The DPS Game

DPS - Damage-Per-Second

While an incredibly useful tidbit of information in an action oriented game, it really is an overused metric, especialy in rpg type games. So how about a game that focuses on DPS?

You have HP (or life) and DPS. HP of oppenants should be scaled such that normal foes around your level should take 3-4 seconds to kill. These are the only two stats in the game. Maybe two more stats, one called focus that allows you more control over your DPS, and the other a 'stamina' stat that controls.

You can 'allocate' you DPS in several ways. You can have area affect, single affect, and ranges. Focusing all your DPS into a single melee target will give a more intense focus vs trying to hit everything in a circle around you.

Thoughts:

• keep the 'control' and 'stamina' stats. Control affects the ability to create ranged and area attacks. Increasing the stamina cost decreases the DPS penlty.
• thought - 'attacks' can be created with a variety of special effects. The effects have no impact on DPS
• thought - armor does NOT reduce DPS. Primarily visual, maybe have some rare suits that boost one of the 4 stats.
• 'weapons' and 'spells' have a minimal affect on stats. The primarily provide the set of visuals that can be used to construct attacks.

The core mechanic is DPS. Anything that distracts from that is bad.