Feedback on a game before I get too far into it.

[Kezza921 1]

Well I have started making my game and I thought it would be a good idea to get some feedback on the base idea for it. Well basically the game mostly revolves around magic so if you want a pure fighter class it might take some effort to be at that stage. I will start off my explaining the world, character/s, magic, story and finally gameplay. (I wont be explaining 100% of it but you will hopefully get the idea)

 

WORLD:
Well the actually main world is in the real modern world but that wont be it. This "plane" is only one of many each with it's own civilizations and some civilizations control more that one "plane". It will be running on a time system so even while your off somewhere doing something a war might be raging that you don't know about. (I have half an idea how I am going to do that).

 

Some myths and legends from history will play rolls in the lore and races you will encounter. This is also true with some artifacts/relics you may be able to find.

 

CHARACTER/S:

Well first off you are the only character in your party, however you can summon things to assist (get to that later). It starts with a very short description of your past and how little you know of it but it goes into a quiz sort of thing and that will define your gender, race, skills, abilities and if your a good person or not. Your race governs some of your starting abilities and your later ones that you get much later on...and yes even being a normal human gets there advantages.

 

The skills you would have are for things like diplomacy, magic, researching etc

 

MAGIC:

Magic is an interesting one...especially in this world. You have a fair few different types of magic (Arcane, Elements, White, Black, Astral (Summoning and dealing with other planes) and Tech (Pretty much magic based technology where magic is the power source)). Your choices that you decide in the quiz gives you your base starting spells and skill in those spells. Most spells require components to use (But you cannot carry everything with you at once *inventory will be limited*) and you are unable to learn some spells if you don't have the right amount of skill in that are. The more you use spells from that area the more skill you have in that area. Cantrips (basic spells the require little or no mana and require no components have to skill requirement). When looking at the spells not all are to be used in combat some are to be used outside of combat.

 

A bit more on how your "alignment" will effect your summoning. For example if you were to try and summon a helper if you were an evil person a demon or another evil creature would come to your aid and the same for your good aligned creatures.

 

STORY:

Well I will be honest here the story is a work in progress, the current running idea at the moment is the game is very open world where you pick your path but it will all lead to one inevitable end. As stated before it was to start with the quiz and then a small gap of a few years with you in your home town. Where you receive a letter from the person you asked you the quiz the years before asking to meet them in London. You leave your town say your goodbyes etc and when you get there you get taught the ropes and get given your starting gear and that's it for the tutorial. From there you are almost on your own, you can ask your teacher for ideas on where to go or you can look at a book in your starting gear which will give you a few places you could go to find work and explore the planes before you.

 

GAMEPLAY:
Pretty much as stated before time will pass so if a war is raging some planes will change the controlling faction over time. This is same said for your character and any family you may have; you will age over time and this will be shown on your character and you will eventually die of old age (Different old age death for each race). This will happen unless you find a way to stop the aging process and this would be done by a few different ways...some will effect you more than just you no longer aging.

 

To get anywhere in the planes you will most likely have to earn it. You get your starting gear and that's it...no more freebies, if you want a spell or something you need to either research it (random roll based on your research skill), get taught it or you have to go out and find it.

The world will not circle around you. If you go to a plane where giant man eating monsters who can kill a man easily; are said to live...you are going to see those giant man eating monsters there. So before you want to go into the unknown try to get information beforehand. There will be an encyclopedia and bestiary you can look into and it will grow as you discover more (I need to figure out how to do that and any help would be amazing)

 

There will be a ton of secrets out there such as artifacts/relics, spells (That have been lost to the sands of time) and perhaps a plane for you to build on. However not all the secrets are good secrets, some things might be better not found as they might cost you your life.

 

 

Thank you for reading and I look forward to any feedback you might have. and sorry for any mistakes it was after 2am that I did this.

[Naveed_Ashfaq 11]

Well, by the sound of things, this game is going to be HUGE. You definitely won't be able to do it alone. You should gather up a team first, or you're gonna be the one dying of old age

On note of that old age thing, you *might* want to scrap that idea. Though it would make the game more realistic, how would it work exactly? So like, I'm wandering around and I suddenly grow old and when I sleep in an inn and I never wake up again because I died. Game over. What do you do? Start from the last save, of course. But wait, I saved only two minutes ago *0* That's it. All that progress gone doen the drain.

 

You also might want to develop the story as well. There's no reference in your post to any reason for the main hero to go on his quest...

 

So far, the mechanics of the game seem to be interesting. All you need now is a good storyline, the skills (and time) to implement your ideas, and a team devoted to the project.

[Kezza921 1]

The age system will truly only effect humans because the others are to long lived. This may seem unfair to humans but they have a ton of things that make it up to them and many ways to stop the aging process. Also if you have been playing my game long enough to die of old age I will be very surprised (for a single year with totally uninterrupted gameplay (Travel, Researching and other things time skip) you will need about 121 hours to reach another year older.)

 

As I have said in my blog, I will be looking for people to help after I have finished the foundations.

[lithkast 18]

Before you come up with features, I'd flesh out the story and main characters first.  I'll give you some advice in that department.  First Write up at least four characters and make them interesting.  Sure have the important stats like what they look like, what their parameters are, but also have their likes dislikes personality etc.  Once you have that, figure out a quest that can get them thrown together.  It doesn't have to be anything big, just some quest that they all do together.  Gives them a reason to travel together.  Then, branch off that quest into more quests.  Maybe the big bad shows up on that first quest and gives them a reason to hunt him down.  

at any rate, don't put too much on your plate with this.  start small with the characters to create a core concept and demo.  From there, you can entice people to help out and slowly add more features

[Kezza921 1]

Characters is the issue since you are the only character. That being said there are a few characters that do show up very frequently to help or hinder you (depending on which side you take). The problem is that most of the time you are the only one fighting, you do have the odd time where you're a leader.

 

On the side of the story I have general ideas for all the paths including the last part, which will boil down to one thing. Some of the factions saw this coming but it took most by surprise and well things get worse from there as the factions have to fight for survival. There will be hints on how to battle them throughout the game (a bit cliche and it needs work). 

Edited August 11, 2014 by Kezza921

[HumanNinja 144]

What's the point if having an aging system for your character if it takes 121 hours of gameplay for said character to age one year? That seems kinda pointless to me.

[BasharTeg6 25]

I recommend you narrow your scope - at least for the demo, but probably for the whole project. The open world stuff can wait until you have a team. Generally, the problem with open world games is you get a lot of space with not enough stuff in that space... and that applies to big budget teams as well as small indie teams.

 

So you'll need to balance between just how BIG you want the world to be with how much detail you want to put into it. Start by deciding on how long you want to work on the demo - 3 months? 6? A year? Then take some educated guesses on how much you can cram in over that period of time.

 

It sounds like you have the makings of a pretty cool game as long as you can actually finish it.