Well I was watching ANOTHER FF13 trailer when I decided I hated their character advancement systems every game. I don't know how this one is, but if it's anything like the LP in the last one, I'll hate it. So I got to thinking, how could you make character advancement good, without redundancy and the idea, for me, was like music. You see, every character is based around their equipment and special abilities. So each character in a battle isn't equal. But what if you could change the loading of someones points? For the sake of the thread I'll call these things Battle Points (BP). You collect these BP as a party. These are 'Unclaimed' BP. When you spend them, the BP pool gets lower and this allows for something similar to the LP system, just not completely redundant. Every skill you could spend them on would require BP. So if you had 'Weaponry' at 0, it would cost 1 point to make 'Weaponry 1'. Then 'Weaponry 2' would cost 2 points. You can see where this is going. There wouldn't be a levelling system, instead equipment would be wearable based upon their required skill. Each item would have a quality, ranging from 1-500. You would need the quality rating's number in the item's associated skill to equip it. And that would be it. From there, I thought their chain hit system was too random. So I thought, why not give every hit and every subsequent hit a 50% chance to chain hit to the weapon's maximum chain? Then abilities came up and by now I'd pretty much designed my own game and this is where things got a little more interesting. You would have a maximum of eight slots for abilities. 2 for Charge abilities. 2 for Damage over Time abilities. 2 for Instant Effect abilities. and 2 for Summons. From here, you could then, based on how you played, upgrade. If you wanted an extra charge slot at the cost of a DoT slot, you would need to use the title Crescendo, it would also reduce the charge time by 1 'turn' unless it was a 1 'turn' charge. Alto for a higher chain hit chance. Allegro for an extra DoT slot and a higher repeat rate. I guess you can see where this is going too. Using these, would then change the game's music. In the end, I decided that the system, as a base, would work quite well for an RPG of sorts. Of course it requires expansion, but I only came up with the idea less than an hour ago. Let me sleep on it. EDIT: Yeah, there was something about being able to queue special attacks before entering battles an unleashing queued attacks at the same time (or within that members attack, anyway) as other party members on a monster would create something called a harmony which would create new, more powerful attacks that would get marked down into a book for you to queue amongst the characters that could do so. My ideas come at me in bursts and I can't remember everything at once, so when I finally get down to seriously thinking about this game, it will probably have changed alot or expanded more. Any input is welcome at this stage, though.

Play Final Fantasy Tactics. Sounds similar to what you are talking about, though it is different in some areas.

That was actually one of the few I did like.

But I'm not talking a turn based thing, it's a real time one like twelve but I just didn't want all the people to be complete morons like Dalmascans.

"I need to get my baby to fight rats so it can equip the super absorbant nappy!"

Star Ocean (can't recall which one) had a similar thing to your harmony attacks. It was a bit crazy since star ocean is real time battles but the basic idea was if you had 2 characters cast a spell that ended at the same time they could potentially be combined into a more powerful attack. I don't believe all spells could do this but the more powerful ones could.


Sounds like a very interesting concept.