::What makes the best RPG Adventure?::

Hi everyone, I'm making concepts for a future video game for a game studio I'm with. The game is called Medallion and I'm doing music story and art. I would like to ask you guys som questions regarding the key elements that make a good RPG Adventure ^_^ here it goes!

Ok to get started, I need a story and it would be great if you could just tell me what you like best in an RPG as for story goes, do you like romance in an RPG or more conflict? things like that ^_^

I'm just curious for your opinions so that I can write a better story and make better concepts

I like stories with alternate universes and odd characters. And let the villian be a bit less badass and more intelligent, the sort that messes with youtr mind, or have them be in your party for a large portion of the games so he/she/it can use you to complete their evil plan. Oh, and I want more nonhuman and gay characters, please!

Moved to General Gaming Discussion forum. :)

I've always wanted a game where you're NOT the hero. But I guess Square supposedly just took care of that one for me

Be pretty funny if a prophecy gets ruined. The chosen one, your leader, gets killed or something. Or turns evil (Vader rip-off. I'm sure you could do a better more believable job than Lucas)

I like bad guys with intelligence. Ones who paved the way to hell with good intentions. Even so far as having a respectable code of honor toward the good guys

Just a few thoughts

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Originally Posted by Vyk

I've always wanted a game where you're NOT the hero. But I guess Square supposedly just took care of that one for me

Be pretty funny if a prophecy gets ruined. The chosen one, your leader, gets killed or something. Or turns evil (Vader rip-off. I'm sure you could do a better more believable job than Lucas)

I like bad guys with intelligence. Ones who paved the way to hell with good intentions. Even so far as having a respectable code of honor toward the good guys

Just a few thoughts

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Soul Nomad is perfect for Anti-Hero game. :-/

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Originally Posted by DrDeath in Despair

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Originally Posted by Vyk

I've always wanted a game where you're NOT the hero. But I guess Square supposedly just took care of that one for me

Be pretty funny if a prophecy gets ruined. The chosen one, your leader, gets killed or something. Or turns evil (Vader rip-off. I'm sure you could do a better more believable job than Lucas)

I like bad guys with intelligence. Ones who paved the way to hell with good intentions. Even so far as having a respectable code of honor toward the good guys

Just a few thoughts

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Soul Nomad is perfect for Anti-Hero game. :-/

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Never heard of it o.o Details??

I just like being a good guy, but maybe an unlawful Robin Hood type, or a female character or an older character. Oh, and have females with some courage and strength who don't require saving every ten seconds.

Most important thing is Story(and Characters), after that is Music. These are the critical things. :p

I like stories (not just in games) where it makes you think. It doesn't give you all the details, just the necessary ones. Then you have to think about the mystery.

It gets your mind involved and those are more memorable.

Accidently leaving plotholes don't count as leaving for the mystery, so don't do that!

I'd say that a battles system and character micro-managing are my number one most important things in an RPG. Story is next.

Yeah, I want a battles system that is very deep and strategic, but not boring or overly complicated, and I want a fresh and nice mixture or Realt Time and Turn-Based gameplay. Oh, and having some nonlinear control over some party members would be nice. (Like romance, friendships, much like Baldur's Gate or KOTOR, look into them.)

And if you can't be good, at least give us a choice for alignment.

I like a story that is basically realistic, something that you see have probably happened sometime in our history too (empire conflicts, beytrayal of kings and leaders etc).

As for gameplay, I am very fond of being able to choose race, class, alignments etc for myself. The more I can choose from, the better. (Oblivion, Morrowind and Baldur's Gate I and II are good examples of what I mean).

I prefer a story that is able to explore the background of the world and the characters. I like games that have a dictionary feature because it lets me find out more information about specific terms and phrases unique to the game.

I prefer some story that has the main character not being -too- over powered. I like the sense of having some sort of realism and not always being some huge hero. Being an ordinary character that manages to do some semi-extraordinary things. Maybe have the hero be a part of some large army where he leads a small unit. Make it so that he can't take on a whole army by himself though. He would need to rely on others to help him out, but he can still handle himself in a fair fight or even a little unbalanced fight (one vs two, one vs three, MAYBE one vs four).

what i look for most in an RPG is story, gameplay, music and art direction.

It's not really a set formula though. Some of the most cliched stories have made for some of the best games, and some games with generic battle systems can really win you over with music and the way it lays out its world.

There's other things too like how monotonous it is. Stuff like that can turn you off fairly quickly.

