I am working on an RPG (non-mmo at first and possibly mmo later on) on the side with a few friends. We wanted some input from everyone else about what makes RPGs exciting to them, so that we can go from there to create one that will be new and stimulating to everyone: 1) What is the most important thing that makes an RPG combat more exciting from the character side (excluding monsters and their interaction during combat)? -variaty of weapons, skills? -stronly developed character classes? -character classes that are designed to work well together? -fast action combat with many foes or a few powerful monsters? 2) What makes classes very exicting to play and level up? -Tress of skills and proficiencies (both passive and active) -Multiple abilities to level up independently( ie. weapon skill is independant of some uber magical attack etc)? -ability to level up stats and skills independantly instead of joint points (ie. you recieve 30 points in a level up, strength, magic..etc take 10 points to go up 1 level, where skills are say 5 points)? 3) Great story (like the FF series) and a action in between or great action and less plot in between (like Diablo2). 4) Combo attacks -Would combining skils and abilities into chain attacks or new attacks/spells (maybe like FF Crystal Chronicles) increase multiplayer gameplay or take away from it? Why? -Would this greatly increase multiplayer teamplay or easily be overlooked? 5) If you could put one feature in an RPG what would it be? thanks in advance, ~guyaton

The direction in which you should take your game is entirely dependent upon whether it's a single-hero or team/party game.

If it's team-based, class combat is a good way to force interaction between different types. In this case, you'll need to add abilities that interact between party members. For instance, a knight might have a "cover" ability like Final Fantasy and the newest LotR RPG. Or, perhaps a mage could have an "energize" skill that adds magic damage to a physical attack of another party member.

If it's single-hero style, do NOT use classes. I absolutely hate class based systems, such as EverQuest and Diablo(2). In those games, everybody in the same class got the same skills at the same levels. They also all looked for roughly the same equipment. I say go for a classless system akin to Morrowind. On top of that, you'll have to balance out the mechanics to prevent everybody from using two-hand longswords. Give different equipment/abilities more than just damage characteristics. That way, players have incentives to differentiate themselves.

Character classes are horrible IMO.

if i wanted my character to be a ranger, I would work on my ranged combat skills, my stealth skills, etc.. The class "emerging" from my skills.

I am split between no character development options (ie: Final Fantasy 7 & 8)

or in-depth, freeform character dev (I'll say Fallout as my example for this)

1) I hate hack and slash fighting systems. What's more boring than clicking on an enemy or holding down a button and waiting for them to die? Give me something to actually do whether it be a hack and slash system where you can change attack styles as the fight progresses, or whether it be an actual aiming system.

2) I totally agree with gav86. I also like the "realistic learning" skill system. If I was to work on my sword skills for a week straight then I'd be pretty good after that week in sword skills. If after that week I decided to take up archery then I'd start to "forget" some of the things I'd learnt whilst training in sword skills. Of course, regular practice will deter the forgetting of skills.

3) Really emotional and in-depth storylines keep your players hooked. Read the article on my site regarding storylines.

4) It would give your players something to think about; "Ok, so I have spell #1, spell #2 and spell #3, so I can either mix spell 1+2 to get spell 4, or I can mix spell 1+3 to get spell 5". Yours players may need to communicate with each other more if they were to trade recipes or spells to develop better ones for themselves.

5) Something new and unique.

Good luck!

Classes suck, the differences between the characters should be based on their personalities and backstories, not some arbitrarily imposed category. I much prefer earning some treasure, say gems, in the game and being able to spend them to buy whatever skills you want your character to learn.

Anyway, I prefer single-hero RPGs, but I'll assume you're thinking about a party-based RPG since your initial post implies that. Either way, I would say the most important thing to make combat interesting is to have the monsters require a variety of different strategies to defeat them. Nothing is more boring than if a monster pops up in front of you, you can immediately know that doing X, Y, and Z is the most efficient way to kill it, and you're going to have to do the exact same thing 20 more times before you get to the next area of the game. [sick]

For a party-based RPG the second most important thing is to have characters which are nice to look at, since you're going to be spending the whole game watching them walk around your screen.

