Dawnspire Apocalypse- DS2 project Part 1 the brief.

[Waihirere]

The devs tried this late in the game by making it for sale, but it sounds like they got a bad deal from their distributor, they also sold extra slots, but by that time I think it was pretty much too late.

As far as I understand, their original plan was to distribute online only. When it became obvious that wouldn't pay the bills, they tried the traditional publisher route, but ended up with a bad one.

Extra slots, if I remember correctly, were always part of the plan.

The main problem for Dawnspire was marketing. They didn't have enough muscle to market the game properly and later on their publisher wasn't interested enough to spend some serious marketing money (and probably not big enough to do it, either).

So if this hypothetical Dawnspire 2 was ever built, the marketing should be planned carefully. For small indie games, marketing is typically a much bigger problem than developing the actual game.

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Some comments about the actual brief:

The game will ship with 9 character classes each with between 16 and 20 skills.

That is 144 - 200 skills total, unless classes share some skills.

This would have a real danger of what I call "the Guild Wars problem". GW has too many skills, which makes it really hard and long to learn for new players, especially the GvG side, where it is essential to know at least all the basic builds and such.

They've actually cut the number of skills they are offering back for GW2, which I think is a smart choice. Less skills, but more interesting skills. More difference between the skills, instead of having a couple of hundred clones of "do direct damage" and "do damage over time" skills. Deeper skills, with interesting inter-class skill combinations (just like Dawnspire). Better balanced skills.

So before going with "yeah, lets have gazillion skills", think why you want to have them all? Do they serve a unique purpose? Are they fun? Do they combine in interesting ways with other skills of the class and with skills of the other classes? Are you prepared to spend all the content development budget to do all the assets for the skills? I mean even if each skill uses only a simple particle system and some code, that's 200 particle systems right there. Of course you can get quite far by just changing colors, particle sizes and such, but still.

There was a good reason why original dawnspire released with 4 classes and 7 skills each. To achieve good game balance, it is better to start small, balance it well and beta test with real players, and only after that implement more skills. That way you can leverage community ideas and needs, plus you'll be able to use real gameplay data to design and balance the new skills.

There will be no support for Lan play initially to cut down the chances of piracy

If players have access to the server code, a knowledgeable hacker will crack the "master server" requirement in under a day, so that's not really a valid reason to not have LAN support.

However there are other very valid reasons to not to support LAN, but they have more to do with ease of implementation and the time it will take.

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As a stylistic note, design documents are typically not written in the future tense, but rather in the present tense. It is just a convention, but there are some clear advantages such as the ones mentioned here: http://www.ionocom.com/articles/spec. I would add being easier to read to that list.

Also, if you are interested in writing good design docs, this is a good read:
http://www.zenofdesign.com/Writing_Design_Docs_2008.ppt

See especially the "no weak language" rule (slides 55-57).

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Some ideas I liked were the learning AI and the co-op campaign. Maybe those could be combined in some way? Like a "community campaign", where the AI bots learn against all players, and are used as opponents in the co-op for some extra challenge.

Could the campaign be expanded to the PvP side as well? Chaining maps somehow based on which team wins, for example. Maybe as a separate game mode?

Also, I was wondering do you really need gold in the concept. Could the gear be bought with ranking points or experience instead to simplify the concept? Or does gold bring something new to the game that couldn't be achieved with these other resource points?

[Persus]

As will become apparent or not, I increased the number of skills you take into battle from 6 to 8 therefore I thought at least doubling the skills to 16 was important. In the end I settled on 20 each. Not saying any of these are any good but It was an attempt to increase diversity of builds, offer a deeper RPG system and create a more dynamic game through this. (not a slur on DS I can assure you) I remember the horror of GW with each class having 200+ skills and 200+ more when they went duel class. I notice they have culled the duel profession for GW2 concentrating on the core professions and how they work.

