[color="#1C2837"]Hello and thanks for looking at this post, please read, or at least skim the main idea and leave feedback, much obliged. While Starspawn is the only idea here at the moment, or of my ideas will be edited into the post, so check back every now and then if your still interested in giving back feedback.

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StarSpawn

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A RPG\Strategy game based off the Lovecraftian mythos

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The basis of the game is that your of one of several races in the Cthulhu mythos trying to survive on Earth while under conflict or working with the three main factions:

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• The ancient Yithians, a time traveling race that was recently almost destroyed because of the loss of their home world and a war with the "Fly Poylops" not that long afterwards, and are currently looking for haven on Earth, to their misfortune the old ones occupy Earth along with the human race.
• Yog-Sothoth, who is one of the two creators of everything, he wishes to regain control over Earth after his twin creator took over to use as a breeding ground for the Deep Ones, and many other horrors.
• Azathoth is Yog-sothoth's twin when it comes to being the creator of everything, but other than this they are far from each other, Azathoth is considered the blind-idiot god who lets other gods do his bidding, or keep him occupied.
  The races you can be in Starspawn include:

• Demi-human-Not stuck to a faction and free to chose, comes with the Arcane and healing tome.
• Old One- Faction is stuck to Yog-Sothoth comes with the death and healing tome.
• Deep-One- Stuck to the Azathoth faction, comes with the Ice and Fire tome.
• Yith-human-Stuck to the Yith faction, comes with the Arcane and Ice tome.[color="#1C2837"]

  Gameplay

  
  [color="#1C2837"] The gameplay in Starspawn is expected to be quite varied, the RPG segment is split between a Dungeon-Crawling with Diablo\Torchlight like gameplay and a adventure role-playing game in the area of the game known as the Dreamworld, where you venture across a fantasy environment envisioned by the story "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" set in the Cthulhu mythos but in a dream world. The RTS segments are separated into several different modes, first being like a game of DoTa, but using your characters from the RPG including all your equipment, skills and level, then there is what has the combat of the DoTa type game, but in a duel format between either a opponents that are computers that are to be fought to continue in your quest or it could be a multiplayer duel. And then there is the piece de' resistance of RTS, the boss battle where you must battle with 5 of your characters in a epic duel against a god.
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  [color="#1C2837"] While the game does include the classic leveling up system it has somewhat of a twist that I call the "Tome system" after finishing enough bounties to level up your character, you earn one skill point, this skill point can be applied to either of the three tomes on that character, as seen before in the races, two tomes are already selected varying on what race you chose from there you can choose from the already none chosen tomes. The different tomes are:
  
  • Arcane
  • Death
  • Healing
  • Ice
  • Fire
    [color="#1C2837"] All of these tomes are essentially skill trees, each of them focusing on each other's theme, example Arcane might have a buffing spell used to increase your defense or strengthen a type of spell, while death could be used to de-buff a enemy or use dark magic that damages you but deals heavy damage in the process.
    [color="#1C2837"]Now with all these spells to use against the horrors of the cosmos, your going to need to use a pool of energy from the depth of your soul to gain access to these powers, or in this case; spell points. Spell points are essential to your survival in combat, they act as a way to attack an enemy, but also a way to defend yourself from incoming attacks; if you have 150 SP in pool and you were hit for 50 hit points you would lose 10 HP and lose 30 SP, that is actually quite the deal, that is a 80 percent deduction of damage that could spell death if you took the full blow.
    [color="#1C2837"]Unlike most dungeon crawlers, you do not earn tons of loot, in-fact it is quite the opposite; you earn all your currency from doing bounties for your faction, bounties are basically quests but they either revolve around killing x amount of enemies, or finish x dungeon; they sound a bit tedious, but I hope to find some way to differentiated itself from the usual quest grind.
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    [color="#1C2837"] Either a plus or a negative, you would not earn any "Exp" from killing enemies, or currency, so you wouldn't be grinding all day to earn enough money to upgrade your armor. Speaking of upgrading your equipment, you don't just go prancing about buying fancy metal armor from street vendors, when you get good armor it's a achievement by itself. To create new armor you would first find a blueprint from magic cloth in the dreamworld with that blueprint you must find a magical tailor capable of such a job, and from there you must bring such items to him to create the new robe with stronger magical capabilities. With stronger cloth you have more open areas around the robe to apply signials which act as magical barriers from magical enemy attacks, which means better resistance and less HP loss from damage.
    [color="#1C2837"] Signals are gained by spending currency at your faction shop, they all have a different boost to defense against certain tome elements that apply to an enemy, example:15% defense against death magic. Also there are different kinds of equipment that can be applied to your character, trinkets add boosts to stats including a boost to your pool of spell points.
    
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    [color="#1C2837"]-still under construction-

Re:

Could you declare one existing game that your game is supposed to beat,
and list three reasons your target player would prefer your game?

Could you declare one existing game that your game is supposed to beat?


