I am interested to know your idea about the character selection process and how it is done in other RPGs?
The game is a campaign based RPG
there are 4 player characters and no two players can select the same character.
I can think of these 3 ways:
1- First come first serve. Anyone who joined first can select his/her character first.
2- Manually assigned by the campaign owner (GameMaster). Players, themselves can discuss this with the campaign owner in a Discord chat or so.
3- Automatically selected by the game server. For this server will keep a history of player characters he has played in any campaigns. Now when a player joins a new campaign he will select a priority list of characters then if two players marked the same character as 1st priority the server will assign it to one who has never selected it before or has played less.
I think first-come-first-serve makes alot of sense in this type of game - its simple, and often the players will be communicating via voice anyway to coordinate selections, right?
Does the gameplay during the campaign differ between characters?
If so, then i would suggest allowing the player to choose their character (or have a priority list like your 3rd idea) if they are using a matchmaking system to join up with random players, otherwise players are likely to leave a match if they get a role they don’t like.
But for private matches amongst friends or people who know each other in a discord server, then it should be okay to let the GameMaster set up the game and assign the players’ roles.
Why not let it be a choice which one they can have? They all seem valid.
The fastest finger first seems fun. I can see kids having a lot of fun with that. Let them also unselect, though. And when all options are taken, proceed.
The “leader chooses” sounds good for teams with an order. I can see a team discussing their options before they play.
The “selection based on history” seems the least likely use case but it would be good if nobody can decide who uses which character, so they click that button.
Yeah, could be voice or text chat. There will be a Discord server for people to communicate and so on, but also there will be provided an in-game-session text chat to communicate while inside the game session.
Should not be much I think
The most obvious difference will be their back history and how they came together to fulfill the goal of the story.
I am not considering classifying them by limiting their abilities or so, they will mostly work together to complete game quests and move forward the story, and so on.
Seems nice to have all. I will add the first two options as they are pretty simple to add, later will see if I need to have the last one or not.
Edit:
I can let them specify which character they like to play with, but the final assignment will be done by the GameMaster in case choices were conflicting.
why not allow them create own character role/class?
some people could have fun having different roles/classes.
some people could have fun having for example 4x similar role/class, because why not.
some people could have fun having mix of different/same roles/classes.
maybe its just me, but i never like if game force me to use specific skills/etc that i cant choose/change myself. Only in games like lol/dota where you have 100+ characters, some of them might match my gameplay.
but still, its just my opinion, where others might think opposite. im only not sure how much “rpg” this game gonna be. because in game like “policeman/seller/bandit/etc” people really need have different roles, but here i assume you will stick more to “tank/healer/businessman/heavy/assault/etc/etc”
The most obvious difference will be their back history and how they came together to fulfill the goal of the story.
well, why not just have it as some “trait” of character like who he is, so they would select it for campaign character and match rest of stats for it. like character traits in Crusader Kings game.
If I am getting you right I think I am doing a similar thing. Actually, upon choosing a character they just select its 3D model which has a predefined name, and I just want to limit them to not select the same model.
Afterward, they are free to use/purchase any ability, spell, or weapon they want for their character.
I am thinking of Game Modes ,so making the gamer free to choose his favourite champion is the best choice , whenever we are talking about gaming & gamers ,we state that they will use Discord & eventually working in teams , but they might also need to play as solos , so you should provide them to
freely choose thier champions after lobby
First come First serve
-& Donot make it auto by game server or selected by room/game owner
& this is as the main Game Mode which is the free mode , you can make other modes that is auto selected by game server which is a random champion selection based on gamer-champion level…
A Good Example of that is Leauge of Legends by Riot …its kinda Strategy but its ok for a RPG Game as well … they have
-Summoner’s Rift which is the main mode - free to play for any level - first comes first serves
-Draft Pick which is a Summoner’s Rift but you can select your position
-Ranked Solo/Flex is a Summoner’s Rift but it needs levels
SO these game modes , you are free to choose your fav champion , & first come first serve , only one can select the same champion
Modes like Nexus Biltz & there was Champion Anniversary Modes , anyway in these modes , server selects champion for you randomly or so.
This should be possible, as I am considering to let the players size in a campaign to be dynamic (should be less than the max number though), so one can go solo. So one can create a private campaign and choose his preferred character and the remaining roles will appear as NPCs handled by Plot System and AI System (GOAP).
I have some raw ideas for this as well but this won’t appear in the first major release. I am considering using Game Modes for the matchmaking part which will come in the second major release.
So simply put there will be two main Gameplay type:
Campaign and Matchmaking.
Campaign gameplay is what I am working on right now which will be available in the first release.
As explained by the Wikipedia page the campaign will have a continuing storyline. A campaign will contain multiple scenes/levels. Here I believe the Discord will be a very good choice for players and GameMaster to communicate and coordinate things as they are supposed to play together for a long time.
For Matchmaking there won’t be a storyline and it will be PvP where one team will have combat against other teams. Here I can have multiple Game Modes as you suggested.
See for example I have 4 roles in the storyline their names are Lee Rin , Do-ha, Moo-Seok, Jo Sang-Heon. I was considering a specific 3d model for each of these roles, but as you hinted, I can separate the role from its model. For example, I can let the player select from 15 different models. Now even though there can only be one player with the role Lee Rin but I can let him select his character model from a wide range of 3d models (no duplicate of course).
