It wasn't the weekend I was aiming for, but here it is! Much more to report in my next post, I just haven't been getting around to committing things here. So here goes:
Adventurer
Standard Hack-and-Slash RPG
Adventurer is a standard hack-and-slash style RPG. Players choose from 1 of 4 classes (Warrior, Mage, Slinger or Monk), and adventure through a series of areas with a range of monsters in them, to obtain large amounts of money as a reward. As they progress, they level up, with each level become progressively harder to obtain. Each time a player levels up, their stats increase- said stats can also be increased through equipment. This is all fairly standard stuff. The unique section of this RPG is that there is no way for adventurers to directly obtain equipment, and no way to directly obtain money beyond the completion of adventures- that is to say, beating up monsters doesn't miraculously generate money and equipment. This is to make sure players have to interact with shops.
More specifically!
In Adventurer, players will go in a fairly sequential order through a set of locations, completing an arbitrary quest within each one for an amount of money. Along the way, they will battle monsters, solve puzzles, the usual. Combat is handled in a turn based basis, but using staggered turns- in other words, a character with a "Speed" of 1 would have a third as many turns as a character with a "Speed" of 3. This gives players a certain degree of customization- they could maximize any stat in particular they want, or build in a more balanced fashion, and still come out just as well either way. For obvious reasons, this would require careful competitive balancing.
The statistics in the game would likely be Strength, Magic, Agility and Speed. Strength would be the primary focus of the Warrior class- it's used for determining how hard you smash things with your stick, and determining how much you can be hit with a stick before you fall down. Magic is the primary statistic of the Mage class, used for throwing spells around, and finding how hard the spells hit, and how many spells you can use. Agility is much the same, but for ranged weapons, with the added bonus of determining how good at dodging you are, and is favoured by the Slinger class, and Speed determines turn order, how fast you hit, and is the focus of the Monk class. Each class would gain bonuses to these stats as they defeat monsters, with most of the bonuses going into the primary stat for their class.
The economy of the game would be the unique selling point, hopefully. None of the shops in the game would be NPC controlled, but instead would be controlled by players of Artificer (see below). Players are able to sell what they find on their adventures (for example, bits of monster, or collected plants, or mined rocks, etc, etc, etc) to these shops, and buy essential equipment, potions, yadda yadda yadda, from said shops. Money would enter the economy via the money obtained at the end of missions, and money can be sunk out of the economy later on in the process, in Artificer. This means the two ends of the in-game economy- the resource collection and the resource refinement and resale- are in symbiosis, linking the two games together.
Pros:
-It's a High-Fantasy RPG, and RPGs and High Fantasy came out on top in the survey
-Replay value inasmuch as there are 4 paths to try and "complete" the game through
Cons:
-Very generic, as far as concepts go.
-Server costs would be astronomical.
-Reliant on not one, but TWO games being both feasible and successful
And while I'm here, let's go two for one in a single post:
Artificer
Resource Management Strategy/Puzzle
In Artificer, players control a small shop in a fantasy universe. Where in the outside world, Warriors, Mages, Slingers and Monks go about their business valiantly saving the world, you stay inside keeping them ready to go! The players manage their shop through (most likely) a mobile or web interface, setting the prices at which they're willing to buy ingredients and reagents from adventurers, choosing what to create from said ingredients and reagents, and choosing what price to sell the finished products at.
More Specifically:
Artificer is a fairly standard "Dungeon Shop"-esque game, but with more of an involvement aspect to it. Rather than arbitrarily having NPCs coming up and buying stuff from your shop, as is the case in most Dungeon Shop games, it would be directly linked to the shops in Adventurer- or in other words, players of Adventurer would use Artificer players as item shops. This creates a virtual economy between the two games, and creates two ways to approach the 'verse- either from the resource management side here, or the RPG side in Adventurer.
Players beginning a game of Artificer would be given a small amount of money and a shop in the first locale. From this shop, they would be able to buy items from and sell items to Adventurers in the first locale- hereinafter "newbies". While still Newbie Artificers, they would only be able to obtain reagents and ingredients that can be found in the first locale, meaning they can only craft gear, potions, etc from what can be found in the starting zone, and thus, the gear they produce is quite poor, and can't sell for much. This would encourage players to move to later locales- however, instead of completing quests, like the Adventurers, Artificers wanting to move up a locale would have to buy a new shop, for a large one time cost, and a further incremental "rent" to be payed out at regular intervals afterwards.
The Artificer interface would consist of three major areas- Buying, Crafting and Selling. In the buying interface, Artificers would set what items they are looking for, and at what price they are willing to buy them. Adventurer players are able to see these prices, and sell their items in this manner. On the crafting screen, Artificers select what they would like to create, setting a job list of what to do. Creating objects takes a significant amount of real world time, which players can mitigate by, for example, hiring more workers, or buying better crafting equipment (more useful money sinks). An example of how this would work: An Artificer has in inventory 3 rusty greatspoons, 3 whetstones, a potion of unspeakably awful acid, and a potion of unspeakably vile poison. They would be able to set up in their crafting screen to have the three rusty spoons sharpened in parallel (assuming they have 3 workers available), then pour the potions on two of the swords. This would take a set amount of time for each task- say, an hour to sharpen each greatspoon, and 10 minutes to potion-ize them, but an hour and ten minutes later, the Artificer would have 3 new Greatspoons to sell to a passing Warrior!
In order to keep the economy stable, money could be put into and taken out of the economy through the quest rewards in Adventurer, grants being given to shops in Artificer, and, obviously enough, the various money sinks- Shop Costs, Rent, New Gear, Hiring Workers- as described so far.
Pros:
-It's a High-Fantasy Strategy, and Strategy games and High Fantasy came out on top in the survey
-"Play Every Day" value in being able to set up crafting tasks on finding out what's being bought/sold
-Artificial Economy lets people learn business and economics, at a very basic level, as they play
Cons:
-Possibly not fun. And this would be a biggie.
-Server costs would be astronomical.
-Reliant on not one, but TWO games being both feasible and successful
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