What about a game that took the RPG player vs player concept and focused solely upon the pvp, removing the massively multiplayer part? You could have duels which would consist of the players controlling a single character, controlling a full party by themself, or acting as part of a player/bot team party where all players control a single character. GuildWars does this quite nicely, but I got a slight feeling that the PvP system was really tagged onto the game and didn't really fit in with the PvE game. This is what has made me wonder about focusing entirely upon the one aspect. One thing I'm trying to look at in my design ideas is to keep my designs manageable for a single person should I ever decide to persue them on my own, which is a major reason for looking at removing the MMO part of the design. Thinking in terms of my thread on scalability, the game could be almost like a Tekken style game in complexity of controlling a single character (albeit with spells and weapons rather than concentrating on justfighting moves), while becoming more like guildwars for team combat, and for singleplayer controlled parties, the game could play more like a mini-RTS. It would be nice to get some element of story into it too, as although i want to keep things simple, another of my goals is to tell a story through a game, even if somewhat simple. A nice smattering of game modes would be nice to, but I'm unsure whether it would be best to make them simplistic capture the flag style scenarios, or whether to try and go for more depth, or a combination of the two. I seem to recall from an ancient thread of mine that someone knew of a RPG style game that played almost in the vein of FPS game modes, but can't recall what it was to do any research on it. If anyone has any further ideas for a game of this style it would be cool to hear them :) Cheers, Steve

I'm now thinking about possibly making this a Quantum Leap style game, where players are effectively spirits entering into various realities in order to fix the fabric of the reality by ensuring that events run to 'fate' (or something to that effect). I like the idea that each PvP match could contain an entirely new set of characters and scenarios to get to grips with, although I'd try to design this in such a way that players get familiar with certain persistant characters and ongoing plots so that they don't have to relearn the game every level. This might even be a good way to combine fantasy, sci-fi and alternative genres into a single game by featuring them as separate realities.

I would also like the ability to heavily customize your team/character. I think this could be accomplished by having missions contain a number of souls present in the mission, the player can then customize their souls into characters, with the limitation that they must fit the theme, this can be done by limiting character/team creation on a level by level basis so we cannot have space marines rampaging around in a fantasy reality.

I shall look into Kart Rider and find out more then.. It wasn't the game I had in mind, but I'm sure it will help :)

I'm now half considering whether to use this as a base to create an RPG style game similar to a text MUD in concept but the fighting being portrayed by this game. This would then allow players to chat and act a role without the distraction of fighting until the GM decides a fight game is warranted, at which point they could quickly setup a level (or have a prefab already prepared) and drop the players into the action to determine the outcome. This woud then allow me to create a more complex game by simplifying the non-combat aspects, while allowing players to still experience an exciting graphical combat system. This would also allow, via the text based portion of the game, a GM to allow the players try to do anything they desire, without requiring the computer to arbitrate on what is and is not possible. Players could of course ignore the RP aspect if they wished by simply using it as a chat lobby, so it shouldn't be offputting to non-RP'ers.

I do however like the fate based idea as I think it gives a lot of potential in the same way that something like Quantum Leap, Sliders or StarGate gave potential for very different settings in each episode while having an overarching storyline.

Also, referring back to the PvP aspect, it might be interesting to have 2 or more teams of roleplaying groups encounter one another, and if they have reason to, they could end up pitted against one another... no more having the game going easy on the hero with puny monsters when they come up against a real opponent, someone must lose!

I'm wary however that adding in too much customisation and sandbox-like ideas into the game could make it very hard to develop, requiring masses of content and programming. Any thoughts on how to simplify this idea to something manageable, or come up with an offshoot idea that would be simpler would be appreciated.


Cheers,

Steve