A proper AAA open-world Adventure Time game. As much like Breath of the Wild as possible within that spectrum where sidequests are found and not indicated, and exploration is rewarded. It's a...
A proper AAA open-world Adventure Time game. As much like Breath of the Wild as possible within that spectrum where sidequests are found and not indicated, and exploration is rewarded.
It's a difficult sell for anyone not familiar with the show or the land of Ooo but basically we're talking about a huge, extremely fantastical and bizarre world with everything from a Candy Kingdom to a Hades-like underworld to a mystical frozen Ice Kingdom to dense jungles and ancient temples to alternate dimensions to a whole above-cloud world. I'd love to see a huge open world that is completely fantastical, with no real world basis, and an insanely diverse collection of biomes.
The show has all kinds of strange things the heroes discover about the world, and many of their storylines are found almost by accident. There's all kinds of mystical items and artifacts in the show that the heroes discover in the world, it wouldn't be much to invent many more of everything for the game. With the imagination of the show, the ideas are basically bottomless. I think having a BotW-style exploration game is key because having question marks thrust at you from all directions is actually against the spirit of Adventure Time.
I've thought about this since long before Elden Ring, but Elden Ring has certainly increased my appetite and hope that we can one day get an Adventure Time game that the show deserves.
Every time this topic comes up, this is my answer (because I have placed way too much thought into this.) The game I'd make would be called Absolute Dominion. So, at its heart, it's a grand...
Every time this topic comes up, this is my answer (because I have placed way too much thought into this.)
The game I'd make would be called Absolute Dominion.
So, at its heart, it's a grand strategy game akin to Stellaris. You're the ruler of an interstellar empire, and you're trying to take over the galaxy. But, there are levels that you can zoom.
Zoom in a level and you can be a planetary governor, ignoring the galaxy at large for the chance to craft a perfect world for one planet, like SimEarth. Or instead of a planet, you can choose a fleet.
Zoom into that level, and it's like Homeworld, where you give orders to individual ships in your attack group, and watch them do your bidding.
Zoom in again, and now you're the captain of a capital ship, giving orders to your fighters and choosing how to assault your targets.
Zoom in again, and now you're a starfighter pilot in a space combat sim, defending your mothership or assaulting the enemy's.
Or instead of playing the fleet, you can assault an enemy world or defend your own as ground forces. At that level, you're one of the imperial generals in an RTS.
But zoom in another level, and now it's a FPS like Battlefield, where you can use vehicles or assault on foot.
At any level, you can influence the direction your galactic conquest takes... if your starfighter does well enough, it could turn the tide of a combat engagement, allowing you to expand your territory.
It's a pipe dream, but that would be the ultimate game for 4X fans.
EVE Online, Elite Dangerous, and No Mans Sky are kinda-sorta approaching that kind of thing in their own way. None have a fully coherent experience like you discuss...but you're also talking about...
EVE Online, Elite Dangerous, and No Mans Sky are kinda-sorta approaching that kind of thing in their own way.
None have a fully coherent experience like you discuss...but you're also talking about having 5-6 different games all seamlessly merged into one.
I think we might get there someday. I have always been intrigued by the idea of an RTS/FPS hybrid game where you have a cluster of players operating as the high level RTS and another cluster operating as 'boots on the ground'.
Watching the announcement video and technical PoC presentation for this is still one of my top-10 most mind-blowing moments in gaming. A player in Dust514 calling down an orbital strike that must...
Dust and it's integration with Eve was also a big step
Watching the announcement video and technical PoC presentation for this is still one of my top-10 most mind-blowing moments in gaming. A player in Dust514 calling down an orbital strike that must be coordinated with actual players flying starships in EVE was jaw-droppingly awesome.
I am a PC player and the few consoles I have ever bought have quickly languished and been resold on craigslist. But I bought a PS2 specifically and only because I wanted in on the Dust514 beta. It was very disappointing when they canned it, it could have been incredible in so many ways.
It isn't the same because it is two different games in the same "world", but Command and Conquer did something close to this. The original games in the Tiberian Sun series were all RTS games. Then...
It isn't the same because it is two different games in the same "world", but Command and Conquer did something close to this. The original games in the Tiberian Sun series were all RTS games. Then they released Command and Conquer: Renegade, an FPS that puts you in the boots of a commando in the last days of the First Tiberium War (the setting of the first Command & Conquer). I like(d) that idea. First, I got to play out the First Tiberium War campaign from this top-down, control the whole army perspective. I got to be the general making all the tactical decisions and moving my troops around. Then, when it gets to the climax of the First War, it zooms in on one individual's story, and we get to see how the war's final days play out in a level of detail that an RTS wouldn't allow.
I'm sure if I went back to play the games again the games and story would be a lot worse than I remember. I was 9, and my family couldn't afford a computer or any games, so I binge-played them with my cousin whenever I visited him. Regardless of execution, I still think it was an interesting choice. I would love to see the C&C IP tall out of EA's hands and see if someone could nail the concept.
Natural Selection and the sequel Natural Selection 2 (previous games by the developers who made Subnautica) has tiny bits of the RTS (commander uses team resources to build structures on a map and...
Natural Selection and the sequel Natural Selection 2 (previous games by the developers who made Subnautica) has tiny bits of the RTS (commander uses team resources to build structures on a map and take control of the map) and FPS (players as space marines fight other players as alien creatures) elements. A bit similar to some Battlefield games with the commander issuing orders but also with building/upgrading equipment.
I can't say the games were extremely popular but I did like the unique take they had. I personally prefer single player games vs AI or games that also have a fun campaign (single player or co-op) like Warcraft/Starcraft/Age of Empires as I am in no way good enough to play competitively.
I think the closest I have ever seen to something like this was Savage 2. It never became very popular, but it was a really unique and interesting blend of RTS and FPS.
I think the closest I have ever seen to something like this was Savage 2. It never became very popular, but it was a really unique and interesting blend of RTS and FPS.
I’ve thought about a similar concept before, but it seems functionally unworkable due to how many people you’d need to stay online for one match. The idea is 2-4 players on teams against each...
I’ve thought about a similar concept before, but it seems functionally unworkable due to how many people you’d need to stay online for one match. The idea is 2-4 players on teams against each other looking at a map from birds eye view like in an RTS like Steel Division. Each unit deployed, however, is squads of actual players playing on the ground in more of an FPS view.
This doesn't fulfill your wish, but what you wrote reminded me of Ultima IV. You do still have to kill things, but the point of the game is more "attaining noble virtue" rather than "good...
This doesn't fulfill your wish, but what you wrote reminded me of Ultima IV. You do still have to kill things, but the point of the game is more "attaining noble virtue" rather than "good vanquishes evil."
Man, that reminds me; one of these days I'm going to have to actually play through at least one Ultima game. I feel like for how old I am that it's something of a tragedy that I've never played...
Man, that reminds me; one of these days I'm going to have to actually play through at least one Ultima game. I feel like for how old I am that it's something of a tragedy that I've never played through any of them.
Given how big a deal the series was an how much historical importance it has, I'm utterly amazed that EA hasn't tried to do more to capitalize on the name. At the very least they could try to do a low budget remake.
Does Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided count for you? I'm not sure if it ticks the "complex" box or not (I could argue it either way), but it definitely is doable without...
Does Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided count for you? I'm not sure if it ticks the "complex" box or not (I could argue it either way), but it definitely is doable without causing permanent harm to any NPCs
Not an MMORPG, and probably too simplistic and not very satisfying, but in Ni no Kuni 2, which you play as a young prince and his japanese minister isekai advisor, you derive progression and...
Not an MMORPG, and probably too simplistic and not very satisfying, but in Ni no Kuni 2, which you play as a young prince and his japanese minister isekai advisor, you derive progression and benefits from growing and developing your city. (I'm also waiting for Palia.)
Ever since I was young I have wanted an open world Lord of the Rings RPG, but preferably one with large scale battles. I always thought it would be cool to be journeying somewhere on a quest and...
Ever since I was young I have wanted an open world Lord of the Rings RPG, but preferably one with large scale battles. I always thought it would be cool to be journeying somewhere on a quest and come upon a large battle happening, and decide whether or not to join. In general I would like a medieval/fantasy RPG game with large scale battles and sieges.
I feel like Skyrim attempted this with the whole empire vs. rebels "dynamic war" that supposedly was going on in the background, but their shoddy grandfathered engine just didn't allow it to...
I feel like Skyrim attempted this with the whole empire vs. rebels "dynamic war" that supposedly was going on in the background, but their shoddy grandfathered engine just didn't allow it to happen. Instead you ran across a group of like 6 people fighting and the game pretended it was a "battle" lol.
But in more recent years, it sure seems like someone must have made a game like this, maybe one that flew under the radar. It seems like something that a lot of people have asked for and talked about over the years.
