As I said, I’d love to have some RPG mode like CotS in SC V. It would be great to combine it with awesome character creation mode in SC IV (and we’re likely to have an improved version of it in SCV).
Here are some suggestions for the RPG mode. It's long, so, so I suggest going for the bold writing if you're not in a super reader mood.
Have Roads (pathways) and Territories (like the towers in CotS, but calling them territories because the stages are not always towers... lol). This would be pretty much like CotS, but...
Have the whole map displayed at the screen at once. This way, players wouldn’t need to worry about scrolling the screen. This doesn’t only make the controls more agile, but also, and more importantly, allows for multiplayer! The multiplayer might be off-line or online. There could be even coop, in 2v2 stuff. Things would easily work well, at least as long as there only two sides (opposing forces). For an example of a strategy game that displays the whole map at once – as well how important this feature is – see Comet Crash.
Allowing multiplayer requires an RPG Versus Mode. And this requires the possibility of opposing sides starting the game with the same conditions and in a symmetric (or close to it) map. Having a good AI for such a versus mode would be awesome, especially if it includes multiple difficulty levels. And, of course, we should have an RPG campaign, where you don’t necessarily start with the same conditions as the AI.
For a campaign, multiple difficulty levels for both the fighting and the RPG aspect (whether or not you have a separate setting for each) would be nice. The most important thing (and is something that lacked in the CotS mode in SC3) is that players who want challenge get the challenge, specially in the RPG aspect. I didn’t loose one freaking tower in CotS... and I don’t think I played particularly marvelously. The enemy was just too passive.
Have players using Created Fighters. The original characters may appear at the campaign as bosses or special companions for a certain stage. Having to make choices as to either fight or befriend (or maybe both) certain characters would be awesome.
Allow the Created Fighters to be built in similar fashion to SC4. However, add new types of equipment, preferably separated (not sharing the same stats), to determine the RPG stats of the characters. It could be a Flag and a Rune, with different symbols (or diffenet engravings or jewels in the rune) in the flag giving them different powers and stats. I’d like this to be separated from the usual fighting gear, so that you could use your RPG character in normal fights, without needing to tweak stuff to make him better. If we have only one set of equipment for everything, an RPG oriented character would be weaker than a pure fighting character, as the pure fighting character wouldn’t need to worry about having good RPG stats.
As for the rules of the RPG game:
The objective is to take all Territories. In the versus mode, there should (could) be a time limit and whoever has more territories would win. If players would have the same amount of Territories, other criteria could be implemented, like the number of kills, having fewer retreats and so on. There could be alternate ways to win. Depending on a spawn system, killing all enemy Special Characters at once could be a victory condition.
Each Side (Player) would have a Base, a Territory where they start the match. The stronger the Base, the greater chance to comeback (or just last long) the players would have.
There would be Roads, likely with branched pathways. The Roads would lead to Territories and eventually to the enemy’s Base. If enemThe Territories would stay in the Roads, not at the side of the Road. If you want to continue in that Road, you will have to get through the Territories in it. If enemies encounter each other in a Road, they automatically start a Skirmish (or call it what you wish... an RPG battle that requires virtually no micromanagement). If they are in groups, they fight as a group, draining each other’s gauge, till one side dies completely (all characters) or disengages. Disengaging causes Burst Damage (eat a chunk of the gauge) to whoever is fleeing. It would, in turn, give them a head start to run away, but a faster aggressor would catch up to them eventually, if they don’t hide in a friendly Territory, before that.
The Territories would have a gauge (kinda like HP), which I’d call Structure. This gauge would be eaten by player attacks in an engagement called Siege. There are different types of territory.
* A Free Territory can be easily claimed. Whoever gets there first, takes it. No siege is required. However, once it belongs to a player, its Structure takes place, and must be depleted in a Siege, before in can be invaded by enemy forces. Free Territory Structures should be generally quite weak.
* A Neutral Territory doesn’t belong to any player, but requires a Siege to be taken. The damage one player does to the Territory Structure, doesn’t help his enemy take it. A Neutral Territory has separate (but equivalent) Structure Gauges for each player. These Territories could give players certain rewards, like a recruit soldier. The farther from the player’s base and the higher the Structure, the greater should be the reward offered by the conquest of a Neutral Territory.
* Enemy Territory is the real deal. You must Siege it, and once you enter it, you have to face any enemy inside (if any), in a Duel team battle. A Duel is an actual Soul Calibur Fight, preferably with Special stats and Abilities ON, pretty much like Tower of Lost Souls, except with generally equal conditions in RPG vs mode. If you win, you take the Territory, its Structure at its maxed level. If the enemy wins the Duel, he keeps the Territory and its Structure gains a burst of recovery. If the territory gives some reward, like a recruit, you take the reward, but if the enemy’s recruit is still alive, he can keep it. However, if the enemy reclaims the territory and still has the recruit, he won’t get a second simultaneous reward (another recruit) from that territory.
