With The Rising MOD, our goal from the start has always been to blend the best aspects that we've liked in SP and MP games while also trying not to pigeon hole the MOD into any particular category or genre. I believe that when you do so, you subconsciously limit your creativity and instead focus on trying to "fill" the gaps of the genre you're trying to imitate when you should be making sure that the feelings and emotions you get from the material you are working from (be it a storyline or game play concept that exists in your head) translates well into game play.
For The Rising, the feelings and emotions we tried to translate into game play (for the Resistance side, not discussing Necrotroph game play yet) were fear and survival (I'm speaking generally about my definition of fear, i'm also including dread, paranoia, and anxiety). Now you may be wondering: "What the hell are you talking about?! How could you possibly translate emotions and feelings into game play mechanics?" Well, lets take a look at some of game play mechanics that The Rising has that instills both survival and fear into a Resistance player:
-Character bleeding: Once your health drops below 25 HP, your character will begin to bleed. This places a sense of urgency on the player to find a health kit fast or they'll either A: bleed to death or B: a Necrotroph will spot the player's blood trail and hunt them down (provokes both survival and fear).
-Ammunition Sharing: Sharing ammunition between teammates gives players an outlet to cooperate and work as a team (survival).
-Stamina System: The stamina system is a great game play mechanic that places a consequence and importance on almost all the actions the player can perform. Everything from: walking, running, jumping, carrying weapon(s), or using a melee weapon will affect your stamina in our game - potentially putting you in a vulnerable situation if you suddenly get ambushed with little stamina (fear).
-Ammunition does not re-spawn: This helps to encourage ammo sharing which in turn provokes a survival feeling.
-Remove remaining ammo on reload: Again, this also encourages ammo sharing but also puts the player into a predicament: do they reload their weapon if it's at ½ clip capacity and stay on the safe-side incase of a sudden large-scale attack? Or do they not reload and save ammo? This also places a sense of urgency on them because if they don't act quickly, they could get ambushed before they even make a decision (survival and fear).
-In-Game Map: In The Rising, they're no "floating" icons anywhere. The player is given a map that they can expand to A: figure out where they are and B: figure out where they need to go (a list of objectives is written on the map). While this may seem daunting at first, after the first few play sessions you won't really need the map. It's just there to help new players and initially instill the survival feeling.
-No side movement when sprinting: This is a great way for us to add a "con" to sprinting by focusing the players' view on what's in front of them by reducing side visibly and movement. By doing this, we can instill fear by the fact that they feel vulnerable when they sprint -- almost to the point where it encourages them to slow down and stay with their group.
Obviously, these are just a handful of game play mechanics and tweaks we've done to overall instill survival and fear into a Resistance player. Here are a few screenshots demonstrating visually where we are:
-MattD, matthew.diprinzio (AT) gmail.com