BABEL

Check out our Babel playlist!

What is Babel?

At the moment, Babel is a proof-of-concept: a cooperative dungeon for (ideally) 4 players. They must coordinate and defeat the four bosses. With time and funding, Babel would be a full fledged MMO, the first of its kind (no levels, no XP, unique classes).

There is no concept of XP or levels in Babel. There are different worlds, the floors of the Tower of Babel, and each world has some specific theme, and requirements for a player to ascend to the next floor.

• The first world would be a simple tutorial world, cyber-retro style. The requirements to ascend would be completing the quests to get the core abilities of your character, some gear, and reaching top 10 of a 50-player arena match.
• The second world would be a Nordic world, full of ice, snow, and appropriate monsters. The players could explore several different villages and the wilderness. The requirements to ascent would be defeating the Dungeon of Valhalla (the currently implemented dungeon) and to have accumulated 500 PvP kills.
• The third world would be a Lovecraftian horror region. Zombies, vampires, and other monsters of the dark roam the lands, haunted manors, mysterious lights, and the region is eternally surrounded by fog (toroidal map, walking into the fog would make a character appear on the other side of the map)
• Fourth world, Arrakis-inspired desert landscape. Scorching heat, oasises, pyramids, lost ruins, mummies, sand-worms, and so much else to add here

There could even be floors representing different times of the same place (like floor 10 you would meet some NPCs on a city, floor 21 you would find the city in ruins after some attack, half the NPCs dead, and the other asking for your help).

When players ascend to the next floor, a copy of their character is made that ascends, while another remains. For example, Daniela might want to return to Floor 1. The character she plays there is exactly the same as it was when she ascended. If she gets new gear or abilities, they won't be reflected on her character on floor 2. Carefully done requirements must be made to ensure that any abilities the characters would need on floor 2 are set as requirements on floor 1. Any gear or abilities obtained in floor 2 will also not be reflected on her floor 1 character. She essentially has 2 characters by that point. Players may wish to return to lower floors for completionism (achievements, etc), events (seasonal or special events on specific floors), or to help friends ascent. Gear and abilities is the only thing that distinguishes all the characters in a world, which on one hand prevents high-level players from killing low-level players, but might also lead to overgeared players doing the same (so designing proper combat and safe areas is clearly mandatory).

For server health, we would want to keep a decent amount of players per floor. Because most players accumulate on the top floors, we would probably have lower floors with a single server, and top floors with multiple ones. Players could choose their server per floor, and once the maximum floor changed (as more floors are added), servers would be merged. Bots could also be considered to fill events requiring a specific amount of people (like the 50-player arena on Floor 1). It is important to keep the amount of servers fluid: react quickly to player-base trends, split and merge as necessary.

What classes are there in Babel?

• The Fighter: third person camera, plays similarly to a JRPG, with simple controls but complex combos. The fighter acts like a melee brawler or warrior, having high health and dealing good melee single target damage. The fighter is also able to enter a defensive stance, dealing less damage, but also healing himself and taking reduced damage. Currently, Fighter has a Charge attack, a Dodge ability, and 5 combos (Spinning, 2x Lifesteal, Bleed, and Restrain).
• The Sniper: first person camera, plays similarly to a FPS, with simple controls and high-skill ceiling. The sniper is a ranged attacker with long, medium, and close range options. The sniper might also heal himself or his allies with a medi-gun.
• The Strategist: third person camera, plays similarly to a MOBA, with simple controls but complex combos. The strategist is an AoE attacker with short and medium range directional abilities. He excels at controlling the battlefield (freezing enemies, shielding allies, creating physical barriers, pushing targets away).
• The Mage: third person camera, plays similarly to an MMO, with complex controls. The mage is a ranged attacker with long and medium range options. The mage targets his enemies/allies and casts spells (some helpful, others harmful) at them, often having low mobility.

Each class gives a party (a group of players that have allied with one another) a different HUD benefit:

• The Fighter: ?
• The Sniper: can spot enemies, allowing them to be tracked through walls
• The Strategist: a minimap with allies and enemies spotted. Players in a party without a Strategist, for example, have no minimap.
• The Mage: health bars visible above everyone's head, allowing people to know the HP % of targets.

How to keep class balance?

• Track win-rate statistics in PvP, DPS and HPS statistics in PvE
• Have specific talents for classes to improve them in PvP or PvE (like "Do more 15% damage to NPCs." and "Reduce damage taken from Fighters by 20%")
• Have a rotational advantage system (similar to how Pokemon has Fire-Water-Grass): Fighters are good against Snipers, bad against Mages, neutral against Strategists. Mages are good against Fighters, bad against Strategists, neutral against Snipers. Etc.

What bosses did we design?

• Freyja: spawns Wildfire Mushrooms that explode on death (must be killed from afar); summons Valkyries that carry players into the abyss (must be killed before they drop their target); creates poison clouds on damage-taken beneath the players' feet (players must move out of these); attacks melee;
• Thor: has a thundercloud rotating around the map dealing tons of damage (players must avoid this); casts a Chain Lightning (players must be spread out); summons magnets that allow the Chain Lightning to bounce to others (must be killed quickly); does a Thunder Slam on damage electrifying the floor (players must jump when Thor lands); attacks melee;
• Loki: creates clones of himself on damage-taken, with less HP but dealing the same damage; creates a Cursed Wall that sweeps the map killing everone (must be avoided by taking the teleporters on the platform to cross the map); attacks ranged
• Odin: not yet implemented. The idea is that, at some point, Odin destroys the map and everyone falls into a small planet where they move around with 3d gravity. And other stuff worthy of final boss fight

Open-Source

Babel is open-source. For details on how to build or contribute, checkout our github!