We definitely have the technology. I mean, consider something like Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator. That engine (or something like it) could totally handle it, maybe being repurposed to a dedicated first person perspective, add the RPG elements, script some battles to appear when the player enters a given region, etc...
I feel like one must already exist, because how could it not, but I just can't think of any.
Mount and Blade is probably the closest thing that actually exists. As for the technology, the moment you go into a first-person or close up third-person perspective, the requirements for quality...
Mount and Blade is probably the closest thing that actually exists.
As for the technology, the moment you go into a first-person or close up third-person perspective, the requirements for quality of animations, graphical fidelity and individual unit AI increase dramatically. Games like Total War or Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator handle thousands of units, but they can look really wonky if you zoom in to the level of individual characters. I think the jank would be unbearable if that was the primary method of playing those games. I'm not sure if a technology exists at the moment that can handle that kind of scale with the fidelity and immersion of a game designed to be played in first person.
I honestly think with current hardware and technology you'd need like two triple A budgets to make the game you're asking for (assuming it was an actual, complete, good game and not just a proof of concept or overambitious stuck in development hell game that will never live up to its promises). Battlefield does large-ish battles with the fidelity required for first person, but still only handles 128 units and the latest one doesn't even have a campaign mode. Mount and Blade Bannerlord, which is the closest game I can think of and probably doesn't quite fit the bill, is made by a smaller team and has been in development for ten years. Star Citizen with its $450 million collected still hasn't been able to deliver the revolutionary server meshing tech that was supposed to allow massive scale.
I'm not so sure the requirements do increase that dramatically. UEBS does support zooming in and focusing on single units, and yeah, the animations are crude up close, but I think that's more...
I'm not so sure the requirements do increase that dramatically. UEBS does support zooming in and focusing on single units, and yeah, the animations are crude up close, but I think that's more because nobody cares about them right now than because of technical limitations. Or in other words, they look wonky just because they threw some simple animation assets in there, and not because they couldn't have put nice ones in instead.
But if we assume that it's true that the UEBS engine, for example, couldn't handle nice animations and meshes, then if people really want those things, it seems to mostly just be a matter of LoD. Give the units near the camera the full proper animation treatment, with fancier meshes, but still give the majority of them, which are distant, the current cheap treatment.
LoD techniques like this are common and well understood, and I'm sure these games already rely on those techniques heavily anyway. And besides, I think a huge portion of the market for a game like this comes from people who are perfectly fine compromising on graphical fidelity in order to have the scale.
I think neither M&B nor Star Citizen have experienced their long development times due to the difficulty of having lots of characters on screen. There are a lot of other long and arduous chores they've been working on. Battlefield restricts itself to 128 mostly because of netcode, and as far as I understood the conversation, we're not requiring that this even be a multiplayer game.
I still think UEBS demonstrates everything you'd need from an engine, and the bulk of the work of making it into an "epic battle exploration RPG" or whatever would just be making assets, scripting the world or storyline or quests, and the usual high-level game design stuff.
And to be fair, all those "assets and game design" things are what takes most of the budget in AAA game development, so yeah, you might be right that it would be expensive, but I think that's not because of the technology, but just because crafting a world for a game takes a lot of artists and hours, etc.
Multiplayer has the disadvantage of dealing with networking, but also has a major advantage of not having to run individual unit AI on thousands of characters. From what I understand of the tech...
Multiplayer has the disadvantage of dealing with networking, but also has a major advantage of not having to run individual unit AI on thousands of characters.
From what I understand of the tech behind UEBS, it actually runs the crowd AI on the GPU, which would obviously chew up resources that could be used for improved graphics. I think you're massively underestimating how much work would be needed to upgrade the engine to support a game intended to be played in a close-up perspective while maintaining the scale. Could it be done? Probably, but I think it's a lot less trivial than just slap some LODs on it and call it a day. The creator seems to think so as well:
Dealing with the high expectations of the gaming community can add a great deal of stress as well. It's hard to explain to people why the AI in UEBS can't have the intelligence and animations of a modern triple-A game that only has 20 characters on screen.
Obviously I don't know as much about that specific implementation as its creator, but I have written code for engines before, made my own hobbyist engine, stuff like that. I've also used the GPU...
Obviously I don't know as much about that specific implementation as its creator, but I have written code for engines before, made my own hobbyist engine, stuff like that. I've also used the GPU for plenty of non-traditional things, including game logic for entities. I appreciate that naive LOD might not be simple to do within that established compute pipeline the creator has made, but, for example, removing a set of the nearest units from that compute pipeline and instead processing them separately in an entirely separate pipeline meant for higher detail results sounds non-monumental.
Perhaps this level of control just isn't possible in Unity specifically, and perhaps that's one reason the creator said that. I certainly wouldn't have picked Unity if I were trying to do anything non-traditional, myself.
Guild Wars 2 has this to an extent; open world PvE has big meta events where a bunch of players get together and generally take down a boss. In its World vs. World mode (PvP between servers) you...
Guild Wars 2 has this to an extent; open world PvE has big meta events where a bunch of players get together and generally take down a boss. In its World vs. World mode (PvP between servers) you might wander around solo to complete small scale objectives and then stumble on a big (20v20 or more) battle that you can join in, though as you can probably imagine that's pretty risky.
This might sound weird but I want a AAA '90s style arena shooter that really leverages today's hardware. As in path traced global illumination, persistent gibs, blood fluid simulations, soft body...
This might sound weird but I want a AAA '90s style arena shooter that really leverages today's hardware. As in path traced global illumination, persistent gibs, blood fluid simulations, soft body deformation, the works. At the end of a round of this hypothetical Quake V or Unreal Tournament 2023, the map should look like a very beautifully lit M-rated Splatoon.
With the Lyra demo of UE5 as the starting point, I'd be surprised if there isn't at least 1 major company and several indie developers working on something like this.
With the Lyra demo of UE5 as the starting point, I'd be surprised if there isn't at least 1 major company and several indie developers working on something like this.
Blast Corps II I mean, come on. Cat Detective The analogue joysticks are used to create meowing cat noises. You have to learn cat language, and you then play a cat detective and you have to...
Blast Corps II
I mean, come on.
Cat Detective
The analogue joysticks are used to create meowing cat noises. You have to learn cat language, and you then play a cat detective and you have to interrogate cat suspects by meowing at them with the invented cat language. Get it wrong and they stop talking, get it right and they keep talking.
Open World Pokemon Snap / Some other paparazzi game
You have missions and start with basic equipment. You have to go around taking photos of pokemon / stars. As you take more and better photos you get access to better equipment, and you can access parts of the levels that were closed earlier.
What I want is a full price, PC/console, no microtransactions, story-focused, complete Star Trek RPG/simulation experience. Not something similar to Start Trek, not a spiritual relative to Star...
What I want is a full price, PC/console, no microtransactions, story-focused, complete Star Trek RPG/simulation experience. Not something similar to Start Trek, not a spiritual relative to Star Trek, but actual full-blown Star Trek. TNG is preferable but TOS would be nice too. Maybe both. SNW would be a compromise. Anything else might lose my attention.
I have played the 2010 Star Trek MMO and it's okay, and there are lots of well known characters, but it's just not very good. What I want is a game that I would feel compelled to play, but not just because it's Star Trek.
As a bonus, I'd take a DS9 RTS game and a bunch of Telltale style adventure games.
My big problem with Star Trek Online (other than the insane level of microtransaction push) is that they focus too much on ground combat, It's such a minor part of even TOS, and yet it feels like...
My big problem with Star Trek Online (other than the insane level of microtransaction push) is that they focus too much on ground combat, It's such a minor part of even TOS, and yet it feels like 40% or more of the missions are "go here and shoot the guys, maybe ask questions later if you feel like it."
It's so far out of the Star Trek vibe that I just can't.
The Matrix Online was a horrible game that really did a lot of things but none of them well... but I started a nearly two-decade long friendship that's still going strong, solely because of its...
The Matrix Online was a horrible game that really did a lot of things but none of them well... but I started a nearly two-decade long friendship that's still going strong, solely because of its roleplay capability.
Have you tried Bridge Crew? I got it purely to sit in the captain's chair in VR, and there are some downsides now (Ubisoft apparently didn't want to renew their license for the voice-recognition...
RPG/simulation experience
Have you tried Bridge Crew?
I got it purely to sit in the captain's chair in VR, and there are some downsides now (Ubisoft apparently didn't want to renew their license for the voice-recognition middleware they used, so you can no longer give voice commands to the AI players, although how this allows them to remove features from a potentially single-player experience after purchase, I don't understand...)
Have you ever tried Star Trek Armada 3 mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion? It's one of those older games I always keep installed because nothing else quite satisfies that itch and it's an...
Grand Theft Auto VI. I buy a new console when a new Grand Theft Auto comes out. The only other game I still love is Pacman, but it's hard to imagine improvement on perfection.
