Left 4 Rapture: Proposal for Bioshock Multiplayer Mode

Many have called giving Bioshock or its successors a multiplayer mode either impossible or purely impractical. And in essence, they are right. Bioshock as a deathmatch would not work. However, I think if any game has shown the capabilities of creative multiplayer possibilities and presents a possible alternative to a Bioshock multiplayer feature, then that inspirational title is Left 4 Dead.

Yes. Left 4 Dead has taught me how to make Bioshock multiplayer. Of course, a certain suspension of disbelief must be maintained for the mode to work at all, but if laid out as a separate timeline to the original game or an amendment to the story of the sequel, it could actually work quite well. My specific citation of inspiration from Left 4 Dead is the 'Versus' multiplayer mode.

The basis: A small group of aquatic Divers hear of the plane crash and dive down to the depths of Rapture either during the events of the first game or immediately after in order to investigate this lost city. They enter through a different part of the city, thus allowing for a variety of new maps and level designs. Each player is given the choice of either uploading the profile and stats of their single-player character or they can design a new profile using a certain budget for plasmids and tonics, which can be earned as they play. These are persistent profiles and their level gains are permanent to the profile. As such, my player is maxed out and is generally tiered toward stealthy wrench-based attacks while another play may have focused their points into electricity and fire plasmids while another player may actually be a standard gun-toter. Either way, as you play, you gain points toward your budget to build you character, unless, like me, your character is already maxed, in which case you can create a new profile.

The backstory, given as an in-engine cutscene that is skippable, is that these divers arrive at Rapture and are forced to survive for 3 days before the players actually gain control of them. This gives ample opportunity for continuity to allow that they have gained weapons, plasmids, tonics and knowledge of the general denizens of Rapture. The standard group size is 3, but is scalable up to 6. To note; as with Diablo II, the more players you have, the more enemies you encounter and the stronger they will be. Another note: Because Tenenbaum is too busy with the main character and everything to hand out the formula for saving Little Sisters, the Diver's are unable to interact with Little Sisters. They are merely invulnerable, non-violent NPC's that spawn with some Big Daddies and not with others. A player who is a Big Daddy cannot have a Little Sister. Find a new motivation for your violence.

Where Left 4 Dead's co-operative Versus inspiration comes in as this: While standard 'Thuggish Splicers', 'Leadhead Splicers', 'Security Bots' and the occasional 'special' creature are controlled by the in-game AI, a second group of players plays opposite of the divers. These anti-heroes, called Splicers, play as 'Spider Splicers', 'Nitro Splicers', 'Houdini Splicers' and at random times one of the Splicer players is released from a Vita-Chamber as a Big Daddy, just being made into the Tank on Left 4 Dead, usually as a Bouncer but every once in a while a player is created as a Rosie. This is to help with range balancing, since Rosies are long range and have high health.

Just like in Left 4 Dead, creature appropriation is random. No player can choose what Splicer they spawn as, but they can choose their spawn location, unless they are a Big Daddy, in which one of a number of Vita-Chamber locations is used. The Vita-Chambers work just like the respawn closets in Left 4 Dead. In order to allow fairness and dissuade the chance of bad spawns, a player can never respawn within a certain radius of a Big Daddy and a Big Daddy can never spawn within sight of any player. Unlike the Tank, however, there is no damage meter dictating if a player can lose control of a Big Daddy. I feel this would disrupt the pacing. Do not forget, while Left 4 Dead serves as a great multiplayer model, the two games are built toward very different experiences and Bioshock lends itself to a slower, stealthier, more deliberately tense pace than Left 4 Dead.

In order to balance the Big Daddies, they have a lot of health but also take a lot of damage, especially if set on fire or shot with armor piercing rounds. The only way a Big Daddy can dampen the amount of damage they take is by regaining health by causing damage to the players. So, a Big Daddy with 2200HP (Player base is 100) takes 2x the amount of damage as the other Splicers do, and 3x the damage is on fire, 2.5x the standard damage if stunned by electricity and 4x the damage from armor piercing rounds. However, every hit that a Bouncer lands will gain that Bouncer 150% percent of the HP lost by the victim and every round landed by a Rosie will regain that Rosie 50% of the HP lost by the victim. Proximity mines thrown by a Rosie give back 90% of the damage caused. So, much like the Tank in Left 4 Dead, the only way to stay alive for a respectable amount of time as a Big Daddy is to wreak havoc and cause damage.




Now, just like in Left 4 Dead, each of the difference classes of Splicers has special abilities, as listed below:



Spider Splicer: This is the equivalent to the Hunter. Fast, agile, able to crawl on ceilings and climb walls (oh the FPS camera hell that could be...) and given the abilities to Dodge, in which they flip in the direction of the dodge, and Lunge, in which, like the Hunter, they pounce onto the enemy. However, unlike the Hunter, Spider Splicers do not pin the player to the ground, but instead latch on to the player's body and pummel them while the player is still standing. The player's vision is obscured, but they are still mobile. To balance this, the damage taken from Spider Splicer hooks is much more than that of a Hunter's claws and, like all the Splicers, the Spider Splicers take more than a couple shots to kill as opposed to the quickly dispatched Special Zombies in Left 4 Dead.



