Citizen Zero is an innovative third-person massively multiplayer online action-adventure game (MMOAAG) with strong role-playing elements, currently under development by Micro Forté. The game is set in the near future, on the isolated former penal colony of Neo-Eden and its two neighbouring planets. The game universe offers a distinctive and diverse neo-noir futuristic setting for exploration and adventure.
The game is played over the internet. Up to 10,000 players can play simultaneously in each shard of the game universe. Players will create a character to serve as their alter-ego in the game, and use this character to explore and get involved in fast-paced action within a unique persistent game universe. Persistent means that the action in the world continues whether or not you are playing at the time.
After you choose your new identity, you will find yourself immediately drawn into the action, no matter your online gaming experience. Choose from a variety of challenging roles, rise through the ranks of one of the active NPC organisations in the world, taking on roles of genuine influence on the world. You may earn the respect or contempt of your elders, make friends and enemies, and become totally immersed in the world and story that makes up Citizen Zero.
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What makes this MMOG different from others?
Every character is a unique mystery. You will gain points and power by uncovering your character's past.
Engrossing interwoven storylines give you a chance to get involved in world events of major impact.
Specifically tailored missions will perfectly suit your interests, ability and playing style.
You are important! The ruling organisations will actively pursue you for your superior skills.
An immersive and exotic world unlike any other you have encountered online.
Easy and effective communications encourage co-operation, collaboration, and communication, fostering a socially safe online community
From concerts to wars - our ground breaking BigWorld™ server technology allows thousands of players to gather together for spectacular events.
The character creation system gets you into the action fast, the mission system helps you stay there!
These features make BigWorld:Citizen Zero fun for role-players and casual computer gamers alike.
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Where can I sign up for beta testing?
We currently are not accepting external beta testing applicants. Check our website in the coming months for an announcement on external beta testing.
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What is the approximate release date for Citizen Zero?
We are projecting 3-6months after beta testing is completed.
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Will there be a subscription fee to play the game? If so how much will it cost?
Yes, there will be a subscription fee. We will announce pricing details as the game draws closer to release.
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Game Design
What is the back story?
The former Penal Colony of NE6744 (sarcastically named 'Neo-Eden' by its prisoners) was set free after a riot caused the Guardians of the establishment to flee. In the fifty years that have followed, a new society has been built around the many machines and buildings that were once part of the prison. As Earth is not aware the riot occurred, prisoners continue to arrive, their minds erased and implanted with an identi-chip which restricts their movements. The ruling board, the DeMannon's Ladder Council (DLC) maintains a comfortable power over all but some of the residents - those people, nicknamed 'Zeroes', who have managed to break the programming of their chip through a massive inner strength and gain new strengths and abilities. You are one such person, and it is your job to unravel the mysteries of Neo-Eden and yourself.
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Where is the game set?
The game is set on the three habitable worlds in the Ulruan solar system - the main planet Neo Eden, the swamp planet Ulrua and the desert wastelands of Trinn. A fourth planet exists, but it is unexplored and is thought to be uninhabited.
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What races can I play?
There are three playable races in the game. You can be a Human, a bio-mechanical Cybrid or a tribal alien Beziel. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses. Whatever race you chose, your character is one of only 5% of the population who is classified as 'Zero' by the automated colony systems. This means you can have access to places that ordinary citizens cannot go, and use equipment and machinery that will not respond to their commands. As a result, you are in great demand by the powerful Overarchy within the game.
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What kind of characters can I play?
All players choose a set of core skills when the commence the game, and then develop skills in one or more extra fields. This means that there are no classes, and anyone may develop whichever area of expertise they wish. Depending on the skills that you chose to develop your can take on a wide variety of roles. They include Spy, Detective, Outlander, Hacker, Medic, and Tactical Specialist.
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How do I play a mission?
The Overarchy sponsor most missions. If you do not wish to belong to a Overarch you can be a freelance agent and hire yourself out to different Overarchs, meaning both that you have no obligation to them, but also that you do not gain some of the greater benefits of being a member. Missions are designed to provide you with a solo or team challenge, with a clear goal and a sense of accomplishment and rewards if and when the goal is attained.
Missions will normally take from 10 to 40 minutes to complete, most averaging less than 20 minutes. The game system also provides longer challenges, made up of a series of linked missions. These can take considerably longer to complete, but each stage can usually be completed within one session of playing.