I like character development, both character development and story make good rewards to keep people playing through the level trudging and dungeon crawling most rpg’s have.
For me if I get attached to the characters I’ll keep playing through just about anything save a memory access violation error every 5 minutes.

As for battles I don’t really like classes, in a one hero system it usually means be a fighter or get to level 99 to beat the first boss and in a multi hero system it makes your characters generic to the point of being just tools to help in battle.

I think character races can replace the role of classes pretty well. They fall into the same category. Elves could be granted a bonus to maximum agility and dexterity potential. Orcs get that same bonus in strength and fortitude. Certain massive weapons could require massive strength to wield, and elves just can't naturally reach that level.

Any type of character distinction would add a lot of replay value to the game. It could just be as simple as allowing the player to set up certain attributes when the game is started which do not increase through play.

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5) If you could put one feature in an RPG what would it be

Tactical real-time combat. The number one feature that usually makes me drop an RPG is boring combat.

Not sure if my reply should count because I only play console-style/Japanese RPGs. Just not a fan of the pure medieval/LotR/D&D setting.

Also, I agree with many of the previous posters in that classes box the player in too much. Anyway...

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1) What is the most important thing that makes an RPG combat more exciting from the character side (excluding monsters and their interaction during combat)? -variaty of weapons, skills? -stronly developed character classes? -character classes that are designed to work well together? -fast action combat with many foes or a few powerful monsters?

I'd say designed to work well together. I just love it when everything seems to work out, tactically speaking.

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2) What makes classes very exicting to play and level up? -Tress of skills and proficiencies (both passive and active) -Multiple abilities to level up independently( ie. weapon skill is independant of some uber magical attack etc)? -ability to level up stats and skills independantly instead of joint points (ie. you recieve 30 points in a level up, strength, magic..etc take 10 points to go up 1 level, where skills are say 5 points)?

Um.... Trees of skills seem to work well enough...

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3) Great story (like the FF series) and a action in between or great action and less plot in between (like Diablo2).

Story by far. If I wanted great action, I'd play an action game. But again, I'm not a big fan of MMO or Diablo-style games, so...

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4) Combo attacks -Would combining skils and abilities into chain attacks or new attacks/spells (maybe like FF Crystal Chronicles) increase multiplayer gameplay or take away from it? Why? -Would this greatly increase multiplayer teamplay or easily be overlooked?

Depends entirley on how useful you make it. If it's almost nessecary to beat stronger enemies, then definitley. However, if it's no more powerful than any other spells (like these types of things usually are) then it'd be totally pointless. I don't think it would ever HURT per se.

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5) If you could put one feature in an RPG what would it be?

Something tactical that makes the player think. RPGs are often pretty mindless games with great plots. Even so-called strategy-RPGs are often questions of who has te higher level.

1) There shouldn't be any "best" weapon or armour. Have a bunch of statistics apart from damage that actually have an impact on weapon performance. Usually the speed rate doesn't affect weapon efficiency very much...

2) I like small but frequent upgrades. A little "your X skill has improved" every now and then. Apart from that, I want to be able to either change class or not have classes at all. Come to think of it, I've never seen an rpg where you can change your character's class. That might be fun, if it could be worked out properly.

3) I prefer action and a story that emerges from gameplay. A la Morrowind and the like.

4) It would definitely increase multiplayer teamplay if the skills of different characters could be combined. A bunch of soldiers with a shield skill (and shields) might make a shield wall, protecting those behind it. Two wizards could combine their spells to make powerful combo spells. Linking their powers to keep a demon trapped, that kind of thing.

5) I'd like to see a fighting system where you fought with (almost) only your mouse.

