What is a feature or thing you want in an RPG that you've never seen in one?

[Bad Jim]

Something used to assist pen and paper style roleplaying. Several players and a GM would log on and play. Except the computer would handle the stats, procedurally generate environments, and allow combat to proceed in realtime if the GM could control his NPCs. That would hopefully capture the essential advantages of pen and paper without spending hours resolving a single fight.

 

[Runding]

I would like to see my characters hair grow longer and clothing becoming worn on long journeys to add to the immersion. Its always bugged me that my character remains prestine throughout the entire game. It'd be fun to have a bit of a maintenance duties for your character. Such as hair cuts, etc.

 

[4173]

Something tuned to encourage bizarre, asstastic character builds. However I'm not sure how you accomplish that without just making good builds that look different than other games'.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I'd like a sort of simulator that allows you to battle your own party members and learn tactics from your set up that you may not have been aware of to further improve your performance. This would probably only work for a turn-based RPG, but I would still welcome it.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

On the subject of potions, I always wondered why chugging excessive amounts of potions don't give you diarrhoea.
Fallout: New Vegas didn't go hardcore enough.

Going to the toilet is conspicuous by it's absence in many games.

Lara Croft can hold it in for a long time especially with all those waterfalls around...:|

A feature I'd love in an RPG is to be able to pretend you are on the side of a faction while acting as a spy for the other like with NCR and Legion. That would be fun.

 

[RemuValtrez]

I absolutely loved the Alchemy system in Oblivion, there were a few things that could have made it better, and there are mods that do such a thing (Alchemy Advanced). Which makes it so you can save potions, and make whole batches of them in you have a lot of materials for it. Overall, alchemy is one of the most powerful tools in oblivion, and I love it for that reason. I just wish more games had that type of system for Alchemy (A Good system for alchemy).

 

[NazzerDawk]

Something used to assist pen and paper style roleplaying. Several players and a GM would log on and play. Except the computer would handle the stats, procedurally generate environments, and allow combat to proceed in realtime if the GM could control his NPCs. That would hopefully capture the essential advantages of pen and paper without spending hours resolving a single fight.

Check out the d and d virtual table, it's gonna be a lot like that.

 

[Jedoro]

I'd like for there to be more realistic time limits in RPG's, because:

-I hate when an NPC says "ZOMG the enemy will attack en masse soon!" but as long as you don't accept the quest, they never attack
-If allies are in a fight and losing, you shouldn't heroically save the day whether you sprinted to their aid or looked around for loot for ten minutes first

 

[Saltyk]

You know what I'd like all RPGs to do away with? Secret stats If you can't read it, I did exactly what I wanted to do. Highlight my comment to see it.

Yeah, don't you hate that? It's a seriously annoying habit of a lot of games. Why should I have to guess about that kind of thing? Why can't they just tell us?

 

[WanderingFool]

Hmm, well...

I want to see a gameplay system something like DA:O for a real-time action based JRPG. To be exact, I want the ability to go into a menu and program each character to act a specific way, such as setting them to "assault" mode for a more aggressive attack pattern, or "Healing" for casting healing spells or whatnot when needed, or a "magic support" or "magic offense" for supporting spells and offensive spells. Even more though, I want to be able to program a response for a given situation, like if I get below 20% health, my healer will cast a healing spell on me fallowed by a stat boosting spell.

For WRPGs, I want the mechanic where good, strong weapons are rarer, while most of the weapons you buy in stores are mass-produced, thus cheaper but are less effective and less durable. Really, im not sure how to explain this well...

 

[Shadowhawk77]

in Army of Two the 40th day there was REAL decisions... The first being killing a guy that was wanted or letting him live because hes a ood guy. But whaat really scared me was if you do something you never know what exactly to expect, which is good and sad at time like when your pinned down and can tell a nice little kid to sit still or grab a gun and shoot a guy
I told the kid to kill the guy without thinking kid gets sniped i feel sad and start crying a little inside (INSIDE!!!)

it end up messing with you internally on what you should do because you dont have real knowledge of whats about to happen so you kinda have to wing it and hope you get it right
thats what i love about games and ive never seen any other game pull it off so sadly well

 

[BLAHwhatever]

Well. I wish I could transfer the dog from Fable III into some more games. Just love a quirly companion u can show your affection to (or disappointment .... or cruelty).
I'd particularly love him in Fallout 3 or Oblivion/Skyrim. Sure, Dogmeat is neat. But I'd trade him in for the Fable-dog any day. I'd also like more details to educating and disciplining the dog.

I'd love Mount and Blade's Combat system in other games, or a more detailed "everything" in Mount and Blade.
Like a livelier world, a better companion system with more social interaction than "i dont like him" "ok I'm with you" "i don't like him either" "don't care". A slight update in graphics, especially in facial expression and character customisation.

