General Gameplay Ideas

As you should know, the game is 2D. It's an action RPG with a focus on combat, rather than levelling up; unlike most of the genre. Combat will be fought with a range of melee and ranged weapons. Melee weapons will probably used with a number of keys on the keyboard, or if the game is to be released on a console, face buttons. Ranged weapons will be equipped by holding/toggling a certain key on the keyboard and aimed with the mouse and fired by clicking.

WEAPONS

Ranged

There will be 4 main types of ranged weapon; pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles. These will all be utilised in different ways. All characters will start with a pistol.

Special ranged weapons can be found/ bought and have a limited ammo capacity, unlike the main weapons. These such weapons, such as flamethrowers and other types of weapon.

Melee

There will be 2 classes of main weapon, with 2 weapons for each class. The first class is striking weapons, which includes blades and staves/spears. The other class is heavy weapons, for hammers and axes.


CLASSES

There will be 3 basic classes; Melee, ranged and magic. Each faction will have a class unique to their side. Also sub classes will be renamed for the different factions, and may or may not contain different elements.


-TO BE CONTINUED-

If you want to contribute ideas, post them below so they can be discussed.

Here is something I wrote a while back about classes


Classes- Good guys
-NONE OF THIS IS FINALISED, THIS IS JUST ONE IDEA FOR HOW CLASSES TO WORK, AND IS QUITE RESTRICTING. IT IS OPEN TO DISCUSSION AND CHANGES MAY BE MADE, OR COMPLETELY NEW IDEAS MAY BE THOUGHT UP-
General Class Information
There are 3 types of armour- Heavy, light and medium. Only certain classes can wear certain types of armour. Also, certain sub-branches off class can only wear a certain type (for example, a stealth fighter can wear both medium and light armour, but when you become a close ranged stealth fighter, you are restricted to light armour only)
The more you use a weapon between rankings up, the more points you could get for attributes for it. For example, if you’re a fast fighter and you only use a spear during ranking up, the next time you rank up, you’ll gain an extra attribute point for that weapon.
All classes have a pistol as a backup weapon.
You choose a class to be in. When first inducted, you are a balanced version of that class which has varied skills. After you’ve ranked up a certain amount of times after being inducted in the certain class, you get to choose a sub-branch of class. After ranking up more after the sub-branch, you get to choose another branch which will be your final branch.
For example, if you choose to be a stealth fighter, you will join that class as a stealth inductee who has balanced skills for both sub-branches, rank up a few times as the inductee, and then choose to join either long range or close range. After choosing long range, you gain a few long ranged perks and skills, and you can rank up some more until you reach the final branch, where you choose a long range specialty; weakening the enemy based skills and perks, or improving your own attributes and stats.

Melee Fighters- (official name undecided)
There are 2 paths you can take; offensive and defensive.
Offensive
These classes can use all melee weapons, and choose to make one a specialty.
Once you reach a certain level, you can choose a sub-branch of attackers. Either a fast fighter, that uses blades and spears, or a slow fighter that uses hammers and axes.
Defensive
These classes can use all types of weapon, but are only specialised in swords and axes.
Once you reach a certain level, you can choose a sub-branch of defenders. Skills for these classes are undecided at the moment.

Ranged Fighters (official name undecided)
-UNDISCUSSED-
Stealth Fighters (official name undecided)
There are 2 paths you can take; long range and close range.

Long Range
These classes can use longbows/sniper rifles (subject to debate) and short blades.
Once you reach a certain rank, you can choose a sub-branch of long range; skills that debilitate enemy stats and perks, or skills that improve your own stats and perks for a time.
Close Range
These classes specialist in short blades
Once you reach a certain rank as a close range stealth fighter, you can branch off into a sub-class where you gain new skills; either you can choose skills that improve your speed and weaken enemy attributes, or choose skills that improve your attack and increase your own attributes.
Specialist Class-Angels
These classes specialise in magic and blades.
Once you reach a certain rank as an angel, you can branch off into a sub class where you can gain new skills; either you choose the Arch Angel which specialises in close combat with blades, or a Seraphim, who uses offensive magic skills to attack and weaken the enemy with. (Names open to discussion)
One of the angels skills will be wings, which allow its wings to grow and gain certain flight abilities.

My idea for the main charachter is in some other forum. Go find it and read it before reading this.
What that post basically says is that the charachter has spent a number of years training as an assassin. It follows that the game could be stealth based, in which case you will always be capable of stealth.
You could still specialise in swords or guns, but magic would be kind of too powerful just as athing that you can use all the time. The obvious solution is to have some kind of mana bar... but everyone who has ever played as a magical charachter in an rpg probably hates mana bars, because of the simple fact that when they run out, you die, because you've specialised in magic and cant really defend yourself any other way.
Theres a way around this. You have a kind of power meter that gradually fills up. You can unleash this power for short amounts of time, and during this time you will be masively powerful and be able to use spells. The meter will rapidly empty while you have this active, so it will be more of a tool to help you out when you get stuck on a boss or a massive bunch of enemies mob you. The spells you cast will automatically become more relative to whichever faction you've joined.
This is kind of like Devil May Cry, except you don't become a demon. They won't mind.

How about you start of wearing just normal(ish. Black clothy type stuff) clothes and a cloak. You can then upgrade armour for a good price, which will have N damage reduction and add a few peices of boiled leather to your clothes. Then you upgrade again, and get metal plates added. Simpler than being able to swap armour around.
Also, can people please read my large post in Plot section. It explains lots and I want to know whether it fits what we want for the game or not. I hope it does, cos it took frikkin ages to write.

Please read my post in the plot section about Skythe city first.

Other than running around, what transport systems will there be in the city? Well... everything is steam powered, so you could have huge steam jets that you can leap into to hurl you up to a higher storey. Also, seeing as most of what goes on won't even be on ground level, there could be some sort of aerial tram system. You could leap onto one of these in order to make a rapid getaway after killing an important charachter, or just use them to get around. This could be easily done on the 2D version as wella s being included if it ever turns into a 3d game.

Also how will jetbacks/wings/jump packs work in the game. It could be one button to jump, press again in the air to glide. Then the attack button could become a kind of dive bomb if you press it while your gliding. Also, the termplars wont have actual feathery wings, cos thats a bit gay. They shud have metal wings that resemble a birds wings, but aren't. The The Scourge should have jetpacks like we discussed.

I've thought about the combat some more. Perhaps there should be some kind of finishing move that you can perform once you've opened the enemies defence. This would need to be timed perfectly though, otherwise you get blocked or countered. If you manage to knock an enemy to the floor or wound him so that he falls to his knees you will get a chance to do the same thing, but the chance will last until the enemy gets back up.

I've also come up with a brilliant idea regarding classes. You get a kind of branching line with a blob on it which is where you currently are in terms of skill. The first branches will be combat or guns. The next branches, assuming you went combat, are defensive, aggressive and balanced. Then you'll get branches determining which weapons your best with.
The way it'll work is that every time you kill something you earn some points, and the points correspond to a certain distance along the branches. You can drag the blob along any branch and the charachter will change proportionately, thus reducing time spent with tedious point spending and option choosing. ALSO, you could go back at any time and start filling another branch, so long as the branch comes off the one youve gone along. So you can split skills between different branches. There would be a maximum 'distance' worth of points you could ever reach.

Timmmm. Go on chat box plzzz