Just wanted to discuss about on designing a pokemon type MMO and ideas.
How will battles work?
In MMOs usually battles occur on the map instead of a separate screen.
How will this work in a Pokemon type MMO? If you travel then would the enemies just target the player and forced to summon a pokemon? What if the enemy were to surprise the player from behind leaving the player without time to summon?
Should the player then be given health stats and is able to be attacked? How strong should the player be if so? If the player is given too much power like ability to fight/cast spells/etc it would take away the focus of the creatures.
How should battles occur? Should they occur on map or in a separate screen? If it is a separate screen then the above problem is not an issue. You just trigger a battle screen. However, this takes away some of what makes MMOs fun. In MMOs other players are able to interrupt/help out/see other players do battle.
What about group battles against a boss? The purpose of boss is to wipe the players but if we don’t let players fight themselves should they just stand by idle when all their creatures are defeated?
I don’t actually know the OP, so I have no idea if they are actually, currently making such a game. And if it’s a Pokemon fangame I would not be interested. But I think that discussing the general theory around a specific issue in a specific game development project is perfectly on-topic for any game design forum. The only real problem with the initial post, in my opinion, is that it asks too many questions at once, which has the effect of stifling discussion of all of them.
Well, as long as you understand that Pokemon are property of TPC, I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to help you on your way.
Basically, you are asking about design problems in two domains (and maybe three or more, depending on how it is perceived).
Edge Cases
The things that you are describing like “what if … … and this undesirable thing might happen” are what most people will call “edge cases”. These are very important in tackling during design time. Specific edge cases are technical by nature, some by audience restriction or availability (connection, matchmaking, etc). As you might have noticed, many game designers (and I agree), consider edge cases should not be part of the grand design at this stage. I will therefore not answer them in this thread, yet I feel you should not be left drifting in the big blue sea.
There are some strategies you can take to overcome the challenges of edge cases:
be creative and find a solution
look for material from others who have already overcome the challenge and “borrow”
go back to the drawing table
Often it will be a combination of all three and mostly number three.
Expectations
The other questions that you have raised, are about how your target audience will deal with your game design. As you are pointing out, there are significant flaws. If you would just mash things up and hope for the best, that will rarely end up in a successful game.
Even though you could create a playable game with these flaws, it’s entertainment value for the target audience will be at stake. But, you have already noticed the challenges you have to overcome. This is where your design adventure begins.
Again, I am not giving you the free ride. Not that I’ve a judgement of your intentions, but I firmly believe will help you to design your game - or will cultivate at least the required skills. So, I will teach you a thing or two and hand you some pointers to craft your own fishing rod.
A game design has one purpose: entertain the players. Whatever you design, you should validate that each mechanic is contributing to that objective - no matter the significance.
You’ll have to compose a strategy; how will the overall game behave? In your case that would be MMO. This means that you should investigate the possible client platforms (mobile, desktop clients, consoles or all), mainly how they will interact and exchange data. This is vital for any MMO, as the expectation will be realtime. Like, you’ll have to consider the design of your data models to be as slim as possible, your client logic big enough to compensate for performance, yet compact enough for the audience to install. This is just scratching the surface.
You should prototype possible scenario’s and decide which strategy will work. You do not need to do this with coding (you can even design this with a storyboard) - but, lucky for you, in my opinion, Unity is one of the best engines for prototyping. Once you’ve decided what will be an acceptable design, you can start filling in the blanks (and not the other way around as you are currently doing).
You’ll need to determine the ground rules of your mechanics. What are players allowed to do, and most importantly, what aren’t they allowed to do? These rules are the ones you test against your edge cases.
Battles in games work like a sport, board or card game. You have to decide if the action is active (like soccer or a FPS), turn-based (like chess and Magic) and craft the system you will use to accommodate these actions.
In case of Pokemon, each creature has a set of data. Once the Pokemon is “cast into existence”, there is a mechanic in place where it fights another player. The rules of this system is entirely up to you.