As to marketing. Things have moved on a great deal since then with the advent of twitter, facebook etc. A strong marketing campaign is as you said a must, as well as a strong publishing partner.

As for the brief I couldn't find any good ones online so created what I thought described the concept. I agree it's not the best but it was a first attempt. As I said I present it as it was written two and a half years ago with no amendments to save blushes. Thanks for those links though will give them a look.

I included gold for a few reasons. 1) it was a reward for winning or taking part in a game. 2) it could be used to replace the refund points system. 3) it could be used to buy/rent the optional armour/weapon cosmetic upgardes. 4) It was a way of luring players to use the store and buy more. It hopefully would ensure a viable revenue stream.

[Persus]

"Some ideas I liked were the learning AI and the co-op campaign. Maybe those could be combined in some way? Like a "community campaign", where the AI bots learn against all players, and are used as opponents in the co-op for some extra challenge.

Could the campaign be expanded to the PvP side as well? Chaining maps somehow based on which team wins, for example. Maybe as a separate game mode?"

I actually had the PvP side of things taking place on a campaign map basis. Basicly the map of 20 areas was blank until a side won a match then one map section was coloured red/blue between rounds. The campaign continued untill one side had control of all the map at which point it would end and one side would score a point on the website as a win. The battle could continue to move back and forth across the map with sides regaining control of lost areas as real wars are prone to doing. I eventually abandoned this idea as to cumbersome and morphed it into the idea in the document were by each win for a side in any game is added to a counter on the website and at months end a section of the map is taken control of or switches control. Giving the ebb and flow of a struggle. But developers are talented people and they could probably make the first idea work, if it was thought good enough.

[Waihirere]

I think it would be problematic to have a campaign that takes a long time to finish, unless the players were somehow permanently divided into different camps. I mean if you would randomly end up on either light or dark (red/blue) side, why would you care which side wins?

But if the campaign was more Enemy Territory style, where a single campaign game lasts for 6 maps or so, and can be finished in a couple of hours, that would probably work better. Especially if the game made an effort to keep players on the side they were playing in the previous map, or would allow switching sides.

As for the brief I couldn't find any good ones online so created what I thought described the concept. I agree it's not the best but it was a first attempt. As I said I present it as it was written two and a half years ago with no amendments to save blushes.

I didn't mean to criticize, just thought I'd give you some pointers on how it is typically done. I think it is great that you went through the effort of making all that and then made it public.

[Persus]

I think it would be problematic to have a campaign that takes a long time to finish, unless the players were somehow permanently divided into different camps. I mean if you would randomly end up on either light or dark (red/blue) side, why would you care which side wins?

But if the campaign was more Enemy Territory style, where a single campaign game lasts for 6 maps or so, and can be finished in a couple of hours, that would probably work better. Especially if the game made an effort to keep players on the side they were playing in the previous map, or would allow switching sides.

I didn't mean to criticize, just thought I'd give you some pointers on how it is typically done. I think it is great that you went through the effort of making all that and then made it public.

That is one of the reasons I abandoned the idea. Theoretically I realised a campaign could last forever if both sides were evenly matched. An alternative as you say could be smaller groups of maps bound together to create sections of a larger war and shorter campaigns.

I am all for constructive critizisim intentinonal or not. 

[ReverendLostLamb]

Maybe the campaigns could be between guilds? That would make campaigns more organised and not so random.

[Persus]

Maybe the campaigns could be between guilds? That would make campaigns more organised and not so random.

Nice idea. A Guild v Guild campaign rather than just a match over 2 rounds. They could fight for control of the small section of the  larger map, like holding their own kingdom. I did have notes on allowing up to 10 guilds control a region of the world map, give them all something to fight over, again I was trying to build on the feeling of the constant struggle to control land etc. I guess something like this could be implemented or tied to that when to sides clash over the aforemnetioned small kingdoms.

Only problem I could forsee is the fact you would have multiple game modes to create which might become problemantic.