Thanks for all the replies so far. Just to let some of you know, the game is currently being designed for party based game play for multiple reasons:

1) Multiple characters in gameplay exhibits better balanced skills because each class is not designed to "take on the world" him/herself.

2) When going from single to multiplayer game modes, there will need to be less (if any) changes to allow teamates to have the need to join up throughout the course of the game.

The gameflow currently is (for single player) supporting a starting team of around 4 characters with skills designed to work together in team play. During single player mode, the player has total control of one "main" character and the three others are semi controllable (via NPC options) but are mostly playable by AI (unless during certain quests or missios you need direct control of on NPC). We are trying to stay away from classes, although we are thinking of having some class-like ability trees (to seperate player A from player B) but these are choosable at the start of the game. Other Ideas is when leveling the player recieves X amount of skill points (which increase between level ups) to increase their skills/abilities. To increase these skills/abilities more costs slightly more with each level up. Another idea was to allow characters to get skills outside their trees, but have these skills at a higher skill point cost.

Do thes sound like some good ideas for the project so far?

thanks in advance,

~guyaton