Grand Theft Auto VI.
I buy a new console when a new Grand Theft Auto comes out.
The only other game I still love is Pacman, but it's hard to imagine improvement on perfection.
Absolutely. I’m really hoping it’s the HD universe version of Vice City. Somewhat related, I’d love for GTA Online to add in the new setting from GTA VI, but also Liberty City from IV. Be really...
Absolutely. I’m really hoping it’s the HD universe version of Vice City.
Somewhat related, I’d love for GTA Online to add in the new setting from GTA VI, but also Liberty City from IV. Be really cool to see LC but with slightly updated graphics, and in a multiplayer setting.
Looks like it's gonna happen. And yeah, I hope for that too. There are not enough AAA games for adults with a vibrant color palette and a sunny disposition these days, and that is something GTA...
I’m really hoping it’s the HD universe version of Vice City.
Looks like it's gonna happen.
And yeah, I hope for that too. There are not enough AAA games for adults with a vibrant color palette and a sunny disposition these days, and that is something GTA delivers in style. The muted colors are one of the main reasons I'm not a big fan of GTA IV.
I want a proper, no hand holding detective game. Closest things I've played are probably Return of the Obra Dinn and Dear Ester. Just a room to explore, no hand holding on what defines a "clue" vs...
I want a proper, no hand holding detective game. Closest things I've played are probably Return of the Obra Dinn and Dear Ester. Just a room to explore, no hand holding on what defines a "clue" vs just set dressing, no super specific guided questions for suspects (something akin to Her Story's confession format could replace this perhaps). You can accuse someone at the very end and just know if you were right or not, no "find all the clues to form an accusation web" or "complete handholding to the finish line".
This is going to seem a bizarre suggestion but this is what Paradise Killer mostly is. It's not actually an anime VN despite seeming like one, it's a British game that does take some heavy...
This is going to seem a bizarre suggestion but this is what Paradise Killer mostly is. It's not actually an anime VN despite seeming like one, it's a British game that does take some heavy influences from anime VNs but it's a first-person exploration murder mystery game in a strange, alternate dimension where nothing is quite explained to you. It's a mystery among gods near the reboot of the universe so it's very out there. The gameplay consists of exploring a sort-of tropical island with superpowers just collecting evidence and items and talking to people, eventually putting together how the mystery unfolded.
It's not quite to the level of "clues are not marked vs. set dressing" but the mystery is entirely on the player to solve, and there's still room to totally miss the mark at the end if you misread or missed any key clues since the way the mystery is constructed can lead to a few false pathways pretty easily.
Skyrim, but Fallout. To explain: Fallout's 3D games have, in general, a more fiddly experience system that requires you to consciously build your character with experience gained by results (+x XP...
Skyrim, but Fallout.
To explain: Fallout's 3D games have, in general, a more fiddly experience system that requires you to consciously build your character with experience gained by results (+x XP per kill/quest) rather than actions (+x XP per action per method). I don't think it's bad that the perks eventually aligned into similar systems (Skyrim's perk tree is essentially FNV's, but visualized via a tree, and with more dependencies).
What I would want is a more RPG-y fantasy RPG, I guess, that requires you to play more in a build you've created, than to create the build by playing. I just think it would be interesting.
I've been looking into CRPGs lately. Maybe that is too far to the side of complexity, but I was tempted to buy Pathfinder Kingmaker. I didn't. But maybe it scratches your itch for some crunchier...
I've been looking into CRPGs lately. Maybe that is too far to the side of complexity, but I was tempted to buy Pathfinder Kingmaker. I didn't. But maybe it scratches your itch for some crunchier fantasy.
I've got a bunch to go through (Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, Shadowrun), and at least from what I've played of Neverwinter it's a bit in the right direction. The issue is I...
I've got a bunch to go through (Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, Shadowrun), and at least from what I've played of Neverwinter it's a bit in the right direction. The issue is I would want that with an Elder Scrolls-style RPG with the same controls/first person feel.
A modern Crimson Skies sequel/remake and a new Armored Core game on PC. The former because Crimson Skies is simply one of the greatest games I've ever played, but is now over 20 years old. The...
A modern Crimson Skies sequel/remake and a new Armored Core game on PC. The former because Crimson Skies is simply one of the greatest games I've ever played, but is now over 20 years old. The latter because I am a big fan of pretty much the entire Armored Core series, the last game was a decade ago, and I'm completely done with consoles.
And @Thrabalen's game because I've had conversations with friends about a similar game that allows me to play whatever role I want from the guy shooting someone in the face on the ground to the ruler of a space empire. A time mechanic that kinda slows time/changes timescale at each level downward would work well as the a day in the life of a soldier means nothing in the course of a ruler's lifespan. Do well as a soldier and your soldier/pilot gets a skill bonus at the local commander level, the commander level turns the tide of a skirmish and becomes an elite squad at the RTS level, the local RTS level wins a battle and feeds that boost to the planet-wide turn based war, which feeds into overall stats and strategy at the interstellar 4X empire level.
This is a game that sounds amazing, but is probably nigh-impossible to get done well as it would require so many elements from so many different disciplines and genres that it is simply bound to either die in developmental hell as nothing gets done or has only a few elements from each genre and pleases no one. It'll simply take millions upon millions of dollars to do correctly, take a decade or more to make, and retail at $200+. Take at least four distinct genres, make them seamlessly mesh and influence one another, have meaningful storylines for each level, hit all the gameplay points of each genre, make it enjoyable, and figure out how to be profitable among a subset of players that wants to play a game with all of those genres.
So I've seen some leaks and rumors that Fromsoft is currently working on a new Armored Core game. It hasn't been officially confirmed and we don't know what platforms it'll be released on, but...
So I've seen some leaks and rumors that Fromsoft is currently working on a new Armored Core game. It hasn't been officially confirmed and we don't know what platforms it'll be released on, but they've put all of their most recent games out on PC so it would be weird not to with this one.
I've heard of that, but I've been hurt before so I don't get my hopes up until I see official info and not rumors. Those "screenshots" also have a lot of oil painting-esque backgrounds that...
I've heard of that, but I've been hurt before so I don't get my hopes up until I see official info and not rumors. Those "screenshots" also have a lot of oil painting-esque backgrounds that screams concept art/fan art or AI generated images and not "screenshots" of the game.
I kind of want to make it myself, to be honest, because it's a relatively simple game that's technically already been made before. I basically just want to do a remake of Emerald Dragon so there's...
I kind of want to make it myself, to be honest, because it's a relatively simple game that's technically already been made before. I basically just want to do a remake of Emerald Dragon so there's a definitive edition of the game that's available in English.
Emerald Dragon came on my radar a number of years ago and when I read that story synopsis and booted the game up in an emulator I was struck by how good everything is. For a game released in 1989, it's an absolute benchmark. I'd say it's even better than what Falcom was coming up with at the time. But more than anything I'm just blown away by the art style, the setting, and even just the simple relationships between the main characters.
The game did technically get an English release in the form of a romhack translation for the SNES version, but the problem I have with it is that it's technically a remake; it came out seven years after the original, it's made by a different company, all the graphics were redrawn in a lower resolution which necessitates a change in style, and the music is rearranged for the vastly different sound hardware. What I would like to do is to make a modern version that is more true to the original so that people can fall in love with the same things that I did all of those years ago.
I still yearn for a really well-thought out version of 10Six. It holds a special place for me because it was my first MMO, and it actually survived it's cancellation because one of the lead...
I still yearn for a really well-thought out version of 10Six. It holds a special place for me because it was my first MMO, and it actually survived it's cancellation because one of the lead programmers took the code and is still running it over 20 years later. I was so into this game, that I actually used my fledgling 3D skills to model an item and send it to the team, and they actually incorporated it into the game!.
The lead programmer has continued to make improvements, but he's only one person with a real career. And there are some fundamental mechanics problems with gameplay that could be improved on using modern designs. Really the core of the gameplay for me is a persistent world, with RTS strategies, and the ability to drop down into FPS mode. Everything beyond that is up for modification.
I would like to see more FPS-Z games (think Tribes or, my personal favorite, Fallen Empire: Legions). There's a skill ceiling in this genre that you'll rarely find in an FPS since movement is now...
I would like to see more FPS-Z games (think Tribes or, my personal favorite, Fallen Empire: Legions). There's a skill ceiling in this genre that you'll rarely find in an FPS since movement is now prioritized as much as accuracy. Furthermore, the game mode usually centers around capture the flag, not deathmatch.
Of course, in the year 2022, pure FPS games are not in vogue. So I propose the following chimeras:
FPS-Z + Metrodvania. Thinking about this more carefully, I might have just reinvented Ori.
FPS-Z + JRPG. The fusion of my two favorite genres. Imagine Xenoblades Chronicles, except it didn't take you half an hour to navigate the map. Actually, I think this is also a game -- Star Ocean: The Divine Force. God, I hope this game doesn't suck.
