If you were making a video game franchise....

[Green-Shirt Q]

I realize the luckitude of a thread like this already existing or already made a while ago, but I guess I'll try it anyway.

There seems to be a lack of new, good video game series, isn't there? I mean, there are a few that are remade over and over and over again, and many attempts at creating a new series falls flat because it's not something that is familiar to the gamers.

I ask you all this: If you could pitch an idea for a video game series to any video game company, have them make it, and have it be the next biggest thing to have a dozen sequels, what would this series be like?

Personally, since I love Mario games perhaps a little more then is generally healthy, I would make my series a cartoony fun-for-all-the-family type games. A platformer. And while accessible to children, quite able to be taken seriously by adults as well. A game with a great sense of humour.

I think this series would be about a beaver, my country's pround symbol, who needs to save the world. Perhaps by using his powers of destruction (to be able to cut down trees and man-made objects using his teeth) in order to save the world from an evil....moose! Yeah.
Also, the beaver knows super-crazy martial arts and is able to reenact fighting scenes from Dragon Ball Z (if the fighting scenes are half as good as I've heard them to be).
Also, a bunch of other, crazy characters to join his quest, like a loon who is crazy, or a boss battle that is a lumberjack.

I'll admit, I'm a little fuzzy on the details (no pun intended) but this isn't about me. It's about you.

What would YOU create?

[Geno9999]

A crazy platforming/fighting game. Crazy because you can summon minions to fight for you, and the gameworld has a Megaman BattleNetwork vibe to it.
Normally, in a single player game, you select a character to be and use that character to explore a 2.5D environment to fight random enemies to get cards and occasionally fight a boss (who tend to be other characters) on a stage.
In multiplayer, You and some friends (local or internet) can fight on some of the stages found in single player.
In both versions, you can customize your deck (In multiplayer, there's an option to turn decks off) which houses minions and effect cards to insure victory.

[Lufia]

To me, the ultimate bad guy is a clown. Clowns terrifiy me. Then it followed that this clown would run about the world spraying it with make-up and too bright colors. Therefore, our hero would fight him with the Legendary Mop.

I thought a Mario-like world would be nice, with a central hub and various worlds accessible from there. Fights would go à la Zelda but there would be combos to shove your Mop in the enemy's face executed through little QTEs. I guess I'd go for something more A-RPG than Zelda, in the end.

Puzzle design is sadly lacking at the time, but it's not like it's a serious project.

The whole thing would, of course, be on crack.

[ImmortalAer]

What would YOU create?

A FPS with balanced guns, that isn't COD. :smallsigh: Preferably realistic Sci-Fi. Not quite Metroid destroy-everything weaponry, but weapons that are beliably advanced. (I mean, you have FTL travel, why haven't you moved past using basic ballistic weaponry?)
(And actually depending on the party your playing with on COD, the snipers in 4 are >everything, and WaW Rifles >all. )

[Rutskarn]

I've put some serious thought into the matter, and I think it'd be this:

Dr. Vahnce vs. Steamwheel Army
FPS for the PC, XBOX360, and PS3

This stylized FPS, rendered in a sort of anglo-anime, pseudo-TF2 style, is an action-humor title that follows the adventures of a scientist-warrior as he attempts to take down the army of Steamwheel Robots that are rampaging the under-construction, completely empty city to the east. With destructible terrain, innovative environments, and a strategic weapons system, this game allows you to plan out elaborate methods of taking down the medium-to-colossal robots in your path.

His signature weapon is a six-shooter rifle, one that can be loaded with up to ten different types of ammo--explosive rounds, fog rounds, stun rounds, etc. He must manage which type cycles next while ensuring that he doesn't run out in a panic situation. There are other weapons as well--from the double-barreled shotgun, which can fire two rounds at once, to the spitfire portable gatling, which fires only normal rounds, to his melee weapon, the chaindagger.

[Ichneumon]

I would create a RTS-game with a Sci-Fi theme that was about conquering different planets and such. You would be fighting with different Space ships and use the environment in different ways, like using snow stuff when on arctic planets and such. You would also be able to customize your legions, your races and armies somewhat similar to how Spore does it or maybe more like City of Heroes. I'd like diplomacy and politics to be actually a big part of it, not just "fighting with someone or allying to someone to not fight with him and fight somebody else". I really liked Age of Empires III and how it did not only involve building armies, but also building and maintaining your economy. Maybe it would be somewhat of a fussion between RTS and RPG. I liked the open-endedness of Spore in the space phase, so maybe my game would look somewhat similar to that.

[warty goblin]

Distant Horizon: Survivalist

In the far future, you are traveling on an ordinary passenger spacecraft, as an ordinary passenger when something goes wrong, and you are forced to evacuate on a lifepod. You crash on the planet below.

Your micro-computer doesn't have maps of the area, only poor quality scans taken by your lifepod on the way down, and that only covers your immediate area. The lifepod holds food and water for three days, a flare gun, short range communicator, a low powered beam rifle for hunting, and your personal luggage.

The planet is inhabited, but barely. No other passengers survived the crash; you are completely alone. There is no voiceover telling you what to do, your only goal is to survive.

In terms of gameplay, this is a survival focused first person game. Your character needs food, water and sleep. The first two must be scavenged from the world, and one should only sleep in safe locations, lest one be awakened by a wild animal eating your legs.

The health system is fairly hardcore, with only limited regeneration for resting. Wounds are, well, wounds, and must be individually treated with bandages and other supplies in order to remove their negative effects. Get bitten in the leg and move slower, get stabbed in the arm and you can't carry as much and your aim is worse, and so on. Your character is fairly fragile, so your best bet is to simply avoid being injured at all.


The planet you crashed into has a small, scattered human population, but is mostly wilderness, inhabited by alien creatures. These creatures would have AI ala the mutent dogs in STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, in that they would quite often ignore and go about their way, unless you annoyed them. Predators would hunt you, prey would flee, and so on.

Mostly this is an open ended game of exploration, where there really isn't an end goal.

[Mr._Blinky]

I would want a squad-based multiplayer FPS where the squad dynamics were far more intricate than "this guy is stealth, this guy has a machine gun, and this guy has demolitions". For instance, everyone has a carrying capacity and inventory space, and some weapons are too big for a single person to carry all parts. So if you've got a .50 cal machine gun, you need one person to fire, and another person carries the tripod and extra ammo. This second person can also act as loader, which makes it less likely that the firer jams his weapon. Or you could have two people act as a mortar crew, three people needed to push a car for cover, etc.

Characters would each have a specialized skill set, gained through an RPG like system (if not an actual RPG itself). One character might have hacking skills, another might have demo, while yet another might be the squad medic. Each of these different abilities would come up often enough that you need to keep each other alive, and the leveling system for abilities would make it difficult if not impossible to make a jack-of-all-trades character, which again forces the players to work to keep each other alive.

Weapons would be heavily modifiable, with many of the mods even being unique to a specific gun. Because of the weight system, it is again impossible to kit your character out for every possible situation, so that the squad sniper is extremely vulnerable against enemy vehicles, or the stealthy character is largely ineffective in an all-out firefight. Weapons would also be based on an RPG skill set, so that the sniper cannot just pick up a rocket launcher to blast the tank unless he's trained with it, which of course means he took away points from things that made him a better sniper.

There should also be more of what I call "support items" besides your standard medkit. For instance, a laser designator that makes everyone else's attacks more accurate, but leaves you yourself unable to fire, or a indirect fire weapon like a mortar to keep your enemies ducking while the rest of the squad moves up on them. The kind of thing that won't get many kills directly, but makes things far easier to everyone else.

The whole point of this is a game where the team dynamic is an essential part of the combat. If your squad gets blasted in the opening of a mission, you're screwed not just because you just don't have the raw firepower to take on your enemies, but because you personally don't possess the skill-set necessary to overcome every obstacle. The tank can't open locked doors, the scout can't heal himself effectively, and the sniper can't destroy the fortified position.

Basically, I'm tired of squad-based shooters where one well-played character can struggle through the entire mission because none of the other abilities are actually necessary, but just make things easier. Or, if you really need to make things possible, at least make them really f***ing difficult to do without a squad. Okay, yeah, the sniper could go around the map, scrounge up enough explosives to take out the locked door, fight his way through to it past armored tanks that his rifle is not equipped to deal with, set his charges, run back through the fire to get out of the way, and then blow them...or the demo guy could just RPG the tanks, place a C4 charge and walk on through. Essentially, a challenge that should be a breeze with the proper skills and equipment becomes a nightmare of a challenge without them.

Also, I'm tired of weapon mod systems like the one in CoD4 (despite how amazing of a game it is otherwise) where there are maybe three or four mods for each weapon and you can only add one at a time. If I want to put an underslung shotgun, reflex sight, flashlight, and laser targeter on my assault rifle, I should be able to do it, so long as the gun has sufficient room on it and doesn't weigh me down too much. And with the weight system, that would be a real factor, because the heavier your gun, the less ammo you can carry. Multiple kinds of ammo would be nice as well, with the better ammo being harder to obtain.

[The Dark Fiddler]

What would I create? What would I create?!? Good thing I was talking about this with my friends a few months ago. I would create...

REAL LIFE

You get to control a random person of no importance, and every function is controlled with a different button. Breathing, blinking, heartbeats (you must be especially careful here; pump blood too slowly and you die, too fast and you get an aneurysm), and every single movement of your hands even! Want to get something out of your pocket? Use the controls to move your arms, move you hand to the pocket, open it, move your hand in, grasp the object, pull it out.

Also, if you cross the clearly marked line with the sign marked "Now leaving: God's mercy" you die painfully.