* Friendly Territory is the stuff you own, including your base. When one of your characters is on friendly territory, they regain Resistance (kinda like a health gauge) and Repair the Territory. Both happen at a slow rate. This rate is even slower if the Territory is under Siege. If a Friendly Territory is under Siege, you can defend it by engaging the aggressors in a Skirmish. Doing so automatically halts the Siege, until the Skirmish is ended. If you’re inside your Territory that’s being Sieged, you can get out and stay just in front the Territory, at its Gate, so to speak. When you do this, you can not disengage from the Skirmish (to prevent annoying microing from stealing the importance from the actual strategy). Alternatively, you can also Open the Gate and let the enemy in, for a Duel, sparing the Structure of your Territory, in case you are confident in such a Duel. Territories don’t strike back. A Siege is a one way battle.
You cannot have Skirmishes inside Territories, but you can have both Skirmishes and Duels when fighting in the Roads. During a Skirmish, one side might Challenge the other side to a Duel. The other side might refuse, of course, in which case, the Skirmish simply continues. Na interesting effect would be, in the case of a Duel ending by Time Up, the loosing side surviving the Duel and automatically fleeing from the Skirmish, taking the Disengagement Burst Damage (or maybe without this damage, but probably with it) and perhaps actually surviving. This would make up for some new strategies of turtling up to at least loose by Time Up, in case you find yourself hopeless of winning a Certain Duel.
Plus, everything, Road travelling, ongoing Sieges and Skirmishes, stops during a Duel, but not during Sieges or Skirmishes.
In Campaign, Enemy or even Neutral Territories could have original characters for you to Duel or simply recruit, along with some story stuff accompanying that. Plus, the Stages used for the Road Duels could be the ones that have the more appropriate look to it, the outdoor ones. The Territory Stages should be preferably indoors or something like this.
I think that pretty much covers the rules. I hope you found it simple. Things can get more complex when we add the stats...
For the rules above I propose 4 RPG stats:
Resistance:
Different from the character’s HP, but closely related to it. The Resistance Gauge is lost by being attacked in Skirmishes. If it depletes, the Character dies. If the character enters a duel, the percentage of his current Resistance will determine the percentage of his current HP. If the character survives the duel, the percentage of his remaining HP will determine the percentage of his Resistance after the duel. Remember, you don’t loose Resistance in Sieges. If you get attacked in a Siege, it automatically becomes a Skirmish. Resistance may be recovered slowly, when on Friendly Territory.
Siege:
The amount of damage you cause to Neutral or Enemy Territory’s Structure, over time. The higher your Siege rating, the quicker you can enter the Territory. Remember, Free Territories don’t require Siege, you just get in.
Skirmish:
The amount of Damage you cause to enemy characters, over time, in a Skirmish. It has no connection to your character’s Attack Rating (from SC4). The Skirmish stat is for the RPG battles, the Skirmishes. The Attack Rating is for the Duels.
Speed:
How fast the character moves on the Road. When moving in group, the characters move at the speed of the slowest of them. The Speed stat must be dealt with very carefully. It can easily become unimportant or too important, depending on how the devs would implement it. Things to consider are: (a) The raw speed of the characters (and the raw speed of the game itself). If it’s too fast, it would be hard to control things and implement your strategy. If it’s too slow, it will be dull and boring. (b) The relation between the speed of the characters and how fast the Skirmishes and, most of all, the Sieges end. If Sieges are generally very long, arriving there first isn’t gonna make much of a difference. If the Sieges are too short, it would be all about having the Speed to get there soon, making the Siege stat quite worthless. So, as you see, these two stats are closely related and should be properly balanced with this relation in mind.
{I did think of a 5th stat, Magic, or something like this, to determine the power of some of the special RPG Skills, but I think having only these 4 would be better, leaving the Skill’s as not dependant on stats, but just the skill level itself.}
Besides the stats, I also suggest RPG skills, pretty much like we have the actual fighting (Duel) Abilities, in SC4, but for RPG use. The skills could have a single level, or multiple levels, like C, B, A (and perhaps even S, for AI bosses in campaign). I’d like two or three slots for Skills, and a maxed character (with access to the best equipment) should have three points to distribute. He could have 1 Skill at A, or 1 at B and 1 at C (or even 3 at C, if you allow three slots). It could be a nice thing to allow just one active Skill, for controls sake, and perhaps even balance sake, as well.
Here are some Skills suggestions. I’d like your feedback for the whole thing, but particularly more for the Skills (: As a general guideline, the more situation specific the effect, the greater it should be. It would also be nice to have a Cooldown system, with very powerful Active Skills having a long Cooldown. (P) is a tag for Passive and (A), for Active.
