People often whine and bitch about how RPG's often fall short in certain areas, such as plot, battle system, characters, etc. but they often don't clarify how these areas can be fixed. What is your idea of the perfect RPG?
Oh, And I'd just like to say that being a PAL gamer (furthermore an Australian PAL gamer) I don't get to play that many RPG's, so I may describe something similar to a game that is already in existance.
Firstly, I'd want it to follow a story like FF and not be ultra free flowing like Morrowind.
I would want it to have the same feeling as The Maxx. Dank, gritty, fucked up characters, twisted humour, almost film noir with a twist of black comedy. This would be quite hard to capture, but it would be great. The characters wouldn't be special or "the one prophecised" or anything like that either. Also, I'd like it to be heavily dialogue based, but with very well written dialogue.
Also, I'd like the battle to be real time. It would be fast paced, and you'd have the choice to fight or run away from potentially tedious hordes of enemies. Something like an altered version of the fighting system in Devil May Cry would be good.
If magic were to be in it (Not sure if I'd want to include it as apposed to maintianing a more realistic world), I'd take the whole elemental thing one step further. In many RPG's, fire enemies are hurt by water, etc, but I'd make it that the order of the elemental attacks matters too. For instance, a water attack after a fire attack wouldn't hurt half as much, and a lightning attack after a water attack would be more effective.
Another aspect I don't think has been fully explored is making multiplayer yet still linear RPG's. In fact I can't think of any multiplayer linear RPG's at all. The second player would be as important to the story line as the first. Perhaps they are best friends or something.
The catch of my game would be the way it was written. Each action you do can possibly alter the storyline. The way it would work is like this:
Someone writes the start of the story. The first choice/event comes along, like "takes item X" or "does not take item X" then, they get another person to write one of the paths and another for the other. Then, another choice/event takes place in each path, creating another 2 plot threads. Then, another choice/event takes place in each path, creating another 4 plot threads, and so on.
In case that was confusing, here is a diagram of what I mean:
Code:|T A
|I A A
|M AA AA
|E AAAA AAAA
| AAAAAAAA AAAAAAAA
v Etc... Etc...
A = a split in the plots path
As time progresses, more threads of storyline appear, creating potentially limitless endings.
I can think of more stuff, but Banzai is on TV soon, so I gotta go.