Just surviving for a minute'd be a challenge in itself. You also start out starving so you need to eat. (You also need to control each stomach muscle).

Hard mode adds instant suicide buttons. Extra hard mode also has each one of the 2501 buttons reassign itself every two seconds.

[chiasaur11]

Hmm....

Although I disagree on the lack of good new franchises to some extent (Plants Vs. Zombies, Left 4 Dead, arguably Bioshock...) I do have a very complicated idea or two.

Space set battlefield style game, with distinct species (Humans, greys, Xenomorph style biological nightmares, transforming robots) and a persistent galaxy. There'd be a commander role, deploying supplies, controlling turrets, hiring mercs, barking orders, etcetera, and if it all goes bad he, she, or it would be able to drop in with a unique heavy duty piece of hardware to turn the tide, at the cost of the aforementioned support capabilities.

Then we move on to the mercenaries, who get a whole separate game, essentially. It'd be a whole MMO bit, with leveling, a world with shops and such with the layout of worlds determined by who's winning the battlefield bits, and if a player is in the neighborhood, they can drop into a battle between two sides and wreck some notable havoc.

Needless to say, I doubt that modern systems would run it and keep the graphics nice, the price would be enormous, bug fixes and balancing would take forever...

But if it somehow got pulled off, it could be something excellent.

[GolemsVoice]

I'd possibly follow the Fallout vain, making a post-apocalyptic game where the player is confronted with everything a post-nuclear wasteland has to offer, in the worst, and also the best sense. Style and atmosphere would be a high priority, with big, oppressing cities riddled with leftover technology, burned-out cars, the skelettons of skyscrapers, you name it. But unlike Fallout, the technology would be much more mysterious, probably with cults worshipping or scavenging technology to give them an edge in the daily struggle against the horrors of the post-apocalyptic world, both human and inhuman. The player, due to some unknown mutation, or manipulation (DUNN DUNN DUNN) is the only one unaffected by the deadly radiation that still lingers within the bigger cities, and is therefore highly sought-after by the various factions inhabiting the wastelands around the cities ike vultures. Much of the game would be FPS, with no stats, but the player get's to choose who he wants to work with, and can chosse many different sidequests to accompany the main storyline. Much of the game is spent alone in the vast ruins of cities or dark, damp underground complexes, where your trusty gun and the everpresent fear are your only companion. THink STALKER combined with Fallout 3

[Joran]

There seems to be a lack of new, good video game series, isn't there? I mean, there are a few that are remade over and over and over again, and many attempts at creating a new series falls flat because it's not something that is familiar to the gamers.

I'd disagree with this. There's quite a few new IPs out there that have done pretty well. LittleBigPlanet, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Uncharted seem to have been accepted by the mainstream gamers. Whether or not you think they are good is a different story.

Personally, for me, a tactical type game, sort of Hitman, but much more flexible. Imagine basically any movie like Ocean's 11 that requires a lot of planning to break into a building, steal something valuable, or kill a target. The game will have a planning/reconnaissance round where people scope out information, get building schematics, and plan the operation. Then carry out the operation in real time with various wrinkles. It's probably way too ambitious though.

[Aptera]

.......A 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) game, set in a fantasy world where belief makes things true. Therefore it has an enormous tech tree. You're "tech" can be based off any number of things deriving from various world views, from Animism, to Platonism, to ancient Chinese philosophy, to Modern Science or new Age Spiritualism. Each one has technologies deriving from the world view extending all the way to the equivalents of "modern technology" in terms of power, so you can have such things as giant flying zeppelins armed with Tesla Coils fighting Chinese Kite-Ships, while below there Alchemists allies transform others into the four basic element and recombine the Aztec soldiers who sacrifice to the Huitchiopolitchli for his favor.

.......Yeah, it would get weird :smalltongue:. Especially when you start crossing branches... steam powered flying saucers who utilize the power of the harmonics of the celestial spheres to power their irrational number generators to destroy the invading Pythagorean-New Agers for the win! :smallcool:

[Triaxx]

S.H.A.R.D. Super Human Abilities Research and Development. Your character has flunked the research before you start, but not because it didn't work, but because it did. He's become SMART. Smart enough to fake his tests, and eject after learning the final goal of the project.

While he's in the woods hunting, the US gets invaded by random power armored baddies. Or guys in helmets anyway. While you're not the only resistance member, you're the only one who can put together all the pieces. Starting off with just a hunting bow, and knife, it seems hopeless, until you see the power in action. Say an infantry fighting vehicle is approaching down the road. Engaging your mind, the game points out a power pole, chainsaw, and the way to cut it so the lines electrocute the inhabitants of the vehicle. Now you can get away, or drop another pole, and take command of the vehicle yourself.

Plus the engine is designed to work with ENOURMOUS maps. Not a mere sixteen square miles, but an entire state. The sort of mapping that takes Gigabytes. Designed properly, it could get large enough to be able to utilize the entire planet. Worldwide fun. Add in the ability to bring in other players into a running game, for multiplayer fun, or the ability to complete it on your own? Far more fun than imagined before. From one player versus ten enemy skirmishes, to NPC soldiers on both sides, to entire player armies duking it out for both sides. Both player controlled air and water craft, as well as 'jump' craft, which take you instantly to a new destination. (California to Hawaii for example, skipping a lot of boring ocean.)

[ImmortalAer]

I would want a squad-based multiplayer FPS where the squad dynamics were far more intricate than "this guy is stealth, this guy has a machine gun, and this guy has demolitions". For instance, everyone has a carrying capacity and inventory space, and some weapons are too big for a single person to carry all parts. So if you've got a .50 cal machine gun, you need one person to fire, and another person carries the tripod and extra ammo. This second person can also act as loader, which makes it less likely that the firer jams his weapon. Or you could have two people act as a mortar crew, three people needed to push a car for cover, etc.

Characters would each have a specialized skill set, gained through an RPG like system (if not an actual RPG itself). One character might have hacking skills, another might have demo, while yet another might be the squad medic. Each of these different abilities would come up often enough that you need to keep each other alive, and the leveling system for abilities would make it difficult if not impossible to make a jack-of-all-trades character, which again forces the players to work to keep each other alive.

Weapons would be heavily modifiable, with many of the mods even being unique to a specific gun. Because of the weight system, it is again impossible to kit your character out for every possible situation, so that the squad sniper is extremely vulnerable against enemy vehicles, or the stealthy character is largely ineffective in an all-out firefight. Weapons would also be based on an RPG skill set, so that the sniper cannot just pick up a rocket launcher to blast the tank unless he's trained with it, which of course means he took away points from things that made him a better sniper.

There should also be more of what I call "support items" besides your standard medkit. For instance, a laser designator that makes everyone else's attacks more accurate, but leaves you yourself unable to fire, or a indirect fire weapon like a mortar to keep your enemies ducking while the rest of the squad moves up on them. The kind of thing that won't get many kills directly, but makes things far easier to everyone else.

The whole point of this is a game where the team dynamic is an essential part of the combat. If your squad gets blasted in the opening of a mission, you're screwed not just because you just don't have the raw firepower to take on your enemies, but because you personally don't possess the skill-set necessary to overcome every obstacle. The tank can't open locked doors, the scout can't heal himself effectively, and the sniper can't destroy the fortified position.

Basically, I'm tired of squad-based shooters where one well-played character can struggle through the entire mission because none of the other abilities are actually necessary, but just make things easier. Or, if you really need to make things possible, at least make them really f***ing difficult to do without a squad. Okay, yeah, the sniper could go around the map, scrounge up enough explosives to take out the locked door, fight his way through to it past armored tanks that his rifle is not equipped to deal with, set his charges, run back through the fire to get out of the way, and then blow them...or the demo guy could just RPG the tanks, place a C4 charge and walk on through. Essentially, a challenge that should be a breeze with the proper skills and equipment becomes a nightmare of a challenge without them.

Also, I'm tired of weapon mod systems like the one in CoD4 (despite how amazing of a game it is otherwise) where there are maybe three or four mods for each weapon and you can only add one at a time. If I want to put an underslung shotgun, reflex sight, flashlight, and laser targeter on my assault rifle, I should be able to do it, so long as the gun has sufficient room on it and doesn't weigh me down too much. And with the weight system, that would be a real factor, because the heavier your gun, the less ammo you can carry. Multiple kinds of ammo would be nice as well, with the better ammo being harder to obtain.

This.

You must combine forces with me, and we shall lay down an amazing backstory, fluff and carrying/wieght/movement system. Then sit back, and stare at it, and wonder where we're going to find a coder that can live up to something near the industry standard, and eventually let it all be forgotten a week or two from now. :smallbiggrin:

[Greep]

Heh, I know what i would make, but since I'm making it I'd rather it be a secret till it's copyrighted >.>

[Ziren]

I'd make an open world (universe?) game in which you play an aspiring space pirate.


You start out with no money, a loyal crew of five specialists (engineer, tactical specialist, medic, pilot and a computer specialist), a battered space ship and the knowledge that you ended up this way because your CO betrayed you to cover up a crime he committed.

You can start flying around and rob unarmed transporter ships, explore or conquer planets, fulfill missions for several groups, capture and turn in other pirates...

As you progress through the game, you upgrade your ship, level up your specialists and hire new crew members.

Your main target is of course to get revenge on that CO that betrayed you, although you would have multiple ways of doing so, from investigating the case to simply find out on which planet he his and blowing the whole thing into oblivion. Of course, as soon as you have succeded a big twist happens....

[Greep]

I'd make an open world (universe?) game in which you play an aspiring space pirate.


