ESCHALT'S PROFILE

I think I'm going to have to agree with mewd here. Classes are not my ideal way of feeling like I have total control over the development of my party. I would like to suggest a Wasteland type of unrestricted skill-based growth. I am all for an open ended world (probably with a typical world map) and classical player advancement, however it should be noted Kentona that when creating a community project, your own ideals sort of take a backseat as the most popular gameplays should be ok'd above anything else. In an amateur project, this seems like the most effective way to keep everyone interested.

Obviously, if most people on the team aren't exactly interested in following through on a restricted, class-based party, you may do well to consider scrapping the project here or working alone.

Of course, before dismissing classes entirely it would be best to consider the pros of such a system. Some good things are as follows. Assuming that there will be many predetermined classes as in Hero's Realm, character development as mentioned by Despain would be easier to implement, more so as the total number of classes decreases. I will mention here, as a secondary plus, that the personalities of my party should be akin to Baldur's Gate 2. There should be cutscenes tied in to the main storyline that sheds light on the pc's backstories. Without predetermined characters, this sort of development would be next to impossible.

With an unrestricted skill-based character growth, you can give the player total control over the development of the party as a whole, instead of an illusion of control. Also, we wouldn't have to worry about character development of pcs as (I think?) it would be near-impossible anyways. We could focus on npc development, with one pc in the party being the leader, the one who hails npcs and whose charisma skill is used as a factor in determining npc reaction.

Now consider the limitations of rm2k3. Using the default battle system, I know of no easy way to enable player characters to level up specific weapon skills (I.e. Sword, bow, staff, etc.) I think it may come down to whether or not we are willing to develop a custom battle system. . .I for one would definitely want to work closely on a building a battle system, as I never have tried to before. I would rather there be a seasoned cbs maker on the team, however, to steer us in the right direction. Thus, I submit the notion of a dw custom battle system with unrestricted, skill-based leveling. A way to implement classes despite this: as pc's gain profieciency/mastery in certain areas of their skill-base, determined solely by the player upon leveling with xp, we can develop a slew of class names to attribute to each individual pc. For example, if the player chooses to increase the staff skill, the armor skill and fire magic, call that pc a battle mage (rename his class or title, whichever). This is an idea that I've been wanting to implement in a game for a while now. It would work sort of the opposite way than just having set classes, except the player would feel a sense of control over how the pc got that title.

How many pcs should the player be given control over? In the default battle system that I wish to avoid, it would be no more than 4. But if we contruct a cbs we could have a party of around 6 characters, able to increase their skills in a multitude of areas (which I will leave up for later discussion).

A karma system of sorts would be interesting as well. If one of your pcs has high sword skill, high charisma, and high wisdom, and a positive karma he would be labeled as a paladin. If he has a neutral karma he would become a bard or something, and a negative karma would make him an anti-hero (or something) who is always on the lookout to use his charisma and sword to increase the size of his wallet.

With a karma system though, we'd have quite a bit of work ahead of us what with multiple paths to complete quests and a large variety of dialogue to choose from. If this seems like too ambitious an idea, we could always simplify it to something with less player control. I just wanted to get these ideas on the table is all.

Can you tell that I really miss the recently deceased golden age of crpgs?