Some misssions will require a wide range of different abilities, encouraging co-operative playing. For example, a mission to rescue a kidnap victim might take place in a building that requires a hacker to get past the door, a security systems expert to disable the automatic cameras, and tactical specialists to help defeat the kidnappers.
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What is the aim of the game?
Citizen Zero may be played like a traditional linear action game, as a role-playing game or treated as a living virtual world.
If you play the game in a linear fashion, the aim is to remove all of the identichip inhibitions and recovering your memories, thereby gaining your freedom. If your preference is for a role-playing style of gaming, the aim is to advance your character and to build your fame and personal power in the process. If you treat the game as a living virtual world, you set your own goals, with the option of getting involved in major stories and events as they unfold.
The game allows players with different styles and goals to work together and establish a place within a vibrant online community.
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Is the game oriented towards solo players or groups?
The game is designed with both styles of play in mind. The mission system can just as easily create missions that challenge a single character, or a team of characters. You are not forced to work in a group in order to advance your character.
However, much of the fun of online games comes from the interaction with other players and the game encourages cooperative interaction. No character can master all of the skills, and some missions will require the right mix of skills. The combat system also encourages cooperative play.
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How important is combat in the game?
Combat is an important source of action but it is not an end in itself. It is not the main focus or style of gameplay in Citizen Zero. The main rewards in the game come from completing missions, not from killing and looting. There are combat intense missions designed for those players who particularly enjoy combat, but combat is in general just one of many possible styles of gameplay.
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How does the combat system work?
The combat system uses a targeting system similar to that of Syphon Filter. Players choose their opponent, how long to aim or prepare each attack, and when to attack. Characters with high combat skills have access to a range of spectacular special combat moves and actions which only work if you prepare the attack.
Some weapons are particularly effective against particular types of opponent or defense systems. The more formidable automata will often have multiple defense systems that need to be overcome before they can be defeated.
The player makes all of the interesting choices in combat (on a second to second timeframe) and is in charge of moving their character around during a battle. Their character's skills affect how quickly they can get a decent aim, the range of special moves that are available. Characters defend themselves against attacks automatically (e.g. by dodging).
This system copes well with latency (lag) on the internet and provides the right balance of player and character ability in determining the outcome of the combat.
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How will character creation work?
Character creation has been specially designed to let you get into the action as quickly as possible. Unlike other games, which force you to adjust even the most minute statistics about your character - sometimes before you even know what their purpose is! In Citizen Zero, you can decide how much you want to adjust your character's stats, and how much you want the computer to intelligently estimate. This is so that newer players don't get daunted, while more experienced gamers have all the control they've come to expect, and action-oriented players aren't bogged down with unnecessary detail.
When you begin playing the game you 'arrive' on Neo-Eden and are sent to ReCollection Inc, a society dedicated to your safe intergration into society. They will assist you in selecting your race, character attributes, and apptitude for a number of core skills that will prepare you for your chosen career. In the course of the game, you can develop other skills which qualify you for new and different roles.
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Can my appearance be modified?
Since Citizen Zero features no classes and few races, we have opted for a high level of customisation for the individual player character.
The two areas we have focused on are human recognition and personal expression. Human recognition at distances of ten paces (where your friends and enemies will probably during heated battles) is more important than the shape of your eyebrows or your eye colour. It is your colour, motion and silhouette that stand out the most. To that effect we include a blended animation system that allows us to present the player with a pallette of animations and stances that they can choose for their character. There are also plans to use adjustable body meshes which change based on your character stats. For example, a character with high strength will have a muscled body.
Rather than go for just a simple swappable texture system, we have added skinned modular character meshes. This allows us to provide a range of distinct silhouettes and colours. Currently the models have four swappable areas, each one containing an average of three textures that can each individually be swapped. Though this system is not optimal for game speed (quake 3 uses only two textures on average for the characters), it provides us with such an enormous range of variation for a fraction of the texture memory. We figure that players would trade a few frames per second for the ability to pick from hundreds of costumes.
Very detailed customisation is a more difficult matter. The more unique textures (for example, player-designed tattoos) the system needs to load, the slower the game will run. We hope to implement as much customisation as possible within the system demands.
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What happens if my character dies?
If your character suffers a mortal wound, you have the option of hovering on the brink of death, giving a companion a chance to use medical skills or special items to save your life, or dying. If you chose to die, your body and all of your equipment are transported back to the nearest revivification tower, where your body is repaired, or a new one grown for you.
