Working on a New multi-player RPG

Hello all, I'm new to the community. I usually just browse around and such looking for help or ideas. I think I'd like to share to the world a new RPG I'm working on. I always try to strive for innovation, but it seems like its getting harder and harder these days to compete with some of the more talented map developers. I am but a lowly wanna-be. Anyways let me break down the RPG...

I'm a fan of Final Fantasy, Everquest and other MMORPGs, so a lot of my inspiration comes from these games (and my motivation to make my own RPG).

This old world is now in ruins... The once dormant demons have arisen again and has reign terror across the lands. The hidden power sources of the 4 great races of the Dark Elves, Dwarves, High Elves and Pandarian people have been stolen by 4 Powerful demons. These once forgotten powers in the hands of these demons have ransacked their homelands and demolished nearly all life within them.

Not long ago, home to the Dark Elves the demon lord [insert name] obtained the power of Fire from deep within their lands.
In the homelands of the High Elves, the dormant power of Water was stolen by the demon lord [insert name].
Deep in the mountain ranges of [insert name] the mighty Dwarves secret power of Earth was taken by the demon lord [insert name].
Lastly, the Panderians ancient power of Wind is now is controlled by the demon lord [insert name].

Now, all of these ancient races flee to the lands of the humans. Together they have a common goal. To restore the power back to the world and defeat the demon overlord that resides in the deepest regions of the world.

That's pretty much the storyline. I know, I know, its been done. And it may not be the final story line, all my ideas are subject to change. I have some of my friends help me develope the story a bit more.

RACES
Dark Elves
Dwarves
High Elves
Humans
Pandas
Trolls

CLASSES
Dark Elves- Assassin, Deceiver, Unkempt Druid
Dwarves- Warrior
High Elves- Enchantress, Magician, Priest, Ranger
Humans- Barbarian, Channeler, Cleric, Paladin, Pirate, Necromancer, Warrior
Pandas- Bard, Ronin, Stormlord
Trolls- Oracle, Shaman, Shadowknight, Warrior

There's also a kicker to the story. To make things interesting I have 1 player act as the "bad guy." They control all the boss monsters and the "Agents of the Demons." Think of them as bounty hunters that can attack at almost any moment. Of course, killing them gives special rewards.

This will be a pretty basic RPG, in the sense that you do side quests... theres major quests... you move along the story and theres an end boss basically. Since I like to make things as fun as possible (because im sure everyone's made an RPG like this) there are some special features I've added that heopfully most people havent.

-Long and Difficult Battles
I don't enjoy battles where theres like 10 to 1 hero and people just stand around. In this RPG, each class has to play their roles in order to survive. Casters will have very little HPs and won't be able to take more than a couple hits so they need to be protected by the heavy tank classes. And fights with more than 3 monsters coming at you could mean certain death. So you have to strategize and pick your classes carefully.
-Crafting
If you've played games like Everquset before perhaps you know what this is. It's taking items from the world and forging your own items. Hopefully, I can make it so once you place certain items into a container (if its the right ingrediants) it will produce a special item. Armor Weapons, whatever.
-Mini-Games
Remember from FF7, the Golden Saturn I believe it was called. Well I want to add a place like this in my RPG. Where you do something aside from the RPG and just have fun while earning special items.
-Bounty Hunters
I think this adds an interesting twist to the story. No sitting around with the possibility of one of these guys popping out.
-Epic Quests
Each class will have their own special epic Weapon and Epic Armor. These items will be unique to them and add very special properties. The quest will be very long and hard though. Probably requiring to kill a bounty hunter along with numerous other things.
-Special monsters
If any of you have ever played EverQuest you know raiding a dragon was a lot of fun. So, I wanted to add very very strong monsters that weren't part of the story, but fun to kill because of the danger and phat lewts they drop.
-Grandmaster Abilities
Aside from the max lvl on the abilities I wanted to add a quest where you earn extra points over your lvl cap to really max an ability. The Grandmaster ability would have special properties to it.
-Castle Sieges and Defense
These are always fun. It won't be like regular WC3 style sieging though. Everything will be scaled to size so it will feel more realistic and porpotional.
-Advancement Skills
Once you've reached the maximum lvl you can still earn "exp" only it goes into a pool where you can spend the exp to learn new abilities and activate them by dialog commands.

Theres also some other things I'd like to add, but I don't know how to do. I want to add more than just 5 abilities to each hero. Also I still can't help but feel this could turn into a flop. I need new ideas to keep this idea alive. I really enjoy doing this but i want other peopel to enjoy it as much as I do. So if its possible if the more experience members of this community could lend me a hand with some ideas or new innovations of the existing ideas It would be greatly appreciated.

You can contact me at [email protected] or AIM: drkumi

Thanks again.

You wrote alot of stuff but not as much as hivemind and I dont see any inovation there just sounds like a bunch of similar stuff to all those other rpgs that just flops ofcourse i just read a paragrapgh lol, but yeah watever if it makes you happy it cant be that baaaad.

well it is a strecth to say some of the things I've thought of are innovations but I meant for this post to have people help me get ideas and such.

