new open RPG / Hero Arena: Artifacts of the Ages

I'm new to this site but I've been into modding & mapmaking for a couple of years now. Hit upon this idea recently, don't think anybody has done it yet.

Up to four players select two heroes each from a central citadel. The heroes are dropped in one of four areas together, the camera is set to third person with a fairly high angle for easy viewing of the area in front and a timer is set for an hour. Each player explores the map in search of six powerful artifacts which have the power to turn the tide of a battle. When the timer expires, heroes are transported to a battle ground for a fight to the death, where these items (if they managed to get any) will be most useful.

Features will include the below, and any suggestions are appreciated:

Eight fully customisable heroes, with four available spell slots each, so far the following:

Elemental spells - Flame, Thunder, Frost, (3 levels of each upgradeable at level 4 and 7) Water and Poison
Elemental summons - Flame, Thunder, Frost, Poison, Water and Death
Status spells - Dispel, Sleep, Slow, Cure, looking for more ideas here. All toned down so as not to imbalance the end-game.
Non Elemental spells - Flare, April Ethereal, Death (5% chance of instant death) and a few more to choose from, triggers are my specialty so these are looking fairly good.
Each hero also has the draw ability, which is a hero ability to steal mana from others, and an individual passive ability, different for each hero (more ideas than bash/critical strike/evasion/drunken brawler please)

Elemental Defense System - A corresponding "guard" item exists for each in-game element, if your hero is attacked by an elemental monster or an enemy hero with the same guard item, or has an elemental spell cast on them, they will gain life. Some guard items are available in stores, some only by defeating certain enemies.

"Soul Trader" stores you can visit at almost any time to change your spells over, learn new spells, purchase items, and obtain clues as to whether other players have been in the area.

Immense elemental guardians controlling the Artifacts which must be defeated. Defeating a guardian allows the corresponding summon spell to be learned, however to keep it fair in the endgame all players can learn the spell.

Special locations to visit and puzzles to solve in order to obtain some of the non-elemental spells and other powerful items.

Varied terrain including a city, desert, forests, snowy regions, plains and wetlands, with different enemies that attack you in each region.

I'm at work so no screenshots at the moment, any feedback is appreciated and will post a few shots later on.

Sounds nice, but when you say "customisable" - do you mean they can equp different clothes and that will change the skin?
Looking forward to screenys..
(Oh and this is the first time i use quick reply, lets see if it works :P)

Sweet, it did :D

skinning's not my thing so the idea hadn't crossed my mind, i meant customisable in that you had the four available slots for your spells, you could select one hero as having a fire base, for example sleep as a status spell, summon fire elemental, a fire spell for dealing damage (including small stun effect) and a non elemental spell like flare (interesting trigger damage effect using the phoenix birth effect) or instead a healing hero with heal as a status spell, an elemental spell like poison, any elemental summon and full-cure for a non elemental spell.

Endless possibilities and no more whining "my hero didn't get the spells i wanted" because you equipped them yourself.

The skinning isn't a bad idea, would have to add in a dialogue trigger for each player to select their colours, or even their weapon perhaps, with a corresponding statistical boost, perhaps an agility boost for a blood elf sword or a damage boost for spiked gloves. The weapon thing might make it too customisable though, currently the heroes are based on things like agility/intelligence, intelligence/strength, agility/strength, or a pure ability and the attributes shine through quite well, weapons would allow for "rounding out" of heroes making the gameplay the same for each pair of heroes, and that would be crap and non-diverse.

I want the use of two heroes to add a bigger dimension to the game than a standard hero arena. With one for each player, combinations like stun/windwalk are devastating, using two allows the non-stunned hero to put up some kind of a fight or counter-attack.

Perhaps if anyone is interested in skinning a project like this they can let me know, or any other ideas?

here's a couple of shots, the first entering the gateway to the poison elemental boss encounter and the second from the desert on the approach to the fire elemental encounter.