This service is not free. You must either pay Revivification Inc its revivification fee or build up a debt of mission points with them. They will sub-contract missions to your character, taking most of the earnings until the debt is paid off.
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What happens if I break the law?
In order for the system to notice a crime, you must be observed (e.g. by security camera, patrol, innocent civilian) or reported (e.g. by a player character).
The response of the authorities depends on the character's history of illegal actions. The more crimes you commit and the worse the crime, the more seriously the Bureau will pursue you. If they catch you, expect swift and decisive justice. Possible penalties include fines, confiscation of property, downgrading of revivification rights, loss of credit with ReCollection Inc, and periods of incarceration on the prison islands. It is rumoured that criminals that are deemed "beyond the pale" have been "vanished".
The Bureau are concerned with the safety of NPCs as much as PCs, and random acts of violence will not go unpunished. It is still possible to fill a niche as a professional criminal provided you are clever enough to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities.
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Will player killing be allowed?
One of the main goals of Citizen Zero is to create a socially safe environment for players to enjoy. As a result, player versus player combat is only allowed in very limited contexts:
If you are involved in a duel (both sides must agree)
If you are within a designated "danger zone". These include sections of the badland and the lowest levels of DeMannon's Ladder.
If special permission is given as part of a mission.
Those players who enjoy matching wits and skills against human opponents can choose to become involved in cross-purpose missions. This means that two or more characters (or character teams) are competing against each other in the completion of a mission. For example: Team A is assigned to gather as many objects as possible. Team B is assigned to protect these objects. Other missions involve direct conflict - for example, Team A and B act against the clock to gather as many of the objects as possible.
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Will there be major stories and events within the game?
Yes. Citizen Zero features storylines monitored and guided by administrators in conjuction with professional writers. Wide-ranging world events will occur, and the system, in conjunction with GMs, will allow the effects of these storylines to filter down to the average player. You may be proud to say that you or your Overarch helped to avert the Great Famine, or that you fought in the war, cleaned up after the flood - or simply take interest in the political machinations of the Overarchy. Your participation in them may be as major or minor as you wish, but they will often touch your character's life in some way or another.
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Are there vehicles in the game?
Yes. Close to the major cities, players can pilot small anti-gravity speeders. These are useful for getting out of the immediate vicinity of the cities, and racing these vehicles is a popular and sometimes lucrative pastime. Further away from the city, players can pilot comparatively slow wheeled and anti-gravity vehicles, useful for moving large cargoes, providing a mobile base of operations for missions and wilderness adventures. Vehicles are useful but they do not override the need for exploration and action on-foot.
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Can players build houses or alter the environment?
At the begininng of the game, characters are given their own apartments. You may customise your apartment's interior as much as you wish. However, the outside of the apartments are not customable. Player-run groups may own buildings and upgrade or adjust the interiors, but cannot build their own houses, due to restrictions placed on unauthorised large structures by the Machina. There are abandoned enclaves in the wilderness that can be claimed by those strong enough to gain access, and form the natural base for real player communities.
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Is there a banking system in the game?
No. Character money is electronic and items can be stored safely within your apartment. You do not lose items when your character is killed.
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What is the Identi-Chip?
When citizens arrive at Neo-Eden they are automatically implanted with an Identi-chip. This is a sophisticated computer chip which originally served to control and restrict prisoners. Today, it has several advantages and disadvantages that are relics from its original purpose.
Provides a tamper-proof identity "card" for citizens.
Serves as a key to secure areas, and authorised access to the more advanced equipment in the colony
Generates inhibitions that prevent violent disobedience, and limits the places that the citizen can travel to.
Stores an image of the structure of the citizen's memories, allowing their memories to be reproduced into a new body on death.
Allows the citizen to use the teleportation systems built into the world.
How linear are the backgrounds/stories that each character has?
We don't want to reveal too many details about the issue of character back stories before the game's release, but there are several details we can confirm. All player characters will be capable of receiving flashbacks which may provide insight into their former lives. These will not be linear, but will be more like a jigsaw puzzle. The 'back story' will sometimes explain things in your 'new' life but will at other times reveal disturbing and surprising things about your character's life on Earth.
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Will people who have fully discovered their past be able to help other people discover theirs?
For a start, there is no such thing as 'fully discovering' your own past. Forming a complete picture about your past is not an achievable goal but a correlative to the process of breaking your Identi-chip. Secondly, flashbacks cannot be knowingly induced. Sometimes, they will seem to occur at random. At other times, there will be a specific entity - a person, an object - which will trigger some sort of recognition in the character's mind.