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Originally Posted by Roogle

I prefer a story that is able to explore the background of the world and the characters. I like games that have a dictionary feature because it lets me find out more information about specific terms and phrases unique to the game.

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I agree with Roogle. This is why I liked Dynasty Warriors. If I ever had a question about a character I could just venture over to the encyclopedia and find out!

For me, it's the plot, characters and depth that sell an RPG.

A well-thought-out story - not necessarily a complicated one, as long as it's told well - is worth its weight in gold. A deeply romantic story isn't always that realistic in a conflict-driven RPG plot, but a subdued or unique love story can be a nice addition, especially if the characters are endearing.

Characters should be diverse, have believable motivations and personalities, and shy away from stereotypes or simply conforming to what's considered 'cool' by a particular audience.

As for depth - by that, I mean a well-developed world with a tangible culture and back-story, not just a random assortment of towns and locations that have no apparent past, or reason for existing as they are. The plot, characters and world should all tie into each other - FFVII's a good example, with Shinra's military history, the role of Materia, and other such matters linking everything together.

OH here it is!! I had no Idea it was moved lol
Anyway, these Ideas are awesome! But before I start commenting on them and start adding improvements to the concepts I have, I think you guys should see what I have so far. that way if you like something I have already, you wont have to wast your breath telling me something I might already have included into the game. Would you like to see what Medallion is all about?

I'd like to know what studio hires a guy that posts on an Final Fantasy fan board to get ideas.

I like Side-quests me, and a main character who is not a teenager.

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Originally Posted by Balzac

I'd like to know what studio hires a guy that posts on an Final Fantasy fan board to get ideas.

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Considering this chap's apparently doing the music, story and artwork, I'm guessing a small-scale and informal production.
No harm in checking out the target audience, to find out what they like or dislike.

I'd like to see it, and we can give some advice.

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Originally Posted by Big D

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Originally Posted by Balzac

I'd like to know what studio hires a guy that posts on an Final Fantasy fan board to get ideas.

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Considering this chap's apparently doing the music, story and artwork, I'm guessing a small-scale and informal production.
No harm in checking out the target audience, to find out what they like or dislike.

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(spoilers)
yes your right, as it turns out, game companies are increasingly using gaming forums for public insight and opinions on other games. It helps a game company understand what they are up against as for what their audience wants and the influence that their competitors has on the public. In march, the director of super sash bros brawl went to forums in Japan to get insight on the new title. but I’m here not to sell anything to you or get you to join anything unless you want to help us build games but that’s up to you. I just need public insight on what games are missing, what do you really want to see in an RPG, what would make it perfect.

Ok so the game play is what makes a game enjoyable and if we cant get anything right, we might as well get this right. Insight I have gotten before regarding battle systems, real time is the way to go as for fighting goes so here’s the battle system: let me know what you think -_^


Medallion; battle system
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This game is an adventure RPG and we want the battle system that is the most revolutionary system since zelda. Its all real time you have a total of 5 main characters a magic user, the hero, sword master, knight and archer/beast. Im thinking you can only use 3 or 4 at a time depending on how much the PS3 can handle. anyway, you can switch in between characters using the shoulder buttons. each character has his or her own special abilities. you use them to navigate your party through temples and such. you can see your enemies in real time and they can see you if you get too close. you also have party commands. whomever you are playing as is your party leader and you can give everyone commands using the D pad. there will also be special commands that pop up when you have a object or sequence you can interact with. a wall for example if you go to a wall a command will pop up that says scale on both your upper left shoulder button and the D pad. The shoulder button is for just you and you can tell your party do do the same command by hitting the d pad.

Now to engage a battle you hold down the upper right shoulder button and you automatically lock on to the enemy. you then automatically enter into battle mode. In battle mode all of the buttons change to attack combo buttons. the combos are similar to that of soul calibure's where you have thousands of possibilities, plus that adds to the skill aspect of the game. and if you want to flee all you do is let go of the shoulder button and RUN!
when you kill all the nearby enemies, battle mode automatically deactivates.

you do level up in the game. each character has a status bar along the bottom of the screen that shows experience points health magic etc. and every time you kill an enemy in real time the XP points fly into your level up gauge in real time. so you may occasionally hear the level up music pop up in a middle of a battle if you or a team member filled their XP gauge.

there is no screen breaking or random battles. Its ALL real time.