FPS-Z + Visual Novel. It's possible. I just know it.
I would pay quite a wedge for a solid adaptation of the Battle Room from Ender's Game. The battle scenes from that book absolutely enthralled young adolescent Billie, from the tactics of...
I would pay quite a wedge for a solid adaptation of the Battle Room from Ender's Game. The battle scenes from that book absolutely enthralled young adolescent Billie, from the tactics of zero-gravity, to self-freezing limbs to use as shields, to finding alternative ways to win the battle scenario. It would be crazy cool to be able to play something that managed to properly capture the spirit of Battle School, but I suspect we're a long way off something that would do it properly and on scale.
A mix between Minecraft and Age of Empires with a little bit of Dwarf Fortress. You start punching wood and gathering resources like regular Minecraft, but you can convince (or force) villagers to...
A mix between Minecraft and Age of Empires with a little bit of Dwarf Fortress.
You start punching wood and gathering resources like regular Minecraft, but you can convince (or force) villagers to join you. You would be able to assign them tasks to collect resources, build infrastructure, and train them to protect the village and prepare for war.
As the game progresses you'll enter in conflict with other villages/kingdoms for multiple reasons: they want your resources; they are afraid of you and want to keep you in check; or your megalomaniacal self simply wants to expand your kingdom.
Repeat until the whole thing crashes either because it was to big to manage, you were betrayed, conquered, or simply decided to burn everything down like Nero. Flee to somewhere else in the world to start over or to enjoy what the world has to offer.
So basically Minecraft but with mechanics to manage your own kingdom from a first-person perspective, with better random encounters, events, and mob AI.
PS: I've never played Dwarft Fortress, so what I described could be just it but in a first-person perspective.
The idea is that you have the option to experience the game alone (without the help of other NPCs) like regular Minecraft, or start and manage your own kingdom like AoE, and everything in between.
The idea is that you have the option to experience the game alone (without the help of other NPCs) like regular Minecraft, or start and manage your own kingdom like AoE, and everything in between.
So we have a ton of games that take place on the surface of a planet, and we have a ton of games that take place across multiple star systems, but we almost never* have a game that takes place...
So we have a ton of games that take place on the surface of a planet, and we have a ton of games that take place across multiple star systems, but we almost never* have a game that takes place across a single solar system.
I want to see A strategy game, most likely RTS or pause/fast-forward-based RTS, perhaps similar to homeworld, on this scale. Ideally, it would have full n-body physics, with planetary gravity wells and all of that, but i suppose simple newtonian acceleration/deceleration (with no speed limit) would do as well, especially in a torchdrive-based setting, like the expanse. Never sat down to fully figure out details, but given travel times would be measured in days or months, Id hope for more of a grand strategy style game than a tactical RTS.
*I know of KSP & CODA, but I want more genres in this setting!
Another game idea that I just remembered, that I think would be very neat, would be a first contact type game. What I envision is a minimalistic, text heavy game, where it is up to you to identify...
Another game idea that I just remembered, that I think would be very neat, would be a first contact type game. What I envision is a minimalistic, text heavy game, where it is up to you to identify E.T. messages and figure out how to communicate with them. The whole pipeline of identifying messages and decoding them would make up the game, with very little handholding. It would be up to players to identify patterns in data streams from radio telescopes (obviously there would be some guidance here as to what "normal" data might look like), and then begin the long task of decoding what is being said. I would want the game to have almost no tutorial on this point, and players would be encouraged to collaborate on forums or using outside tools like text analysis or other programming skills. Maybe the game would be designed to support player scripting or plugins to aid in message analysis and decoding.
The game designer would have to invent an alien language and compose the set of messages to send players, and would have to develop a relatively sophisticated AI to respond to player messages. Messages could be similar to things like Lincos, or entirely different.
I hope this makes sense to someone else, it's an idea I have thought of for a while and I think, if executed well, it could make for an amazing puzzle game and would generate fun online communities.
I imagine this game with ultra-retro aesthetics like Mind Scanners or Papers Please. So fairly simple from a technology standpoint. The complicated part, I think, would be the linguistics itself....
I imagine this game with ultra-retro aesthetics like Mind Scanners or Papers Please. So fairly simple from a technology standpoint.
The complicated part, I think, would be the linguistics itself. How to make it feel truly alien but also possible to decode? You could probably use some already existing conlangs as inspiration at least. The difficulty curve would be tough to balance.
I'm intrigued by this idea, and I wonder if the difficulty with the linguistics could be somewhat mitigated by having it be an async multiplayer experience? Where 2 players are randomly paired,...
I'm intrigued by this idea, and I wonder if the difficulty with the linguistics could be somewhat mitigated by having it be an async multiplayer experience? Where 2 players are randomly paired, and you have to try and learn how to communicate with each other? I'm not sure how to make that interesting for both players though.
Absolutely, that's the aesthetic I had in mind. I think it could even work as largely terminal based game. The linguistics would be the hard part, as would the AI governing communication. I think...
Absolutely, that's the aesthetic I had in mind. I think it could even work as largely terminal based game. The linguistics would be the hard part, as would the AI governing communication. I think ideally, players could send test messages to the alien counter-part to see if they could communicate. Another idea I had was some type of "translator", where you actually have players communicating with other players, but their messages are passed through an intermediate layer where it get's "translated" into the alien language. But I think that would almost be harder than writing the AI in the first place. EDIT: I just saw that @Omnicrola suggested something similar! It would certainly add some dynamism to the game.
I think a well developed alien language, along with something like Lincos for the actual communication, would make the game challenging enough that it would take a community to crack.
This may only be tangentially related, but Computers + Lincos = Cosmic OS. The idea is to communicate enough information to the alien civilization to bootstrap a virtual machine that can execute...
I think a well developed alien language, along with something like Lincos for the actual communication, would make the game challenging enough that it would take a community to crack.
This may only be tangentially related, but Computers + Lincos = Cosmic OS. The idea is to communicate enough information to the alien civilization to bootstrap a virtual machine that can execute computer code. Figuring out a Virtual Machine from first principles might be a fun exercise in such a game.
I'm not sure if it was Cosmic OS or a similar project I read about, but the ultimate goal was to encode a form of artificial intelligence into the message, so the alien civilization can interact with it in real time and thus communicate effectively, despite the long latency between actual messages. It could, for example, incorporate something like Stable Diffusion (generalized to all modalities) to teach them about humanity and, in return, learn from them. This is way too advanced for an actual game (as noted by others in the thread), but it definitively would be interesting.
If the game is about humanity receiving such a message, you could additionally imagine that the alien AI is (secretly) hostile and wants to somehow escape the virtual machine to wreak havoc on earth...
A trading card game around viruses/bacteria and nanobots, similar to your Magic the Gatherings or Hearthstones where you manage cards and resource, but the key feature is that each player has a...
A trading card game around viruses/bacteria and nanobots, similar to your Magic the Gatherings or Hearthstones where you manage cards and resource, but the key feature is that each player has a randomly generated deck at start, and when you encounter someone else's deck, win or lose, that deck is then available for you to run next there after. You can play a bracket or a ladder with a custom deck with more fine tuned rules for competitive balance, but the main draw is that there's a dominant strain of deck out there, and you're either feeding it's reign, or looking to take it down a peg.
This amuses me. So there is no ability to customize decks, only the ability to choose to use a deck once you have encountered it? Probably the entire system resets and re-randomizes periodically...
but the main draw is that there's a dominant strain of deck out there, and you're either feeding it's reign, or looking to take it down a peg.
This amuses me. So there is no ability to customize decks, only the ability to choose to use a deck once you have encountered it? Probably the entire system resets and re-randomizes periodically to keep it fresh?
Ideally it wouldn't be a clean refresh since it would just lead to the same metas over and over again. New decks would be introduced through new players or some ability to generate a new deck, and...
Ideally it wouldn't be a clean refresh since it would just lead to the same metas over and over again. New decks would be introduced through new players or some ability to generate a new deck, and maybe there would be a month long season where the last week only the top performing decks are available, and whatever deck type comes out on top gets more points per win, but less weighted towards power next season?
As far as deck construction, maybe that would be the ultra competitive money sink mode, but the idea is to lean into the metagame of everyone running the same deck, and learning how to deconstruct it with what's available to you. Also it's stolen shamelessly from Hearthstone's burndown brawl, which was ran for a week and some of the most fun I had with the game.
Although now that I think about it, maybe there should be a "friendly" mode where you and your opponent play your decks, and you get a randomly generated hybrid deck available instead of a copy of the opponents. That would speed up the churn a bit if the way to make better decks is to play matches against decks that work well together, make a child deck, then have that one proliferate to try and become the new meta.
This idea seems like it could easily be built on top of the Keyforge system by adding just the deck replication mechanics (fairly easy). I'd love to see it. Should we call Richard Garfield?
