Sep 25, 2024
To:Taylor J
Naturally. The online mode would be critical to the game's long-term success in my opinion. It would be as simple as just being able to play chess online, but that's a critical feature that would entice both chess newcomers and veterans alike. Since I'd want this game to be on as many platforms as possible (mobile, PC, and console) I'd make it mandatory that the online experience is the best it can be.
Story mode would essentially be the way to unlock CPU opponents and cosmetics for player's avatars, but I would likely have the 1st chapter of story mode serve as a tutorial of sorts before players get free roam. Though I might just have a normal tutorial instead.
My original idea for a tutorial is that a character will ask the player how good they are at chess. If they answer, "new player" they'd get a brief overview of the game and play a tutorial boss with assistance. If they answer "experienced" they skip the tutorial and jump straight into the tutorial match. But if they answer "I'm a grandmaster" they are prompted with one final chance to reconsider before being forced to play a 2700 elo CPU opponent where losing or drawing results in a loss and being forced to go through both the beginner tutorial and the tutorial battle as punishment.
Though since I kind of want to to entice players to check out the story, I might settle on having things go as follows, [Initial start-up (language and region selection)- Story mode prologue (Chapter 1 of series {with player being guided through the fight with Inojin})- After Inojin is defeated, avatar selection- Then player is taken to hub area where the host of the game explains the various modes before directing player to approach a mysterious woman. The woman then asks the player if they are satisfied with their initial elo rating of 100 and offers to give them a one-time only test to give them a chance to raise it. Here, the options would be, "no" which allows players free roam, "rookie" which allows players to raise their rating to 500 if they play against the 100 elo tutorial boss, "intermediate" which allows the player to obtain a rating of 1200 if they beat the tutorial boss when he plays at the level of a 1000 elo player, "advanced" which allows the player to obtain a rating of 1800 if they beat the tutorial boss when he plays at the level of a 1500 elo player, and finally, "I'm a grandmaster" which allows the player to face the mysterious woman who plays at the level of a 2700 elo player, with losing or drawing resulting in the player being forced to watch a tutorial on how to play chess as punishment. After that, players would be allowed to either explore other modes, do story mode, or go online.
It's also worth mentioning that there would be a way for players with an official title, (grand master, international master, etc) would be able to have their title show up next to their username after going through a verification process.
One final thing I'll mention is that online tournaments would take place every weekend and allow the players to unlock new hubs, CPU opponents, and even Side Stories just by participating in them. Essentially, the hubs would be different hotels around the world where the tournaments take place, but to unlock the Cpu opponent, you'd have to find them hidden within the hub and ask to challenge them in order to unlock the option to do so whenever. In-game currency would be required to challenge these characters, but it would be easy to obtain. More on this vision will become clearer in the next three chapters. This along with updates to story mode would serve as a long-term pull to keep players enticed. There would also be weekday tournaments and special events as well, just to name a few. In short, I have a really ambitious vision for this project.
