I did more experiments on the view of the game, I’m happy about the classic first person view, a la Dungeon Master, even if of course the gfx efforts will be more than a simple 2d topdown/isometric view.
Call me nostalgic but I really want to recreate the atmosphere of those old classic, and keeping that visual feeling will be essential.
I’m still thinking about the classes. I want to innovate a bit, but at same time don’t want to push it too hard…since I still need to sell a decent amount to live, I don’t want to revolution the roleplaying genre yet 😉
Anyway you can be assured that you won’t find only similar spells to the classic AD&D spells “magic missile” or “fireball”. I want to make also some original spells, for all the casting classes in the game, which right now are Druid, Wizard, Sorcerer and Healer.
Also I’m thinking about the use of the other attributes like Knowledge, Wisdom and Intelligence for non casting classes, and viceversa. They’ll have some impact for sure, but of course not as the main ones.
Knowledge could influence how many new moves a fighter can learn per level, for example. Still would be hard to find another use also for Wisdom and Intelligence. Also, in this case would mean people could make a fighter with average skills and be better than a big tougher one? sure, intelligence plays an important role in fights, but if a small fighter can overcome a big strong one, is mostly thanks to the quickness, agility, rather than pure intelligence. I think is more the instinct, reflexes that guides a fighter in the frenzy moments of a close range fight…!
Nonetheless I’ll try to find a proper use for all the attribute, for all classes. But fighters will be more influenced from the fighting attributes, and casters will be influenced more from the casting attributes.

LOL ok the post title is a bit crazy… but I got that suggestion recently from my forums that says:

I have another suggestion though: what about a serie of “mercenaries” or heroes ? like in suikoden games. You have a finite number of character to explore the dungeon, so anytime you go back to your home village you can rebuild your party.
That opens the game to new strategies. For example one level there could be some really tough long-range fighting monsters, so you should make your party only with long-range classes like rangers or spellcasters.Â

Well I must admit, that isn’t a bad suggestion at all. How many times you’ve started again the whole process of “Character Creation” in party-based RPGs because you thought “hmm no this class/races combo doesn’t fit my tastes/playing style, so I’m going to try again with different choices”.

This method would be very good to solve this “problem” and also be quite innovative. I am thinking to implement it this way: you have a number of characters to choose/create when you start a new game, like 20 or even more. Then you can pick 6 characters from those 20 and go adventure in a tower level. You can then come back and maybe replace some characters. Of course they all start with zero XP, and those who stays “at home” don’t get XP. Maybe you can train them in something, but have to test well this aspect, because I don’t want the heroes staying at home to get more powerful than the one adventuring and killing monsters on the field!!!

Anyway, is a very good idea and I’m surely going to implement it somehow in the game!