First, I don't like first person shooter games and I do enjoy rpg's (despite some painful general shortcomings mentioned below). Obviously that's just my preference, but it leads to a very different ideal game.

What I would like to see combines traditional MMO's, certain mechanics from Oblivion, and a sim-city/empire ability. As a player you would have the option of founding a new nation that could expand or die out based on your chooses for the development of the nation, the effectiveness of players joining your nation, interactions (trade/banditry/war) with other nations and threats from whatever "monster" populations exist. The monster populations would grow automatically (with some feedback obviously), and develop progressively stronger champions/chieftains as it grows. Leaders of the nation could create cities with various beneficial upgrades (guards patrolling, marketplace etc) and set quests/jobs based on current needs. The game would also automatically generate various quests, such as rewards for specific monster chieftains-who would not respawn, although a new one would arise.

The Oblivion mechanics are avoiding the idiocy of classes and levels. I've always found it idiotic that you kill your 10th rat and suddenly learn how to cast heal. Your skills should go up because you practiced them (Eve has a good system for this too).

What do other people want in a game that they haven't seen yet?

Two of the best games I've ever played came in the '80s: Starflight and Starflight 2. So the game I'd like to see would be similar to them but X1000.

I want a huge galaxy to explore, a thousand star systems or more. The ability to fight space battles with my crew or land on planets; fly through atmospheres or dive under the oceans. I want to meet dozens of interesting races and solve countless problems.When I fly into a solar system I want to be uncertain of what I'll find there, the thrill of exploration and seeing something new should be ever-present. Kill bad guys, hunt animals, dig for precious metals... all should be options, or maybe all three in a single hour! I want a crew to boss around but one that can give some good advice when the problems pile up. And of course a storyline that is epic in scope and involves the past, present and future, but not one that I have to participate in if I don't want to.

I want there to be numerous ways to "win" the game. I could shoot and kill my way to success or win by trade and economics or even by attaining politcial office. I could captain a space ship or build a colony to greatness. I could be a lone mercenary or a well connected family man.

I doubt anyone is working on such a grand game though.

-Doughdee222

"I am a realist, not a pessimist. The real world is pessimistic by nature."

The problem is that MMOs require a persistent world in order to be balanced and fair to everyone (otherwise a raid group of 25 Korean 15 year olds will take over the game world a few hours after the game is released...), but if the world is persistent your character obviously can't have a real impact on anything, so you're stuck being a nobody. But conversely, while you can substantively alter a single-player RPG game world, no one can look at your character to see what you've accomplished...

@ doughdee,

Sounds great. If only we had millions to spend on our own teams of game developers.

@bortimus,

That is a fundamental challenge for MMO's although there are potential solutions. For example, Eve simply has such a massive universe that no group can exert too much clout (i think there are systems in it that have not yet been explored). Player - player interactions there have done some amazing things (massive financial scams, months long infiltration of a corporation to assassinate the ceo and empty their vaults).

Another option is to impose real penalties from death or even a character lifespan, although I know that most people wouldn't like that. I've wondered if a random "inheritance" from the previous character(s) wouldn't balance the frustration of losing a character with the problems of the kids with no life.

So, doughdee222, you're talking a combination of Civ 4 (empire building) + Starcraft (strategy/resource management) + Mass Effect (explore the universe on various missions) + WoW (MMO) + Wing Commander (Space Combat). Plus a bunch of stuff that hasn't been invented yet. Well... I would definitely play that game. In fact, I'm only a very casual gamer (hence the Wing Commander reference... I can't think of any more modern space combat games) but I think that this game would turn me into a hardcore addict. Something tells me I'm not going to have to worry about that happening, though.

The more massive the game world, the less time the developers can spend on any given piece of that world. Look at Daggerfall, there's a game area the size of Great Britain, but all generic.

As computing advances game we might see more interesting automatically generated content (I can barely code VBA & SQL so could be way off). If the parameters are set correctly, the developers could give a minimal set of instructions and get nearly any general result. Then if they wanted to tweak an area for aesthetic or storyline reasons, they could for example run an aging algorithm on all structures with a sub algorithm of repair based on some level of local prosperity set by either the designer or fluctuating over computed time.

They already have done that quite a bit (Oblivion landscaping for example). The problem I've always seen is that once I can tell that content is auto-generated and is clearly following a set pattern, I lose interest rapidly. Once I had a good idea of what the general algorithms for creating an Oblivion dungeon were, I didn't feel like exploring them since I already knew it'd be some goblins, and the goblin king standing next to a chest, the contents of which would be juuust right for my character's experience level. Now if I went into the same dungeon, and found an intentionally placed magic sword, perhaps even one I probably wasn't even supposed to find yet, I'd get excited.