what WOULD be your favorite game?

[razgon]

So, with all the talk about the decline of PC games, console'itis, death of TurnBased Strategy games, less focus on creating a good, innovative game and more on money, what WOULD be your favorite game, if you could design it?

I think that here on OO we have a nice representation of more adult, intelligent, qualitity-minded, good-looking gamers, and, we even have a few game designers look in on us, once in while (No, not you Derek, please...)

I have a dream myself...

Basically, you could call it Rome:TW in space. Only, I had the idea before RTW did
Its a turn-based strategy game, set in deep space. The focus is on research, empire management, and of course, the occasional space war, with galaxy spanning consequences.
Space battles would be possbile to fight out in 3D battles, fleet-wise, with ability to pause, and give new orders.

Graphics must of course, be good, and musical score should fit the deep-space theme.

In addition to this, there should be governors and leaders, giving various boosts to various areas.

The galaxy should be alive, teeming with alien races, special events, both local and galaxy spanning.
Some of the events, are diplomatic in nature, relating to your own empire (Not unlike Nationstates), others are dealing with new forces in the universe, disasters, rebels and so forth.

Diplomacy should be reminiscent of Master of Orion 2's diplomacy, only with more options, and should actually be a viable way to winning to game, especially with the use of espionage/sabotage as well.

hmm, looking at this, its basically what Moo3 shoild have been...sigh...

So, let me hear, what would YOUR favorite game be?

[DArtagnan]

I have a ton of dream games, but off the top of my head, the following would be truly great:

A CRPG with the following features:

The scope and basic gameplay of an Elderscrolls game

1st and 3rd person perspective.
Exploration emphasis.
Freedom and non-linearity.
Real-time combat with player and character skill carrying equal weight.
The sheer scope and size.

The richness and rewards of the D&D 3.5 ruleset

Naturally, modified to be feasible in real-time.
No other system is more rewarding, and every single level gained is significant.

The loot system of Diablo 2

The sheer variety and balance of power in this system is totally unsurpassed.

The dungeon design of System Shock/Ultima Underworld

The level of immersion and detail is still unmatched.

The polish, balance, and production values of a Blizzard game

They know what they’re doing like no other company out there.

The Unreal 3.0 engine

Though Oblivion looks very impressive, I still think a succesful implementation of the next generation Unreal engine would surpass it by quite a bit.

The cinematic feel of an Origin game

I’m thinking in particular of the old Wing Commander games,

The writing of whoever did Bioforge

Don’t know who the writer was, but it still remains in memory as the most brilliant and mature writing I’ve encountered in a game as of yet.

Small-scale cooperative multiplayer

2-8 players. This is a particularly vital feature and a thoroughly succesful implementation in a game like this has yet to be done.

[Beer Goggles]

A PC only Thief 3.

[wonderpug]

Funny, I read the thread title and had a similar dream as razgon's before even reading it.

In short, my favorite game is Star Wars: Rebellion done properly.

[Blackhawk]

It depends on my mood when you ask me. Right now, if I could snap my fingers and summon the 'perfect' game, it would be:

A blend of the concepts of Rome: Total War, and Operation Flashpoint, and Rainbow Six.

The setting is modern real-world military. Think a grand strategic map comparable to Rome - you build, do diplomacy, manage armies, the whole spiel. When you meet another army, you can face them in Rome like RTS mode, with the option to take over a unit in FPS view. The gameplay here would be comparable to OpFlash with first person control over land, sea, and air units, with the option to pause, zoom out, and give orders.

In Rome, you had the option to send in spies to discover information or sabotage enemy defenses, and assassins to kill enemy leaders or sabotage civil and military buildings. You could do this in my game, too, but you'd have the option to go in and do them yourself, either alone or with a small squad (think Rainbow Six/Splinter Cell here).

It'd be a blast. You've declared war on a neighboring nation, and have trained an army with which to stage an invasion. You load a squad into a chopper, covertly insert them into a neighboring city, then play the level like an FPS. You sabotage the anti-air defenses, strap some C-4 to the side of the officers' mess, and make your escape. You then take your army and invade, playing the battle like an FPS. With the enemy air defenses down after your sabotage, you drop into first person and hop in an attack chopper to assault the enemy armor yourself.