Im also thinking about including a mix of trace and orchestrated as the background music in big boss fights.

using "Magic":

this is what makes the fighting engine so much different from other fighting engines out there. you do use "magic" or thats what everyone thinks it is. Its actually called Soulfire, Ill explain the history of Soulfire later in the thread. Anyway, there are two ways of using soulfire or magic if you will. there is hand-Soulfire(HS), and combat-Soulfire(CS). HS moves are mainly used to inflict status effects and has special traits. HS also is the strongest form of soulfire at a high level but slows down the user. CS moves are magic attacks that require a weapon to work, these attacks are meant to inflict damage collectively and unlike HS it does not slow your movement. In other words it flows with you and is best for combat.

There are also higher levels of CS and HS that only certain players can achieve, advanced hand_Soulfire and advanced combat_soulfire. This list shows which character gets what according to Magic:
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Vaun(hearo): sword, long-sword, heavenly weapons, duel sword, staff, spear, short bow, snake, hand soulfire, advanced combat soulfire.

Sarf(archer, healer, nomad) knife duel-knife/short sword, short bow/long bow, crossbow, advanced compact bow, combat soulfire, hand soulfire.

Roland(knight, heavyweight) long-sword, duel long-sword, Claymore, ax, duel snakes, combat soulfire.

Felia(Soulfire artist, the female) duel knife, short sword, short bow, cross bow, soulfire weapons, advanced hand soulfire.

sword master(swift fighter, light weight)short sword duel short sword, sword,duel-spin knifes, staff, combat soulfire.
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Anyway, Soulfire has levels and every time your Soulfire level increases, you learn more attacks or the HS/CS becomes more affective. Now because of the nature of soulfire, every time you defeat an enemy you gain soulfire in the SF gauge. When you use an HS or CS based move, it depletes the gauge. If you use HS or CS in a fight and you defeat you gain soulfire XP along with your regular XP. You have an XP gauge that has two different colored bars in it. Blue for regular XP and light blue for soulfire XP. If you fill the light blue bar to the to the top, your soulfire gains a level.
Ok, now here's where the fighting gets interesting. You know about combos in other games, well in medallion there are attack sequences. There are attack sequences in both soulfire and nonsoulfire based attacks. An attack sequence is basically a never ending combo thats gets stronger and faster if you keep up the combo. Lets say you press X to start your first non soulfire move you then press a different button combination to create a combo if you don't get hit or countered, you can keep adding on attacks to the combo and every time you do it gets faster and more powerful. So lets say your character can use CS and you press triangle to activate it then you can do an attack sequence and if you keep it up, your attack can get extremely powerful and shiny!

Now I can show you some art and screens next. ^_^

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Originally Posted by Big D

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Originally Posted by Balzac

I'd like to know what studio hires a guy that posts on an Final Fantasy fan board to get ideas.

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Considering this chap's apparently doing the music, story and artwork, I'm guessing a small-scale and informal production.
No harm in checking out the target audience, to find out what they like or dislike.

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I don't want to sound like a dick, but it just sounds like he's on his own with this. A quick google search of Soulfire revealed his DA page and he's 18. I just hope he understands the amount of work that actually goes into making a a game. I've wrked around this industry long enough now to see people like this come and go. They have their ideas, but fail to realise all the stuff that goes with it.

But if this is what he wants to do, who am I to stop him?

Good luck.

Meh, his ideas sound rather interesting, certainly something I would play. It sounds a bit like Rogue Galaxy, as far as combat, but it certainly intrigues me. XD

http://forums.eyesonff.com/artists-f...ept-art-_.html

me personally this sounded like someone that steals others ideas. me myself would want money for my thoughts if its gonna inspire a game.

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Originally Posted by sora_lion_heart

http://forums.eyesonff.com/artists-f...ept-art-_.html

me personally this sounded like someone that steals others ideas. me myself would want money for my thoughts if its gonna inspire a game.

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Are you saying this isn't his project or he's recycling ideas?

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Originally Posted by sora_lion_heart

http://forums.eyesonff.com/artists-f...ept-art-_.html

me personally this sounded like someone that steals others ideas. me myself would want money for my thoughts if its gonna inspire a game.

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Wait, you guys don't think I stole these Ideas do you? those are ALL copy written by Soulfire. Thats my topic, the art is all concepts that my members and I drew and the screen shots are real screen shots of the game. Besides what game could I be taking them from or where are they inspired from? If those weren't ours, the fact that I'm saying they are could put me in jail for fraud. Everything I'm telling you is true. we do have a studio and It doesn't matter how old you are you just have to be dedicated if you want to start something like this. ^_^ SoulFire Soft has 10 members and we are planning on merging with another independent company soon. Our first project wont be this one, we are currently building a puzzle game for Microsoft XNA which means it will go on Xbox live once Microsoft approves it. This is no lie.
Now anyway is there any changes you would like to see in the current concepts I have so far?