Blood Thirst (P): When Skirmishing in group, the character’s allies receive a bonus in their Skirmish stat. Does not affect the character.
Black Magic (A): When Skirmishing the character causes a Burst Damage (eat a chunk of gauge) to all the enemies in the Skirmish.
Phalanx (P): When in group, the character’s allies take less Skirmish Damage to their Resistance (the only type of damage to their resistance). Does not affect the character.
Healing Magic (A): In group you cause a Burst of Healing to your allies. Does not affect the character.
Survivalist (P): The character recovers his Resistance faster, when in Friendly territory. He may also recover it slowly, when idle on the Road. This Skill might even enhance the recovery of HP, as a reserve during a duel, or it could perhaps be another Skill.
Battery Ram (P): When Sieging in group, the character’s allies receive a bonus in their Siege stat. Does not affect the character.
Trebuchet (A): When Sieging the character causes a Burst Damage (eat a chunk of gauge) to the Territory’s Structure.
Apprentice (P): In group, the character’s applicable offensive stat (Skirmish or Siege) increases towards the highest on his group. It doesn’t get simply gets to that level, it goes a little towards it. If you’re talking about Skill levels, C would give you 1 point towards it, B would give 2, and A, 3. And remember you wouldn’t be able to get past your group’s natural highest in this fashion.
Reinforcement (P): The character receives a multiplier bonus to his Speed, when moving towards an ongoing Skirmish or Siege. It should be carefully decided whether or not this effect should extend to beyond territories (maybe OK for friendly, but not for neutral or enemy’s).
March Leader (P): When moving in group, the character’s allies Speed are enhanced. It should be decided whether or not this effect can increase the allies’ Speed past the character’s own, in which case the character’s own Speed would raise to the same level and the group would move at this new, enhanced Speed.
Fortification (A): The character increases the Structure gauge of a Friendly Territory. This increase lasts until the Territory is actually taken by the enemy. If it’s breached, but the enemy looses the Duel, the Fortification effect remains. It should be carefully decided whether or not this should be usable in the Base. The limiting factor to this power could be the cooldown or (or/and) the number of Territories the same character can keep Fortified at once (perhaps only 1). In this case, Fortifying a Territory beyond your limit would remove the character’s oldest Fortification.
Engineer (P): When inside a Friendly Territory the character makes the Repair (what happens normally, with any character, but at a slow rate) happen considerably faster. When the Territory is being Sieged, the Repair is still slower, but not as slow as it would be without this Skill.
Settler (A): The character can create a Friendly Territory in the Road. It has a weak Structure, and might be taken by the enemy, just like any other. The use of this power should be somehow very limited.
Warlord (A): The character adds a Special Condition to a Territory, that affects characters from both Sides alike. The Special Conditions include the well known Slippery Floor and the Quake. There should be more. Ideas include: (a) Artillery: whoever gets launched, takes arrows, receiving damage. (b) Plague: falling casus extra damage, staying down also slowly drains health. (c) Fire: fire covers a portion of the ground and perhaps the wall, too, when a fighter gets in contact with it, he takes damage, and in the case of falling on it, he might be ground-staggered... the fire dissipates on such contact. (d) Small Ring: a magical abyss of strange matter surrounds the fighters (or just assign a small RO stage, if the Territory icon in the RPG map doesn’t relate to the Stage’s Appearance). (e) Small Cage: a small Cage covers the fighters (or like in idea ‘d’). (f) Mercy: After the fight is decided (unless by Time Up), a 2nd round happens, the loosing side using their last character, with a small HP recovery from being KOed, and the winning characters with a big HP recovery from the point at when the 1st round ended. If a Territory already has a Special Condition, it is displayed at its icon in the map. Warlord might then be used to neutralize any effect.
Tactical Retreat (A): You can disengage from a Skirmish without taking the usual Disengage Burst Damage. You can also Disengage from a Gate Skirmish, to the safety of your Territory. This should have a very long Cooldown, which could be lower on higher levels of this Skill. And you cannot ever Disengage if you are ultimately flanked, surrounded by enemies at the different sides of the Road.
General (A): You can change the Style of a Recruit that’s given to you as a reward for taking a Territory. Recruit’s Styles are generally random, so this Skill can come in handy to keep you comfortable in using a Recruit with a Style you’re familiar with. A Recruit’s Style cannot be changed more than once. In Campaign, you shouldn’t be able to change the style of original characters that may befriend you.
Dueler (A): When Skirmishing, instead of simply Challenging your enemy to a Road Duel, you Summon the Duel, and your enemy is forced to accept it. Good to use when the Skirmish is not on your favor. Should have a big Cooldown.
Doppelganger (A): The character changes his class, shifting the base of his stats. He must be idle. It may be wise to limit this use only when inside friendly territory, or perhaps even to friendly territories that are not under siege. And this should have a massive Cooldown.