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What is the Overarchy?
The Overarchy is the name given to the collection of powerful organisations and factions that dominate the social landscape of the Ulruan system, providing missions that suit their interests to be performed by their agents. Player characters will be in great demand from the Overarchy, for their superior skills and powers, and it is through them that players will find the bulk of their missions.
Some examples of Overarchs include The Frontier Guard - an alliance dealing independent justice on the frontier, The Bureau - A shady organisation combining the responsibilities of the FBI and the CIA, and The Cybrid Mafia - a cybrid resistance movement and criminal syndicate.
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Can players run Overarchs?
An Overarch is NOT a guild in the sense of current MMORPGs. The Overarchy system has been put in place to provide meaningful gameplay and a way of moving up in the game world. Overarchs are desperate for the services of 'Zeroes' - you don't work for the Overarch, the Overarch works for you. Overarchs will always be essentially solid-state. Their machinations have such an influence over the world that for reasons of balancing and player power, it is impossible for a player to run an Overarch. We never want to put our players into a position where they can be actively disadvantaged by another player. However, players may run their own organisations, either independently, or as a smaller franchise of an Overarch. It is these player-run organisations or franchises that will be closest to EverQuest style guilds. You do not need to be in an Overarch to create your own organisation. Many player-run organisations are will be taken seriously by the other game entities and can in turn affect the state of other Overarchs.
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Do I have to join an Overarch?
Not at all. It is entirely viable to work outside the Overarchy system. One of the things that is deficient in many current MMOGs is the lack of direction. Players are motivated mainly by desire for power, money, or levels. We designed the Overarchy system to address this, especially for players who aren't familiar with MUDS, or found themselves asking 'Why should I bother going on?' after a month or so of playing one. Therefore, the choice of freelancer is potentially that of the more advanced gamer. Life for a freelancer is potentially both more challenging and more rewarding than that of an Overarch member. For one, you can earn an awful lot of brownie points with many different Overarchs without actually joining them. A talented freelancer will quickly attract the attention of the Overarchs, and you can have fun playing hard to get, or climbing a fair way up various slippery poles. Naturally, with the advantages of being part of the Overarchy come restrictions, and you avoid those restrictions.
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What are the Machina?
The prison colony and all of its facilities were constructed and maintained by bio-mechanical, self-repairing machines. Many of these systems have gone feral, continuing to expand and reproduce over the planet without obvious purpose. The largest installations are often called the Machina. Smaller mobile machines are generally called automata, while the smaller garbage-collecting entities are macrons.
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What is the CommuniPanion?
The CommuniPanion (or CP) is the Ulruan system's communication device, issued to all citizens. It is used to contact allies, transmit information, and to learn about and accept basic missions (More sensitive missions will require you to go to a branch office of the organisation and go through a proper briefing). It is also an excellent tool in for making friends in the game world and features an ICQ style interface.
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Will there be a guide program?
Yes, players will be able to get involved as volunteer guides.
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Technical
Will there be a Mac or Linux port?
Our highest priority for ports are the PS2 and X-Box. We're developing the server under Linux, and its great for our purposes but its not a very popular games platform yet.
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Will the 3D Client support T&L?
Yes. Our 3D client will be supporting hardware transformation and lighting.
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With estimated 10,000 people per server/shard it would be pretty laggy how will you combat this?
We have designed the server back-end to cope with much more than 10k users (more like 500k). If everyone online decides it wouldd be cool to hang out at the same city, the server can cope. The server just concentrates more resources on that area. There are three things that we've done that will help with lag: 1. Target aiming, hits and misses are calculated on the server (acting as an impartial observer between clients). So the combat isn't twitch, and consequently isn't strongly lag affected like Quake, but its still interactive. 2. Data sent to player is prioritised, so more significant, and time sensitive events will arrive as quickly as possible 3. We don't send data to the client that can be synthesised, or faked leaving more room for other updates.
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What are the minimum system requirements?
CPU 500Mhz PentiumIII class
RAM 128M
Video 32MB+ Video card with DirectX 3D acceleration
Audio 16 bit (pref. with hardware accel.)
CDROM 12x spin
HD 400M
Input Win compatible keyboard & mouse.
Comms Internet Service Provider and 33k (or better) modem
These are estimates and they will be revised when new details are received.
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