When you win, you drop back out to the world map mode and continue with your campaign.

[ChrisGwinn]

If I thought I was a great game designer, I'd be writing games instead of playing them.

[Kraken]

I'd be happy to play razgon's game.

For years, I've picked away at a design for a space exploration and development game. It starts out with real historical conditions at the close of WW2, and slowly progresses thru the Space Age to near-future technologies and programs and on into science fiction. It is highly realistic and contains no (or extremely limited) combat. You're the director of a quasi-NASA organization. You carry out high-level policy directives set by your government (a semi-randomized AI working within historical parameters). You have to cope with budget fluctuations, unstable international agreements, technological failures, and random political and economic events; your long-range goal is to transform your government agency into a semi-independent corporation (like a defense contractor), and ultimately to build a profitable space infrastructure that can sustain itself without government contracts. Each nation's government type influences its budget and planning process, and of course your agency's successes and failures feed back into political support for your agenda. It is basically a business sim with lots of exploration, real historical events, and strong political overtones.

Unfortunately, with no combat and precious few explosions, nobody would buy it. It's the kind of game only a micromanager would love.

[ChrisGrenard]

Honestly, for me it would be a perfected version of Breakdown. Everyone who has played Breakdown knows what the problems are. I just want those fixed.

[ChrisGwinn]

Oh, I do have one game idea that I'd like to play.

I'd love to see a really cool zero-G SF sim with a strong emphasis on Space marine boarding party action. Punch through hulls, SF combat in close quarters, explosive decompression, customizable power armor, etc.

[Seppe]

I think my ideal game would be more along the lines of Razgon's game. But ChrisGwinn's would be fun.

I dont think i could come up with just one, but a MOO type game would be great (either 1 or 2 or even some of the ideas of 3). I think a Master's of Magic would be awesome - i still play that game.

I guess a really good tbs 4x game would be my ideal.

But i also like x-com, chaos gate, etc.
And RPGs, and ... well lots

[dfs]

King of Dragon Pass set in the early colonial period.

Playing Fate, I'm reminded of how much I liked the menu system of being in Town during Darklands. If NPC's are little more than vending machines, don't make me chase them around the map. A good historical/replayable RPG.

I believe it was Tom Wolfe who postulated that writing fiction was doomed because by the time you dreamed up a fictional story strange enough to be interesting it had already come true.

[razgon]

Oh, I do have one game idea that I'd like to play.

I'd love to see a really cool zero-G SF sim with a strong emphasis on Space marine boarding party action. Punch through hulls, SF combat in close quarters, explosive decompression, customizable power armor, etc.

niiice - now THAT I would play!!
Kinda like Space Hulk and the Space Marines eh??

ChrisGrenard: What is "Breakdown"??

[ChrisGrenard]

Oh, I do have one game idea that I'd like to play.

I'd love to see a really cool zero-G SF sim with a strong emphasis on Space marine boarding party action. Punch through hulls, SF combat in close quarters, explosive decompression, customizable power armor, etc.

niiice - now THAT I would play!!
Kinda like Space Hulk and the Space Marines eh??

ChrisGrenard: What is "Breakdown"??

Breakdown is a First Person game on Xbox. Basically, you use (rarely) guns and often your fists to fight evil aliens and whatnot. The storyline is actually quite good, however the difficulty and interface was totally unbalanced at times. Anyway, the game never leaves the first person perspective, but it had all sorts of scenes where stuff was happening and your character would do stuff like rappel off of walls and neat stuff like that, while simultaneously never feeling like you've "lost control" of your character. I don't know how they did that, but it was neat.

[ChrisGwinn]

Isn't Breakdown the game that features both a first-person perspective and vomiting by the main PC?

[Kaigen]

I want someone to mix Half-Life and a Bioware game. Meaning, totally cast the player into the game world like Half-Life does. Never ever leave the first-person perspective, and have the story happen to the player rather than telling it to the player. But at the same time, allow Bioware style dialogue trees, the choice to be good or evil and branching plot threads in the story.

