kroska

I think a mixture of linear and open world works well. You move onto a new place that 'think' that you discovered, have a intro scene to it. Then the player does a few key plot things then can either wander around, go to past locations and do side quests and generally 'F' around till they wish to advance the plot. Its a main plot with mini side quest plots in between that are optional. Its really hard to see what would work well for this game because i have no idea how good the actual main plot is.

You could also have on-hit % buffs that have a chance to activate on hit or after casting a number of spells. Basically having long lasting buffs, short term buffs then super short (5 sec max) on-condition buffs. *shrug as well* more ideas.

This is kind of an odd poll because most people aren't sure of how the gameplay is going to go. Like here's the gameplays to match how much power and player has. Fallout 1&2: moderate power throughout the entire game as enemies and situations got harder along with the characters progression. enemies would be in groups of 1-8 at a time. You could only kill 3 per turn max no matter how powerful you were. You could take quite a few hits and kill npc's in one hit or twenty. Dynasty warriors: Hilariously powerful, kill thousands of scrub enemies at a time and decimate the battle field. Could easily kill 8 enemies at a time with one combo but there are hundreds of enemies to kill within your field of vision. Dark Souls: The most interesting play style (in my opinion) that isn't replicated often. Even the first level enemies can still kill you at maxed out 'level/gear'. Your damage output and skill level makes them less of a threat later on because the enemies are killed quickly. Although only 2-3 enemies come at you at any one time. So the factors for combat are; Damage output, hitpoint total, number of enemies per combat sequence, highest number killed with one action, speed of combat, how much environment or movement is required to win a fight. If you bulldoze your problems down you've lost the 'game' of maintaining interest. If each fight is a suitable but possible challenge that still makes the player think he has gained more power then your keeping that interest. If you wanna make a high power player character game, ya either have really tactical enemies, tons of enemies or enemies as high powered as you, rapid combat speed, or very very entertaining combat animations/kill scenes. Disclaimer: Just my opinion.

The fighter/wizard mix creates a dynamic where the player creates a mental scaler of combat capability. If i have so much of fighter and so much wizard i'm somewhere on this moving scale of power. But more or less your still playing the same cut and dry classes without the excitement of seeing either one at their maximum potential. To spice it up that's where D&D-esc prestige classes or subclasses would come into play later so things don't get laughably boring. So instead of A+B = AB (same content) you have a scenerio of A+B = C (new content, hooray im interested again) . Examples would be: Swordmage = Fighter/wizard Rage mage = Barbarian/wizard Shadowblade = rogue/wizard psychic warrior = fighter/psion Radical customization of combat style in a individual class really makes a difference between games that are a one time play and ones that you play again and again. Disclaimer: This is just my opinion and observations.