"Character collector" games not based on an existing franchise, worth trying?

So recently I have been playing around with the idea of creating a Character collector game (For examples of big name ones check out Dokkan battle or Marvel Future Fight, but quickly ran in to a little issue that I thought of.

Would people even care about collecting these characters?

The basic idea of the game I have in mind is for it to be a JRPG type game where the player "recruits" people from around the fantasy world to work in there "Guild" they set out on missions to slay X amount of monsters or Y boss monster and earn currency to they use on upgrading there guild and recruiting (Collecting) new heroes.

But it seems to me all the successful games in this genre tend to be based off of a big franchise first, to add to the appeal of "oh I really want to get Wolverine because he's my fav hero, so that's my goal for this game is to get him" if all of my characters are unknown people would that appeal still carry over? Would people care about who they recruit or want to collect a certain unit in the game?

If not is there anything on the game design side of things I can do to make collecting certain characters more appealing other than a simple "rarity" system?

The only idea I have had so far is to give each "rare" hero you can recruit a unique quest to go on but that feels like you're then locking story/game content behind "RNG" which never feels good for a designer or a player.

So any thoughts or ideas?

 

I'm a huge Star Trek fan, so I had to give Star Trek Timelines a try. As soon as I recognized it was a character collector with not much else going on, I lost interest. I kept playing for a few days to see if it was worth the grind just to be able to see some of my favorites, but decided pretty quickly that it wasn't and uninstalled.

So I may not be the target audience if I can't stay interested in a character collecting game where it is a huge franchise that I'm a big fan of, but to me, the core gameplay has to be fun above all else. I would think this is especially true if you're not gaining the impressions you'd have from piggybacking a major IP.

 

Not really my genre but a quick (!!) thought:

1 use all characters from all universes, all games, all movies. think big.
2 make mock ups, so do not use the real characters.
3 use tuned down graphics e.g. realistic ---> crossy blocky road qubicle voxel models
(this would also help achieving that 'every character' goal )
4 Also of course, don't use trademarked names and stuff
5 Use the player's imagination. Imagine if you are playing minecraft and another player appeared: dark grey, black mask, and a big yellow dot on his chest ? he is ?? na na na na na naaa

6. I never played that genre.
7. I am not a lawyer.
8. Please don't laugh.

 

The players would have to be invested in the world to want to learn about the characters. When they get those characters they need to learn a lot about them so they are driven to perhaps follow their storylines to learn more information about them. Then maybe while exploring their backstory it crosses paths with other characters that peak the players interest & maybe they are driven to try for those characters. As they discover more about the characters they are learning more about the world. All of this will be hard to do right but it is possible if the starting story is strong enough to make people care.

 

Every world with their characters (be it marvel or disgaea or whatever else) started from unknown characters in the beginning. But as your characters won't be known, by themselves they will feel like "hey, another whatever-his-name person for achievement". You would need a good storytelling and good gameplay to make people attracted to your game first. Character collection won't be good on its own if you do it in unknown game with unknown characters; however if you support each character collected with a story, quests, missions and such it will be good. When you'll make 3rd (or even 5th) part of your game, character collection will have meaning without all of those for those who played parts before as "Oh, I remember his story/quest gave me <description>" feeling.

P.S. of course there are "get all achievements" people who would still go for it, but there's not much of them, especially if your gameplay is bad.

 

If it is recognisable, then there is too much likeness.
I'd stay far away from unlicensed intellectual property.
http://www.blastr.com/2013-2-1/marvel-and-dc-sue-small-publisher-over-using-word-superhero

 

The sets of points (1) and (2, 4, 5) are mutually exclusive. 3 is a good idea.

6 is understandable; I've been a lifelong gamer and I've never really heard of 'Character Collector' as a genre. I've heard of Mons like Pokemon or Digimon...but it's a cool concept.

7 is obvious.

8: This is all I have to say to that.

 

Character collection of relative unknowns is a key element of crossy road. The trick is to make the game fun. Secure the most valuable IP on the planet and make a boring collection game and it will sell poorly.

 

There's nothing wrong with making your own franchise.

I think the key to this is much like a 'manager sim', where the goal isn't to collect characters, but rather that doing so is what leads to achieving a larger goal, be it something to the tune of 'you're a princess trying to raise an army to overthrow the evil overlord who deposed your family'.

If you'd like to get in touch with me, we can try hashing out the ideas some more. I'm actually interested in a game like this

 

I do not think IP would would be an issue. My first thought would be that obviously you have to make the early game extremely fun when they only have one character, but after that I think a second important feature would be to make the first few characters fall into archtypes that are easily understood. ( Brute, Stealthy etc) and save the more unique character types for later on.

 

When you say 'character collection' game are you referring to ones like Heroes Charge and the like? Where you collect a stable of fantasy characters to pvp in teams of 5, and you have to put the best teams together with synergy, etc? And if you are I believe that is a decent model, no? Build good characters that are based on fantasy tropes, griffon, demon, angel, dwarf warrior, etc. There are 100's. And to me it is one of the best micro-transaction games out there.