Plot, Continuing from Ideas. Options

[Sparrowsmith]

The closest thing we have to a plot synopsis can be found here: http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index....st&p=557072
but there is still a lot of work to do.

Mainly, we need to work out some characters. Who are they and, more importantly, how do they behave/develop?

We have a few character outlines:
-The 'main' protagonist. The first one to log off the game/one who returns to his original body in layer 3
-The fighter. One of the two members of the group who does not own the game. He is an adept martial artist of some kind and spends his introduction robbing a warehouse for a copy of the game and then saving the 'main' protagonist from a group of monsters.
-The fighter's accomplice. An unwitting ally. Also doesn't have the game.
-The programmer that shoots the Rogue Program
-The programmer that contacts Matryoska (spell fail) might be the same programmer as above
-The Rogue Program (quite developed, but still a little weak in characterization)

We need to develop these, and make some more, then develop them as characters. I'd rather not have us submitting characters, but trying to work out how these people should act according to their situation.
Let's get these characters worked out, nice and logical like. Also, any additional plot points. We gotta work them out too.

We're kind of slowing down here, let's not have that.

[Kaust]

1)A simple party has warrior, healer, wizard, and thief. A more complicated party might have up to 7+ people, and anything from basic classes like thief and cleric to really weird ones like geomancer or a time wizard. Now a balanced party has about even offensive melee, and support classes
...
2)We'd need a fairly effective party change system (VX Ace has a very easy one to use), since this game will have a HUGE number of party members.

1)The game opens as an mmo, so what is one major aspect that people love about mmos? (just in case you don't play them I'll answer myself) its the character customization, they tend to give players much greater control over how a character is being 'built' than console games. If its important that the layer2 player already has a character then its too late for this idea (I actually prefer it like this, better stories open by 'dropping in' on the protagonist, otherwise its like the guy had no existence prior to the events we play through), but if not then it would give us a good place to stick in any possible tutorials on battle systems or whatever since that's when tutorials'd be found in a conventional game.

2)...Where'd this come from?

[thatbennyguy]

1)The game opens as an mmo

That is a good idea, but it might not be realistic. For example, in an MMO, there are hundreds/thousands of players in a world at once, so how will we simulate that in the game? Another thing is that the player will control the four characters as a party, which is unlike an MMO where the players are individually controlled and can go their separate ways. Also, an MMO is a (slightly) impersonal experience, whereas these four are fighting as a team through a dungeon that has a storyline. MMOs lack this. I'm not saying that it's impossible, but what I am saying is that we have to be careful not to provoke disbelief.

I prefer to think of it as a LAN RPG, where they're all playing in the same room, co-operatively slaying monsters. However, this brings up the impossible nature of an "update" to a LAN game. So if we go with this option, then we have to find another reason why it crashes, perhaps because of a glitch in the game or something. That's just my opinion.