Concept: Templars of Kayne

Fair warning before I start this: After some analysis, I have already made the decision to go with this concept over Contact Sport, Adventurer, or Artificer (or the hazy spacepunk RTS concept that unfortunately never took off. You shall be missed, "Grande Machines"). The reasoning for this should be obvious from the pros and cons when listed, but even if not I'll be posting my thought processes at a later date. Without any further ado:

Templars of Kayne
High Fantasy Strategic Shooter
Templars of Kayne is a moba-esque two dimensional shooter with strategic elements (I'm well aware that the last bit means virtually nothing, but oh well). Plaers choose from a selection of characters, with a variety of unique abilities and roles, and are placed onto a planetoid arena, with 5 capture pillars spaced around it. Players are separated into two equal teams, and start off at a capture pillar. Your team wins if they are able to capture all of the pillars on the arena. Pretty simple. The hard part is actually doing it.

More specifically!
The breakdown of the genres is as follows:
The MOBA-esque part comes in the selection of characters. In Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games, such as Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends, or Heroes of Newerth players select from a large roster of characters, each with their own characterisation and unique abilities, and use this character throughout a given match. The way this differs from the middle of the freedom scale as I described in a previous post is the scale of the roster- at the time of writing, there are 97 Heroes in DotA, and 111 Champions in League of Legends. For (I hope) obvious reasons, I will be starting off with a roster of around 30- enough to leave a decent choice and spread of roles, but not so many as to make the process of design and balancing impossibly complex. Additionally, forcing players to use the same Templar throughout the match means that teams can be picked strategically, rather than reactionary countering, as is an issue in some games.
The Two Dimensional part is me beating a dying horse, and making the arena a circular, gravitationally centred planetoid. You may recognize this idea if you've read *any* of my previous posts. I'm unwilling to scrap it right now, partially because of the fact that I'm really stubborn, but mostly because people seem to react well to the idea, and it in general sounds like a fun mechanic. The reason I'm not going even further is because three dimensions would be considerably beyond my technical capabilities, which would be an issue.
The shooter part is because I honestly can't think of a better way to describe it. It's a shooter only in the loosest sense of the word, due to the high fantasy setting- guns are not a concept that exist, and beyond the odd crossbow or conjurer, most of the combat is up close and personal. However, there isn't really a name for that genre, as far as I can tell, so shooter it remains for now.

From a technical standpoint, there would be several stages to playing the game. Stage 1, a lobby client is loaded up, and the player is matched up with nine other players (or something), and split into the two teams. At this point, they would be given open communications between themselves, likely through some variety of built-in text or voice relay, through which they are able to discuss Templar choices, strategy, and the like. Through this client, they'd be able to select a Templar and indicate that they are ready to start. When all players are ready to start, a second client is launched for the game itself, connecting all players to a gameserver and starting it off. At that point, the players are given free reign to kill each other and capture pillars to their heart's content, until one team wins, at which point all players are booted back out to the lobby client to play again if they so wish.
For the reasons indicated earlier with regards to multiplayer games and playing with friends, there should be some means of allowing players to choose who to play with- meaning that a third layer of client may be necessary.

Gameplay itself consists of running around with your team, fighting with and against the aforementioned unique characters, and capturing pillars. In order to capture a pillar, players would need to stand by it, uninterrupted, for several seconds- meaning that they can only feasibly do so if no enemies are nearby. If players are killed, they come back a little while later at one of their team's pillars.
I said it was simple, didn't I?

Pros:
Scores in the most highly rated slots in the survey.
Easy to pick up, hopefully.
Simple to code the actual game part.
Cons:
Multiple layers of client could be difficult to code.
Balancing and creation of assets would be an uphill struggle.
Server costs may be high (but not as high as the other concepts)

So, there we have it. Thought processes and further details coming soon!