You start out with no money, a loyal crew of five specialists (engineer, tactical specialist, medic, pilot and a computer specialist), a battered space ship and the knowledge that you ended up this way because your CO betrayed you to cover up a crime he committed.

You can start flying around and rob unarmed transporter ships, explore or conquer planets, fulfill missions for several groups, capture and turn in other pirates...

As you progress through the game, you upgrade your ship, level up your specialists and hire new crew members.

Your main target is of course to get revenge on that CO that betrayed you, although you would have multiple ways of doing so, from investigating the case to simply find out on which planet he his and blowing the whole thing into oblivion. Of course, as soon as you have succeded a big twist happens....

Hah, sounds like sid meiers' Pirates! only in space. Really considering how awesome that game was I'd love it.

[Ziren]

Hah, sounds like sid meiers' Pirates! only in space. Really considering how awesome that game was I'd love it.

I admit that I had a mix of Pirates! and GTA in mind when I came up with the idea.

[RS14]

Distant Horizon: Survivalist

In the far future, you are traveling on an ordinary passenger spacecraft, as an ordinary passenger when something goes wrong, and you are forced to evacuate on a lifepod. You crash on the planet below.

Your micro-computer doesn't have maps of the area, only poor quality scans taken by your lifepod on the way down, and that only covers your immediate area. The lifepod holds food and water for three days, a flare gun, short range communicator, a low powered beam rifle for hunting, and your personal luggage.

The planet is inhabited, but barely. No other passengers survived the crash; you are completely alone. There is no voiceover telling you what to do, your only goal is to survive.

In terms of gameplay, this is a survival focused firstthird person game. Your character needs food, water and sleep. The first two must be scavenged from the world, and one should only sleep in safe locations, lest one be awakened by a wild animal eating your legs.

The health system is fairly hardcore, with only limited regeneration for resting. Wounds are, well, wounds, and must be individually treated with bandages and other supplies in order to remove their negative effects. Get bitten in the leg and move slower, get stabbed in the arm and you can't carry as much and your aim is worse, and so on. Your character is fairly fragile, so your best bet is to simply avoid being injured at all.


The planet you crashed into has a small, scattered human population, but is mostly wilderness, inhabited by alien creatures. These creatures would have AI ala the mutent dogs in STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, in that they would quite often ignore and go about their way, unless you annoyed them. Predators would hunt you, prey would flee, and so on.

Mostly this is an open ended game of exploration, where there really isn't an end goal.

Check out Notrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notrium). It is free, and very much like what you just described. With weather effects!

I posted this concept some time ago in response to a suggestion by BRC:

I really like this idea. I'm seeing it as "Close Combat, with Improved Mobility and Off-Board Support."

On the question of chance, I don't see a problem with it, in principle, but I don't think it should be presented in such an explicit manner. I'd rather see it as "well, there's an old FlaK 18 in a nearby plaza---it's manually aimed, so they'll have a hell of a time hitting the ship before we get behind cover of the ridge, but if they pull it off, they could do some serious damage." The player can judge such chances, and if it's that important to get troops on the ground there, take the chance. Particularly if this incorporated a campaign mode, the loss of a few drop-ships would be acceptable and expected.
Even if they're hit, though, it seems like the drop-ship should have a chance to set down safely. Even a crippled drop-ship won't just explode in the sky, although it may be a total loss after the landing. Infantry are likely to make it out, although heavy equipment may be destroyed.

I'm not opposed to reinforcements, but I don't think they should be handed out like candy for controlling special locations. The player has "active troops," deployed in this sector, "ready troops," at the staging area, and ready to board, and "reserve troops," deployed on the ground in other sectors, but ready to pack up should they be needed. This gives a long chain of reinforcements if one side needs to win this battle at all costs, but more often, the battle will end when one side gains a clear advantage, and the defeated combatant's off-board forces will be more productively employed to contain the victor on the surrounding maps.

The problem I see is that this seems a futuristic setting, yet one in which heavy ordinance is very much available. Being futuristic, it seems that that ordinance should also be precise: any tank foolish enough to wander onto the battlefield should be quickly nailed through the roof with a smart bomb. Yet then we wind up with armor being relegated to a fire support role, and that's not cool. The only solutions, as I see it, are:
1) Forget artillery. With rapid deployments by drop-ship, it makes sense that off-board artillery can't be set up in time to matter, and it's simple enough to declare orbital firepower non-existent. Airpower, I feel, should exist, but should be spread thin, and not overwhelming when it is used. An airstrike should have a good chance of killing a tank, but not an absolute chance, and should be forced to run a gauntlet of missiles and light arms fire before it even makes that shot. Thus accurate air-to-ground missiles should be mostly restricted to very short range.
2) Feature plenty of highly mobile units. I talked earlier about off-board reserves---well one good reason to have off-board forces is to start setting up artillery batteries. After an early slugging match with heavy infantry and armor, artillery gets set up, and starts "removing grid squares," so to speak. The heavy forces get airlifted out, and fast armor and mechanized infantry come into play. They skirmish back and forth, evading artillery fire only through rapid redeployment, while cheap, fast drop-ships skip in to provide reinforcements or evacuate casualties. Helicopters should start to replace drop-ships in this role somewhat, but will be much more vulnerable to ground fire---but how cool is it to have a helicopter taking cover behind buildings?
3) Accept that sometimes, one side will have an overwhelming advantage. At the end of a multi-day battle, one side is likely to break through and start overrunning the artillery batteries. Then it becomes not a question of who will hold ground at the end of the day, but how many troops and how much materiel can be evacuated intact. Artillery fire should start decimating ground troops, air support should be abundant on both sides, and the reserve troops from previous battles are necessary just to hold a perimeter while the drop-ships land. Fortunately, for the defenders, their artillery, while it lasts, will keep heavy infantry and armor at a distance for some time---the first forces to try to overrun the batteries will be almost scouts, and will not break through for some time. However, as artillery begins to leave in drop-ships, the attacker's heavy forces can enter battle, making an overrun assured. It'll make for a very tense and difficult final battle for the defender, while still allowing him a strategic victory.

Also, as I have nowhere else to put this, I'd like to see some static forces from the very beginning. They'd be minimal, weak forces stationed defending a sector when the campaign starts, but would quickly be overrun by the incoming heavy infantry and armor. They would, however, grant the defender a boon to tactical intelligence, as well as perhaps being able to inflict minor damage to the attackers.


I would also love to see a space simulator that gives serious thought to the strategic and tactical implications. Planets are the only things worth controlling, so spacecraft are a mix of deep-space and atmospheric craft. The former would mostly mount heavy guns on one side, with CIWSs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIWS) dotting the rest. They would be capable of orbital bombardment. Atmospheric craft would be armored and optimized for ground attack.

At-will FTL would be prohibited, but wormhole generators could be sent out at c. Once they reach their destination, a ship can use them to jump large distances rapidly. Thus with forethought, other systems may be explored. They would be of little use in combat, however.

Ship-to-ship combat would occur at moderate range and relatively low speeds. Acceleration would be poor, save for some light craft, thus requiring good spatial thinking for one capital ship to bring its guns to bear on another. Light craft would not be obsolete, but would be a mixture of ECM, recon, and command vessels (as counterintuitive as that sounds). Against capital ships, missile would be effective, but only if they could penetrate the shield provided by the CIWS. Thus a small fighter swarm might approach, deploy missiles idling beyond CIWS range, and fire those missiles strategically, all the while making feints or attacks themselves to overwhelm the defensive fire of the ship.

[ImmortalAer]

GiTPF -should- design a game. Or six. :smalltongue:

[Gaelbert]

I'd make an open world (universe?) game in which you play an aspiring space pirate.


You start out with no money, a loyal crew of five specialists (engineer, tactical specialist, medic, pilot and a computer specialist), a battered space ship and the knowledge that you ended up this way because your CO betrayed you to cover up a crime he committed.

You can start flying around and rob unarmed transporter ships, explore or conquer planets, fulfill missions for several groups, capture and turn in other pirates...

As you progress through the game, you upgrade your ship, level up your specialists and hire new crew members.

Your main target is of course to get revenge on that CO that betrayed you, although you would have multiple ways of doing so, from investigating the case to simply find out on which planet he his and blowing the whole thing into oblivion. Of course, as soon as you have succeded a big twist happens....

Freelancer. There are even mods that let you pilot capitol (?) ships, which need crews. I would definitely suggest you check it out.


To me, the ultimate bad guy is a clown. Clowns terrifiy me. Then it followed that this clown would run about the world spraying it with make-up and too bright colors. Therefore, our hero would fight him with the Legendary Mop.

I thought a Mario-like world would be nice, with a central hub and various worlds accessible from there. Fights would go à la Zelda but there would be combos to shove your Mop in the enemy's face executed through little QTEs. I guess I'd go for something more A-RPG than Zelda, in the end.

Puzzle design is sadly lacking at the time, but it's not like it's a serious project.

The whole thing would, of course, be on crack.
Mario Sunshine, basically? A psychedelic Bowser travels around spreading the world with a multicolored goo. You use basically a hose to clean it all up. There's a central hub and worlds accessible from there. You also attack enemies with the hose (which is robotic.)

[Green-Shirt Q]

New rule! No pointing out that somebody's idea for a game already exists!

Also, no insulting the game idea. I don't see any insults, but just in case, that is also a rule now.

[BizzaroStormy]

Honestly I think that Metal Gear Solid 3 was the best from a mechanical standpoint. It had a great stealth system, cool gadgets, balanced weapons, awesome health system, ect. Really the only two flaws I saw with it was that the enemies and story were as thick as tank armor.