Nitro Splicer: Nitro Splicers actually have the fastest run speed in the game. They are given a box of infinite molotov cocktails or hand grenades, picked at random upon spawning. Hand grenades have a 2 second gap between throwing opportunities and molotovs have a 4 second refresh. Hand grenades are combustive in nature, with a blast radius of about 12ft. They cause a lot of splash damage and even heavier damage if they explode as a direct hit. If a hand grenade hits a target, they explode on impact. If it misses and hits part of the environment, they have a 1.5 second fuse after making the initial bounce. Molotiv cocktails explode in impact regardless of what they hit and they erupt in an area-of-effect flame that spreads to a radius of about 20ft. Anyone caught in the flames is caught in fire and is continually damaged until the flame burns out (about 6 seconds later). Molotov cocktails cause greater total damage than grenades if landed a direct hit. Nitro splicers are also immune to fire and resistant towards explosives, but have the least amount of health out of all the Splicers. Note: Fire will attract standard A.I. Splicers to the players, while explosives will alert any nearby turrets, camera, or active bots. Use the knowledge accordingly.



Houdini Splicer: If the Spider Splicer is the Hunter and the Nitro Splicer is the Boomer, then the Houdini Splicer is obviously the Smoker and serves a similar role. Except for one thing: Houdini Splicers have the most health of all the Splicers. This will be possibly be the most fun Splicer to play if one likes to disrupt teamwork. When playing as a Houdini Splicer, a player has three attacks, though only two cause damage. 'Fireball', like it sounds, is a small ball of flame that causes mild damage upon impact and does not cause procedural flame damage like a molotov. They merely impact and cause a default level of damage. However, being magical in nature, they have infinite range and do not run out. While slightly slow moving, catching a player from behind with a few shots can cause respectable damage. The second attack is 'Claw', in which the Houdini Splicer uses one hand to hold on to the player's clothing and uses the other hand to pummel them. During this, the Diver player has obscured vision and can only use melee attacks and close-range plasmids to defend themselves, but unlike Left 4 Dead, they CAN defend themselves, albeit in a weakened state. And this is why the third skill matters: 'Abduct' is a skill that is used in tandem with the Houdini's 'Teleport' ability.

To teleport, simply press the left trigger to open a body ghost of yourself and place is approximately where you wish to teleport, and then press the assigned Teleport face button. The game will instantly place you as close as possible to the place you selected. If you merely press the face button, the game will teleport you to the last place you Teleported from. In order to Abduct an enemy, use the Left Trigger to 'paint' that player with your ghost and press the Teleport button. You will Teleport behind that player and have a small window of opportunity to press 'Claw' and grab ahold of them. This is where it gets tricky, in order to balance this out. Once you grab ahold of them, they have the opportunity to break free of the hold by pressing their Jump button. You have to press the 'Teleport' button before they press the 'Jump' button in order to Teleport to your last location with them. If you do, you will automatically teleport to that location (by default of the system, it will be within line of sight of where they were) and will already have a hold on them to begin Clawing them. They have to try and defend themselves as you attack. They're attacks cause minimal damage but can interrupt your attacks if timed right. They cannot break free of the hold. The only way they can break free of the hold is if you let go or if a teammate rescues them from you by damaging you, shocking you, or freezing you.




The Divers: As explained earlier, your Divers are what you make of them. You save their profiles and keep them from game to game. In order to cater to a more conducive system for co-operative multiplayer, health and eve hypos are somewhat more plentiful, though still dictated by the game A.I. to some extent. If a player wishes, they can take up one Tonic Slot in both 'Combat Tonics' and 'Physical Tonics' each to gain the 'Regen' tonic. This tonic allows a slow regeneration of Health and Eve. If a player meets a certain criteria (as set by the developer), they can use up an 'Engineering Tonic' slot to upgrade the 'Regen' tonic to 'Medical Miracle' in which the rate of regeneration is increased. The cost of two or three slots for this skill will actually balance out any game-breaking advantage it might give to a player.



The game: Just like in Left 4 Dead, the point of the Bioshock multiplayer experience to is survive from checkpoint to checkpoint while an overseeing game A.I. procedurally generates A.I. Splicers, Bots, Turrets and Big Daddies, in addition to dealing with the other team in Versus mode. In Left 4 Dead, you have Safe Rooms and Safe Houses. In Bioshock, you have 'Hideaways' which are rooms that are stocked with Health, Ammo, Weapons, and Eve, much like the ammo tables and health chests found in check-stations in Left 4 Dead. Instead of an escape vehicle, the destination in Bioshock is a Bathysphere. Players much survive long enough to reach the Bathysphere to beat the level. At then end of each level, whether by Divercide, in which the Splicers kill all the Divers, or by Bathysphere escape, the total scores are tallied per team, after which the sides are switched and the level is played with the roles reversed before proceeding to the next level.

Unlike Left 4 Dead, the Bioshock multiplayer experience will involve a good bit of story and will have scripted, skippable cutscenes at key points, as well as the ability for players to find Audio Diaries, Ghost Memories, hidden Tonics and Plasmids (these are randomly hidden at the start of each game. No GameFAQ cheating for you!) as well as access vending machines and U-Invent stations and the ability to hack all the machinery present. It will be up to the procedural A.I. to up the challenge accordingly. Each of the 'Districts' of Rapture, which is what the levels are called, are actually linked together in a connected narrative, unlike the separate chapters of Left 4 Dead, and completing all the Districts in order will reveal the actual game story and provide a constant narrative. Once the story has been completed by a player once, if hosting a game they are given the option to 'Remove Story Elements', which disables cutscenes, Audio Diaries, and Ghost Memories. In order to skip a cutscene, all players must vote of skip it. This way, little Mikey who's never played it before, won't have all the vets deprive him of his story.



As a whole, the Bioshock multiplayer mode could be expanded into many directions if ever given the proper amount of care and thought put into, but this is my personal set of ideas of a plausible method of creating a valid and definable Bioshock-themed multiplayer experience, even if it is a complete rip-off of Left 4 Dead. Why is that? Because Left 4 Dead got it right! Complimentary flattery indeed.