Re: what's popular?
Plot wise I could go with either of those ideas, but it would depend upon the mechanics and choices you got in exploration and combat. For example, if the dragon quest let you command you and your dragon dynamically, choosing different actions and abilities against eemies, and being able to counter enemy stratogy rather than just attack attack attack.
On the abilities issue, i do love games where you cn learn different abilities and have the choice to make a character directly by choosing what they specialize in, however the only danger there is that there is enough differences in the gaempaly and abilities to affect the tactics of how you play and explore the game. For example, if practically speaking all getting experience with one weapon does is up your attack and damage with that weapon, then there really isn't much difference in what you level up, it just depends upon what you buy.
If however the weapons have slightly different ways of attacking, then combat could change according to your specialization. For example, lets say that a sword specialist would need to get close in combat, but then would have abilities like parry and repost to let them defend themselves and attack the enemi, where a astaff specialist would need to stay at medium range but might have great defenses, as well as abilities that stunned or knocked down enemies.
This is again like races and classes something I'd love to see in a game, different weapons actually having tactical differences, say different moves and abilities rather than just different attack and damage rates.
The other thing of course is that the game should be replayable, so even if the player doesn't have a choice of race or class, there is enough choice in the game to provide different ways of playing. For example, in the dragon idea, lets say the player could choose either a black dragon, hard as nales in melee combat but not particularly fast or intelligent, a green dragon, smaller and less combative but with extra senses and abilities in the natural world, or a gold dragon, average in combat but with a special afinity to learn and use magic.
Other ideas are possible, but you see where I'm going with this, effectively etting players have major differences so that the game can be played through more than once, and so that those playthroughs actually require different tactics or ways of defeating, ---- for instance maybe a game with the green dragon requires more sneaking and travel and less fighting, (since after all who says your character just advances or gets xp from killing stuff).
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=144800#p144800
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