Ideally, the setting would be a kind of surreal Planescape-esque universe. The size of the game world would be kind of a mix of a Bioware game and the Zelda games. Meaning you have several major cities that you can move between, but give a fully explorable world in between those filled with stuff to do.

Combat would be a polished-up first-person version of Blade of Darkness' combat with some elements of Riddick thrown in. But you'd also have the option to play stealth or magic characters. Stealth would play more like Thief, and magic would be something entirely unique. In fact, I'd like to see magic become almost puzzle like and maybe even use the environment to allow players to create spells on the fly. Say they could choose a spell alignment (defensive, offensive, support) and then magically attune the spell to something in the environment. So if a mage picked offensive and attunted that to a torch, he would launch a fireball. If he picked supportive and then attuned that to a pond, he would heal himself. If he picked defensive and then attunted that to a rock, he would gain some magical rock armor.

But players wouldn't be limited to a single class. At the same time, if someone was playing mage-heavy and they tried to pick up a two-handed axe, they might find it swings very slow and clumsy. Or if a thief tried to cast a spell, the effect it had would be negligable. Maybe a fighter wants to sneak by someone, he would find that his footsteps are louder and his armor makes a lot of noise. Someone could play a jack of all trades, but they'd never be as strong as they could be if they focused on one.

And even though the game would be entirely first-person, the game should have a lot of visual customization on your character that you could see in your reflection in mirrors or water throughout the game. But like Fable, if you're a brawler your character model will become more muscled and scarred, if he's sneaky then he'll become more lithe and if he's magical, then he'll become more emaciated and so on.

I'm also attracted to the idea of limiting the player inventory. Don't allow them to carry a backpack full of platemail or axes or claymores. For example, you might only allow them to carry a primary and secondary melee weapon, a ranged weapon and the armor that they're wearing. Their backpack would be for things like food, potions, or small loot items. Players can still take armor off bodies, but they'd have to wear it. Instead of carrying it back to town, they could sell the location of corpses to scavengers, who would go collect the items you couldn't carry.

The game would also have as little HUD as possible. Health could be indicated by the world losing some of its color and the sound of your heart beat becoming audible and fast. Things like a quest journal or map would take the form of an actual phyiscal objectl that you could pull out of your backpack.

So, basically Half Life + Baldur's Gate + Blade of Darkness + Torment + Fable + Zelda + Riddick + Thief = pwn.

[Kaigen]

Okay, one other thing: I think instead of a Bioware-style dialogue tree, a more fitting system to the Half-Life "You are THE man" philosophy would be for the player to choose an emotional response instead of a verbal response. Allow the player to fill in exactly what the player said in their own imagination, so you don't have to put words in their mouth. So if a kid came up to you and said, "I lost my mommy. Could you help me find her?" You could choose out of Irate, Friendly, Apathetic and so on.

[ChrisGrenard]

Isn't Breakdown the game that features both a first-person perspective and vomiting by the main PC?

Why yes, yes it does.

[Eduardo X]

OFP mixed with WWII Online, but single player, and perhaps set in a more modern country, kind of like Boiling Point, but with supply moddled enough to conduct a guerrilla war if you want, or a full-scale war if you get that much support. There would be urban guerrilla, diplomacy with the possibility of US intervention, and all things limited-warfare.

[Sparhawk]

A game that I can call, home.

[Creepy_Smell]

I'm a simple man.

I'd just combine the concept of Autoduel (car combat where you have different roles - vigilante, courrier, arena duelist) with the car combat of Interstate 76 and the graphics of GTA:VC (Havent played SA). Multiple cities with lots to do in them with different roads between them. It needs some main rpg story to it but lots of optional tasks.

But you should be able to get out of the car..

[Zathras]

I've always wanted a Civ game that continued on after your colony ship took off, and followed the colonists righ on into an Alpha Centauri game.

That would rock.

[Victoria Raverna]

The Sims Infinity.

