Never played a megaman! :0
thats okay, the idea with megaman is you have to find the level with the easiest boss, you beat the boss then you gain "his" ability such as freeze gun. You then use that to kill the fire boss etc... and throughout the game you get more powerful with your "doctor" i think is what he is called, not sure. This basically, in an RPG setting would allow the player to advance, not in a experience level way but in a improvement? way. Then it would allow greater possibilities for adventuring and it could even unlock different environment or outcomes etc...

Ok, I see that the mechanic need not be restricted to platformers, but I still have a couple of concerns with transferring the rather simplistic "X beats Y" basis to a more realistic setting. Consider the example I gave of obtaining technology (or information, for that matter) from a captured city. Say city A has information or technology which will make it easier to conquer city B. This raises some questions:

If A and B are friendly towards each other, why did A not share the information with B so that it could better defend itself? If A is hostile towards B, why hasn't it already used the knowledge to its advantage?

If A is friendly towards B but has kept the knowledge secret - for example, as insurance should relations with B turn sour - how is it that this knowledge falls into your hands when you conquer A? After all, if the guardians of the secret were motivated enough to hide the fact that they even possessed such knowledge from an ostensible ally, what possible reason could they have for revealing this to an explicit enemy? It seems to me that you would need a series of contrived coincidences in order for the "abilities" or their equivalents to be passed on in the simple manner of Megaman's boss powers.

There is also the consideration that, in a world where individual characters are important, being conquered is not a binary state. Sure, one army may have won a definitive battle, but that doesn't mean that the populace will just accept their new leaders. There may be revolts. The thousands of inhabitants will not act as a single entity, so that even the "A is friendly towards B" scenario that I described would actually be an oversimplification - hence my earlier comment about sliding relationship scales being a starting point, but not enough by themselves. I'm not dismissing the core concept that you seem to be suggesting, but it would need a lot of tweaking.

Wow, I had a similar idea for an action RPG where you "level up" through I guess what is referred to as the "Megaman" approach by getting powerups that allow you to progress through the game (I was thinking of Bioshock when I came up with it...same thing). The only difference between yours, Robin, and mine (besides mine lacking a story) is the player also gets to choose the outcome of the game by making critical decisions (kind of like in Mass Effect). I posted a concept thread in "Help Wanted" but so far it's been overlooked. Here is the link (it's concept 2, the first one is just a silly idea I had that I thought would be fun)...

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=568882


I think it would be great if a game like this were made

Hi, ptbcomposer. I've looked at your thread and it does look like an interesting idea, but to tell the truth I'm not sure how similar it is to what I had in mind. What I'm envisioning is an "RPG" only in the sense of the sort of story and exploration it entails. Maybe it would have been more accurate to desribe it as an adventure game: I want to avoid the sort of "stat / ability progression" normally associated with RPGs, whether by grinding through combat or by other means such as "the Megaman approach". Decisions that the player makes will certainly make differences to storyline, character interactions etc. but not in the sense of directly granting the player character extra abilities. Perhaps instead he will make political allies, or arouse an NPC's suspicion.

Wavinator, thanks for your post: it's given me quite a bit to think about. King of Dragon Pass does seem to have some very innovative ideas - although I'm keen to have the gameplay take place through the eyes of a single character (importantly, not the leader even of a relatively minor town; instead, one emissary among many). So decisions would be co-ordinated through conversations with NPCs: there might be the occasional map as a graphical aid, but the information it conveys will be based on the knowledge, trustworthiness and motivations of those who drew it rather than an infallible, unbiased source of fact. Also, I do not think my story would take place over as long a timespan, so the "strategic" side of things would necessarily look rather different.

Can I bump this so it doesn't get autolocked? I've been busy with exams, but I'll be free from mid June and plan to put some time into development of a prototype then.