This idea seems like it could easily be built on top of the Keyforge system by adding just the deck replication mechanics (fairly easy). I'd love to see it. Should we call Richard Garfield?
Keyforge sounds like an interesting analog and if I knew anyone in my area that played, I would be down to give it a shot. I'm not sure how you'd manage the physical economy with the game now, I...
Keyforge sounds like an interesting analog and if I knew anyone in my area that played, I would be down to give it a shot. I'm not sure how you'd manage the physical economy with the game now, I guess people could import purchased decks and insert them into the ecosystem as well, but I don't know enough about the game to know if that gives physical owners a big advantage.
Yeah I was thinking more of the system for generating and naming the unique decks, but I would manage the economy for this game idea entirely online, I think.
Yeah I was thinking more of the system for generating and naming the unique decks, but I would manage the economy for this game idea entirely online, I think.
When I was a kid (in the late '90s as early 3D games were going mainstream) I came up with my own "dream game" that I desperately wanted to be made. I haven't really thought about it since, and...
When I was a kid (in the late '90s as early 3D games were going mainstream) I came up with my own "dream game" that I desperately wanted to be made. I haven't really thought about it since, and I'm probably forgetting a bunch of the details, but to my knowledge it still hasn't been made. Of course my interests and free time for gaming have shifted a lot since then, so maybe it was and I just didn't hear about it. I think it could get made in much finer form with today's tech then I ever dreamed of in the PSX era.
Anyway, I was really into racing games back then. I imagined a 2-player co-op arcade racer/shooter with elaborate destructive environments. It would play like an over-the-top action movie. One player is the driver, and the other is the gunner. Tracks are long and linear, not circuits, and it's a struggle just to survive all the way to the finish line, let alone finish first (no respawning). In addition to taking out the other hostile racers, there are tons of hidden shortcuts and alternate routes that can be opened up in chaotic ways. There are also environmental hazards to avoid, and maybe penalties for civilian casualties, because most of the tracks would be through busy public spaces. Part of the challenge would be in managing a limited ammo supply and collecting armor/weapon/boost power-ups.
Tracks would offer a wide variety of terrains, from mountain cliffs to jungle ruins to downtown city centers. Each track would provide its own preset vehicle and weapon loadout, so you're driving trucks in the countryside, convertibles on the beach, motorcycles on the freeway, snowmobiles in the Himalayas, you get the idea. This is a video game sprung from the mind of a 12-year-old boy so there's not a lot of subtlety in it! But I still think it would be a lot of fun to play.
There were some scenes in the last couple Uncharted games that definitely felt close to what I imagined, as you're jumping onto moving vehicles, shooting bad guys with the mounted turret or whatever, then hopping into the driver's seat for a while, and so on. And I played a racing game called Split/Second that had a bunch of stunts and explosions that opened up shortcuts, that was also similar. I wouldn't be surprised if my idea actually has been made, so if you know it please share!
Some car combat games meet some of your criteria. I used to love Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal on the PS1 and PS2. But they're basically arena shooters instead of linear tracks, and a lot simpler...
Some car combat games meet some of your criteria. I used to love Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal on the PS1 and PS2. But they're basically arena shooters instead of linear tracks, and a lot simpler than your dream game.
One game that comes close to that feeling is the game I "invented" when I was a kid, which consisted in playing Nascar by racing in the wrong direction and purposefully colliding with all the vehicles until my car was completely totaled, meaning that I "won" :P
Oh yeah, Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal were 100% inspirations for me back in the day. Destruction Derby too. I did the same thing as you, setting up head-on collisions in any game with car damage...
Oh yeah, Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal were 100% inspirations for me back in the day. Destruction Derby too. I did the same thing as you, setting up head-on collisions in any game with car damage models, Daytona USA was a favorite of mine for this. Later on I had a lot of fun with the Burnout games and Danger Zone. None of these are exactly what I had in mind though, a true chaotic, destructive arcade racer with weapons and that co-op dedicated driver/shooter gameplay.
A proper AAA open-world Adventure Time game. As much like Breath of the Wild as possible within that spectrum where sidequests are found and not indicated, and exploration is rewarded.
It's a difficult sell for anyone not familiar with the show or the land of Ooo but basically we're talking about a huge, extremely fantastical and bizarre world with everything from a Candy Kingdom to a Hades-like underworld to a mystical frozen Ice Kingdom to dense jungles and ancient temples to alternate dimensions to a whole above-cloud world. I'd love to see a huge open world that is completely fantastical, with no real world basis, and an insanely diverse collection of biomes.
The show has all kinds of strange things the heroes discover about the world, and many of their storylines are found almost by accident. There's all kinds of mystical items and artifacts in the show that the heroes discover in the world, it wouldn't be much to invent many more of everything for the game. With the imagination of the show, the ideas are basically bottomless. I think having a BotW-style exploration game is key because having question marks thrust at you from all directions is actually against the spirit of Adventure Time.
I've thought about this since long before Elden Ring, but Elden Ring has certainly increased my appetite and hope that we can one day get an Adventure Time game that the show deserves.
I’ve never seen the show but now I desperately want this game.
Every time this topic comes up, this is my answer (because I have placed way too much thought into this.)
The game I'd make would be called Absolute Dominion.
So, at its heart, it's a grand strategy game akin to Stellaris. You're the ruler of an interstellar empire, and you're trying to take over the galaxy. But, there are levels that you can zoom.
Zoom in a level and you can be a planetary governor, ignoring the galaxy at large for the chance to craft a perfect world for one planet, like SimEarth. Or instead of a planet, you can choose a fleet.
Zoom into that level, and it's like Homeworld, where you give orders to individual ships in your attack group, and watch them do your bidding.
Zoom in again, and now you're the captain of a capital ship, giving orders to your fighters and choosing how to assault your targets.
Zoom in again, and now you're a starfighter pilot in a space combat sim, defending your mothership or assaulting the enemy's.
Or instead of playing the fleet, you can assault an enemy world or defend your own as ground forces. At that level, you're one of the imperial generals in an RTS.
But zoom in another level, and now it's a FPS like Battlefield, where you can use vehicles or assault on foot.
At any level, you can influence the direction your galactic conquest takes... if your starfighter does well enough, it could turn the tide of a combat engagement, allowing you to expand your territory.
It's a pipe dream, but that would be the ultimate game for 4X fans.
you're a microorganism fighting to pass along its genetic markers. I think I just reinvented Spore :P
This answer definitely had me go on a little journey to find good successors for Spore. Most are either abandoned or still in Early Access.
It might be worth installing Spore with all the expansions and reassessing if it's really that bad. I bet there are mods for it as well.
I played spore a bit at release. It honestly wasn't bad...but it also wasn't the promised greatness.
EVE Online, Elite Dangerous, and No Mans Sky are kinda-sorta approaching that kind of thing in their own way.
None have a fully coherent experience like you discuss...but you're also talking about having 5-6 different games all seamlessly merged into one.
I think we might get there someday. I have always been intrigued by the idea of an RTS/FPS hybrid game where you have a cluster of players operating as the high level RTS and another cluster operating as 'boots on the ground'.
Watching the announcement video and technical PoC presentation for this is still one of my top-10 most mind-blowing moments in gaming. A player in Dust514 calling down an orbital strike that must be coordinated with actual players flying starships in EVE was jaw-droppingly awesome.
I am a PC player and the few consoles I have ever bought have quickly languished and been resold on craigslist. But I bought a PS2 specifically and only because I wanted in on the Dust514 beta. It was very disappointing when they canned it, it could have been incredible in so many ways.
It isn't the same because it is two different games in the same "world", but Command and Conquer did something close to this. The original games in the Tiberian Sun series were all RTS games. Then they released Command and Conquer: Renegade, an FPS that puts you in the boots of a commando in the last days of the First Tiberium War (the setting of the first Command & Conquer). I like(d) that idea. First, I got to play out the First Tiberium War campaign from this top-down, control the whole army perspective. I got to be the general making all the tactical decisions and moving my troops around. Then, when it gets to the climax of the First War, it zooms in on one individual's story, and we get to see how the war's final days play out in a level of detail that an RTS wouldn't allow.
I'm sure if I went back to play the games again the games and story would be a lot worse than I remember. I was 9, and my family couldn't afford a computer or any games, so I binge-played them with my cousin whenever I visited him. Regardless of execution, I still think it was an interesting choice. I would love to see the C&C IP tall out of EA's hands and see if someone could nail the concept.
Natural Selection and the sequel Natural Selection 2 (previous games by the developers who made Subnautica) has tiny bits of the RTS (commander uses team resources to build structures on a map and take control of the map) and FPS (players as space marines fight other players as alien creatures) elements. A bit similar to some Battlefield games with the commander issuing orders but also with building/upgrading equipment.