I think games that use the MGS mechanics with a different storyline and some upgraded AI could be frickin' amazing.

[warty goblin]

New rule! No pointing out that somebody's idea for a game already exists!

Also, no insulting the game idea. I don't see any insults, but just in case, that is also a rule now.

I object to both of these. The first one on the premise that if somebody details their dream game, which happens to more or less exist, this rule would bar the rest of the thread from passing along this information. Nobody profits from that. The worst that could happen with people pointing out the existance of games is somebody's idea would be revealed as less original than they thought, in which case I suggest that if this is done in a polite mannor and they are still offended by it, that they grow some thicker skin.

The second one I do not directly object to, but responding to, and discussing ideas is the interesting part of a thread. Otherwise it's just a series of disconnected posts.

[Athaniar]

I've had an idea in the works for quite some time now for a sci-fi RTS. The basic premise goes something like this: In the year 2100-something, an alien superweapon strikes Earth and obliterates a large portion of, uhm, South America. This upsets the five major alien species (all based on aliens from alien sightings and/or conspiracy theories, by the way), since they had an agreement not to do such overt things to the planet (just covert things like recon flights, abductions, and high-level government infiltration).

The species start accusing the others of launching the warhead, but they all claim to be innocent. This disagreement eventually becomes outright hostility, and before long, the factions of Earth (yes, it's not a united Earth, you've got a problem with that?) have five first contact situations to deal with. And not peaceful first contacts, in case you wondered. Some alien species (especially the deceitful reptilian ones) at first convince the gullible humans of their "peaceful intentions", which leads to the destruction of such beautful locations as, uhm, Washington.

The gameplay, you say? What gamep... Oh, right. As I said, this is an RTS, but not one focused on buildings, but rather on pure army combat, more or less. Units can be called in via space- and airships, and there will be command posts to conquer, containing a variety of funny stuff.

A campaign is included, but I won't reveal any plot details at the moment. Thirty-something (give or take tent to twenty) maps will be available for single- and multiplayer, some with lots of open space, some with close-quarters city combat.

Another very important gameplay aspect is real-life physics (to go with the next-best-thing-to-real-life graphics). Soldiers, vehicles, buildings, rocks: everything should be able to take visible damage and respond accordingly. Sure, it's probably practically impossible, but it's my dream, right? And everything is to-scale, so no foot soldiers the size of spaceships (or vice-versa).

[SolkaTruesilver]

I would like a 4x strategy game with multi layers of gameplay.

Lemme explain myself.

In your average 4x game, all civilization start at the same level, they all progress usually at the same pace. Strangely, even if they are elves, dwarves, humans, etc...

But I got thinking. Usually, in your classic Fantasy world, the elves and dwarves have been around much longer than you have. And they both have had to deal with the orcs for quite some time, and the orcs never seem to actually increase in progress...

In my dream 4x strategy game, you'd have the first layer, which is the classic gameplay. Only one race: the humans. You can develops your kingdom/lichdom/knightdom/whateverdom into many options, etc... The game could be a satisfying strategy 4x game just like that.

But disseminated around the map are older civilisations. Dwarves in the mountains (which are usually useless to you), Elves in the forest. Both are highly advanced in their own field of sciences, and extremely deadly to provoke. But if you manage to conquer one elven kingdom.. maybe the treasures would be ripe for the taking? Off course, these races don't even count about victory condition...

Then, when you have achieve on the Human game, you could go play an Elf game. you start 10 000 years before the human even appear on the map. Your main opponents are other elves, and off course, the random orcs and dragons around the map.

But eventually, human kingdoms start to appear right and left. Your growth rate is so small compared to them. You have highly advanced technology/magic, but... they could overwhelm you so easily...

Should you crush them one by one? try to avoid them? don't forget, your real rivals are the other elven kingdoms. Will THEY try to manipulate the humans into fighting you?

You could even have the same things for the Dwarves, which would be even stranger, as the Dwarves would have access to incredible riches, but their territory would be of almost nil value to the other races. Is conquering them worth the effort?

What about bullying them?

So, you would have, in a single game, the conflict between the different human factions, the different elven factions, the different dwarven factions. Each have their own "rules", mechanics, etc...

But they are all on the same playfield, and will have to deal with each other eventually. But they all have to keep in mind the victory conditions, which are usually set against their equals.

[chiasaur11]

I've had an idea in the works for quite some time now for a sci-fi RTS. The basic premise goes something like this: In the year 2100-something, an alien superweapon strikes Earth and obliterates a large portion of, uhm, South America. This upsets the five major alien species (all based on aliens from alien sightings and/or conspiracy theories, by the way), since they had an agreement not to do such overt things to the planet (just covert things like recon flights, abductions, and high-level government infiltration).

The species start accusing the others of launching the warhead, but they all claim to be innocent. This disagreement eventually becomes outright hostility, and before long, the factions of Earth (yes, it's not a united Earth, you've got a problem with that?) have five first contact situations to deal with. And not peaceful first contacts, in case you wondered. Some alien species (especially the deceitful reptilian ones) at first convince the gullible humans of their "peaceful intentions", which leads to the destruction of such beautful locations as, uhm, Washington.

The gameplay, you say? What gamep... Oh, right. As I said, this is an RTS, but not one focused on buildings, but rather simple army combat, more or less.

A campaign is included, but I won't reveal any plot details at the moment. Thirty-something (give or take tent to twenty) maps will be available for single- and multiplayer, some with lots of open space, some with close-quarters city combat.

Another very important gameplay aspect is real-life physics. Soldiers, vehicles, buildings, rocks: everything should be able to take visible damage and respond accordingly. Sure, it's probably practically impossible, but it's my dream, right? And everything is to-scale, so no foot soldiers the size of spaceships (or vice-versa).

Five species, eh?

Etherals, Snakemen, Sectoids, Mutons, and Floaters?

(Don't mind me. X-Comming it up a bit lately.)

[Athaniar]

Five species, eh?

Etherals, Snakemen, Sectoids, Mutons, and Floaters?

(Don't mind me. X-Comming it up a bit lately.)

Tell me more of those. At least two of them sound somewhat alike my races (but not much).

[Knaight]

Hmm. Screw it, I'm just basing this off of a tabletop game I ran.

You control a few robots that have escaped from a factory,*loading them up on weapons, and running from other factory robots, as well as other companies they piss off. Its run as a tactical turn based strategy game, with extremely small turns, closer to DROD than Fire Emblem. Various creative events that break tactical rules would be portrayed as cut scenes. You also have to run a PR campaign, trying to convince humans to allow robots as intelligent in them in society. Major opposition here would be deeply religious people clinging to the idea of superiority due to having a soul, brilliant humans, ignorant humans who just can't believe in intelligent robots, and conspiracy theorists. This section is done by creating information networks, which involves making deals with news agencies, publicity stunts, etc.

Of course, it would be a very difficult game, as the turns are DROD sized, and anybody who has played upper levels of DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold, or DROD: City Beneath knows that makes things really difficult.

[chiasaur11]

Tell me more of those. At least two of them sound somewhat alike my races (but not much).

Sectoids: The greys. They mostly die easy, but the highest ranks can rip your beloved soldiers's minds wide open.

Floaters: They can fly, but other than that, non issue for the most part. Not as weak as Sectoids, but no mind powers, and a weak super unit thing.

Snakemen: What it says on the tin. Not a major threat, but they reproduce like crazy according to logbooks. Their superunit? The creature from alien with the film sped up.

Mutons: Big. Tough. Dumb. Huge purple guys in green spandex, they're cyborgs built only for war. Cyborgy parts are hidden, though.

Etherals: Scary robed dudes. Mind control powers that make everybody but your best psychics look weak in the brain breaking department. Humanoid, thin, bald.

[Athaniar]

Sectoids: The greys. They mostly die easy, but the highest ranks can rip your beloved soldiers's minds wide open.
Sure, I have greys. But really, who doesn't have greys?


Floaters: They can fly, but other than that, non issue for the most part. Not as weak as Sectoids, but no mind powers, and a weak super unit thing.
Flying floating things? No, doesn't sound like something I have.


Snakemen: What it says on the tin. Not a major threat, but they reproduce like crazy according to logbooks. Their superunit? The creature from alien with the film sped up.
I have reptilians (as I mentioned), but they're neither especially snake-y nor Zerg-y.


Mutons: Big. Tough. Dumb. Huge purple guys in green spandex, they're cyborgs built only for war. Cyborgy parts are hidden, though.
No, no dumb purple cyborgs here.


Etherals: Scary robed dudes. Mind control powers that make everybody but your best psychics look weak in the brain breaking department. Humanoid, thin, bald.
No, not these either.

Phew, looks like I'm safe.

[chiasaur11]

Didn't think there'd be too much crossover.

Besides, if there was it'd probably be due to common sources. No shame in that.

[Athaniar]

The five alien archetypes I'm basing my aliens on are, by the way, reptilian shapeshifters (although not all of them are shapeshifters; it's complicated), greys, energy beings, mothmen, and Nommo. The reptilians are my favorites, and therefore the ones with the most info on yet, including politics, religion, military, techonology, and entertainment. You see, when I have a good idea, I tend to elaborate on it.

[Lufia]

Mario Sunshine, basically? A psychedelic Bowser travels around spreading the world with a multicolored goo. You use basically a hose to clean it all up. There's a central hub and worlds accessible from there. You also attack enemies with the hose (which is robotic.)
Oh my! How did you guess?!

Of course it's inspired by Mario Sunshine, but I'd like something more A-RPG-y and less platform-y. Just changing the orientation of the gameplay can make a whole lot of difference.

[Egiam]

An American Revolutionary War-themed FPS.