I really have no answer to this question, I'm not trying to outdo any game when thinking about Starspawn, while it does take some heavy influence from many different games, but I want to merry them together in a bouquet of madness of mixing decent RPG dungeon crawling, adventuring into the depths of the dreamworld, battling against your enemies with clashing armies in a DoTa (Defense of The ancients, a popular Warcraft 3 mod) inspired segment, a duel to challenge each player's wits, and a epic battle against one of the many old ones battling over Earth.


Actually when thinking about how I celebrate the many different genre's in my game, I could somewhat take Darksiders as a rival, while both being incredibly different they try to celebrate their sources, but while still feeling fresh and original.

And list three reasons your target player would prefer your game?

• The unique idea of being one of the horrors themselves in the Cthulhu mythos hopefully will catch the attention of some fellow fans of the mythos, compared to the many other Cthulhu mythos games where you play as just a regular old Joe, or a psychic (Call of Cthulhu: The dark corners of the Earth).
• The bringing together of RPG to RTS gameplay in a fluid manor where you get direct control of what you have in the RPG areas to RTS to battle with, rather then the regular DoTa game where you level up your character for the game and that's it, I'm one of those people that want a bit more to the game and keep that character.
• The fact that there is so much to do in this game should be impressive by itself: You have two separate ways to play the RPG, the dungeon crawling, and adventuring both interline often , both are important to the story and then along with 2 different genres of RPG you get basically three modes to enjoy in RTS: War, Dota with my characters, dueling, a competitive duel between CPU, or another player, and a somewhat Co-Op mode to fight together in a epic battle.
  And thanks a bunch for your feed back!

Re:

Displaced Activities

The question wasn't meant to be profound. It was just to set a reference for evaluation. I was thinking about what sort of feedback people actually want when they post their game ideas. I thought one of the responses that people want to get may be in this form: "Hey, your game is better than X, I would play it instead of X!" To me that is a concrete positive feedback. If a reply contains that, then you have a concrete audience for the game from which you could get the most relevant feedback.

For question 1, you don't need to think of a game that is similar to your game, it doesn't even need to be in the same genre. By default, I guess you could use the game Tic-tac-toe as the reference. It is a valid reference although it won't get you very far in ranking your game design. This is a somewhat philosophical question: do you think your game can at least 'beat' Tic-Tac-Toe? Would your target player prefer to play your game over Tic-Tac-Toe? If so, you could account the amount of time and money the target player spends on Tic-Tac-Toe (per unit time) and compute the worth of your design. If it cannot beat Tic-Tac-Toe, you would ask "why not?" and think about what needs to be worked on (that is, if you decides that your game should displace that activity). Other activities that are valid for the comparison are: reading, watching TV, instant messaging, etc...

So for your case, perhaps a more relevant point of reference is DOTA. Because you know your vision the best, in your judgement, does your game 'beat' DOTA? Have you already decided that your game will not displace DOTA, but some other activities? Or perhaps not all of DOTA, but a portion of it? If you mix gameplay modes from different games, you could declare multiple, but I think it is easier to discuss one by one.


Main Attractions

As a person with little time to read your post, it boils down to these:

1. The player will play as a horror
2. Level up characters in RPG gameplay and use them in RTS style gameplay
3. There is a lot to do.

For me the first one is interesting. Meaning: If you just put that as the premise of the design and use that as the title of the thread, I would be drawn to read it just by that alone. I would read your thread over the other threads. Your title would have beaten the other titles. You moved by attention from other threads to your thread. That is displacement at work.

The other two are not so interesting. To you this doesn't mean much, because you don't know whether I am in your audience, and I don't know who is supposed to be in your audience. But if you tell me your game is supposed to beat DOTA, then since I happen to have played DOTA, I can tell you somewhat whether I think your game can beat it. The short answer here is no, because I like the short lengths of DOTA and I like the fact that each match is separate and there is no data that carries over. I like how when I see an enemy, I know exactly what their abilities are, no matter who is playing the character; I like how sometimes I can't get the character I want because a teammate took my character. I like how the game is intense because everyone knows fundamentally what needs to be done, so that even if you team up with a stranger you still know how to cooperate. If I have a persistent character with a lot to do it would be like WOW and that is boring. For these reason, attraction 2 and 3 are not attractions but drawbacks.

Suppose you believe that I ought to be in your audience, then you could:
a) Convince me that your game address my desires (Show me that everything I think your game would lack is actually present)
b) Change the game to address my desires

Suppose you believe that I am not in your audience, then you could:
a) Identify an audience who prefers your game over DOTA (Different people like DOTA for different reasons)
b) Set a different reference (e.g. WOW)

Beaware that what you think you want may not be what you want when you actually play it. A design in your mind is more accommodating, more convenient, etc..
(On a more sour note, I don't play DOTA anymore so beating DOTA doesn't actually mean that you could displace me to play your game. I think it is still a valid way evaluating a design. In terms of my game-playing margin (i.e. time I would most likely spend to play game), to attract me you would have to beat Settlers of Catan or game design itself.)

I hope this gives you something relevant and concrete to think about. It is easier to think about design and specific improvements when the discussion is concrete.