I can't say the games were extremely popular but I did like the unique take they had. I personally prefer single player games vs AI or games that also have a fun campaign (single player or co-op) like Warcraft/Starcraft/Age of Empires as I am in no way good enough to play competitively.
I think the closest I have ever seen to something like this was Savage 2. It never became very popular, but it was a really unique and interesting blend of RTS and FPS.
I’ve thought about a similar concept before, but it seems functionally unworkable due to how many people you’d need to stay online for one match. The idea is 2-4 players on teams against each other looking at a map from birds eye view like in an RTS like Steel Division. Each unit deployed, however, is squads of actual players playing on the ground in more of an FPS view.
This doesn't fulfill your wish, but what you wrote reminded me of Ultima IV. You do still have to kill things, but the point of the game is more "attaining noble virtue" rather than "good vanquishes evil."
Man, that reminds me; one of these days I'm going to have to actually play through at least one Ultima game. I feel like for how old I am that it's something of a tragedy that I've never played through any of them.
Given how big a deal the series was an how much historical importance it has, I'm utterly amazed that EA hasn't tried to do more to capitalize on the name. At the very least they could try to do a low budget remake.
Does Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided count for you? I'm not sure if it ticks the "complex" box or not (I could argue it either way), but it definitely is doable without causing permanent harm to any NPCs
Still in development and just opened the second round of alpha playtesting, but Palia may be what you're looking for.
Not an MMORPG, and probably too simplistic and not very satisfying, but in Ni no Kuni 2, which you play as a young prince and his japanese minister isekai advisor, you derive progression and benefits from growing and developing your city. (I'm also waiting for Palia.)
Ever since I was young I have wanted an open world Lord of the Rings RPG, but preferably one with large scale battles. I always thought it would be cool to be journeying somewhere on a quest and come upon a large battle happening, and decide whether or not to join. In general I would like a medieval/fantasy RPG game with large scale battles and sieges.
I feel like Skyrim attempted this with the whole empire vs. rebels "dynamic war" that supposedly was going on in the background, but their shoddy grandfathered engine just didn't allow it to happen. Instead you ran across a group of like 6 people fighting and the game pretended it was a "battle" lol.
But in more recent years, it sure seems like someone must have made a game like this, maybe one that flew under the radar. It seems like something that a lot of people have asked for and talked about over the years.
We definitely have the technology. I mean, consider something like Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator. That engine (or something like it) could totally handle it, maybe being repurposed to a dedicated first person perspective, add the RPG elements, script some battles to appear when the player enters a given region, etc...
I feel like one must already exist, because how could it not, but I just can't think of any.
Mount and Blade is probably the closest thing that actually exists.
As for the technology, the moment you go into a first-person or close up third-person perspective, the requirements for quality of animations, graphical fidelity and individual unit AI increase dramatically. Games like Total War or Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator handle thousands of units, but they can look really wonky if you zoom in to the level of individual characters. I think the jank would be unbearable if that was the primary method of playing those games. I'm not sure if a technology exists at the moment that can handle that kind of scale with the fidelity and immersion of a game designed to be played in first person.
I honestly think with current hardware and technology you'd need like two triple A budgets to make the game you're asking for (assuming it was an actual, complete, good game and not just a proof of concept or overambitious stuck in development hell game that will never live up to its promises). Battlefield does large-ish battles with the fidelity required for first person, but still only handles 128 units and the latest one doesn't even have a campaign mode. Mount and Blade Bannerlord, which is the closest game I can think of and probably doesn't quite fit the bill, is made by a smaller team and has been in development for ten years. Star Citizen with its $450 million collected still hasn't been able to deliver the revolutionary server meshing tech that was supposed to allow massive scale.
I'm not so sure the requirements do increase that dramatically. UEBS does support zooming in and focusing on single units, and yeah, the animations are crude up close, but I think that's more because nobody cares about them right now than because of technical limitations. Or in other words, they look wonky just because they threw some simple animation assets in there, and not because they couldn't have put nice ones in instead.
But if we assume that it's true that the UEBS engine, for example, couldn't handle nice animations and meshes, then if people really want those things, it seems to mostly just be a matter of LoD. Give the units near the camera the full proper animation treatment, with fancier meshes, but still give the majority of them, which are distant, the current cheap treatment.
LoD techniques like this are common and well understood, and I'm sure these games already rely on those techniques heavily anyway. And besides, I think a huge portion of the market for a game like this comes from people who are perfectly fine compromising on graphical fidelity in order to have the scale.
I think neither M&B nor Star Citizen have experienced their long development times due to the difficulty of having lots of characters on screen. There are a lot of other long and arduous chores they've been working on. Battlefield restricts itself to 128 mostly because of netcode, and as far as I understood the conversation, we're not requiring that this even be a multiplayer game.
I still think UEBS demonstrates everything you'd need from an engine, and the bulk of the work of making it into an "epic battle exploration RPG" or whatever would just be making assets, scripting the world or storyline or quests, and the usual high-level game design stuff.
And to be fair, all those "assets and game design" things are what takes most of the budget in AAA game development, so yeah, you might be right that it would be expensive, but I think that's not because of the technology, but just because crafting a world for a game takes a lot of artists and hours, etc.
Multiplayer has the disadvantage of dealing with networking, but also has a major advantage of not having to run individual unit AI on thousands of characters.
From what I understand of the tech behind UEBS, it actually runs the crowd AI on the GPU, which would obviously chew up resources that could be used for improved graphics. I think you're massively underestimating how much work would be needed to upgrade the engine to support a game intended to be played in a close-up perspective while maintaining the scale. Could it be done? Probably, but I think it's a lot less trivial than just slap some LODs on it and call it a day. The creator seems to think so as well:
Obviously I don't know as much about that specific implementation as its creator, but I have written code for engines before, made my own hobbyist engine, stuff like that. I've also used the GPU for plenty of non-traditional things, including game logic for entities. I appreciate that naive LOD might not be simple to do within that established compute pipeline the creator has made, but, for example, removing a set of the nearest units from that compute pipeline and instead processing them separately in an entirely separate pipeline meant for higher detail results sounds non-monumental.
Perhaps this level of control just isn't possible in Unity specifically, and perhaps that's one reason the creator said that. I certainly wouldn't have picked Unity if I were trying to do anything non-traditional, myself.
Guild Wars 2 has this to an extent; open world PvE has big meta events where a bunch of players get together and generally take down a boss. In its World vs. World mode (PvP between servers) you might wander around solo to complete small scale objectives and then stumble on a big (20v20 or more) battle that you can join in, though as you can probably imagine that's pretty risky.
This might sound weird but I want a AAA '90s style arena shooter that really leverages today's hardware. As in path traced global illumination, persistent gibs, blood fluid simulations, soft body deformation, the works. At the end of a round of this hypothetical Quake V or Unreal Tournament 2023, the map should look like a very beautifully lit M-rated Splatoon.
With the Lyra demo of UE5 as the starting point, I'd be surprised if there isn't at least 1 major company and several indie developers working on something like this.
Blast Corps II
I mean, come on.
Cat Detective
The analogue joysticks are used to create meowing cat noises. You have to learn cat language, and you then play a cat detective and you have to interrogate cat suspects by meowing at them with the invented cat language. Get it wrong and they stop talking, get it right and they keep talking.
Open World Pokemon Snap / Some other paparazzi game
You have missions and start with basic equipment. You have to go around taking photos of pokemon / stars. As you take more and better photos you get access to better equipment, and you can access parts of the levels that were closed earlier.
Holy shit I wanna play that rigth meow.
Yup, I'm in. Especially after playing through Stray.
What I want is a full price, PC/console, no microtransactions, story-focused, complete Star Trek RPG/simulation experience. Not something similar to Start Trek, not a spiritual relative to Star Trek, but actual full-blown Star Trek. TNG is preferable but TOS would be nice too. Maybe both. SNW would be a compromise. Anything else might lose my attention.
I have played the 2010 Star Trek MMO and it's okay, and there are lots of well known characters, but it's just not very good. What I want is a game that I would feel compelled to play, but not just because it's Star Trek.
As a bonus, I'd take a DS9 RTS game and a bunch of Telltale style adventure games.
My big problem with Star Trek Online (other than the insane level of microtransaction push) is that they focus too much on ground combat, It's such a minor part of even TOS, and yet it feels like 40% or more of the missions are "go here and shoot the guys, maybe ask questions later if you feel like it."
It's so far out of the Star Trek vibe that I just can't.
Sounds like they just wanted to re-use that FPS tech.
With all its faults this game should be fine for some roleplaying. Maybe I'll look into a roleplaying group. Never done that in a MMO.
The Matrix Online was a horrible game that really did a lot of things but none of them well... but I started a nearly two-decade long friendship that's still going strong, solely because of its roleplay capability.
Star Wars Galaxies was one of the best MMOs that let you eschew combat entirely in favor of roleplaying, and still have progression.