:(

No one wants to help???

shameless bump

I like it, I think it is a good idea, considering all the RPG's on b net are crap atm, so a new one wud go down well

GL on it :D

I agree, that is partially why I'm motivated on this project. I look at other people's RPG. No customized spells, lack of content, boring and the terrain looks slopped together.

Currently a friend of mind is working on the terrain for my RPG. It looks amazing. He actually takes time making the terrain look nice and realistic. Btw the RPG will be poportional to the characters unlike a lot of RPGs out there still making heros like 1/2 the size of most of the buidlings.

Couple things I want to add the to features are:
-Quest to "evolve" the heroes into more mature heroes as part of a quest (changing skins and such) make them more powerful.
-More than 5 abilities (i think i'll do either 8 or 12)
-Some armor changing appearance of the hero (like epic armor and epic weapons)

Of course I would need a talented skinner to help me modify these models. Hopefully someone's out there who enjoys helping out a newbie editor :)

You can't give a hero more than 5 hero skills, the game just ignores the extra ones...

I read from someones post people have found a way around that. Just create a dummy ability and use triggers to switch to an identical hero with different abilities. So it would simulate flipping through like pages of a spell book or something.

Well, in that case you should have like an esc menu which have the different "spellbooks" (units). I think that would be much more organized! Just my two cents!

I think having the dummy ability would make it quicker to switch between the units. This RPG i have envisioned will be difficult and intense so going through the trouble of having to switch spells by a menu would be annoying.

As were on the subject, I don't quite understand the method of using a dummy ability to switch to a different hero.

For instance, say you're playing HERO that has 12 abilities so HERO_A has 4 abilities HERO_B has 4 and so on. What if you're playing as HERO_B and gain a lvl, but you want to train one of the abilities on HERO_A. Can you just switch over and spend that point on HERO_A or do you have to gain a lvl on each seperate persona. That is confusing to me.

or just do

player skips cinematic (esc key pressed)

if [hero] is page1 then replace hero with page2
if [hero] is page 2 then replace hero with page 1

Goes to show you how little i know about this editor...

Thank you all I really appreciate all the input and help.

From the information I gathered from various people from this post I now want to have 12 Skills for each class. I already have 21 classes thought up of (oringally only had 5 per) Now I will have 3 groups of abilities for each class depending on what type of class they are. So far i have these types of classes:

TANK (melee hero that take damage for the weaker classes)
The Tanks will have STYLES (abilities which improve dmg and possibly adding a small effect costing very little mana). PASSIVE/MODIFIER SKILLS (things such as Parry or Evasion and STR increase skills) and ABILITIES (regular old spells)

ROGUE (stealth heroes)
Rogues will have STYLES (much like the tanks but will focus more on inhibiting something from the opponent) and 8 Various abilities unique to the Rogue classes I have. For instance, my Deceiver class will have 4 STYLES 4 Decptions Skills and 4 Apply Poison skills.

CASTER (ie healer, mage type classes with 3 different groupds of spells)
Caster will have 3 unique groups of spells. As an example my Necromancer has Skeletal Manipulation, Siphons, Disease and Poisons

HYBRID (semi-tank semi-caster)
Hybrids will have some tank abilities and some caster abilities. Each will be unique to the class but it will feel like playing a Tank and Caster at the same time. Such classes will be like Paladins which will be much like a cCeric and defensive Warrior.

I've pratically put all the specific spells on paper but I'm looking over them and having help from friends to finalize and name the spells.

question: is there a way to level each hero and copy of that hero for different abilties and have them all gain the same ammount of exp and abilities points?

I wouldn't say all the rpg on bnet are crap, there are some good old ones that happened before you could edit spells.

But if you want innovative, you should allow players to customize thier heroes instead of giving them thier Strn Agil and Intel per level automatically. Originaly this was only possable using JASS (and later GoldenUrg and Scio added the function to the GUI) But now in TFT editor, the function is a standard part of WE.

Hero - Set Attribute (Strn Agil or Intel) Set/Add/Subtract Integer

This combined with dialog menus you can create a diablo style stat menu.

www.trekinc.net/realms/dakan HeroQuest Episode 2 has a good example of this (i made this map back in wc3 classic 1.02, before you could edit spells really, but it has some innovative things besides the stat menu) When a hero died, your hero became a ghost, and another player had to buy a resurection scroll and use it on your ghost to bring you back alive.

If you want to take the stat thing a step further. Heroquest episode 1 (which is a much newer map) has 7 hero stats completely different from the normal wc3 ones. It uses upgrades and dialog menus to control the bonuses. You can control Damage, HP, MP, Attack Speed, Armor, HP Regen, MP Regen all seperatly as stats.

Besides my 2 rpgs, i have never seen a stat menu used... So it is something to do that hasnt been overdone yet.