I see great potential in AC's system for multiplayer.
Think Mortal Combat meets AC meets Dungeon Seige.
It boils down to two different actions:
- Defend
- Attack
while attacking is in its basic form just swinging a weapon, or slinging setting something on fire. More powerfull and complex attacks are combinations of simple basic things. For instance kick+stab = piercing your fallen opponent, kick+swing = behead an opponent as finishing moves, as mid-combat kick+stab = bleed your opponent, kick+swing = stun. But for casting classes a similar system: fire+stab = fireball, fire+swing = fire AOE, kick+fire = firewall.
Defending would be parrying with either a phsyical or magical shield (maybe tri, on more effective to physical attacks the other to magical attacks.
Loose a bit of AC's auto parry stuff, and add in collision detection instead of roll the dice damage dealing. Make staff/rod weapons or casters their weapon... not just a broomstick to knock an enemy on the head with once you've ran out of mana/ki/energy whatever. stab would joust the staff forward from wich the fireball erupts, kick would knock the but of the staff on the ground, in earth magic this equals earthquake which has a stun effect. And if your broomstick happens to hit someone doing this, even more (but little) extra damage.
I've read many fantasy books lately, and hey there is enough (popular) lore out there where you have all kinds of agile melee warriors and spellslingers that would fit just fine in this system.
So hey... make my wet mmorpg dreams come true