Have you tried Bridge Crew?
I got it purely to sit in the captain's chair in VR, and there are some downsides now (Ubisoft apparently didn't want to renew their license for the voice-recognition middleware they used, so you can no longer give voice commands to the AI players, although how this allows them to remove features from a potentially single-player experience after purchase, I don't understand...)
But anyway, it might be worth looking at.
My dude, have you heard the good word about Star Trek: Resurgence? It's from the former Telltale game devs.
https://www.startrek-resurgence.com/
O-M-G that is absolutely wonderful!
Have you ever tried Star Trek Armada 3 mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion? It's one of those older games I always keep installed because nothing else quite satisfies that itch and it's an excellent mod.
Grand Theft Auto VI.
I buy a new console when a new Grand Theft Auto comes out.
The only other game I still love is Pacman, but it's hard to imagine improvement on perfection.
Absolutely. I’m really hoping it’s the HD universe version of Vice City.
Somewhat related, I’d love for GTA Online to add in the new setting from GTA VI, but also Liberty City from IV. Be really cool to see LC but with slightly updated graphics, and in a multiplayer setting.
Looks like it's gonna happen.
And yeah, I hope for that too. There are not enough AAA games for adults with a vibrant color palette and a sunny disposition these days, and that is something GTA delivers in style. The muted colors are one of the main reasons I'm not a big fan of GTA IV.
Given the recent hack, you have reason to be hopeful.
I want a proper, no hand holding detective game. Closest things I've played are probably Return of the Obra Dinn and Dear Ester. Just a room to explore, no hand holding on what defines a "clue" vs just set dressing, no super specific guided questions for suspects (something akin to Her Story's confession format could replace this perhaps). You can accuse someone at the very end and just know if you were right or not, no "find all the clues to form an accusation web" or "complete handholding to the finish line".
This is going to seem a bizarre suggestion but this is what Paradise Killer mostly is. It's not actually an anime VN despite seeming like one, it's a British game that does take some heavy influences from anime VNs but it's a first-person exploration murder mystery game in a strange, alternate dimension where nothing is quite explained to you. It's a mystery among gods near the reboot of the universe so it's very out there. The gameplay consists of exploring a sort-of tropical island with superpowers just collecting evidence and items and talking to people, eventually putting together how the mystery unfolded.
It's not quite to the level of "clues are not marked vs. set dressing" but the mystery is entirely on the player to solve, and there's still room to totally miss the mark at the end if you misread or missed any key clues since the way the mystery is constructed can lead to a few false pathways pretty easily.
I've played this! Loved it.
Skyrim, but Fallout.
To explain: Fallout's 3D games have, in general, a more fiddly experience system that requires you to consciously build your character with experience gained by results (+x XP per kill/quest) rather than actions (+x XP per action per method). I don't think it's bad that the perks eventually aligned into similar systems (Skyrim's perk tree is essentially FNV's, but visualized via a tree, and with more dependencies).
What I would want is a more RPG-y fantasy RPG, I guess, that requires you to play more in a build you've created, than to create the build by playing. I just think it would be interesting.
I've been looking into CRPGs lately. Maybe that is too far to the side of complexity, but I was tempted to buy Pathfinder Kingmaker. I didn't. But maybe it scratches your itch for some crunchier fantasy.
I've got a bunch to go through (Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, Shadowrun), and at least from what I've played of Neverwinter it's a bit in the right direction. The issue is I would want that with an Elder Scrolls-style RPG with the same controls/first person feel.
A modern Crimson Skies sequel/remake and a new Armored Core game on PC. The former because Crimson Skies is simply one of the greatest games I've ever played, but is now over 20 years old. The latter because I am a big fan of pretty much the entire Armored Core series, the last game was a decade ago, and I'm completely done with consoles.
And @Thrabalen's game because I've had conversations with friends about a similar game that allows me to play whatever role I want from the guy shooting someone in the face on the ground to the ruler of a space empire. A time mechanic that kinda slows time/changes timescale at each level downward would work well as the a day in the life of a soldier means nothing in the course of a ruler's lifespan. Do well as a soldier and your soldier/pilot gets a skill bonus at the local commander level, the commander level turns the tide of a skirmish and becomes an elite squad at the RTS level, the local RTS level wins a battle and feeds that boost to the planet-wide turn based war, which feeds into overall stats and strategy at the interstellar 4X empire level.
This is a game that sounds amazing, but is probably nigh-impossible to get done well as it would require so many elements from so many different disciplines and genres that it is simply bound to either die in developmental hell as nothing gets done or has only a few elements from each genre and pleases no one. It'll simply take millions upon millions of dollars to do correctly, take a decade or more to make, and retail at $200+. Take at least four distinct genres, make them seamlessly mesh and influence one another, have meaningful storylines for each level, hit all the gameplay points of each genre, make it enjoyable, and figure out how to be profitable among a subset of players that wants to play a game with all of those genres.
So I've seen some leaks and rumors that Fromsoft is currently working on a new Armored Core game. It hasn't been officially confirmed and we don't know what platforms it'll be released on, but they've put all of their most recent games out on PC so it would be weird not to with this one.
I've heard of that, but I've been hurt before so I don't get my hopes up until I see official info and not rumors. Those "screenshots" also have a lot of oil painting-esque backgrounds that screams concept art/fan art or AI generated images and not "screenshots" of the game.
I never said the game was possible. I said I really want it to exist!
When Star Citizen launches, I'm sure it will be all that and more. My grandchildren will have a blast.
I'm right there with you. I want it, I just don't think it's feasible.
I kind of want to make it myself, to be honest, because it's a relatively simple game that's technically already been made before. I basically just want to do a remake of Emerald Dragon so there's a definitive edition of the game that's available in English.
Emerald Dragon came on my radar a number of years ago and when I read that story synopsis and booted the game up in an emulator I was struck by how good everything is. For a game released in 1989, it's an absolute benchmark. I'd say it's even better than what Falcom was coming up with at the time. But more than anything I'm just blown away by the art style, the setting, and even just the simple relationships between the main characters.
The game did technically get an English release in the form of a romhack translation for the SNES version, but the problem I have with it is that it's technically a remake; it came out seven years after the original, it's made by a different company, all the graphics were redrawn in a lower resolution which necessitates a change in style, and the music is rearranged for the vastly different sound hardware. What I would like to do is to make a modern version that is more true to the original so that people can fall in love with the same things that I did all of those years ago.
I still yearn for a really well-thought out version of 10Six. It holds a special place for me because it was my first MMO, and it actually survived it's cancellation because one of the lead programmers took the code and is still running it over 20 years later. I was so into this game, that I actually used my fledgling 3D skills to model an item and send it to the team, and they actually incorporated it into the game!.
The lead programmer has continued to make improvements, but he's only one person with a real career. And there are some fundamental mechanics problems with gameplay that could be improved on using modern designs. Really the core of the gameplay for me is a persistent world, with RTS strategies, and the ability to drop down into FPS mode. Everything beyond that is up for modification.
I would like to see more FPS-Z games (think Tribes or, my personal favorite, Fallen Empire: Legions). There's a skill ceiling in this genre that you'll rarely find in an FPS since movement is now prioritized as much as accuracy. Furthermore, the game mode usually centers around capture the flag, not deathmatch.
Of course, in the year 2022, pure FPS games are not in vogue. So I propose the following chimeras:
I would pay quite a wedge for a solid adaptation of the Battle Room from Ender's Game. The battle scenes from that book absolutely enthralled young adolescent Billie, from the tactics of zero-gravity, to self-freezing limbs to use as shields, to finding alternative ways to win the battle scenario. It would be crazy cool to be able to play something that managed to properly capture the spirit of Battle School, but I suspect we're a long way off something that would do it properly and on scale.
A mix between Minecraft and Age of Empires with a little bit of Dwarf Fortress.
You start punching wood and gathering resources like regular Minecraft, but you can convince (or force) villagers to join you. You would be able to assign them tasks to collect resources, build infrastructure, and train them to protect the village and prepare for war.
As the game progresses you'll enter in conflict with other villages/kingdoms for multiple reasons: they want your resources; they are afraid of you and want to keep you in check; or your megalomaniacal self simply wants to expand your kingdom.
Repeat until the whole thing crashes either because it was to big to manage, you were betrayed, conquered, or simply decided to burn everything down like Nero. Flee to somewhere else in the world to start over or to enjoy what the world has to offer.
So basically Minecraft but with mechanics to manage your own kingdom from a first-person perspective, with better random encounters, events, and mob AI.
PS: I've never played Dwarft Fortress, so what I described could be just it but in a first-person perspective.
Apart from aesthetics, how would this be different from an Age of Empires kind of game? 🤔
The idea is that you have the option to experience the game alone (without the help of other NPCs) like regular Minecraft, or start and manage your own kingdom like AoE, and everything in between.