(only half kidding :smallwink:)

[SolkaTruesilver]

An American Revolutionary War-themed FPS.

(only half kidding :smallwink:)

I think there is a lot less fun into 1-shot guns than you might imagines.

[Morty]

I'd make a good, solid, classic series of fantasy RPGs. Real RPGs mind you, not hack'n'slashes or action games pretending to be RPGs. They'd be set in a classic, but well thought-out and non-cliched world.

[Thane of Fife]

I think there is a lot less fun into 1-shot guns than you might imagines.

No, it could be great for the Wii - it would come with all these peripherals, and every time you fired, you'd have to grab the wii-powder horn, tilt it over your wii-mote, take the wii-plunger..., etc.

[SolkaTruesilver]

No, it could be great for the Wii - it would come with all these peripherals, and every time you fired, you'd have to grab the wii-powder horn, tilt it over your wii-mote, take the wii-plunger..., etc.

While, in multiplayer, the other player comes and wack you with the Wii-sword?

That'd be AWESOME!

[Gaelbert]

New rule! No pointing out that somebody's idea for a game already exists!

But if the point of this thread is to make an ideal or dream game, wouldn't somebody want to know if they actually could play their dream game?


Oh my! How did you guess?!

Of course it's inspired by Mario Sunshine, but I'd like something more A-RPG-y and less platform-y. Just changing the orientation of the gameplay can make a whole lot of difference.

Gotcha. I thought the description was a little too uncannily accurate...

[Mando Knight]

No, it could be great for the Wii - it would come with all these peripherals, and every time you fired, you'd have to grab the wii-powder horn, tilt it over your wii-mote, take the wii-plunger..., etc.

Like Strong Bad's Light Musket in Episode 5 of SBCG4AP, then? (8-Bit is Enough!)

[warty goblin]

I think there is a lot less fun into 1-shot guns than you might imagines.

It would be difficult to make work, but I think it could be done. The trick would be adequatly capturing the chaos of being in a tight formation under fire, and following drill. I've played games that make firing crossbows with reasonably realistic reload times fairly interesting, and massed musketry also gets you bayonet charges.

Further details on my survival oriented game.

Since the game is so focused on survival, crafting would have to be a component. I think the best way to do this would be through a very simple skill system based on the complexity of the item being crafted. Thus something simple like a spear would require one level in Craft Simple Items, but something like a bow might take two or three. In order to craft an item you would of course need to have the raw materials in one's inventory and sufficient skill. All in all I'm thinking there would be the following skills:

Craft Simple Item Create spears, knives, bows, arrows et cetera from natural resources or purchased supplies.

Craft Technological Item This skill allows you to assemble electronics and advanced technological components into usable items. This allows you to assemble solar panels to charge your weapon batteries, make new weapons or improve old ones, and so forth. For obvious reasons, most of the components for technological items must be purchased or otherwise obtained from other humans.

Harvest Allows you to more fully utilize the gameworld. Higher ranks let you harvest more meat from killed animals and use lower quality, aka easier to obtain, materials for crafting.

Skills are increased by convincing people to teach them to you, which is easiest, or by using the lower level skill an aweful lot.


You would get some choice in who you played as, both cosmetically and mechanically. At the beginning of the game you could choose from a few preset background templates, which determine your starting skills, and the resources in your personal luggage. Choose more survivalist options, and you get some basic items and more skills in Craft Basic and Harvest, and so on.


There would have to be an inventory, and some sort of dialog system as well, although both would probably be fairly rudamentory.

[Green-Shirt Q]

But if the point of this thread is to make an ideal or dream game, wouldn't somebody want to know if they actually could play their dream game?


<.<
>.>

New rule! You're not allowed to point out how flawed my rules are! :smalltongue:

But seriously, I just said that so nobody would get hurt feelings. I certainly wouldn't like to hear "YOUR IDEA WAS DONE A BILLION TIMES YOU RIPPED OF SUCH AND SUCH N00B" when I've shared my little bit of creativity.

So if you must, you can point it out. Just as long as you do it politely.

[Lufia]

Further details on my survival oriented game.
*snipped*
Lost in Blue but in space? I'd play that one!

I'm okay with more complex stats systems compared to the original, but they shouldn't be a hindrance to the gameplay. Taking wounds into account isn't bad if you've some kind of medikit or medical knowledge, otherwise the player would realistically end up dying from gangrene from a bunny bite.

Games shouldn't go for "realistic" but for "winnable", in my opinion.

[Jamin]

I would make a Fire Emblem type game but every chapter you would have units that you could lose ie faceless goons but if you kept them alive than you would get bonus stuff.

[Ziren]

Freelancer. There are even mods that let you pilot capitol (?) ships, which need crews. I would definitely suggest you check it out.

Interesting... It lacks a lot of the features I'd like for my game, but it's probably as close as it gets for now. I'll definitly check it out. Thanks for showing me this.

[DeathQuaker]

It's not terribly original, but something I'd have fun making and playing, if I had the time and skill, would be something akin to, vaguely, "Suikoden meets Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights." (Wow, there was a lot of qualifiers in that sentence.)

Which Obsidian sort of beat me to this, as the NWN2 OC is in some ways like this already, but mine would be better. :smalltongue:

Basically I'd want to do something where you are in the middle of a conflict and you decide to form your own faction, gathering supporters and mercenaries to build an army and a stronghold. You can take small units/parties out to explore, but there will also be large scale tactical army combats. (This is all inspired by Suikoden.) Lots of focus on stronghold building as part of the game, and you could make some choices as to how your stronghold looks and what amenities it has.

Who you recruit and how you treat your recruits--and your enemies--will alter the outcome of the game. Unlike Suikoden, there wouldn't be "right" endings and "wrong" endings (none of this "You failed to find the 108th Star of Destiny under that rock over there, so your best friend dies" crap). There could be endings where you are considered benevolent and where you are considered tyrannical and anywhere in between, but all equally valid endings that should feel satisfying to the player who made the choices to get to those points.

The world would be well-detailed with good political intrigue. Recruitment would involve good dialogue and roleplaying. Some people may not join you if you act a certain way or if you don't have certain other allies. I would probably not put it so you have to have all recruits--the fun would be seeing the different combinations you could get depending on your choices. Like both Suiko and most good D&D based RPGs, there'd be good party banter and characterization of most NPCs. I'd probably have a lot of recruits, but not as many as the 108 you have to get in Suikoden.

NO random encounters, and minimal dungeon crawls save for a few fun sidequests--but lots of world exploration if the player wants to. Probably something like the real-time-with-pause combat the Bioware/Black Isle/Obsidian games have. I'd like the graphics to be artistic looking (not uncanny valley actor models) but not cartoony or cute.

You can build your main character however you like--male, female, warrior, thief, wizard. Alternatively, if I decided the story DID need a specific hero to lead the army, it still would NOT be a 16 year old androgynous boy who acts like a brat half the time. Maybe a vet in his/her 30, 40s, or 50s, scarred and jaded. (So, Geddoe :smallwink:)

I will reiterate, there will be no, absolutely NO, "someone dies while you cannot control your actions for stupid plot reasons." I'm looking at YOU Suikoden NWN2 OC.

There could perhaps be recruit deaths within your control. Like, if someone dies during a tactical battle, they're dead, kaput.

Maybe to shake things up, make it a little more steampunk than fantasy. I know that's the trendy thing, but it would be cool to have, for once, people fighting with clockwork deathrays instead of magic missiles.

Ooooooooooooooh.... GIRL GENIUS meets Suikoden meets Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights..... awwwwwwwwwwwwww yeah. :smallbiggrin:

[SilverSheriff]

Also, the beaver knows super-crazy martial arts and is able to reenact fighting scenes from Dragon Ball Z (if the fighting scenes are half as good as I've heard them to be).

I don't think the audience is going to appreciate 20 minutes of internal monologue (which in DBZ's case was a whole episode) while the real in-game time passed is like... 3 minutes.

I'll post my game pitch later...

[Green-Shirt Q]

I don't think the audience is going to appreciate 20 minutes of internal monologue (which in DBZ's case was a whole episode) while the real in-game time passed is like... 3 minutes.

I haven't actually seen DBZ (just a YouTube parady known as "Super Mario Bros. Z" that has amazing fight scenes and zero long internal monologues which you speak of) but I can safetly say my game probably won't have any of that.

[ImmortalAer]

I absolutely did not create a forum for a GiTP video game design team. At all.

And if I did, it would totally be linked here (http://playgroundstudios.freeforums.org/), or something.

:smallamused:

[Geno9999]

I haven't actually seen DBZ (just a YouTube parady known as "Super Mario Bros. Z" that has amazing fight scenes and zero long internal monologues which you speak of) but I can safetly say my game probably won't have any of that.

That's because half of the main cast is a Heroic Mime (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicMime).

[Thane of Fife]

I was fooling around with the Random Video Game Name Generator (http://norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html) recently, and it spewed out Super Sexy Bingo Domination.

I can't really think of any possible idea that could make a better game than that. It's got everything you need in a video game: Sex. Domination. Bingo.

Other choice ideas include:

It's a Mad, Mad Submarine: Limited Edition
Robotic Skydiving Demolition
and
Scandinavian Volleyball: Total War

I think any one of those could be a major hit.

[Fri]

Distant Horizon: Survivalist

In the far future, you are traveling on an ordinary passenger spacecraft, as an ordinary passenger when something goes wrong, and you are forced to evacuate on a lifepod. You crash on the planet below.