Like the Sims 2 game but don't stop it at just your house, you can travel to your workplace and work there. If you're in military career, you can travel to work and got send to Iraq and fight war there as a soldier and later you are promoted to higher level and you can command war as a general. If you're in politic career, you can become the president and have to make all decision that president make.

For sport career, you can choose to become a football player and then you play the game like in a sport game when you're in match.

So what I want is the ultimate sim of everything.

[wonderpug]

The Sims Infinity.

Like the Sims 2 game but don't stop it at just your house, you can travel to your workplace and work there. If you're in military career, you can travel to work and got send to Iraq and fight war there as a soldier and later you are promoted to higher level and you can command war as a general. If you're in politic career, you can become the president and have to make all decision that president make.

For sport career, you can choose to become a football player and then you play the game like in a sport game when you're in match.

So what I want is the ultimate sim of everything.:)

Not quite what you're looking for, but have you heard of Second Life? Haven't tried it myself, but supposedly you can roam around the virtual world with other people and design just about anything from bumper cars to WWII fighter planes. I think it might be the closest thing to an "ultimate sim of everything" at the moment. :)

[jpinard]

Oblivian Graphcis, with the entire world Arena had.

[Victoria Raverna]

The Sims Infinity.

Like the Sims 2 game but don't stop it at just your house, you can travel to your workplace and work there. If you're in military career, you can travel to work and got send to Iraq and fight war there as a soldier and later you are promoted to higher level and you can command war as a general. If you're in politic career, you can become the president and have to make all decision that president make.

For sport career, you can choose to become a football player and then you play the game like in a sport game when you're in match.

So what I want is the ultimate sim of everything.

Not quite what you're looking for, but have you heard of Second Life? Haven't tried it myself, but supposedly you can roam around the virtual world with other people and design just about anything from bumper cars to WWII fighter planes. I think it might be the closest thing to an "ultimate sim of everything" at the moment.

I have tried Second Life, it is not what I want since it abstract a lot of stuff while what I want is a sim that contain everything.

While a sim of everything probably not possible to be released, I think it is possible for a modular concept of several games that connect seamlessly with each other to become a sim that contain almost everything. So like EA releasing The Sims Infinity as the central module then if you own EA Sport games then you can choose sport career and become soccer player by integrating with FIFA or Total Club Manager if you become a coach/manager. Or you can stay in business career but at higher rank you can choose to spend each morning playing golf by connecting to Tiger Wood golf sim, etc.

Then EA can release military based FPS so you can become a soldier in the Sims and fight war by integrating the FPS. Or integrate EA war game and you as a general in the Sims can fight war.

Plus other possible EA games except those that in other period of time or a fantasy based one can integrate with the Sims.

If EA put option to integrate everything to the Sims, I'm sure a collector type of person like me will own all EA games just so I can integrate them into the Sims even if I probably never even play some of the games. Most of EA games will be like an expansion to the Sims.

It is just almost like how Nintendo want every owner of gamecube own gameboy. Owner of games on gameboy want to buy the same title for gamecube just so they can connect them together, etc.

[razgon]

Thats pretty interesting...the whole concept of games integrating has been explored way to little.

The only thing I've ever heard of, is Championship Manager and is it FIFA that interacts, so that oyu can play the matches you want in CM, for real in FIFA...nice touch...guess thats the basic idea of what you want...

of course, the integration would be diffuclt, also because it probably means codesharing amongst different developer houses...

[Victoria Raverna]

Thats pretty interesting...the whole concept of games integrating has been explored way to little.

The only thing I've ever heard of, is Championship Manager and is it FIFA that interacts, so that oyu can play the matches you want in CM, for real in FIFA...nice touch...guess thats the basic idea of what you want...

of course, the integration would be diffuclt, also because it probably means codesharing amongst different developer houses...

While it is still difficult, codesharing among different developer houses are not needed since what I want is to integrate almost every games to the Sims. So what EA need to do is to develop a standard way to integrate games to the Sims and publish that info. So it'll be like The Sims Infinity plug-in SDK thingy.

