Question on the preferences of people

Wow, Been a long time since I've been here, I saw that you got hacked and did'nt come but I am happy to see it's back.

Anyways, I am about to develop a Custom Open RPG with the things I want to see that I haven't seen in others, or things I want to see done better. I always thought that if you can't find it, do it yourself, so I guess I kind of have to.

Here's my questions on what people prefer, which should be only the first of many questions in this thread I may ask.

Most of this is based of FFOpen.

How would you prefer a race/class choosing and Class Progression?

* At first I was thinking like the real World of Warcraft type thing, You choose a race, a specific list of classes come up specific to that race (As in a race can only use certain class or race specific classes) and you choose your class. Your unit comes out through that choice, all this being done by dialog menus. Now, the problem with this is Class progression, the system in the FFOpen RPG was not enjoyable to me first of all when I saw fighters running around with ultima materia made the Black Mages basically useless, so hopefully I can balance the two, but also when you progressed to a higher level class like beserker, dragoon, etc. You would start at level 1. I did however like that your class leveled up and that gave you your skills, unless people don't like that and have a better idea, which I am sure there is one, I will probably use that. So that makes it either no class progression or I need a different system besides the FFOpen.


*Second, I hated the dang item possesion, some newb would come up and touch the item and then you couldn't get it, I hope to improve this somehow because when my friend switched class he couldn't wear his godly aegis armor anymore, and tried to give it to me but he couldn't. I am thinking of a text system where you can transfer ownership to a player, but this could be difficult since I don't know JASS or anything. Any ideas are apppreciated.

*Item management, I was thinking of having a body Box your armor, weapon, and stuff like that, Here's my question, can you make custom auras that only give to your player and not the party? This way, I could make a sword that adds 50 Damage, I could make a aura that gives you 50 damage. I think that you could use a thing where you pick the item up, and you type something like -transfer slot2 and it would transfer your weapon in slot 2 to your box, or vice-versa. The main question I have here is the auras becuase I really am not sure.

These are my main questions for now, on how people prefer these things to be done or how not to be done. Any comments or suggestions is appreciated.

Thanks

Yes, you can make an aura that just affects the bearer. Change the "Targets Allowed" and area of effect.

Don't even have to modify targets, jsut set area of effect to 0. As for the class system, FF had the right idea but their problem was balancing. Also, I don't think it's such a good idea to have that materia appear as you level up so that in the end you can basicly combine all classes in 1. That's the kind of thing that makes all people choose the same class that has highest stats in the end and loading their hero with materia from othr classes. As for item storage, you could have a stash in town (and if there are many towns it could transfer from town to town), or you could have a little invulnerable packmule following you around. You could also make the packmule hide somewhere until you need to use it, and then make it appear next to you through some command like "-junkbox". There are other solutions, like setting your actual inventory as a backpack with pockets, and when you click on a pocket, its contents open up (this would allow you to store 30 items (5 x 6, saving 1 spot for cancel button), but multi-level pockets would probably be annoying.