high, im developing a 2D online multiplayer RPG / shooter which gameplay will be a mix of Shadowrun (genesis) and an action shooter with player vs player and npc combat... anyway, im coming down to a desision and would very much like your opinion.. currently the game uses a top down view ala final fantasy 3 or any other square tile based RPG (like chrono trigger or shadowrun for the genesis)... anyway, the way combat works is : its real time, you see an enemy, you click a button and you are now targetting that enemy. you click another button and the bullet/ whatever will shoot and hit that target...skill check goes into play judges if you hit/missed/ how much damage... i was thinking this wont be as fun or at least be harder to develop a fun combat system. i want peopel to join up and death match / FFA each other and that will be a very fun and important part to the game, so i want it to be as fun as possible. i want the players to have to actually aim themselves, not auto aim. but to do this, i will have to switch the view to a birds eye view ala GTA 1 and 2... with the birds eye view, i could allow full 360 degree rotations and free aiming.. players would aim to shoot, and still a skill check would be made to see how much damage / hit / miss... so really it comes to this : free aiming combat with a birds eye view (not as nice looking), or, auto aiming combat with a top down view (not as nice combat).. what do you think? keep in mind this is an action/shooter/RPG and will be multiplayer.. i want it to be equal part action /RPG... i want the combat to be as fun as possible, especially in a multiplayer environment. but i want to keep an RPG feel to the game with skills experiance points etc... please give me your opionions! which would you rather play and why? thanks for any help!!!

First multiplayer game right?

Using isometric tiles allows 360 degrees rotation, think about it.

And 2 side notes. I think that having to aim, and then have a check is bad for newbies.. you want to make the game hard? newbies stats suck in the beginning, and if the person is a newbie at aiming, when he says ''Hell yeah I hit you!'' because he finally could aim good enough to touch his enemy, then it says.. miss. Dang. Something like that happened to me, and would be a directly uninstall prolly.

Lastly, focus on 1 thing of the game. Develop that selected property extensively. That way you can have a decent game with less effort.

iso allows for full rotations? i dont see how thats possible... although i only thought about it for half a second (gotta run to school shouldnt be be posting this lol).. even if it allowed full rotations, wouldnt it require huge amounts of art work? plus, im not using iso tiles anyway, so thats out of the question.

also, there is a single player game too. kind of like diablo 1, you can play single or multiplayer. your character will work on either mode.... so you can build your character strong, get a feel for the game before starting to play mutltplayer.. im kind of leaning toward ff3 style view at this point because combat can still be very fun, (you could still dodge bullets and such) but combat would instead of require aiming, require thinking.... as in what gun to use, at what times, etc.. (there will also be magic and hand to hand combat also)

thanks for your input!