So we have a ton of games that take place on the surface of a planet, and we have a ton of games that take place across multiple star systems, but we almost never* have a game that takes place across a single solar system.
I want to see A strategy game, most likely RTS or pause/fast-forward-based RTS, perhaps similar to homeworld, on this scale. Ideally, it would have full n-body physics, with planetary gravity wells and all of that, but i suppose simple newtonian acceleration/deceleration (with no speed limit) would do as well, especially in a torchdrive-based setting, like the expanse. Never sat down to fully figure out details, but given travel times would be measured in days or months, Id hope for more of a grand strategy style game than a tactical RTS.
*I know of KSP & CODA, but I want more genres in this setting!
It goes to a full galaxy over time, but have you checked out Aurora 4X?
No, linux gamer, aurora 4x is built entirely around the windows .net forms API.
Another game idea that I just remembered, that I think would be very neat, would be a first contact type game. What I envision is a minimalistic, text heavy game, where it is up to you to identify E.T. messages and figure out how to communicate with them. The whole pipeline of identifying messages and decoding them would make up the game, with very little handholding. It would be up to players to identify patterns in data streams from radio telescopes (obviously there would be some guidance here as to what "normal" data might look like), and then begin the long task of decoding what is being said. I would want the game to have almost no tutorial on this point, and players would be encouraged to collaborate on forums or using outside tools like text analysis or other programming skills. Maybe the game would be designed to support player scripting or plugins to aid in message analysis and decoding.
The game designer would have to invent an alien language and compose the set of messages to send players, and would have to develop a relatively sophisticated AI to respond to player messages. Messages could be similar to things like Lincos, or entirely different.
I hope this makes sense to someone else, it's an idea I have thought of for a while and I think, if executed well, it could make for an amazing puzzle game and would generate fun online communities.
I imagine this game with ultra-retro aesthetics like Mind Scanners or Papers Please. So fairly simple from a technology standpoint.
The complicated part, I think, would be the linguistics itself. How to make it feel truly alien but also possible to decode? You could probably use some already existing conlangs as inspiration at least. The difficulty curve would be tough to balance.
Great idea. I'd play that game.
I'm intrigued by this idea, and I wonder if the difficulty with the linguistics could be somewhat mitigated by having it be an async multiplayer experience? Where 2 players are randomly paired, and you have to try and learn how to communicate with each other? I'm not sure how to make that interesting for both players though.
Absolutely, that's the aesthetic I had in mind. I think it could even work as largely terminal based game. The linguistics would be the hard part, as would the AI governing communication. I think ideally, players could send test messages to the alien counter-part to see if they could communicate. Another idea I had was some type of "translator", where you actually have players communicating with other players, but their messages are passed through an intermediate layer where it get's "translated" into the alien language. But I think that would almost be harder than writing the AI in the first place. EDIT: I just saw that @Omnicrola suggested something similar! It would certainly add some dynamism to the game.
I think a well developed alien language, along with something like Lincos for the actual communication, would make the game challenging enough that it would take a community to crack.
This may only be tangentially related, but Computers + Lincos = Cosmic OS. The idea is to communicate enough information to the alien civilization to bootstrap a virtual machine that can execute computer code. Figuring out a Virtual Machine from first principles might be a fun exercise in such a game.
I'm not sure if it was Cosmic OS or a similar project I read about, but the ultimate goal was to encode a form of artificial intelligence into the message, so the alien civilization can interact with it in real time and thus communicate effectively, despite the long latency between actual messages. It could, for example, incorporate something like Stable Diffusion (generalized to all modalities) to teach them about humanity and, in return, learn from them. This is way too advanced for an actual game (as noted by others in the thread), but it definitively would be interesting.
If the game is about humanity receiving such a message, you could additionally imagine that the alien AI is (secretly) hostile and wants to somehow escape the virtual machine to wreak havoc on earth...
Not exactly what you want but if you want to decipher a written alien language you might like the archaeology game Heaven's Vault .
A trading card game around viruses/bacteria and nanobots, similar to your Magic the Gatherings or Hearthstones where you manage cards and resource, but the key feature is that each player has a randomly generated deck at start, and when you encounter someone else's deck, win or lose, that deck is then available for you to run next there after. You can play a bracket or a ladder with a custom deck with more fine tuned rules for competitive balance, but the main draw is that there's a dominant strain of deck out there, and you're either feeding it's reign, or looking to take it down a peg.
This amuses me. So there is no ability to customize decks, only the ability to choose to use a deck once you have encountered it? Probably the entire system resets and re-randomizes periodically to keep it fresh?
Ideally it wouldn't be a clean refresh since it would just lead to the same metas over and over again. New decks would be introduced through new players or some ability to generate a new deck, and maybe there would be a month long season where the last week only the top performing decks are available, and whatever deck type comes out on top gets more points per win, but less weighted towards power next season?
As far as deck construction, maybe that would be the ultra competitive money sink mode, but the idea is to lean into the metagame of everyone running the same deck, and learning how to deconstruct it with what's available to you. Also it's stolen shamelessly from Hearthstone's burndown brawl, which was ran for a week and some of the most fun I had with the game.
Although now that I think about it, maybe there should be a "friendly" mode where you and your opponent play your decks, and you get a randomly generated hybrid deck available instead of a copy of the opponents. That would speed up the churn a bit if the way to make better decks is to play matches against decks that work well together, make a child deck, then have that one proliferate to try and become the new meta.
This idea seems like it could easily be built on top of the Keyforge system by adding just the deck replication mechanics (fairly easy). I'd love to see it. Should we call Richard Garfield?
Keyforge sounds like an interesting analog and if I knew anyone in my area that played, I would be down to give it a shot. I'm not sure how you'd manage the physical economy with the game now, I guess people could import purchased decks and insert them into the ecosystem as well, but I don't know enough about the game to know if that gives physical owners a big advantage.
Yeah I was thinking more of the system for generating and naming the unique decks, but I would manage the economy for this game idea entirely online, I think.
Another game I wish would exist: Marvel Heroes 2. The original was so good... if only Gazillion hadn't been led by such complete idiots.
A new Silent Hill game. That's all, lol.
An fps based on the tobetan book of the dead.
When I was a kid (in the late '90s as early 3D games were going mainstream) I came up with my own "dream game" that I desperately wanted to be made. I haven't really thought about it since, and I'm probably forgetting a bunch of the details, but to my knowledge it still hasn't been made. Of course my interests and free time for gaming have shifted a lot since then, so maybe it was and I just didn't hear about it. I think it could get made in much finer form with today's tech then I ever dreamed of in the PSX era.
Anyway, I was really into racing games back then. I imagined a 2-player co-op arcade racer/shooter with elaborate destructive environments. It would play like an over-the-top action movie. One player is the driver, and the other is the gunner. Tracks are long and linear, not circuits, and it's a struggle just to survive all the way to the finish line, let alone finish first (no respawning). In addition to taking out the other hostile racers, there are tons of hidden shortcuts and alternate routes that can be opened up in chaotic ways. There are also environmental hazards to avoid, and maybe penalties for civilian casualties, because most of the tracks would be through busy public spaces. Part of the challenge would be in managing a limited ammo supply and collecting armor/weapon/boost power-ups.
Tracks would offer a wide variety of terrains, from mountain cliffs to jungle ruins to downtown city centers. Each track would provide its own preset vehicle and weapon loadout, so you're driving trucks in the countryside, convertibles on the beach, motorcycles on the freeway, snowmobiles in the Himalayas, you get the idea. This is a video game sprung from the mind of a 12-year-old boy so there's not a lot of subtlety in it! But I still think it would be a lot of fun to play.
There were some scenes in the last couple Uncharted games that definitely felt close to what I imagined, as you're jumping onto moving vehicles, shooting bad guys with the mounted turret or whatever, then hopping into the driver's seat for a while, and so on. And I played a racing game called Split/Second that had a bunch of stunts and explosions that opened up shortcuts, that was also similar. I wouldn't be surprised if my idea actually has been made, so if you know it please share!
Some car combat games meet some of your criteria. I used to love Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal on the PS1 and PS2. But they're basically arena shooters instead of linear tracks, and a lot simpler than your dream game.
One game that comes close to that feeling is the game I "invented" when I was a kid, which consisted in playing Nascar by racing in the wrong direction and purposefully colliding with all the vehicles until my car was completely totaled, meaning that I "won" :P
There is also Grand Theft Auto.
Oh yeah, Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal were 100% inspirations for me back in the day. Destruction Derby too. I did the same thing as you, setting up head-on collisions in any game with car damage models, Daytona USA was a favorite of mine for this. Later on I had a lot of fun with the Burnout games and Danger Zone. None of these are exactly what I had in mind though, a true chaotic, destructive arcade racer with weapons and that co-op dedicated driver/shooter gameplay.