Your micro-computer doesn't have maps of the area, only poor quality scans taken by your lifepod on the way down, and that only covers your immediate area. The lifepod holds food and water for three days, a flare gun, short range communicator, a low powered beam rifle for hunting, and your personal luggage.

The planet is inhabited, but barely. No other passengers survived the crash; you are completely alone. There is no voiceover telling you what to do, your only goal is to survive.

In terms of gameplay, this is a survival focused first person game. Your character needs food, water and sleep. The first two must be scavenged from the world, and one should only sleep in safe locations, lest one be awakened by a wild animal eating your legs.

The health system is fairly hardcore, with only limited regeneration for resting. Wounds are, well, wounds, and must be individually treated with bandages and other supplies in order to remove their negative effects. Get bitten in the leg and move slower, get stabbed in the arm and you can't carry as much and your aim is worse, and so on. Your character is fairly fragile, so your best bet is to simply avoid being injured at all.


The planet you crashed into has a small, scattered human population, but is mostly wilderness, inhabited by alien creatures. These creatures would have AI ala the mutent dogs in STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, in that they would quite often ignore and go about their way, unless you annoyed them. Predators would hunt you, prey would flee, and so on.

Mostly this is an open ended game of exploration, where there really isn't an end goal.

Robinson's Requiem is kinda close to that. First person view, even. (http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Robinson/)

read that LP, Warty. You're crashed to an alien planet and you must find food, drink, fight disease, make fur coat, craft bow and arrows, everything. A bird could pluck one of your eye if you're not careful fighting it and you must spend the rest of your game half-blind. Or plucked both of your eyes. Try to finish the game blind :smallbiggrin: (or simply reload)

[toasty]

Really I want two games.

Fantasy Kingdom Total War... so it'd be medieval total war, but with mages, orcs, trolls etc. THAT would be... epic. But since Total War is a franchise already...

I'd want to make an MMORPG, fantasy based, where the player's actions actually mean things and makes a difference in the world at large.

Ideally, the the game would start out with the default fantasy races (humans, dwarves, elves, orcs) with NPCs as the leaders of all major organizations that these races have (from guilds to the goverment). Each of these races (except the orcs) would be united into at least a semi-stable unified government. However, as the players level up, gain influence in the organizations of their races, unlock new secrets and the like they could change the world. For instance, a mage could discover a forbidden book of nercomancy, become a lich and then start a new race: the undead. Another player, a cleric, could use his power in the Church to organize a crusade against the orcs. Joining the crusade would give the other players some sort of bonuses. Such as access to special weapons or weapon upgrades normally only given to high ranking Church Members.

Of course the best thing about the game would be killing the king and taking over the kingdom. Or rebelling and making your own kingdom. Or unlocking the secret imprisonment of the dark elves and unleashing them upon the world. Or uniting the orc horde and attempting to conquer the human kingdom(s).

Obviously the game has serious flaws in that I have no idea how one could take the NPC role of King and put in onto a human player. And furthermore, besides having a cool title... what exactly would this player be able to do? What bonuses does he get? Also, how do you, fairly, allow the introduction of "hidden" races (such as the dark elves or the undead. Which must be "unleasehed" by the players) without suddenly turning the server into a horde of players who want to turn play undead...

Another thing is that the player actions could, from time to time, make servers unplayable. If someone manages to unite the orcs and then conquer the elves and humans it would kind of suck since now there are only two playable races, one of which will probably destroy the dwarves eventually. Obviously you could simply reset the server, but when do you decide that a server is "broken" and needs to be reset? And how often would you need to reset a server? The key would be to have all the servers pretty balanced so that you'd rarely need to actually reset them... but when you have a game that is so focused on player-based content it becomes rather difficult to balance the game...

One can dream though, right?

[ImmortalAer]

One can dream though, right?

Or one could join the GiTP design team, as linked above or in my Signature.

/shameless plug

[Fri]

Someone already said something that's kinda similar with my dream game. Basically, it's something like freelancer with party. Freelancer crossed with firefly or cowboy bebop, maybe.

It's a free roaming space game like freelancer, but you're given a cargo ship with one small fighter inside it. At first you're only alone with one friend, your copilot or something. As usual, you do random mission, selling good, and everything. But you can choose to control the bulky and turreted carrier, or leave the carrier to AI and defend it with the small fighter. Later, you'll get more party member, like another fighter pilot, a mechanic that can customize your ship, and everything.

Space wolves is kinda similar with that game, but it's a 3d strategy game with a lot of things half done. Space wolves 2 is an idiotic bugfest.

[warty goblin]

Lost in Blue but in space? I'd play that one!

I'm okay with more complex stats systems compared to the original, but they shouldn't be a hindrance to the gameplay. Taking wounds into account isn't bad if you've some kind of medikit or medical knowledge, otherwise the player would realistically end up dying from gangrene from a bunny bite.

Games shouldn't go for "realistic" but for "winnable", in my opinion.

I wasn't really shooting for 'winnable' actually, since I didn't really conceptualize the game has having a win condition. I was more shooting for something that felt like the middle of STALKER, or parts of Far Cry 2, where you might have objectives, but the real point was simply interacting with the world.

Far Cry 2 is where I got the idea for wounds actually, since the wound healing animations in that game are great. I personally wish you ended up with a wound every time you took more than 20% damage.

[Athaniar]

I was fooling around with the Random Video Game Name Generator (http://norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html)

Hey, that thing's fun.

Hideous Alligator Saga
Curse of the Deer Hunter Hunter
Mythical Buddhist 2000
Celtic Afro Dancers
Irish Kung-fu Dystopia
Star Wars Cricket Anthology
Terrible Sudoku in the Outback
Amish Lizard Oppression
Muppet Transvestite Fiasco
Radical Sailboat of the Deep
Generic Caveman - Collector's Edition
Religious Trailer Park Feud
Holy Yeti Horror
Micro Werewolf Rescue
Demonic Ostrich Carnage
Enormous Conga on Wheels

Scratch that, that thing's absolutely hilarious.

Hillbilly Lawnmower from Outer Space

[Ziren]

Far Cry 2 is where I got the idea for wounds actually, since the wound healing animations in that game are great. I personally wish you ended up with a wound every time you took more than 20% damage.

Actually they're pretty bad. Sure, they look mighty fine, but pushing the bullet, that keeps you from bleeding to death out of the wound without applying a compression bandage afterwards? Don't try this at home, kids.

[warty goblin]

Actually they're pretty bad. Sure, they look mighty fine, but pushing the bullet, that keeps you from bleeding to death out of the wound without applying a compression bandage afterwards? Don't try this at home, kids.

I'm well aware they aren't realistic, but so what? Their point isn't realism, but to convey the subtle point that you have just had the crap pounded out of yourself. I found them most effective in doing so, far more than the screen flashing red, or anything like that- instead of annoying me they pulled me into character and forced me to think reasonably about how to escape enemy fire long enough to heal up. Hell, there's really only one quasi-realistic game health system- you get shot, you die, and that is not condusive to the sort of game I'm going for here.

[SilverSheriff]

It's an RPG with more dialog than shooting stuff.

wall of text warning.
First off my game would be only 30% plot-based, but the rest of the missions could only be opened if certain goals are met and certain characters don't die and on top of that they would be influenced on-top of that by some other characters that don't die. say in Grand theft Auto 4 you chose the mission where you accept the end deal therefore making Dmitri come to your cousins wedding and killing him; you could instead choose to (non-lethally) jump in front of the killing bullet confining you to Hospital for a few months (likewise with the other ending), You would then be able to donate the money from the deal to charity leading to you being forgiven by Cate and able to go on a few Romantic dates with her and they all live happily ever after. You could also join the Police and become the undercover cop that shuts down the criminal underworld for good.

Yes my game would be heavily influenced by Grand Theft Auto but with a twist: its set in Steampunk'd-up Wild-West America and your a Cowboy (much like GUN now to thing of it), you'd be able to use any sort of transportation, including riding trains, riding on top of trains, riding Wagons, riding on top of wagons, Parkour, Horses, canoes and of course your feet. Trains would have gatling guns on them, canoes would have steam-powered engines, wagons have hydraulics that allow them to jump and crazy **** like that.

Your companion would be a very intelligent, story-driving woman with hardly and boobage to talk of and a personality to boot. She'd also have Dynamic AI; if you started sneaking she'd sneak with you, if you ran she'd run with you, if you were to jump up onto the stage and dance your drunken heart out she would either be joining you or looking at you in pity because she's not that drunk yet, YES THATS RIGHT: characters would get realistically drunk, especially with you; your screen would start being fuzzy around the edges some NPCs would be temporarily replaced with more attractive NPCs until you wake up with a hangover the next morning to realize you've been broke-back mountaineering to make realistic beer-goggles.:smallamused:

All of this would be made with N64-Legend of Zelda-style Graphics and the only big number required to play the game would be the size of your hard-drive: this game would be like... 30GB or something: nearly all of it being the actual game and not how realistically NPC character's boobs bounced.

Also it'd have simulations of the PC's hunger, bladder, sickness and how warm your clothes kept you on those cold winter nights.

I think everyone would buy it.

oh: and the only difficulty setting would be: your game saves for this character will be deleted after you die and you might be killed in a matter of seconds if you don't think about this like a real person in a real situation would.

[RS14]

Or one could join the GiTP design team (http://playgroundstudios.freeforums.org/index.php).

I'm going to also support this. Come on over, start a thread on what you're interested in, and we'll try to give some thorough suggestions.

