Hello 
I want to make an RPG/Adventure game, not an open world. Combat system a little like a Diablo 3, but with differences.
But my problem is i can’t decide between a Top Down view, or a third person…
What do you think guys, what is the + and the - for each game type ? I need some “outside vision”…don’t know if i can say it like this.
Thank you all for help
3rd person needs more detailed environment than Top-down. In Top-down you feel less intimate with the character.
In Top-down you better know what’s going on around the character, in 3rd person it should be easier to do fights 1v1.
I’d say… if you control more than 1 character or if you fight against more than 3 enemies at once, I’d let Top-down, else 3rd person or possibility to switch between them would be better, I guess.
Thank you @Vikom for your time and your advices, it’s true for the fights… 
I will wait to think more about it, and also wait if more people give answers !
Why not both? Why not even add in a first person mode?
Obviously - a multiplayer game like this would suck, since the game is bound to be easier in top down then in first person. But a single player game can easily apply all of it without issues.
As far as quality goes, the only thing you need to pay attention to is that the Top Down can’t use cardboard assets that aren’t set up specifically for top down view. If you are making your own assets, it’s trivial. You just need to baseline the camera settings so as to get a steady LOD transition from one camera type to the other.
At the end of the day I think it primarily comes down to the feel and play style you want for your project … Implementation wise they would be very similar to make… The main difference between the two that I can think of would be issues arising from camera location. Counter intuitively FPS/TPS could be easier to implement as the camera is locked to the character and therefore always viewing from their perspective. Implementing a top-down design you have to consider assets blocking the camera view, what happens when trees are between characters and the camera, what happens when a character walks inside a building (possibly with multiple floors), if underground and walking through tunnels how will you fill the screen space outside of the tunnel space…
As MostHostLA mentioned, trees could also be an issue if you’re buying from marketplace/trying to optimise, many use a billboard for their lowest Lod which works fine when viewed from ground level, but when viewed top down they just look like big cardboard cut-outs so you’d have to use another method like sprite sheets, or a really good new method octahedral imposters…
Thank you a lot [USER=“3140864”]MostHost LA[/USER] & @Mach45 .
This really help me to think about it.
I will think about what you 3 tolds me, want will see what i will do then.
I’m struggling with the same issue. I’m making a WW2 rpg zombie game.
I like the feel of the topdown when in combat. The camera is fixed and the player follows the mouse. But I really like switching to 3rd person and seeing more detail in the distance.
A few of you have suggested doing both but my issue with a hybrid TopDown/3rd person is that the AI needs to interact with the character differently when using different camera views.
For instance in 3rd person mode the enemy soldiers engagement radius needs to be much higher than in TopDown mode.
In TopDown mode, if the AI has a very high engagement radius, bullets start flying in from outside the camera view and its very annoying.
and If I was to use a shorter engagement distance for 3rd person, it looks dumb because the AI realistically could see you from much farther away.
I hope all that made sense.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
Edit: I will note that I do like how intense the topdown is for shooting zombies because you don’t always know what’s coming.