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I've wrked around this industry long enough now to see people like this come and go. They have their ideas, but fail to realise all the stuff that goes with it.

But if this is what he wants to do, who am I to stop him?

Good luck.

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your exactly right it is impossible to build this game now even with 10 members. this game will take at leased 30 programmers just imagine how many people it will take if you include the others, artists, writers, modelers etc. So we are starting very very small and we have built 3 small games for experience even before we started on our first public project. It wont be for years before we start production on Medallion so it gives us plenty of time to come up with more concepts and improve Ideas. Might as well start early so we can make the quality of this game top notch in every aspect. ^_^

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Meh, his ideas sound rather interesting, certainly something I would play. It sounds a bit like Rogue Galaxy, as far as combat, but it certainly intrigues me. XD

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thanx ^_^

Something that is very open-ended. Sort of like TES4. However, one thing I've been thinking of lately, with regards to Neverwinter Nights 2, is a game with two parallels of the same story. What I mean is to have the typical "good-vs-evil" story, but depending on your disposition you can choose which side to fight for. Essentially you'll have 2 different endings: one where the good vanquishes evil, and the other where evil achieves it's goal of world-domination or complete destruction. What does that have to do with NWN2 you ask? Well, it seems that no matter what your alignment is with NWN2, you ALWAYS have to run the course of saving the world. A bad alignment just makes the game harder because nobody's willing to help you. A variation of that idea could simply be two sides of a war (sort of like the 4 races of EVE-Online) where everybody is neutral with everybody at the beginning, but depending on their actions can end up fighting for one cause or the other. Simply, it's an example that the only thing that separates enemies is their perception of what is right, not necessarily good-vs-evil.

Other than that, a solid (back)story and some romance if you can fit it in smoothly wouldn't hurt it.

TES4? That is an excellent Idea and is very popular concept, but I tried to incorporate that into this game but it just messed up things. It gives the player allot of options which could ruin the depth of the story. The story is the most important thing in this game so far and we even have the story for the second game thought up. In the second game however, you play as the "bad guy" but your cause for being the enemy of the world is for good.

We are also creating another game concept that we plan to build in the near future. It is an MMORPG called Clouded Oceans. In that game you can be both good or bad and according on the role you play, you can change the story.
Thanks for your help ^_^Ill see if we can incorporate this in medallion, if not, there will defiantly be something like this in one of our later games. If you have any other suggestions please tell me -_^

>>> Square holds the key of success maybe thinking like they did 18 years ago would lead into a great rpg game..

Whatever, good luck with your game.

Some stuff I did when I made a game using GameMaker last year:

Epic scenes will make it good. (think The Landing from FF8)

Good music that doesn't get people turning down the volume every time its up. (like the main FF theme, yuck)

Also a great atmosphere/setting to play in.

Enigmatic or characters with heavy backgrounds are cliche though they always bring talk about a game (Magus from Chrono Trigger, Zack from Crisis Core, etc)

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Originally Posted by Ledious

Vaun(hearo): sword, long-sword, heavenly weapons, duel sword, staff, spear, short bow, snake, hand soulfire, advanced combat soulfire.

Sarf(archer, healer, nomad) knife duel-knife/short sword, short bow/long bow, crossbow, advanced compact bow, combat soulfire, hand soulfire.

Roland(knight, heavyweight) long-sword, duel long-sword, Claymore, ax, duel snakes, combat soulfire.

Felia(Soulfire artist, the female) duel knife, short sword, short bow, cross bow, soulfire weapons, advanced hand soulfire.

sword master(swift fighter, light weight)short sword duel short sword, sword,duel-spin knifes, staff, combat soulfire.

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I don't think anyone has commented on the characters yet so I will. No. Just no. Here's why.

Vaun: Vaun? Vaan? Very similar. Might want to change that. He also has too many weapons. I recommend having him as a Light Warrior of sorts. 1H swords and Shields, Knives, Daggers etc. Only give him basic Soulfire.

Sarf: Too many things again. Make him the healer with Staves and Rods. Also give him a few basic attacking Soulfires.

Roland: He's the Heavy Warrior characters. He shouldn't need Soulfire. He should be the one plowing through, with the others for support and Soulfire. I suggest giving his own kind of skill.