[Lufia]

I'll join the GitP desing team when there is a width limit of 768 pixels on the layout for those of us with shi- *erm* outdated configs. :smalltongue:

Is anybody around here actually capable of building a game engine? Or do people plan on buying one? In the "affordable" range are Game Maker (free), RPG Maker ($60 for a licence), Multimedia Fusion 2 ($100, though the demo might be enough to do some stuff) and probably more that I've never heard of. Otherwise, the Unreal engine can be bought for around $400,000 IIRC. Wanna start a common fund?

[ArlEammon]

My series would be called Pantheon. It would be a God-Tournament Fighting Game.

Fighters:
Ra
Odin
Zeus
Indra
Daghda
Horus
Thor
Ares
Kali
Morgan
Thoth
Freya
Hecate
Ganesha
Nuada

[Trazoi]

I've got a couple of dozen ideas which tend to blur togheter, but they're almost all bright, colourful cartoonish 2D games. Most are challenging to make but IMO potentially within my abilities with a couple of years of improving my skills.

For those of you more seriously looking into their designs, are you doing this purely as an intellectual exercise, or are you actually planning on making the game? If it's the former, anything goes as long as you're having fun :smallsmile:. But if it's the latter, I'd highly recommend restricting yourself to design ideas that are within you or your team's abilities. I don't know your skill level, but for beginners something like an old school 2D platformer will be a challenge - but not insurmountable if you're willing to work towards it. But trying to make a larger, prettier version of a game that took a few dozen professionals several full-time years is folly.


My series would be called Pantheon. It would be a God-Tournament Fighting Game.
Unfortunately there's already a casual puzzle game called Pantheon. I noticed because I've got an idea for a god game and had my eye on the title too. Annoyingly it seems every single word title is taken. :smallannoyed:

[Hell Puppi]

An MMORPG where you can play as human/elf/ two-legger or as one of the monters.
You level up and if you're a monster you can choose to go to the human area and fight for a bit more experience and where you go depends on what monster you are. You'll also be a bit tougher than what usually spawns in the area.
Eventually if you get high enough you can have a random chance of becoming an 'instance' creature. Basically you get to be a 'raid boss' and lay some serious smackdown on the other side for a bit.
Not sure yet what to do to make the humans cool, as of right now I think everyone would play the monster side =/


Or an RPG based on Watership Down.
You heard me.

[chiasaur11]

I've got a couple of dozen ideas which tend to blur togheter, but they're almost all bright, colourful cartoonish 2D games. Most are challenging to make but IMO potentially within my abilities with a couple of years of improving my skills.

For those of you more seriously looking into their designs, are you doing this purely as an intellectual exercise, or are you actually planning on making the game? If it's the former, anything goes as long as you're having fun :smallsmile:. But if it's the latter, I'd highly recommend restricting yourself to design ideas that are within you or your team's abilities. I don't know your skill level, but for beginners something like an old school 2D platformer will be a challenge - but not insurmountable if you're willing to work towards it. But trying to make a larger, prettier version of a game that took a few dozen professionals several full-time years is folly.


Unfortunately there's already a casual puzzle game called Pantheon. I noticed because I've got an idea for a god game and had my eye on the title too. Annoyingly it seems every single word title is taken. :smallannoyed:

What about Porkenblarg?

Good name, I always thought.

[Trazoi]

What about Porkenblarg?

Good name, I always thought.
Yes, but try playing it on a triple word score in Scrabble and see if the other players allow it. :smallwink:

[chiasaur11]

Yes, but try playing it on a triple word score in Scrabble and see if the other players allow it. :smallwink:

Hey, if anybody doubts, I direct them to the relevant Seanbaby articles.

And when they're stunned by either amusement or horror, I knock them out with a two by four, and claim "You agreed with me, but I gotta admit, you were really hammered at the time. I mean, you passed out immediately afterwards."

Works so far.

[RS14]

Is anybody around here actually capable of building a game engine? Or do people plan on buying one? In the "affordable" range are Game Maker (free), RPG Maker ($60 for a licence), Multimedia Fusion 2 ($100, though the demo might be enough to do some stuff) and probably more that I've never heard of. Otherwise, the Unreal engine can be bought for around $400,000 IIRC. Wanna start a common fund?

The Qfusion engine is free and open source. It's based on the Quake II engine, and is used by Warsow. I don't have experience with it, but do have some programming experience and could probably pick it up if I was feeling motivated.

Edit: See also this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_first-person_shooters#Free_first-person_shooter_game_engines)

[Ziren]

I'll join the GitP desing team when there is a width limit of 768 pixels on the layout for those of us with shi- *erm* outdated configs. :smalltongue:


The layout is adjusted as soon as you have registered. And are logged in, obviously.

[TFT]

I would love to see a game where it was basically a rts for 1, him being the general, another rts type for field commanders, a couple of those. Basically the general would make all the strategies, plan the upgrades, resources, etc. etc. The Field commanders would deal with tactics, where the units go, how to attack, etc. etc. the rest would be like sergeants, leading the troops and basically it being a rts. You would have to work your way up to being a general or field commander since its such a crucial posisition. Obviously you would have a single player campaign where you rise the ranks from a private up to a general.

[Thanatos 51-50]

An RPG/superhero sandbox game with moral choice.

Keep in mind that I've been thinking about this since before I knew of InFamous.
At character Generation, you play through a very Batman-esque Origin Story where your ultra-rich parents are buying you a birthday gift, and paying for you to have a private tutor in one subject for a number of years.

I'm fuzzy on the birthday gifts, but which one you choose will basically determine Offense, Defense or Balanced Powersets at the end of it all, and the choice of tutor will determine your power source.
You can either choose to have a
Philosophy Tutor (Magic)
Chemistry Professor (Mutation)
Electronics Professor (Technology)
or a
Personal Trainer (Training)

These will determine what powers you have access to when the game starts, so if you chose the Electronics Professor and the Defense option, you would be an Iron Man-esque, power armoured Hero/Villian, and a Balanced Personal trainer would make you a ninja (or Batman).

Important factors in the game will be:
Noteriety (Probability of being randomly attacked by thugs/vigilantes wanting to make a name for themselves by taking you out or scaring away "Street level" side-missions, defeating them quickly. After all, nobody is going to try and steal a purse when he sees Spider Man bearing down on him.)

Anonymity (High Anonymity will allow you to make escapes by changing into your civilian persona. Low Anonymity will let cause you to be assaulted at your "day Job" or while otherwise in Civilian Mode, as well as cause your contacts some serious grief)

Income (This is how you pay for research for new abilities)

Experiance (trakced seperately for each ability, a la Final Fantasy II.)

There would be a multitude of "travel" abilities usable throughout the game (Flight for Mages/Tekkie/Mutants, Sports Cars/Motorcycles for everyone. Mutants can do a Spider Man - esque swing, Tekkies and Normals can teleport.)

You would have access to all your powers while in Civilian mode (But doing this is the quickest way to lower your Anonymity)

Karma will determine what kind of sidequests are playable, and what storyline you begin to follow. The game will be divided into three basic "Tiers"

Rookie
Hero/Villian
Legend

the Rookie Tier of the game allows you to tell the game what you want to play as, with the actions here being the most black and white (Kill the mugger, Arrest the Mugger, Help the Mugger, Kill the Mugger AND the old lady, pocket the cash). Your actions will be tracked on a Violence/Nonviolence, Good/Evil and a Kind/Cruel Axis. Significant progress on all these Axes (IE, being a Cruel/Nonviolent/Evil Guy) will move you up into the Hero/Villian Tier, where choices become more muddled grey and you get to see the effects of your Rookie Choices on the gameworld. you can still completely change the way you're treating the city here, but it's harder. Achieving 75% in either diretion on two of the axes will move you into the Legend Tier.

Once you're a legend, even if you wanted to change, nobody is going to blieve you. Dr. VonEvilguy will always be remembered as the supervillian, and nobody is going to care if he says his new ray gun will be used only to cure cancer. They'll think it's a Death Ray. You have an impossible amount of work ahead of you to change the Public Opinion, and a slightly more managable amount to change the world for the better instead of ruining it.

[Lorn]

Hm..

The year is 5053. Mankind has not evolved at all for the past four thousand five hundred years, instead developing ways and means to stay alive throughout the harshest environments and to maintain status as top predator.

But all of that is changing.

In 4746, one man suffered massive damage from a fall out of a 6th storey window. The company owning the building - a robotics company, specifically - rebuilt him into part man, part machine.

After the initial backlash, the process of replacing limbs and organs with robotics began to see more widespread use. By 4968, most implants were fairly safe, and many people were seeing them as fashion accessories. These processes also allowed humans to go out and colonise the surface of the world; in 2012, the planets in our solar system aligned, blotting out the sun. This rendered the surface of the Earth uninhabitable due to the absolute cold. People now live in colossal domes, interconnected by a complex rail system.

Life in the domes is hard, and many people are moving to the Outside. They see it as a glorious opportunity to claim back what they believe to be theirs... although, in the space of three thousand years, who is to say there is not a new top species?



Basically, a GRIMDARK cyberpunk style RPG. Very futuristic, very dark. Can be played online, though offline play is also available; there is no storyline, aside from the passage of time. The players will impact hugely on the world, with monthly small updates and yearly large updates available to those playing online - when you connect, it patches your game and brings you up to speed. Characters that have not been played with online for over six months will need to be restarted - however, they will be able to leave their items and money (and possibly any implants) to newer characters to represent someone dying and leaving stuff to someone.

The game will be changeable between first and third person, and controlled by WSAD/mouse as in an FPS. Combat will take place both at a range and in close.

And no, this isn't anything like Fallout.

As for updates - small every month, huge every year. Every chance that the games developers will screw the players around a bit - for example, a stupidly good implant - as in, ten times better than any on the market - that malfunctions and leaves a player paralyzed temporarily. Teaches people to be cautious.