Better control over your troops.

A LOT MORE sidequests. Maybe a Mainquest you can choose to ignore. Like in Fallout. "Go get a water filter" "Screw you, Imma explore the wasteland and kill stuff on my own merits" or "ok brb asap"

And maybe a fantasy setting. Including magic. Balanced magic, that is. Like mages are darn hard to find, require a lot of training, and I mean a lot. Like become a perfect swordsman in 5 years, became a decent mage in 25 years. And one crossbow bolt between the eyes without him having some magic deflection shield "online" should be able to kill the mage.
Also: No/ only weak healing magic. Or let healing magics scale with the first aid skill and surgeon skill. You know. Gotta know anatomy to heal wounds/ bones/ arteries/ nerves/ organs and stuff.

I dunno. Mount and Blade's Combat system is lying there, waiting for developers to create the perfect/ a very decent game around it. WHY DOESN'T ANYONE GRASP IT!? (I'm not saying Mount and Blade isn't a decent game)

I'd also like future RPGs to get their focus back on a decent story. Especially for the main plot and your companions. After all interesting companions can make or break a game for me.
Mass Effect does this alright, but not perfect. Let the guys have some opinions on what you're doing and the situations you're going through. And not only in their side missions. "I don like dis, Shepherd" "I agwee yith you, Shepherd :3" is NOT enough.

Could write moar. But dis is enough for now

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

I really like the idea of the Lessions Learned perk in the Fallout DLC. (At lvl.22 you can gain a % exp. bonus set by your lvl i.e 22% for lvl 22)
This makes Lvl Grinding soooooooooooooooooooo much easier.
Just imagine a JRPG with this, as a choice for people whose idea of fun is NOT doing random crap for 1000 hours to advance.

 

[Bostur]

What is a feature or thing you want in an RPG that you've never seen in one?

The original Silent Service had the concept of realism settings. Checkboxes that could be turned on and off to add or remove individual gameplay features. Dud torpedoes, realistic aiming, weather effects, fuel consumption - to name a few. I'd love to see RPGs have optional settings like that. FO:NV did it with it's hardcore mode, but it would have been better if the individual features of hardcore mode could have been selected.
Settings that would make sense for an RPG could be potion cooldown, friendly fire with AoE, consumption of lockpick tools, spell ingredients.
A system of realism settings needs to be separate from the difficulty setting and should only be used for features that don't affect overall difficulty and game balance much.

If there is a feature or thing you want in an RPG, but its not done right, how can it be fixed?

In general I would like RPGs to have less focus on combat. Many RPGs are simply combat sequences interrupted by storyline. It's possible to create much deeper world interaction by varying what players can do. The Fallout series is pretty good at this, but I see a lot of potential for improvement. Hacking and lockpick mini-games is just scratching the surface really. I find it a little bit ironic that an ancient game called Wasteland had much deeper world interaction than most modern titles.

What features do you like about certain RPGs?

I like that Fallout uses it's own rulesystem without copying a pre-made one.
I like the elaborate characters of DA:O.
I like that Dungeons of Dredmor has a perma death option.
I generally like games that allow me to see a combat log, sometimes things happen too fast to really notice what is going on. Chewing on the numbers in a combat log can help in that case.

 

[Heartcafe]

real harsh consequenses, many RPG developers keep saying that their games have consequenses depending on your actions, however these effects are usually pretty much meaningless and dont have big effect on the story, I want to see something that have real effects on your gameplay (kill your companion, take away your money, give you shitloads of guns for free) good & bad big outcomes that effect directly to YOUR story & gameplay

Didn't Dragon Age Origins do that? You could kill or discard almost every single one of your companions.

 

[Rapamaha]

real harsh consequenses, many RPG developers keep saying that their games have consequenses depending on your actions, however these effects are usually pretty much meaningless and dont have big effect on the story, I want to see something that have real effects on your gameplay (kill your companion, take away your money, give you shitloads of guns for free) good & bad big outcomes that effect directly to YOUR story & gameplay

Didn't Dragon Age Origins do that? You could kill or discard almost every single one of your companions.

yeah DA Origins got some of it right, but for me losing certain characters didnt really matter to me in DA Origins, only 3 of the companions in DA:O were actually interesting and the rest pretty much just stood there in my camp for the whole game so it wasnt that big "shock" for me

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

To be able to play as a full grown freaking dragon and you had to steal treasure from the weakling nations of whatever fantasy world you lived in and horde it all away for use as a bed.

Then every now and again some hero would come try to kill you with his party. It would be like a reverse RPG unless you wanted to play as a good dragon where you could be voiced by a scottish actor who is too often mentioned around dragons for his name to be mentioned here.

Some quests could be:
Destroy village 0/10
Unleash blight 0/1
devour children 0/700 000

It would be the single coolest RPG ever.