Felia: The Female? I recommend scrapping one of the males and creating a female in their place. Make her the Mage and give her nearly all of the Soulfires. Let her use Bows so she has some damage behind her for when she doesn't use Soulfire.

Sword Master: Unnecessary. You already have two characters with swords (Well more if you use the characters that you created.) Make him something else. A thief maybe? Daggers and Knives and Crossbows. Maybe some kind of Stealth Soulfire?

Yeah, at the moment the Characters are way too similar. You need to change them or else some characters will end up useless. (I'm looking at the Sword Master.)

I also noticed a Weapon called Snake or something. I'm assuming you mean like an animal? No. Instead create a Beast Tamer character that uses Whips and Knives and can summon Monsters.

Just some friendly advice. I'm not going to comment on the rest, because for me, Characters are what help define the Story. Oh, actually one thing, don't include a Romance, unless you can do it perfectly and have it as a side story so it doesn't distract from the actual plot.

Make it so several major characters are not attractive. Especially some females. I don't mean make them hideously deformed, just... normal people. Some normal people are not too hot. Some girls who are not innocent princess types have breasts smaller than a DD-cup.

Heck, just try to ditch the cliches altogether. Don't go for cliches OR anti-cliches. (That is to say, don't give the lithe little girl a giant hammer for a weapon. That's exactly the same as giving her two daggers.) Just develop nuanced, believable characters.

And be brave with the plot. For instance, kill major characters. Not out of spite, but if they need to die. One thing I've always wanted to see in a game is where one or two or your party members stay behind to buy time. And they die. You control them until they perish (They don't die after 5 fights when some cheap invulnerable boss shows up, either), and that's the last you ever see of them. They're dead. Gone. Once they die, you take control of the other characters, and the time your sacrificed people remain alive for is exactly the length of time you have as a headstart. That sort of thing. Or, give the players difficult choices to make. This doesn't mean a choice between two different rewards, or a simple binary good/evil choice, but a difficult choice. A choice with no easy or obvious answers. A choice which the player is faced with, which is difficult for them, and which is not contrived. And which has a real impact on the story.

A tall order, I know. But getting the plot right would mean even if other aspects of the game are average, you'd have a real gem on your hands.

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(I'm looking at the Sword Master.)

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He dies in the middle of the game but is a vital part of the story. He taught vaun on how to manipulate his own soul fire which only a few people in history could do.
Both vaun and the sword master die at the same time and the "sordmaster" sacrifices himself to bring vaun back alive. The concept works perfectly but I cant tell you guys how it works yet, I want to keep it a surprise. Well in the process of vaun's death he learns how to manipulate his internal soulfire. Sarf then later replaces the sordmaster's position in the party. He is like the crossbow-using, stealthy guy you were talking about.

Now as for vaun's name, this is what is soooo disappointing. The name Vaun was chosen for this character 6 years ago, before ff 12 was even mentioned to the public. The name USED to be original and it was perfect. Now ever since ff12 came out, everyone has been thinking vaun was influenced from the Vaan in ff12 and it wasn't.
Well, I talked about this with my team and we think it is necessary to keep the name since it will be a while until we start production on this game. Plus we think that the Vaan from ff12 was just an off character and didn't really have any significance to the plot. Our Vaun is the most important character in the story and his character he is much different than FF12's Vaan. But if we find another name that suites him we will change it. It would just be a shame, Vaun was the very first name we ever wrote down for medallion and he was the projects inspiration.

These Ideas about the other characters are good and Ill have to show these to my team and see what we can do. However it is completely different than some opinions on the characters I have had in the past. Some people want to be able to chose a weapon they would like for each character and gain experience for that weapon. As the character gains more experience with a certain weapon they become more skilled with it. This will enable the player to customize their party more, like if they wanted to have 2 relatively heavy characters on their team, they could. Or if they wanted 2 people who can use a bow on their team, they could. The certain weapons a character can use is limited according to their body mass, knowledge, what they specialize in and what they would prefer to use. They wouldn't use one type of weapon, instead they would use more than one type that way the player can have access to more strategic options. Because of the commands you can use in this game you can have 2 people who use a bow and you can tell them to shoot from a distance while the other team members distract the foe. Felia can shoot from a distance but what if the monster is impervious to HS based attacks? She would need to fight with CS which requires a weapon. Also 2 different characters can combine two "like" attacks with each other to create a more affective version of that attack. You can switch between weapons during battle and each weapons have different strategic uses.

