Single/multi player, none Orpg map.

[Solu9]

I guess this is the right forum to post this.

I am considering making a RPG but I need some takes on my ideas.

Players:
I want to have 3 players able to play this map together and discover the story as it unfolds.
While there are currently 5 characters to choose from:
-a tank/illutionist
-a melee damage dealer with a couple of AoE abilities
-a pure healer
-a ranged damage dealer focusing on spells
-a utility/supporter with a mix of the above characters

So as the story goes on and the cinematics kick in the characters who is not in play will transfere along with the players and act if they have been there the whole time. How will that work? And will it be too much work just to have the storyline flowing?

Battle:
The battle system will be based on the battle system from Final Fantasy 7,8,9. When the players travel around the world there is a chance that they will encounter monsters. When they do, they will be moved to a battle area to fight and back to the world when the enemy/ies are dead. Is that a good idea or will it take the dynamic out of the map?
(Remember this is only a map inspired by Final Fantasy, and not a Final Fantasy map).

Camera:
I am in doubt in this case. Either I want the camera to have static angles locations which will depend on where the players are. Or just a top-down look as in the normal War3.
What do you think? And is a 3rd person view necessary?

General:
With these ideas will is actually be better to make the map a single player map? My concern with that is that when the characters have 7 abilities each it will be pretty hard to get them all used.

Hope you can help with suggestions.

 

[Druu]

That's a lot of queshion there. If you want to inspire from FFs, I highly suggest you to do minigames like those games offer (FF7's racer chase, FF8's fight on the flying machine to save Rinoa, FF9's duel during the play). If you're not going to make this -save/load ORPG.

Then you should make it a storyline develloped with 3 characters and cinematics. Don't bother doing stupid quests and grinding areas. Make leveling unnecessary at some points.
(You could do as FF8 did with monsters and set them stronger as you level up)

As for camera, when scrolling screws over most cameras, I'd use them only for cinematic.

The most important is to have fun while making it