What do you think? - An online 2D Megaman X style multiplayer battling game!

[Amos]

It sounds like you've got a pretty solid design going so far, and I like the concept. My advice would be to just start programming it based on the idea you have now, and once you see how it actually starts to play, make changes to the design to accomodate what's more fun. Start working on combat before the level creation, since that seems to be the core of the design. I'm also working on something vaguely similar, although it's more like online Isolation (Read: Side scrolling WASD + mouse shooter, click this) than MMX. As far as pricing goes, it'd have to be pretty high quality to charge $39.99 for. Most people won't pay much for anything 2D nowadays, with the exception of handhelds. I'm aiming to get my game on Steam, and if I did, I'd ask $9.99 max for it, although I'd probably wind up just making it free. I'd probably pay a similar price for the game, and only if I played it first and it was refreshingly fun. I wouldn't play it at all if it had a monthly fee; avoid doing that at all costs, as you do not carry the same weight as Blizzard in the game making world.

Thanks for your input, and thanks for the complement. I've given this quite a bit of honest thought and critical speculation on my own, which is why I'm bringing it to this community before I went full-force on it. I'll admit, it is a niche audience, but if the idea of SSB works so well, and it has a devoted following, obviously its mechanics are fun to the general masses. The battle mode I found the most fun in Melee was the HP battles, which seemed to require skill more than its normal gameplay counterpart, and in which I found too easy to beat even on the hardest levels. I found that it is only fun when one plays against a real flesh-and-blood opponent in order for the game to shine in that area. Then this idea came to mind. An intense battle game of this sort.

I wonder if a 3D environment would be better than a tiled or drawn one? I'm personally not very skilled with 3D, so I'd need to find someone else who was willing to do some background artwork for this project. I want the game to appear as professional as it could possibly be, so that requires quality backgrounds and menus, of which I'm still in the process of studying the dynamics of that type of CG artwork. I am an animator more than I am a draftsman. Any idea of where I'd be able to find help of this nature?

Also, thanks for your input on price. I was looking to make this a very professional game but I might lower it a bit. However, it will require much work to create, so it's really not feasable, 2D or not, to lower the price of the game too much. However, I agree with you as far as the subscription mechanism goes. I wasn't that interested with doing that anyway. I'd hate to have to manage a server to play on, but if this game takes off, most likely users will make their own public servers and solve that problem, as people should be able to find a place to play. I plan to make a sort of tournament mode for server admins to set up games for people to compete with one another. However, details are unclear at the moment as to exactly how this would work on an per game basis.

Allright then. I guess I took your "MMX style game" in the title a bit to literally. Though I'd argue now that it sound more like a straight up fighting game.

And I'd have to agree with DeathBySpoon about price. Considering your offering a 2D product online, you probably can't get away with charging over $5.00 for it and the game will need to be high quality. I don't mean to suggest it won't be, just that it's going to take a lot to sell something vs. MUGEN, a 2D console fighter, or Smash Bros. Brawl once it's out.

Haha, I guess it's not really a fighting game either, as you can shoot just as much as you can punch and kick, and it would be just as important. So, it's a bit of a hybrid of a sort. Too bad it's hard to pin down exactly what it is until I get it all together. Once I do, though, maybe I'll make a good combo-genre in the end. ;D

Either way, I don't intend to compete with SSBB, but as far as a 2D console fighter or MUGEN goes, I want to make people think of fighting games in a new way. Instead of learning an endless number of moves in order to be considered "skilled", I want to be the one to encourage the application of a large vareity of moves. In order to allow that large vareity and still keep the game balanced between players, the moves would need to be extremely simple to pull off, but also have a specific strength and weakness in each of those moves in relation to another counter-move.

For example, a shooting attack would be great against a sword attack, unless that sword attack could block or deflect the bullets with ease. This would make the shot attack ineffective against a sword wielding opponent. So in this case, it would need some form of a tradeoff. For example, when you block an attack, you lose energy, but less than being hit. If you deflect, you will require some well-placed timing, and it may only be used when the attack is very close to your body, so it will also require some risk to deflect the attack. Even then, the deflect may not succeed, but will just kill the bullet instead. So, there's always a downfall to any attack or movement, as well as an advantage. Hopefully I will get and maintain a perfect balance between them, in order for the game to work well for everyone.

I'm actually going to start programming this thing tomorrow. As offered before, anyone who wants to playtest is able to do so. I will post a link to the download of the file in case someone would like to test it out when I get a small part of it done. There's only limited network functionality in the prototype, but it will show the basic concept well.