Heres a list of some weapons. A Snake is an axe with an extend/retractable chain operated with a trigger. Another name for the weapon is an Augdril (there is a picture of one in the list below)
http://fc03.deviantart.com/fs30/f/20...by_ledious.jpg

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And be brave with the plot. For instance, kill major characters. Not out of spite, but if they need to die. One thing I've always wanted to see in a game is where one or two or your party members stay behind to buy time. And they die. You control them until they perish (They don't die after 5 fights when some cheap invulnerable boss shows up, either), and that's the last you ever see of them. They're dead. Gone. Once they die, you take control of the other characters, and the time your sacrificed people remain alive for is exactly the length of time you have as a headstart. That sort of thing. Or, give the players difficult choices to make. This doesn't mean a choice between two different rewards, or a simple binary good/evil choice, but a difficult choice. A choice with no easy or obvious answers. A choice which the player is faced with, which is difficult for them, and which is not contrived. And which has a real impact on the story.

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yes Exactly! we don't want this to be the average generic RPG so we have huge twists surprises suspense and some horror, death isn't always a pretty thing. 2 main characters die the sword master and Felia. vaun dies too but you can control his spirit in the afterword and eventually you find a way to get out and revive your self. when you come back you find the "swordmaster" is dead and that he sacrificed himself to bring you back to life. Which is Ironic because that's about the time when you found out he was a spy and had orders to imprison you. Vaun learns that the "swordmaster" believed that there was still hope for ordinary people and that Vaun could show the world that.

All I can say is great idea with killing off a few characters. Vaun's seems a little cliche, though. Don't try to make it like Vaun just dies, the the swordmaster sacrifices himself all at the same time, make it draw out more than a few minuets to add to the epicness of the story. Another approach is to go crazy with ideas, and to scrap the bad ones, and put the good ones together in a preferable way. (But try not to confuse the game players and the staff in the process, or it will not work like you want it to.)

Long story short: Don't confuse people, don't confuse the programmers and such, and try your ideas.

I sound like I'm being bossy, don't I :(

Ok, so the sword master should die at the same time as Vaun? is that what you mean. I'm a little confused on what you mean by "all at the same time". and yes what ever will add to the epicness. So far people have been very pleased with the overall story, everything happens on a very large scale I just hope it will be epic enough.
Oh no, your fine everyones comments here are really helping me out, bossy or not :D

Well, allot of you have been talking about the music so I think Ill show you some of our concepts as for music goes. Let me know if it fits what your looking for;)

Here's some music samples of some of the background music that will be played in Medallion. They're not finished pieces so they are only snippets of the songs and you will hear mistakes.

medallion town music samples - Putfile.com

And heres an example of the music once its finished:
medallion music sample final - Putfile.com it may take a while to load.
enjoy! :D


hmmm....is this loading for you guys?

Not for me.

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Originally Posted by McLovin'

Not for me.

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hmm, yea its not working for me either. Weird
it was working yesterday...

- Good story (a given)
- But don't forget to include fun gaming
Neither one is good by itself in an RPG, you can have much fun with hunts in FFXII, but where's the story?, you can get immersed in Suikoden III's story, but the gameplay makes you cringe, as a result, neither one is as good as they could have been.

- Variety in the character department
Sound like obvious but, honestly: how many more games that are all about a bunch of teens with a token little kid/adult do we need?
Games like FFVI and even Rogue Galaxy are good examples of variety

- Variety in the gameplay
To go from point A to point B with lots of random fights in between, only to go from there to point C to the end of the game with a sprinkle of bosses here and there does not a fun game make.
Again FFVI shines here and so does FFIX, from little things like feeding fish to a dying man to rock a huge cage you are trapped in are things that break the monotony, they don't need to be ground-breaking, as long as they are part of the story.

- Attention to music and design
No one likes forgettable/annoying music and boring/ugly designs, take in consideration that I'm not talking about the latest graphics here, FFXII Revenant Wings graphics don't compare to Crisis Core graphics, but in their own right they are gorgeous, because attention was taken in order to make it look the best possible.
Similarly, in FFXII Revenant Wings, the music was simply taken from FFXII, but it was better placed, more attention to where in the game each track would sound it's best was taken, thus the music is much better enjoyed.

I can't get into too many details right now,but i would like a story that doesn't explain evrything.Something that makes the player think and wonder about certain elements of the story.Shadow of the Colossus is a good example although it's not an RPG.Less is more.
Characterization is also very important.A good story definitely needs characters that the player cares about.The hard part is how to avoid cliches.