Also, anyone playing stupidly, for example "LOL n33d gold nao plz" or being generally irritating will be lobotomised. IRL. All in the terms of use :p


And yes, yes I have thought about this. There's a LOT more background on my computer :p

[ImmortalAer]

The Qfusion engine is free and open source. It's based on the Quake II engine, and is used by Warsow. I don't have experience with it, but do have some programming experience and could probably pick it up if I was feeling motivated.

Edit: See also this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_first-person_shooters#Free_first-person_shooter_game_engines)

Why use the Qfusion when Unreal2 is free as well? They used it for Unreal Championship 2, and a bunch of other games. It might not be quite Unreal3, which was the base for Gears of War, but it's enough to get started with, right? :smallbiggrin:

(Besides it's written in C++, which is appearntly one of the more common/better programming languages out there, according to some people/websites? :smallconfused: )

[Fri]

An RPG/superhero sandbox game with moral choice.

Keep in mind that I've been thinking about this since before I knew of InFamous.
At character Generation, you play through a very Batman-esque Origin Story where your ultra-rich parents are buying you a birthday gift, and paying for you to have a private tutor in one subject for a number of years.

I'm fuzzy on the birthday gifts, but which one you choose will basically determine Offense, Defense or Balanced Powersets at the end of it all, and the choice of tutor will determine your power source.
You can either choose to have a
Philosophy Tutor (Magic)
Chemistry Professor (Mutation)
Electronics Professor (Technology)
or a
Personal Trainer (Training)

These will determine what powers you have access to when the game starts, so if you chose the Electronics Professor and the Defense option, you would be an Iron Man-esque, power armoured Hero/Villian, and a Balanced Personal trainer would make you a ninja (or Batman).

Important factors in the game will be:
Noteriety (Probability of being randomly attacked by thugs/vigilantes wanting to make a name for themselves by taking you out or scaring away "Street level" side-missions, defeating them quickly. After all, nobody is going to try and steal a purse when he sees Spider Man bearing down on him.)

Anonymity (High Anonymity will allow you to make escapes by changing into your civilian persona. Low Anonymity will let cause you to be assaulted at your "day Job" or while otherwise in Civilian Mode, as well as cause your contacts some serious grief)

Income (This is how you pay for research for new abilities)

Experiance (trakced seperately for each ability, a la Final Fantasy II.)

There would be a multitude of "travel" abilities usable throughout the game (Flight for Mages/Tekkie/Mutants, Sports Cars/Motorcycles for everyone. Mutants can do a Spider Man - esque swing, Tekkies and Normals can teleport.)

You would have access to all your powers while in Civilian mode (But doing this is the quickest way to lower your Anonymity)

Karma will determine what kind of sidequests are playable, and what storyline you begin to follow. The game will be divided into three basic "Tiers"

Rookie
Hero/Villian
Legend

the Rookie Tier of the game allows you to tell the game what you want to play as, with the actions here being the most black and white (Kill the mugger, Arrest the Mugger, Help the Mugger, Kill the Mugger AND the old lady, pocket the cash). Your actions will be tracked on a Violence/Nonviolence, Good/Evil and a Kind/Cruel Axis. Significant progress on all these Axes (IE, being a Cruel/Nonviolent/Evil Guy) will move you up into the Hero/Villian Tier, where choices become more muddled grey and you get to see the effects of your Rookie Choices on the gameworld. you can still completely change the way you're treating the city here, but it's harder. Achieving 75% in either diretion on two of the axes will move you into the Legend Tier.

Once you're a legend, even if you wanted to change, nobody is going to blieve you. Dr. VonEvilguy will always be remembered as the supervillian, and nobody is going to care if he says his new ray gun will be used only to cure cancer. They'll think it's a Death Ray. You have an impossible amount of work ahead of you to change the Public Opinion, and a slightly more managable amount to change the world for the better instead of ruining it.

That's really awesome. And I can think one way to make a simple way of it. Basically stripped to the idea without all the action and pretty polygons.

Make it a browser based text game. You heard me. It'd be good for that kind of game.

[RS14]

Why use the Qfusion when Unreal2 is free as well? They used it for Unreal Championship 2, and a bunch of other games. It might not be quite Unreal3, which was the base for Gears of War, but it's enough to get started with, right? :smallbiggrin:

Because I'm lazy and just looked up the engine of the first free FPS I knew. :smallwink:

[Morty]

It's an RPG with more dialog than shooting stuff.


You'd never sell that game.

[toasty]

You'd never sell that game.

I'd buy it. :D

[Ziren]

You'd never sell that game.

Almost all of the games here wouldn't stand a chance on the market, so if any of them is done, it's most likely going to be freeware/open source (though I'm still clinging to that straw that Firaxis might actually make a game that is close to what I have in mind - I wouldn't trust any other developer with it).

[SilverSheriff]

You'd never sell that game.

I didn't say that there wouldn't be non-quest based violence; the main story would be 60% dialog thought.


...game...

...And yes, yes I have thought about this. There's a LOT more background on my computer :p

WANT NOW.:smallbiggrin:

[Morty]

I didn't say that there wouldn't be non-quest based violence; the main story would be 60% dialog thought.

I got that, but it doesn't change the fact that this game wouldn't sell. Not that the purpose of this thread is market analysis, so maybe I should just shut up.

[ImmortalAer]

Almost all of the games here wouldn't stand a chance on the market, so if any of them is done, it's most likely going to be freeware/open source (though I'm still clinging to that straw that Firaxis might actually make a game that is close to what I have in mind - I wouldn't trust any other developer with it).

...Pax Imperia II?

Nevermind, blaming the wrong company again. :smalltongue:

[Gnome de plume]

An RPG with the sense of humour of Monkey Island, including the ability do pun duel.

[Misereor]

I ask you all this: If you could pitch an idea for a video game series to any video game company, have them make it, and have it be the next biggest thing to have a dozen sequels, what would this series be like?
[/B]

I've always fantasized about Shadowrun Online.
Single player sandbox game with campaign and limited multiplayer-element that would eventually be developed into a full MMORPG. Think GTA with bigger explosions, magic, and stealth.
Putting everything in needed for an authentic feel would be too difficult to accomplish at once, so limited features at launch, to be added in the expansions (or "chapters") along with timeline and adventure updates. I'm thinking 2046 or so at launch, and then working forward with one major expansion/plot update a year. Minor features and plot updates to be added on the fly. I'm thinking three development teams. One for the core game, one for expansions, and one for lesser updates.

Other stuff to break the mold:
Character trees, lifestyles, commuting, loadouts (+concealment ofc), downtime, gaining faction heat/notoriety/reputation, neighborhood ratings, chance for perma-death/disfigurement/essence loss, etc. And definetely not the standard end-game. Rather aging, death or successfull retirement (with accompanying bonuses to next char, depending on retirement score).

*sigh*
Maybe I should start playing the lottery. I would need a Billion or so to do it the way I wanted...

[Flickerdart]

Wait, so whatever we make, it's guaranteed to be the next big thing and have a dozen sequels?

Such power...I'll be in the lab, brewing up something truly diabolical. "Watching Paint Dry Simulator" doesn't seem quite sinister enough.

[danzibr]

Huh. Somewhat to my surprise, people have already voiced things very similar to what I'm about to say.

I'd make a TRPG where you control a Necromancer. Out of combat, build and customize your mini-army. As you gain levels, you can control more/stronger undead. Then typical TRPG gameplay.

[Dienekes]

2009? That's some powerful necromancy we got going on here.

But it's still an interesting question. Personally, I've always been a huge fan of swords and whatnot in a game, and I think after playing a bit of the For Honor game, they've got a melee system that is fun and engaging. Unfortunately, the game itself seems all focused on the parts of gaming I don't particularly care about.

Instead I'd make a probably over-complicated mix of a Bioware game, Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls, and For Honor.

You go through a detailed story of various factions starting a fantastical medieval war, where you make allies, get betrayed, maybe start your own house. Each weapon has it's own moves and combos that make each weapon feel distinct with advantages and disadvantages. You can build and design your character, to emphasize movement speed, damage, health, endurance, and equipment load. And a magic system that I'm still planning in my head a bit. It's a tough balance between making magic fun and making it too powerful in comparison to the rest of the players.

You pick up a few companions to interact with, of which 2 of them can go out with you on a mission. If you are in the mood for co-op though, one or both of them can be replaced with a fellow player's character.

There will be a mix of warrior and monster bosses, some of which can be jumped on and hacked at like in a Dragon's Dogma or Shadow of the Colossus style game.

And further online play would be made available to duel your character against others as well as run through a few other game modes: 1v1, 2v2, mass battles, castle sieges, and tournament modes.

With good writing, and crisp gameplay I think this could be insanely fun. But, I'll admit it's a bit too big for current games. They all either have a hugely fleshed out single player and limited to no multiplayer options or focus entirely on multiplayer and have single player modes that are about 3 hours long of lazy writing and a stereotypes masquerading as characters.

[Tvtyrant]

I would really like a completely massive RTS. It would be divided into hexes like a 4X game, but control is at the RTS level and the camera zooms into whichever hex you click on. The hexes you are not currently controlling are AI controlled, with some orders available to tell one province to focus on defense, another on wood, etc. You can micromanage troops and production and zoom out to focus on grand strategy.

The assumption of the game is that the group playing would save frequently and come back to play later, or it can be left on and allow the computers to be in control while people do their normal stuff.

[danzibr]

2009? That's some powerful necromancy we got going on here.
Haha... I didn't even notice. And I talk about a game with a Necromancer :P