RPGs and that Dreaded Control System

[Shurikane]

I've played enough RPGs to know that there are tons of valid ways to control your characters:

-Random encounters (Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Golden Sun, Breath of Fire)
-Point-and-click (Diablo, Lineage)
-Action-RPG (Phantasy Star Online)
-Platform-RPG (Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Wonder Boy)
-Shooter-style WASD (GunZ Online)

I'm also thinking about the complexity of the controls, ranging from the overly simplistic two-action layout of Diablo II, to the more refined customizable buttons of Phantasy Star Online, and to the immense shortcut menus of Lineage II and World of Warcraft.

My own RPG concept involves swordfighting, throwing, and gunning, which means I have no choice but to adopt either an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective or a first-person perspective (or a mix of the two), and the concept itself draws on the Platform-RPG style, which doesn't arbitrarily decide upon hits or misses with the roll of a dice. Anyway. That means I need to map four keys to basic movement, and optionally the mouse for looking around. That's all fine and dandy.

But now, what about the skills and shotcuts? My concept has tons of skills, magic spells and whatnot. I originally planned to have the whole keyboard be mappable to the user's will but then I thought, maybe that would be overkill... Also, there are RPGs that build their strategy specifically on the fact that there are very few shortcut slots available (such as Diablo II and Guild Wars.)

So that's my question to the rest of the gamers: how much keyboard would you be willing to deal with? Just the F keys? The number keys? The numeric keypad? Left and right mouse buttons? The whole keyboard? Would you prefer to have many mappable keys or do you find it beneficial to purposely restrict the number of mappable keys?

[Silver Adept]

It depends on the macro ability of those keys. If there's good macros that can be made out of it, then lots of keys being mappable is good. If not, then the design needs to centre around being able to access all of the skill keys easily in the middle of a firefight.

[MitchellTF]

All I know, is that controlling via Keys works much better than via Mouse, because it encourages Zelda-Style dodging and running, more than just trading blows...(Maple Story rocks for this...)

Other than that, not much else to say...