One alternative is that an opponent attacks. Then the game freezes, a little menu pops up with your options. You select "evade", "block" or "counter", depending on your skill and the game continues. The game calculates what happens and then freezes again to give you the options on what you want to do next. This opens up for a lot of tactics. Let's say that an enemy always blocks with his very useful shield. Then you can choose the "Strike at shield" to smash it out of the way. If you succeed, then he won't be able to use the shield on your next attack.

The other option is that you don't control every single move of your character. Instead, you and your opponent(s) are locked up in battle, showing some fighting animations. You then have some options like moving somewhere, pressing an attack or counter or whatever you can come up with. There's some more quick thinking here, and a lot of tactics and timing, if done right. The key is that the Diablo style hack n' slash is automated. The player is only concerned with the greater picture so to speak.

I'd love to play with one of those fighting systems. Though the first one only works for single-player single-hero games I guess.

Here are some random maniacal ramblings:

2) Character classes are somewhat great, since they make it easier to balance the game (and also prevent every character becoming some "ultimate" character type with all the skills etc.), give guidance to the player (the player will not be overwhelmed with a bazillion options to choose from) etc. That said, I do dislike the restrictions of character classes when they are implemented poorly (i.e. usually). You can make similar restrictions using some sort of in-game mechanics (e.g. the player has the option to join guilds and "class-restricted skills" are taught only in guilds, for instance), but without the artificial "a wizard may not use a sword" restrictions (of course, the guild of wizards might prohibit the use of blades, but that is an in-game issue (you still could use a sword, but might be thrown out of the guild) rather than a hard-coded one).

3) This is really a confusing question. After all, the action is basically a part of the story (story as in what happens to the player during the game, not as in what is the pre-written plot of the game). If you mean whether the story should be emphasized by some sort of traditional story-telling means (and probably in the form of a pre-written plot and a lot of scripted cinematic sequences and such) as opposed to just having the story as background action (i.e. the game doesn't shove any kind of cinematics in your face and doesn't stop to tell you the story directly and that sort of thing), I'd prefer the latter.

I find an emergent, dynamic story overwhelmingly superior to the way too common "pre-scripted, messianic, epic story about saving the whole universe and then some". With emergent I mean that the story is not pre-written as a whole, but rather the story forms itself as the player explores the world. Note that just throwing a bunch of pre-written or random quests won't do the trick; some sort of gestalt needs to emerge in the player's mind. The world needs to be very dynamic for this to work, and the consequences of the player's actions should be considered.

I didn't really answer the question; well, I did, but it's not that obvious. The original question seemed to be something along the lines "do you want to focus on the story or the action", and my answer is something along the lines "the action should be the story". I don't mean that the game should be just combat, but rather that you shouldn't have separate "game modes" or "mentalities" for the combat parts and the non-combat parts.

5) Random maps. It pains me to see game after game having only one infrastructurally static world, since for someone who likes exploring the game world and trying to find atrifacts etc (rather than following religious fanatics who, regardless of how many other characters I have already played through the main quest, still think I'm the messiah and have to cure the plague and kill the very evil dude and save the world and all that stuff), there is little replayability in such a game.

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Original post by Kekko 5) I'd like to see a fighting system where you fought with (almost) only your mouse.

I'd like to see a fighting system in a Diabloesque game where you could fight using only the keyboard or could at least configure every aspect of the mouse usage (e.g. using different buttons for moving and attacking). Since the mouse is not all that accurate (considering that in a hectic battle you don't have the luxury of taking your time to precisely give the commands), just pointing and grunting (i.e. clicking, i.e. using the same button for every possible action) makes the computer second-guess what I really want to do, usually doing the wrong thing (e.g. when playing a mage character and trying to use the horrible control system to cast a spell, I miss by one pixel and the computer decides "oh, he wants to walk in the middle of the monsters"; usually a painful death for the character and a lot of swear words will follow. No thanks for that mouse suggestion). But it's really a matter of preference.