NGMOCO DROP MORE IPHONE FPS DETAILS, HALO CONNECTION
It’s been some two months since ngmoco’s online multiplayer iPhone arena shooter project codenamed LiveFire (which has now changed to something unrevealed) first made its debut at Apple’s iPhone 3.0 conference, but the publisher has just added a new entry to its developer diary offering a few more details on how its in-game commerce will function.
There was a touch of nervousness with the announcement that the game would support in-game purchases to upgrade and equip your avatar, and it looks like this has been scaled back to some degree: ngmofo Chris notes that upgrades earned as you rise in the ranks will primarily be cosmetic ones (shifts in your armor’s color), but that the in-game commerce could give entirely new thematic armor changes, which are coming, says Chris, from some of the original Halo artists.
But, he continues, they’re sticking their first tenuous dips toes into the water to see how they might balance the game by giving each armor set (heavy armor, amphibious suit, stealth) unique properties:
We’re also in the process of experimenting with gameplay-affecting attributes for purchasable armors. This feature is in the early stages of testing for balance and is something we may or may not ship with, but the design idea is to differentiate the armors sets by speed, protection, physics and other properties that align with the concept of a given armor. So a heavily armored combat suit would take more damage than base armor, but would also come with slower movement.
The intent is to give each a bonus and a trade-off, rather than a complete upgrade, to keep things in balance with the base armor set. Another idea we’re discussing is giving each armor different modifiers to power-ups (either instead of or in addition to base stat modification), so a heavy battle suit might enjoy longer bonus from damage power-ups and shorter bonus from a jet-pack powerup.
Read the full run-down for more on their design, with additional entries on the weapons and actual name of the game promised soon.
IDENTITY & IN-APP COMMERCE IN FPS
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