Ultimate Finisher (P): The character’s Critical Finish wins the fight, even if there were other characters left in the enemy team. P.S. I know CF was removed, but I wanted to state the idea anyway ):
A lot of thought would be required to decide whether or not, how, etc. these Skills could stack up. Also, perhaps some Skills should exist only in one level (most likely A), which could be appropriate for the more qualitative of them. And maybe it would be better to prevent stats from going past their natural maximum value (10, in the scale I’ll suggest ahead).
And that’s pretty much all there is to the rules and the stats. But there is also the issue of how to achieve the stats and Skills. It could be a totally open system, where you simply choose the stuff you want, with a cap. It could be by equipment, like SC4. Or, what I’d prefer, by equipment and by Class. You choose a Class that gives you starting values for your stats, and then add the equipment to complement those stats and also give you access to Skills. Acquiring and combining new equipment would be the progression part. I don’t think the same type of equipment should interfere with both the RPG stats and the actual (SC4) fighting stats. I think they should be separate. In fact, I think even the RPG stats and the RPG Skills should have different types of equipment, maybe a flag for the stats and a rune for the skills. You would start with lame equipment, however relatively varied equipment, then you would gain increasingly strong and far increasingly varied equipment.
It would be nice if could directly win some of the equipment; gaining a discount access to the equipment, needing to pay a fair value for it, in gold; and yet, just rashly buying ANY equipment (before ‘unlocking’ it) for a huge load of gold. So, if you have trouble getting some important equipment, you can buy it. It shall hurt in your pocket, but you should be fine, as long as you don’t do this much, and try to unlock stuff as much as possible.
Let’s get back to the Classes. I propose a 10 points system for the RPG stats. Each class should have one Low (3) stat, two Mid (5) stats and one High (7) stat. The classes I suggest are:
Assassin (or Champion... whatever): Low Resistance (3), Mid Siege (5), High Skirmish (7) and Mid Speed (5)
This class can put a quick end to Skirmishes, especially when fighting in group. It’s also not bad to invade Territories. It works wonders as long as it’s hit hard.
Cavalry: Mid Res (5), Low Sie (3), Mid Ski (5) and High Speed (7)
The ultimate conqueror of Free Territories. It can also provide a quick backup to ongoing Skirmishes. It’s not good to take Resilient Territories.
Knight: High Res (7), Mid Sie (5), Mid Ski (5) and Low Speed (3)
This heavily armored warrior advances slowly, but can take on pretty much everything in his path. The ultimate defender and the ideal class for Duels, because of his high Resistance, that usually means a high starting HP to the Duel.
Pikeman: Mid Res (5), High Sie (7), Low Ski (3) and Mid Speed (5)
The master of getting through the Territory defenses, this class is the ultimate conqueror of the most resilient Territories. The Pikeman is vulnerable to Skirmishes and must often be protected by other classes.
So, these are the classes. The flag equipment, which could contain different symbols or colors would give the character more stat points. I suggest 3 more stat points. It might seem like little, but I do not suggest this randomly. With 4 points from equipment characters from different classes would be able to have the same stats. 3 is just bellow that. You can still change the class quite a lot, but not enough to make it like another class, so the Classes’ authenticity would be kept.
There should be lots of different flags (if don’t like flags for this purpose, it can be anything else). You should start with 4, each giving one point to just one of the four stats. Then you would gain access to mid quality ones, that would give 2 points, at the same stat or to different ones. Eventually, you would have access to the high quality stuff, that would give 3 points, in many different combinations. These flags could be unisex. And each character could have his own flag, of course.
Lastly, there would be the type of equipment to give you access to the Skills (the RPG stuff, as opposed to Abilities, the actual fighting stuff, from SC4). I suggest runes, with different engravings and stuff.
The Skills could be categorized in a similar way to the SC4 Abilities, but preferably with different parameters (not Power, Gauge, etc.). Then the characters would gain access with different runes, allowing different combinations of points in different categories. The runes could also specify stuff like one level B of this kind and one level C of that kind. We would have lots of runes to collect/buy (: And like the flags, the early access would be limited to the lame runes, giving only one level C Skill.
Ultimately, combining the class, the flag, the rune and all of the SC 4 fighting stats and Abilities would result in a very broad and complex experience. Its online play would be great, since the RPG stuff wouldn’t be affected by latency – making the overall RPG + fighting result less affected by latency than just pure fighting is. And playing vs on a couch would be totally awesome!
Well, that’s about it. If you’ve read this enormous stuff, thank you very much. You’re my hero. And sorry for the length. I look forward to read your feedback and your own suggestions. If you happen to think this stuff is really hot, maybe we can make a petition, and maybe some dev will lay his eyes on this, or in an upgraded version of this we may construct together.
Cheers.
