Need opinions on game-in-progress

[Nilore]

I've been working on programming an online browser-based game for some time now, and I'm getting to the point where I need to know what gamers think of certain things. I won't provide a link to the game itself as of right now, since it's still in development, but I will later in this post give a link to the development message board. I'd like to offer some of the key items that the game will have and see what gamers seem to think of them, so that I may be able to improve on what I already have and maybe add new things later. I figure posting this here might get some good feedback, since this site is full of creative gamers.

The game would best fit under the same genre of something like Ogame, as it is completely browser-based, mostly text, and is a primarily PVP system. With that in mind, you generally level up, learn skills, and find items completely by fighting and defeating other players.

Instead of having 'attack playerX' and wait for a combat report to pop up, I've decided to program it so that the game requires input from the player during battle. In order to fight another player, you will have to enter the Battleground, and from there you can pick a player from a list of people who are in the same battleground as you, and then pick the attack you want to use. But instead of learning skills at certain levels, you will have to experiment a little to learn new attacks. More complex attacks will be harder to learn.

For this, I'm going to use a system called Alchemy Table. In middle of combat, you can choose a number on each major element (fire, water, wind, earth, light, shadow) and hit the attack button (note: the range of numbers you can use depends strictly on your stats. If you put one point into Fire Attunement, you will be able to go up to 1 on Fire, etc, etc). The combination of numbers you picked have a chance to either do damage, heal, or do nothing. If it does nothing, you lose a little MP... if it does damage or heals, it is saved into a list, from which you can pick the attack again without having to fiddle with the numbers.

You will gain points that you will be able to place to stats every time you level up. Everyone starts out the same, and every element or group of elements leads a slightly different play style, so as your character grows, he or she becomes more unique. For instance, if you want to be able to attack more often and dodge attacks, you would place your points into Speed, but if you want to hit harder you would place your points into Strength, etc.

To make things more interesting than just a bloodfest, there will also be factions to which you can align your character upon registration. I may later add stats for the factions themselves as well, which depend on how battles end. I will also add NPCs later on, such as bosses, that will be extremely hard, one-time things.

So, what do you guys think? I'd appreciate any feedback I can get with comments or ideas. There's a message board for development notes and such ( http://hero.shardsofcendaran.com/board/ ) as well.

Thanks in advance

[Drack]

This "alchemy" concept has been done before, believe it or not.

Look up Item Combos in Baten Kaitos, where you need to use otherwise useless items in a certain order to create a very powerful attack. There are hundreds of combos in the game.

I hated that system, but some liked it. Of course, most players ended up just looking up the combos on FAQs instead of experimenting.

[anosou]

I hated that system, but some liked it. Of course, most players ended up just looking up the combos on FAQs instead of experimenting.

I loved it, a lot. Just sayin'