. If time is important in the game, please give us an appropriate timepiece, not just a clock when we go to sleep... or maybe some ability, to pick time of day by sun/moonlight, sky, shadowfall, star positions (night)... guess a HUD inappropriate on a low-tech native...

11. I WISH... fire done well in Far Cry 2, how about WATER here ? I mean, bodies of water of any size should have swells, chop, whitecaps, maybe even ...surf... maybe you people could rope nVidia's people in here... do you remember the Snoqualmie screensaver with all the particle (gel?) fluid dynamics ? helpful at all?
and sorry, Ubisoft, but swimming, FarCry(1) more real than 2. Needs fixing. Swimming in swells > view bob? tho brain compensates, no need to be too mechanical about it, chop/surf > face splashes(loss of non-close view)/short underwater dives/poss loss of orientation to land... and what about drift from current not to mention rips (poss game-border control mechanism?)

12. Need to do something about being stopped by any wall more than one foot high.
(a)My body usually auto compensates for steps, tree roots, small boxes etc, i dont need to jump, and shouldn't need to jump (> come out of crouch) to get past small obstacles.
(b)Jumping is normally a whole-body affair, i use my arms, whole legs (incl knees, and upper leg muscles), change my whole posture etc, not just jump from tippy toes & 'spring' with lower-leg muscles. And running jumps vs hurdles etc too. Or i can sit on a low wall & swing my legs over.

***!!!*** Immersion needs to include ones game body having same (or better) abilities I would normally expect from my physical body, as well as the superb advances in environmental realism we're getting. Think how it might feel to be fighting etc in a 90-year-old persons body - maybe can appreciate the view, but running little, stiff knees, can't jump more than 6" etc... add square-wheeled skates (for view bob)... you get the idea. The avatar is a native, conditioned to his v physical life (& hopefully not ...malaised), warrior athletic abilities & stamina. he should be able to ***lope***, long distances too, maybe burst-run can catch horse?... Another way of putting it - You remember how clunkily dinosaurs used to be thought to move ? RAPTORS - incl humans - dont move like that. Give us raptors some speed & agility.. Have you seen the (anime) video Ninja Scroll ? Early on, the koga-ninja team flits through the trees at canopy level, never touching the ground... of course that would need extensive long training, but maybe the avatar already has that... ?? how about it ?
(hmmmmm.... all those ninja abilities... come from a low-tech (re fighting) background, maybe like avatar society ? or maybe one one another continent.... a sequel, hein ? but not a street-fighter type thing, please) But if bring in martial arts, bring in their philosophies too, meditating, magical sutras, healing abilities... woo, going long way here...

13) Last for now... (whew! you say) that ?kiss at end of teaser - >> possibilities!!!:-

a)Q:when is a kiss a lot more than a kiss ?
A: when it is a mechanism for info-exchange by STD-style blood nanosites... READ 'The Diamond Age' by Neal Stephenson (I really hope he writes a sequel... the review doesn't pick it, but the common thread in Stevenson's books is cryptography, i think this is more a speculation on poss fut diretions, so no further sequel, i reckn))

b)kiss >>...>> progeny. Qualities & abilities of.. maybe think the protagonist of Alien Logic, who is 3rd? generation of offspring of human & alien mating...


?RESOURCES FOR YOUif you haven't seen already)

re bridges, check
http://weburbanist.com/2009/08...nd-perilous-bridges/

and note more detail re root bridges at
http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/
(wonder if they'd ever get strong enough to hold one of those pieces of floating real estate in place ?)(read site b4 answering that)

Also, living tree buildings, check:
http://blog.makezine.com/archi...CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890
new to us, but maybe old tradition to Naavi ?

That should be enough baccy to power a whole war-council (for a while..)

quote:

...Hiding a war of this kind seems pretty close to impossible.

Hiding depends on what you hide it in. If the settled galaxy of that time has plenty of uncharted planets as well as plenty of settled ones (>infrastructure, protocols & ?laws/?enforcement, probably other non-human races...) then the default setting might well be for it to be unnoticed - UNLESS word gets out... read "Fire in the Sky" by Jo Clayton...

A table DM eh! excellent! good to know the right people in place...

Also, btw, re yr comments above, that ?kiss at end of teaser... could change a LOT of things... ?

I wonder if the plot was influenced by the first novel of the Deathworld trilogy by Harry Harrison?

The planet Pyrrus, a strange place where all the beasts, plants, and natural elements are out to destroy man.....

Sound familiar?

Have read it, but a v long time ago. 1st book "The Tactics of Mistake" or am I mis-remembering ?
The film sounds wonderful, but based on Kotaku's r/v of the game, (sounds lawnmower; have UT series for that; at least in UT there are worthy opponents) I might wait till I've tried the demo, or skip it, (just abusing the natives, and they can't even pick up & use enemy's weapons? sux) though the film may change that...

Justice - as a player/DM presumably also interested in other scenarios (since involved in Avatar) u may wish to google "Jorune". it does sound rather different scenario from Avalon, in most respects, but could maybe with a little adaptation, perhaps later, give mechanisms for further adventures, presuming the Naavi survive... whichever way, happy hunting.

Hopefully there will be a bit more to it than just massacring each others, but I guess it will have to be within the settings of an all out war. Probably a bit hard to make Cameron change his film in order to give us a Deus Ex inspired game

And Jorune seems quite interesting. I might pick up a bit of inspiration from there for the next time it is my turn to DM a campaign. I'm moving to a new country next week, studying, so we'll see how quickly I find a group of D&Ders.

I'm wondering(hoping) that you can play the game with a Na'vi body that is of differing gender to your human self. That would add an interesting layer to things.

For the PS3 version, I would like to see fully customizable/adjustable Six-axis motion control for piloting & driving vehicles when playing on the RDA side. I'm not quite sure if this would work for the animals that the Na'vi ride or fly but hopefully one of the moderators will be kind enough to enlighten me.

I would also like to see a very good matchmaking/party system for the multiplayer modes. It should be easy to gather your friends together in a lobby in the multiplayer part of this game. Then, it should be easy to find and connect to ranked games with your party. The multiplayer modes should be lag-free and error-free. Killzone 2 is a pretty good example of this.

Also, for multiplayer, a spectator mode would be helpful so that we can watch a game in progress while not actually participating. Killzone 2 has a very good spectator mode.

A "death-cam" feature in multiplayer would also be helpful so that inexperienced players could see who is killing them, which weapon they used, and what their location was. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a great example of this.