If they managed to do it, then I guess it'll increase the sale of PC games since The Sims series is a best seller PC game title so even if a small percentage of the Sims players decide to buy a few games to integrate it, it'll increase sale of these other games.

EA tried some kind of integration before with Total Club Manager and FIFA games for the PC. Also EA used to have a bonus system in EA Sport games for console that allow you to play like FIFA game and unlock some stuff but those points you win from FIFA game also count to unlock stuff for EA Sport's other games like boxing or basketball. It seems like the drop this in newer EA Sport title for console.

[Shadari]

So, basically Half Life + Baldur's Gate + Blade of Darkness + Torment + Fable + Zelda + Riddick + Thief = pwn.

The Elder Scrolls games are pretty much in line with that same vision.

[ChrisGwinn]

So, basically Half Life + Baldur's Gate + Blade of Darkness + Torment + Fable + Zelda + Riddick + Thief = pwn.

The Elder Scrolls games are pretty much in line with that same vision.

Except the setting isn't surreal, there's no dialogue tree, combat/stealth/magic isn't as he described, there's no change in character models over time... Did you read the first part of his post?

[Shadari]

So, basically Half Life + Baldur's Gate + Blade of Darkness + Torment + Fable + Zelda + Riddick + Thief = pwn.

The Elder Scrolls games are pretty much in line with that same vision.

Except the setting isn't surreal, there's no dialogue tree, combat/stealth/magic isn't as he described, there's no change in character models over time... Did you read the first part of his post?

Well I said that their vision was in line with what he described, not necessarily that their actual implementation was identical. Can you name something that's closer to Kaigen's description than an Elder Scrolls game?

[Kaigen]

So, basically Half Life + Baldur's Gate + Blade of Darkness + Torment + Fable + Zelda + Riddick + Thief = pwn.

The Elder Scrolls games are pretty much in line with that same vision.

Except the setting isn't surreal, there's no dialogue tree, combat/stealth/magic isn't as he described, there's no change in character models over time... Did you read the first part of his post?

Well I said that their vision was in line with what he described, not necessarily that their actual implementation was identical. Can you name something that's closer to Kaigen's description than an Elder Scrolls game?

It's closest, but I don't think it's close. Sure, it's an open-ended first-person RPG but other than that, what I envision is a totally different monster.

[Brian]

But you should be able to get out of the car..

Never get out of the car.

[Creepy_Smell]

But you should be able to get out of the car..

Never get out of the car.

Seeing if anyone would notice.

[RashG]

Basically my dream game is Jagged Alliance 2 with more of everything. Made by the same team that made JA2 and with the same fluidity of gaming and humour.

And razgon, the game you are describing sounds very much like Imperium Galactica 2. Unfortunately it had the same fate as MOO3.

[qp]

Cross Daggerfall, GTA, Diablo? With small scale coop multiplay. Oh and Gothic's wildlife. Basically a wide ranging, fun to play, action RPG.

[Freezer-TPF-]

A full Mechwarrior action-RPG with in-Mech combat as well as outside the Mech FPS combat missions with skill development. Seamless transitions between being on foot and piloting perfectly-scaled vehicles/mechs. Mechwarrior Mercenary-type storyline.

[baron calamity]

Start with Freedom Force and combine equal parts of GTA and Xcom with dashes of The Sims 2 and fallout 2. I don't think I've ever need another game.

[dfs]

I don't think I've ever need another game.

But hasn't Derrek already promised us that?

I gave up hoping for that "last game ever" long ago. As long as I game, I'll be interested in new and different takes on the genres. Taking a game I love and finding those few small niggles that I want improved is almost reflexive now. No thought to it at all.

[Kraken]

I find it amusing that, when asked about the ultimate game, this bunch of people who gripe about the death of innovation happily come up with "cross Game A with Game B on the Game C engine."

[baron calamity]

I find it amusing that, when asked about the ultimate game, this bunch of people who gripe about the death of innovation happily come up with "cross Game A with Game B on the Game C engine."

Easier to explain in conversation.